The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

Intro

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. The House of Representatives has given President Reagan more than half of the emergency military aid he wanted for El Salvador. The House voted for a compromise $70 million. Wholesale prices rose slightly in July, the first rise in three months. A state of emergency was declared in Lawrence, Massachusetts, after two nights of rioting. Egypt blamed Libya and Iran for the mining of the Red Sea. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: In our table of contents for the hour tonight, a view of why rioting has hit the Massachusetts town of Lawrence, an update on recent near-collisions and the growing frustrations over airliner delays; a major documentary report from Minnesota on child abuse; the Olympics from the unusual perspective of an anthropologist; and the closing segment of our series from Route 89 in Arizona on Folksinger Katie Lee.

MacNEIL: The House of Representatives, it's Democratic majority softening somewhat on El Salvador, today gave President Reagan more than half of what he wanted in emergency military aid. The House voted for $70 million for military assistance to the Duarte government in combatting the left-wing guerrillas. The Reagan administration had asked for $117 million, and the Senate had approved that amount. The House defeated a move by administration critics to cut the new aid to $40, and went for the compromise of 70 when it was reported that the Senate would agree. House Speaker Thomas O'Neill said new evidence presented by the administration on arms aid for guerrillas apparently persuaded a lot of members. Here's a sample of the debate that proceeded the vote.

Rep. JACK KEMP, (R) New York: The issue is not just the signal that we're going to be sending to Central America, my friends. The issue is not just the security assistance to El Salvador. I just made a call to Jose Napoleon Duarte to ask him how important this was. He said, Mr. Kemp, the security assistance is critical, but this is a vital political need that I have as we build our government's ability to deal not only with the extreme left, but also to deal with the extreme right. Everyone who's gone to El Salvador on left and right from the United States Congress in the last two years has said, "Mr. Duarte, if you win, we're going to help you with a partnership to build democracy in El Salvador." He won the election, he got inaugurated, and since his inauguration there has not been one vote on the floor of the House giving him that partnership or manifesting that partnership that we said would be there if he should be inaugurated as the new president.

Rep. JAMES SHANNON, (D) Massachusetts: I remind you, this is the fourth time this year that this institution has approved additional military funding for El Salvador. If we increase it one more time, then what incentive is there going to be for the military to stop the death squad activities? What incentive is there going to be for those who want to see continued military support in the next fiscal year to make some progress in the next two or three or four months? There will be none. And that's the point that we have to face today. This is an extravagant request for military assistance. It is sure to increase the killing; it is sure to increase the bloodshed; it is sure to increase the level of the war. It is regret.

MacNEIL: The El Salvador vote was one of the last acts of the House before it rises for a month-long recess through the Republican convention and Labor Day. Its other major business tonight is a vote on enlarging the Superfund to clean up toxic waste sites. Before the House is legislation calling for a sixfold increase in the Superfund, raised largely by taxes on the chemical industry from the present $1.6 billion to $10.2 billion. Jim?

LEHRER: And the subject of tax increases came up at another Republican news conference today, GOP leaders of the House predicting there would be an agreement on a platform plank to please all, those who want an ironclad ban against the a tax increase and those who want some room to maneuver. The news conference was called to attack the Democratic platform, but it rurned quicly to the GOP tax plans.

Rep. KEMP: Our platform will unequivocally, categorically reject tax increases as a mechanism by which to reduce deficits.

Rep. ROBERT MICHEL, (R) Illinois, House Minority Leader: When one says you mean you're never going to have any tax increases, I can't -- I can't put myself on that kind of a mark, nor can I really think, frankly, the President can for an extended period of time when, if the need arises for a program that requires additional revenue, then it seems to me you gotta leave yourself a little bit of wiggle room there to provide for that revenue to fund that program, and that program then will to be justified with the American public.

LEHRER: In the non-political economic news of the day, wholesale prices rose a modest 0.3% in July, said the Labor Department. It was the first increase in three months and was blamed on hikes in food prices. But most economists agreed the increase was modest enough to mean inflation was still on the back burner.

On Wall Street the stock market had another very busy day. The Dow Jones average was up to more than 22 points at one time, but closed 5.96 points down, and closing overall 1218.09. Robin? Riot: Lawrence, Massachusetts

MacNEIL: The city of Lawrence, Massachusetts, will spend tonight under a curfew following two nights or rioting between hispanics and whites. The 8 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew was declared by the mayor today and will last through the weekend. One hundred and eighty specially trained riot police were brought in from other parts of Massachusetts to help keep order. Last night Molotov cocktails, bottles of gasoline with flaming wicks, were among the missiles thrown by gangs of young men in Tower Hill, a low-income section of Lawrence. One side was mostly Spanish-speaking, the other mostly of French-Canadian, Irish and Italian descent. Four people were arrested and 20 were injured before the police resorted to tear gas and restored order at 2 o'clock in the morning. To give us some background on the tensions that have produced the explosion in Lawrence, we talk to Yohel Camayd-Freixas, co-chairman of the Massachusetts Commission on Hispanic Affairs. Mr. Camayd-Freixas is also an assistant professor of planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mr. Camayd-Freixas, how do you in general explain this rioting?

YOHEL CAMAYD-FREIXAS: Well, to the extent that one can explain events such as this, I think there are some immediate, short-term explanations and also some antecedent situations that may have created the conditions to make this sort of rioting happen. I think, as you know, there was an incident day before yesterday where a white family accused a hispanic family of having broken the windshield of their car, and there were some words and the thing escalated. Reportedly -- I was not there, but reportedly the police took awhile in coming in, and by the time they got there there were a hundred people on either side screaming at each other and so on, and a series of escalating conflicts that led to the Molotov cocktails and shooting and various other things.

MacNEIL: That was the immediate cause. Now, what is the background case, in your view?

Mr. CAMAYD-FREIXAS: Well, Lawrence is one of those cities in Massachusetts that has experienced simultaneously a couple of things. One is a massive influx of new hispanic immigrants seeking employment and economic opportunities, and on the other hand it has been losing a lot of its manufacturing industries. So that competition for diminishing jobs and so on has been great.

MacNEIL: Excuse me. How big is the hispanic community as a proportion of the population of the city now?

Mr. CAMAYD-FREIXAS: It's about -- well, going on adjusting '80 census figures to 1984, we're probably talking about 20% of the city. The city is about 63,000 people, so we're talking about 13,000 hispanics.

MacNEIL: That's a large hispanic community for a small New England town.

Mr. CAMAYD-FREIXAS: Yes, it's probably the largest proportion of hispanics in any town in the Commonwealth.

MacNEIL: Now, why -- excuse me. Why would hispanics choose to go to a rather fading New England mill town to look for jobs?

Mr. CAMAYD-FREIXAS: That's good question. I think that a lot of the character of the hispanic immigration and migration is often times economic and also to reunite with family and friends. Part of what happens is that the information on what kind of jobs may be available in a given area lags behind the conomic reality of the area. So a lot of folks may have gone to Lawrence to join their family, their friends, also expecting through these interpersonal contacts that they have to find and easier time of finding employment. And they find that that's just not the case.

MacNEIL: You're on this state hispanic commission. Have signs of tension or friction come to light before these riots?

Mr. CAMAYD-FREIXAS: Yes. There have been several incidents that have added to the frustration on particularly the hispanic side. I think the white community, of course, has been seeing this influx of immigrants over the last 10, 15 years and has had some difficulty adapting to it. On the hispanic side, there recently were a series of articles by the local newspaper. The Lawrence Eagle Tibune, that sought, interestingly enough, to bring to the front -- to the forefront, to a public dialogue, issues of prejudice within the community. And there efforts, well-meaning I think they probably were, resulted in a lot of hispanics being terribly offended by the whole situation, and they picketed the newspaper, they had meetings with the editors and all sorts of conflict. There's also several other things. A nearby town of Lowell had some similar difficulties with regard to some remarks made by the mayor as to the character of hispanics or something of this sort, and also there's some debate going on as to what to do with some areas in the -- some land in the city of Lawrence where housing is going to be built. And a lot of the community wants to have moderante and low-income housing and a lot of t he leadership and Planners in the city want upper-income housing.

MacNEIL: I read in one of the news accounts today that some of the white youths in the crowd last night were chanting, "Go home. We were here first." I mean, is there active hostility on the part of the previous settled white people?

Mr. CAMAYD-FREIXAS: Between white folks?

MacNEIL: Between the whites and the hispanics. I mean, are they generally hostile to the hispanics?

Mr. CAMAYD-FREIXAS: Well, I don't live in Lawrence. Reports that I have heard in my contacts with the people in the city have indicated a rather significant amount of intolerance. Essentially the problem is one of massive lack of communication between the two communities, and also the fact that, in this case, the newcomers, the hispanic community, that has become a significant share of the town, hasn't had much of an opportunity to participate in mainstream activities of the community. I think that there has been some of that conflict going on. You should also note that the median age of hispanics in Lawrence is something like -- it's 19. So that in fact hispanics have a disproportionate amount of youths among their ranks, so that there're probably a lot of hispanic youngsters running around and getting into conflict with a lot of white youngsters, and all of it happening in the Tower Hill, a workingclass and poor community where all the riots are happening.

MacNEIL: Well, Professor Camayd-Freixas, thank you for that background. Jim?

LEHRER: Overseas today, Egypt's defense minister said he's 70% sure Iran and Libya are to blame for the mining of the Red Sea. He said there's no definite proof yet, but when Egypt learns who is responsible, it will refuse to allow that nation's ships to use the Suez Canal. A U.S. Navy ship left Rota, Spain, for the Red Sea this morning after picking up four mine-sweeping helicopters that had been flown over from the United States.

In Lebanon, a bomb explosion killed one and wounded four others in a crowded Beirut suburb. The target of the attack was a building used by Shiite Moslem militia. The bomb was the fifth to explode in Beirut in the last 48 hours.

And, in the African nation of Zimbabwe, Prime Minister Robert Mugabe moved closer to his goal of setting up a one-party socialist state. His party is holding its first convention since black-controlled Zimbabwe replaced white-ruled Rhodesia in 1980. The convention accepted a new constitution that calls for the eventual move to a one-party socialist state. Mugabe has said he will push for a one-party government after general elections next year. Child Abuse

MacNEIL: The scandal surrounding New York City daycare centers over allegations that children were sexually abused continued to simmer today. News reports said a fifth and possibly a sixth daycare center were involved. The city agency that supervises the centers, the Human Resources Administration, was cleared by the city of charges that it hindered an investigation. The two top officials of that agency resigned earlier this week. New York's mayor, Ed Koch, said today that the investigation was being actively pursued. The New York case is only one of several that have headlines nationwide and focused attention on this painful subject. One place that's had several incidents recently is Minnesota, a state that's taken the lead in the prosecution and treatment of offenders, as we see in this report from Barry Richards of public television station KTCA, Minneapolis-St. Paul. A warning, some language in this report is explicit.

BARRY RICHARDS, KTCA-TV [voice-over]: Jordan, Minnesota, is a placid town nestled in the hills of the Minnesota River Valley, 45 minutes from downtown Minneapolis. It's a town whose 2,800 residents have always prided themselves on living in a community with high moral standards. Above all, they thought it was a good place to raise children. But last fall the idylic image was shattered when the first of 24 adults was arrested for sexually abusing local children, and the town of Jordan found itself at the center of the largest alleged sexual abuse ring ever uncovered in the state of Minnesota.

Jordan arrests came only one year after the conviction of the last member of another child sex abuse ring, which operated in a town just afew miles south. Six members of the Cermak family were jailed, including a grandmother and grandfather who were convicted of playing sex games with their grandchildren. The Cermak case was the first big case for Scott County Attorney Kathleen Morris, who had been elected on a pledge to investigate and prosecute every reported case of child abuse in the county. Since then she has gained a statewide reputation as the leading crusader against a legal system that traditionally looked the other way when confronted with sexual abuse of children. And Morris enjoys solid support in Scott County, in spite of some initial opposition.

KATHLEEN MORRIS, Scott County Attorney: Oh, with the Cermaks it was just. Jim and John were okay. The women they got real upset about because women don't do that. Or, when I arrested Grandma and Grandpa I'd gone too far. Why didn't I leave them alone? You know. Why arrest a poor grandma and grandpa? The community as a whole, I think, has been real supportive. They really take children as a priority. You know, we keep saying it's our most precious resource. It's about time we took care of them.

RICHARDS [voice-over]: Meanwhile, some residents of the nearby twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul were busy dismissing the Scott County cases as a rural phenomenon. Then came the arrest of one of the most prominent members of the Minneapolis arts community, the director of the Children's Theater, who was accused of having sex with three male students.Both the Children's Theater case and the Scott County investigation have received national publicity. Both were featured prominently in a recent Newsweek cover story. And people are beginning to ask, why Minnesota? Well, the answer is, because of people like Kathleen Morris, who is willing to say loud and clear the very things that people don't want to hear.

Ms. MORRIS: They expect you to be able to pick sexual abuser out. They want them to look like a sexual abuser; they don't want them to look like you and I look. Sexual abusers don't wear three-piece suits, or they don't work, they don't belong to the League of Women Voters. And if you believe that, your life is easier. If you believe that it doesn't happen where you live and with anybody you know, then, guess what? You can go right on, nice easy life and not worry about it.

RICHARDS [voice-over]: According to Morris, the reason there is more publicity about sexual abuse in Minnesota is not because there is more of it, but because Minnesota is one of two states that lead the nation in doing something about the problem.

Ms. MORRIS: No, we aren't any different. I think what's different is the state of Washington and the state of Minnesota, they're forerunners in the prosecution and treatment and dealing with victims as well as offenders. I think what happened was, because of the Cermaks and the media taking an interest in it, it for the first time was really brought out in the open, and people started saying, wait a minute, it isn't a family affair. Families don't have the right to sexually abuse kids.

RICHARDS [voice-over]: More than any other group, Morris credits the media. Six months after the first Cermak arrest, local television station WCCO aired a controversial series about sexual abuse. The series alleged that a respected Minneapolis judge had paid a juvenile male prostitute for sex.

REPORTER: Do you see the man that you had sex with on that page?

YOUTH: That's him.

REPORTER: They boy picked out the photograph of Judge Winton.

RICHARDS: As a result, the judge was removed from the bench. To Don Shelby, the reporter who prepared the WCCO series, its significance had little to do with the judge.

DON SHELBY, WCCO-TV: In the only limited way that I can make that judgment, I would tell you that it's the first time that I had ever seen a series of reports on this subject that focused on the victims, that spent time with the victims and tried to explain the sensibilities of the victim and why it occurs that the damage is much greater than the act of sex itself, why we needed to say that the act of the sexual abuse of children is not a sexual action, not be perceived as such. But it is an act of abuse of a child.

RICHARDS [voice-over]: This boy was molested by his family doctor in a small Minnesota town.

YOUTH: When at first it happened, I don't know, I drew into myself. I didn't trust anybody. I didn't talk anymore, lost all my friends, most of them. I tried to do myself in. I tried to O.D.

Mr. SHELBY: Tried to commit suicide?

YOUTH: Yeah.

RICHARDS [voice-over]: Shelby also takes credit for convincing the community that sexual abuse should be treated as criminal behavior.

Mr. SHELBY: This community was not doing that. And when we went to Seattle, to the King County Sexual Assault Services, where they had been doing it for years, where they found that the combination of jail time and treatment was the most successful modality, that they finally awakened here to that prospect. And we showed that they were not going to jail. And, based on the Entepin[?] County's statistics, we showed that of an estimated 3,000 cases of sexual abuse in 1980 that only 10 individuals actually did time in prison, and that has changed.

RICHARDS [voice-over]: But therapists and other professionals complained that the series told the public that there was a problem but did not let people know enough about what to do about it. Recently WCCO in Shelby responded with a week-long series of programs called "Project Abuse." One of the most memorable moments was a sequence in which a five-year-old girl, with the help of an anatomically correct doll, showed what her abuser had done to her.

THERAPIST: What is he doing with you?

CHILD: Put it in here.

THERAPIST: He put it in your butt? [unintelligible]

CHILD: [unintelligible]

THERAPIST: He put his penis in your mouth and he put his fingers or his hand on your butt.

RICHARDS [voice-over]: Project Abuse covered a spectrum from educational material for children to information about services for victims and offenders. Thousands of people, many of them children, called a special 24-hour hotline to report abuse or to ask about services. The extent of the problem continues to astound even the professionals who deal with sexual abuse on a day-to-day basis.

Ms. MORRIS: Well, I think the newest statistics -- I think WCCO, when they did theirs, said one out of four young women by the time they're 18, and one out of 10 young men. I think that those statistics are way low, and I think what we're going to find out and what basically nationally they're saying is a third of all young people by the time they're 13 will have been sexually abused. I don't think that's unusual at all. In fact, I think that's probably low.

RICHARDS [voice-over]: The one-third figure is shocking, and it's important to qualify it. One third of all children will have sexual contact with an adult by age 13, but sexual contact in this case refers to anything from an unwanted touch to rape. Morris believes that any sexual contact between a child and an adult is sexual abuse because of the shame and psychological damage it can cause. She also believes in shocking the public, not just with statistics but with blunt language.

Ms. MORRIS: People out there want to believe that sexual abuse -- and when you talk about sexual abuse and sexual molestation and child molestation, they want to believe in their minds it's too much kissing or it's hugging, you know, and Morris arrests people in Scott County for hugging and kissing their kids. We ought to let people know we aren't talking about hugging and kissing. It's time to quit messing around. And it's like a woman not very long ago said, "Well, you keep saying women can sexually abuse, what do women do?" And it didn't dawn on me, I've got to start telling people that, too, because unless you deal with it you don't know women that stick curling irons up kids and bowling pins and ice cubes and cucumbers, and you name it. Because unless you come from that experience, it's hard to imagine what a woman would do with a kid. So we've got to tell people that's how women screw kids.

RICHARDS [voice-over]: While Kathleen Morris and the media are busy education adults, others in Minnesota are working to inform kids.

ACTOR [playing relative]: How's my little Mary Sue?

RICHARDS [voice-over]: What you are seeing is a clip from the Illusion Theater production, "A Touch," a play designed to teach kids what sexual abuse is and what to do about it. "Touch" has been performed over 1,800 times in 36 states, and recently was made into a film for national distribution.

MARY SUE: I want to go to my room!

TEACHER: What could she have done?

1st CHILD: Told her parents.

TEACHER: Okay.

2nd CHILD: She could have said stop.

3rd CHILD: She should have said, "I don't like that."

4th CHILD: She could have gave her grandfather a signal that she didn't like what he was doing to her.

RICHARDS [voice-over]: Cordelia Anderson, one of the creators of "Touch," is a therapist who has worked with children who are victims of sexual abuse. She reacts strongly to the suggestion that "Touch" might scare children.

CORDELIA ANDERSON, Sexual Abuse Prevention Program: When we ask children what sexual abuse means, they say things like, when someone chops you up into little pieces and they put you in the trunk of their car and they take you away. That's scary. We've been using scare tactics for years. We have not been giving children accurate information. We have not been telling them that it's very often maybe someone they know. It seems like it's scarier, but what we need to let children is most people are not going to hurt them. Most touch is good.

RICHARDS [voice-over]: Anderson also believes it is important for all of us to be able to talk openly about healthy sexuality. Illusion Theater has created a new play entitled "For Adults Only," which deals in part with our discomfort about talking about sex.

ACTRESS: My littlest granddaughter is five now, and one night I was giving her a bath and she pointed at herself down there and said, "Grandma, this is my 'gina." Well, I nearly slapped her face.

RICHARDS [voice-over]: This push for greater openness is enthusiastically supported by therapists who treat child molesters. The final group which Morris credits for bringing sexual abuse out in the open. When sex is shrouded in secrecy, they say, people can grow up thinking deviant behavior is normal.

JERRY KAPLAN, Alpha House: We see really a lack of general and healthy knowledge about human sexuality among offender populations. Some do not know what a healthy sexual relationship even is. I've seen people that believe what sex is is having some kind of contact with kids. That's what they learned when they were themselves victimized.

RICHARDS [voice-over]: Jerry Kaplan is the director of Alpha Human Services, which runs in-patient and out-patient programs for male sex offenders. He is honest about the potential for successful treatment.

Mr. KAPLAN: I do not think in terms of curing sex offenders. I think in terms of reducing the probability that they will again engage in some type of similar sexual misconduct.

RICHARDS [voice-over]: Those that can't be treated, he says, should be incarcerated for as long as possible.

OFFENDER: I planned on where we were going to go, the situations on how I was going to touch them, what I had to do to get their pants down. I'm not a violent rapist. Everything I did, you know, I thought was in a caring, loving manner. You know, no violence, no force. And so I didn't consider myself a rapist. I didn't even consider myself as a child molester. I considered myself as a father who loved his daughter very much.

RICHARDS [voice-over]: This man is part of an outpatient group that meets at Alpha House once a week. Although it is almost impossible to generalize about child molesters because there are so many different types, experts say there are a few common traits. One of those is low self-esteem.

OFFENDER: When I was a kid with my real father it was all yelling and screaming.

THERAPIST: He yelled at you or you yelled at --

OFFENDER: And I couldn't -- no, I was slapped every time I'd open my mouth. I couldn't express my opinions.

Mr. KAPLAN: Oftentimes they feel very uncomfortable with adults. Usually they have a history of very few rewarding social and/or sexual experiences.

RICHARDS [voice-over]: Another trait which is somewhat surprising is a rigid sense of morality.

Mr. KAPLAN: Well, we do see a disproportionate number of child molesters that seem to be very rigid, moralistic, overly religious. I'm talking about somebody who is trying to use religion as a way or providing external control over impulses that he himself is marginally able to control.

RICHARDS [voice-over]: Kaplan's findings jibe with Morris' experience with Beverly Cermak, the 28-year-old mother of three who pled guilty to five counts of child rape.

Ms. MORRIS: I was asking her why she ever -- when was the first time she ever knew that Jim was involved with her children, and she said it was when her daughter was six months old and she heard her screaming in the bedroom, and she walked in and there was blood all over the place, and Jim was having anal sex with her. And I asked Beverly, I think, when she got involved, and she said about a month later. And I asked her if it was because she'd been physically abused and forced. And then she said, "No, no, it's because sex with children is beautiful." She immediately said to George and I, a police officer, "But I gotta tell you something I did that was really, really wrong." She said, "I had an affair with my brother-in-law, and that's a sin." And after we talked to Beverly for awhile, that was against the Ten Commandments: thou shall not commit adultery. Nowhere in the Ten Commandments did it say "Thou shall not screw children."

RICHARDS [voice-over]: In spite of the zeal with which Morris has prosecuted the Cermaks and other child molesters, she has room for pity, too.

Ms. MORRIS: I feel sorry for the Jim and John Cermaks of the world. They've been sexually abused all their lives, and that's why we have to detect it early, so we can get them into therapy so they can learn that there are other ways to live, other ways to care about. It's like the oldest Cermak child is 12 now.She just told her therapist a couple of weeks ago, she asked her, she said, "Do you think when I grow up I might do this to my kids?" If she can start worrying about that now, then, guess what? We've got a real chance of her not ever doing that to her kids.

MacNEIL: That report was by Barry Richards of public station KTCA, Minneapolis-St. Paul.

In Washington today the Senate gave approval for a new federal agency designed to assist local law enforcement and including a national center for missing and exploited children. If the House goes along, each state will get a minimum of a quarter of a million dollars a year. The national center will spend $10 million a year to operate a toll-free hotline, which is already in operation, for people with information about abducted children and runaways.

Jim?

LEHRER: Still to come on the hour tonight, a look at the squeeze on controlling air traffic, a report from Los Angeles on a very different view of the Olympics, and words from Route 89 in Arizona from folk singer Katie Lee.

[video postcard -- Queen Creek Canyon, Arizona]

MacNEIL: For the first time ever, a federal district judge has been convicted of a crime while he was serving on the bench. A jury in Las Vegas, Nevada, found Judge Harry Claiborne guilty today on two charges of income tax evasion. The judge, who is 67, faces a possible sentence of up to six years in prison.

In Philadelphia today, a former deputy police commissioner and six other former policemen were convicted on federal corruption charges for their part in a $350,000 extortion ring to protect illegal gambling. The verdict was returned after a jury deliberated for eight hours in what's being called the biggest police corruption case in the city's history. All the lawyers for the convicted officers said they would appeal. One called the verdict a miscarriage of justice. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Howard Klein said, "The defendants had a fair trial and the verdict speaks for justice."

In another federal case today the Justice Department in Washington announced the arrest of five Georgia Ku Klux Klansmen on charges of attacking couples of mixed race. The five men were arrested in Atlanta and charged with seven counts of conspiring to engage in racial discrimination. In one case the Klansmen were said to have broken into a home and terrorized a white woman and her two adolescent children. In another attack, a black man married to a white woman received a severe head injury. Justice Department officials said this was the biggest case they and the FBI had been able to bring in what they called an emerging form of Klan violence.

Jim? Crowded Skies

LEHRER: On Wednesday a Delta Airlines plane carrying 146 passengers had a near miss with a smaller private plane near Washington's National Airport. The Washington Post said today air controller error caused the two planes to head directly for another, only 100 feet apart. The smaller plane vering away to prevent a collision. It was the fourth near-miss reported in the Washington area in 10 days, and added further to the already heightened concern and debate over the air traffic control system. Critics say the system is overcrowded and overworked, causing enormous delays of commercial airline flights and some charge unsafe conditions, a charge vigorously denied by the Federal Aviation Administration. Douglas Feaver, transportation reporter for The Washington Post, is here to tell us more about it all.

Doug, what kind of controller error was involved in this Wednesday incident?

DOUGLAS FEAVER: The Wednesday incident, Jim, was one where two airplanes were doing what they were legally entitled to do, one under very positive control, completely in the system, on a flight plan that the controller knew about. The other, just flying along. It was a clear day and he had the right to do that with an electronic device aboard that reported his altitude. What the controller didn't notice was the two airplanes were converging, and it's his job to pick that up and make the necessary route adjustments so the planes will not get as close as they did.

LEHRER: He just missed it?

Mr. FEAVER: He just missed it. He was talking on -- he was talking on one of the intercoms that they have to somebody else on a nonbusiness thing. This is an experienced controller, a person with 10 years experience. This is not one of the new hires, and he was just diverted. It's the kind of thing that we can see happening to all of us at one point or another, but this was a very, very close call.

LEHRER: So it was not related in any way directly to the complaint of the overcrowding and the overworking. Is that correct?

Mr. FEAVER: I think it would be impossible to make a direct correlation. Again, we have an experienced controller. He'd been on duty only for 17, 18 minutes at the time of the incident.

LEHRER: Any similarity between Wednesday's and these other ones in the last 10 days?

Mr. FEAVER: There is a similarity. The three at the Baltimore-Washington international airport, two of those were relatively minor. One was a little bit more serious and it also involved a momentary diversion by the controller. In that particular case, the diversion was one of the kinds of things that happens in aviation sometimes when many things go wrong at once. One airplane was on the wrong frequency. A pilot in another plane made a right turn instead of a left turn. Those are the kinds of things that sometimes add up to accidents when many things go wrong at once. But the common element in the two is that the controllers, for one reason or another, were diverted momentarily from the screen. And that can certainly be a stress factor.

LEHRER: Sure. I mean, it could be.

Mr. FEAVER: Sure.

LEHRER: And it's a part of the thing. Now, the delay problem. First of all, how bad is it?

Mr. FEAVER: Well, it's not that bad if you take away New York City, but New York City is the most popular place for people to take off and land airplanes in the country. In New York about, oh, for a thousand -- for every thousand flights right now for the three New York airports, about 195 of them are delayed more than 15 minutes. Now, that sends ripples throughout the nation's system. If you take away New York you're down to about 20 delays per thousand flights of more than 15 minutes.

LEHRER: And a delay is defined as what?

Mr. FEAVER: This is 15 minutes or more from the published schedule. Several things are contributing to this. One of them is the fact that the FAA now requires -- this is since the PATCO strike -- now requires airlines to take the delays on the ground instead of going to holding patterns in the air. So it's a question of where you want your delay, whether you're going to wait to take off or whether you're going to wait to land once you're in the sky.

LEHRER: I don't know about you, but I'll take mine on the ground.

Mr. FEAVER: I'm with you.

LEHRER: Okay, all right.

Mr. FEAVER: Another factor is that airline deregulation has led to a different scheduling pattern on the part of the airlines. They want to put many flights into one airport at one time. It's called a hub-and-spoke system. An individual airline wants to have as many connecting possibilities in one city at one time. So they like to get 30, 40 flights on the ground and then have everybody make their connections, and then 30, 40 flights off.

LEHRER: An example of that, the way American does in Dallas. U.S. Air does in Pittsburgh --

Mr. FEAVER: United at Chicago. Atlanta has both Eastern and Delta doing it. So this is the kind of thing that the airlines like to do. But, again, if New York gets backed up, it sends ripples throughout the system. And that's largely where the problem is, the three New York maiden airports -- Newark and LaGuardia and Kennedy. Their traffic patterns are so closely enterwined that sometimes, depending on the weather and which runways are used, a Kennedy takeoff can affect a LaGuardia takeoff, and a Newark takeoff can do this. So it gets very complicated. The big problem is in New York City, but it is certainly affecting the system nationwide.

LEHRER: Is there an answer? Is there a solution to this?

Mr. FEAVER: There is a solution, but it's going to take some time. They are working very hard on the New York air space and seeing if they cannot reconfigure the approach and departure patterns so they won't conflict to the degree that they do today. A few more controllers, a few more experienced controllers, would help, but that wouldn't eliminate the biggest problem, which we see throughout the system, which is over-scheduling on the part of the airlines. Many, many airlines want to put too many flights down on the ground at the same time. At LaGuardia the other day they had 80 flights scheduled when a maximum of 68 was possible for the period of time we're talking about in clear weather. Now, you bring in a thunderstorm or you lower it to where it has to be instrument flight so that instrument conditions, and it's different.

LEHRER: Now, Frank Borman, the president of Eastern, wants to meet with the heads of other airlines and try to work something out among themselves. He wants an antitrust waiver and that sort of thing.Is that going to get off the ground?

Mr. FEAVER: Well, it looks like it's off to a good start, although not all airlines approve that. United said yesterday that they oppose it. They oppose that kind of a meeting. Eastern filed its application with the Civil Aeronautics Board today. The CAB said they will give it an expedited hearing. The Department of Transportation is supporting the application. We'll see. But it clearly is going to require some kind of cooperation among the airlines or some kind of -- or imposition of some control by the FAA.

LEHRER: So to wrap it all up, you know, is this a very scary subject. I don't need to tell you that, obviously you know more about it than any of us. But there is -- the pattern on the near-misses is not some clean pattern that is directly -- that we could say tonight, or anybody could say tonight that it is directly the result of the overwork, overcrowding of the system, correct?

Mr. FEAVER: No, I don't think so. The near-misses are actually decreasing in terms of numbers, and have been steadily since 1979. There are fewer now than there were then -- a reported near-miss. That's one where a pilot files -- goes to the trouble of filing a report. The delays that we see in the system are an indication that the FAA is keeping traffic at levels it feels its controllers can handle. The delay is actually a safety indicator, not an indicator of chaos.

LEHRER: Doug Feaver, thank you very much.

Mr. FEAVER: Thank you.

LEHRER: Robin? Olympic Anthropology

MacNEIL: Next tonight we have another look at the Olympic games, not this time through the eyes of athletes or sports commentators or politicians, but scientists. There's actually a team of anthropologists in Los Angeles studying these games. Larry Merchant has been studying them.

TICKET BUYER: I need two tickets. I need two. I need two tickets.

JOHN MACALOON, anthropologist: What in fact these little vignettes of people wishing to pay a fortune for tickets, Americans wishing to pay a fortune for tickets to the ceremonies reminds us is that the ceremonies are exceedingly important. They're the hottest ticket at every Olympics I've been to, more so than the sports events.

LARRY MERCHANT [voice-over]: John Macaloon has been to Olympic games in Montreal, Lake Placid, and now Los Angeles, trying to understand what it is about the games that attracts such a large diversity of nations and cultures.

Mr. MACALOON: To be a nation it's part of the definition of being a nation in the modern world is a country which sends athletes to games. Now, if we Americans, we don't need that opening ceremony to tell ourselves that we are a nation among nations. For many, if not most of the countries here, whose athletes, as you suggest, will not make it past preliminaries, for them that opening ceremony is crucial.

Why? Because, in effect, they're showing the flag. In effect, they're taking their place on a walking map of the world, a panorama of nation states. They're constituting themselves and appearing as a people among peoples. The ceremonies perhaps have a stronger value than our media realize, often. Certainly in other cultures, in other countries the ceremonies are understood as really what the Olympic games are all about, what distinguishes them from other world championships where the competition might actually be better than it is in the Olympic games. And yet they have not generated evocative ceremonials.

MERCHANT: Is flag-waving, then, implicit in the Olympics?

Mr. MACALOON: Of course. It's necessarily present. I think people who say get the politics out of the Olympics have not been paying attention. The very first Olympic games, as I wrote in my book, showed in my book, the very first modern Olympic games in 1896 toppled two consecutive Greek governments.It's been there from the beginning.Indeed, the thing to understand is the relationship between, if you will, Olympic politics and the politics of governments. This is the people's diplomacy, if you will. A mass audience comes and feels the right to interpret our relation with the Chinese, our relation with the Soviets. Everybody suddenly in the sports context becomes an expert on foreign policy. And it creates discourse, whereas in usual politics, at least in this country, we tend to defer to experts.

MERCHANT: What impact do you believe the absence of the Russians has had on these games?

Mr. MACALOON: Well, it's of course had an enormous impact. But there are a variety of different aspects to it. You produce a distorted games on the athletic fields, of course. That is to say, the whole question of who appears in finals, who makes victory stands and so forth is in many sports quite different than it would have been with them here. We may pay the price that Moscow paid in 1980, an enormous civic relations and public relations difficulty because of the same circumstance. The Soviet Union amassed a huge medal count because of, again, the distortion -- the athletic distortion of those games. And in fact it generated enormous bad feeling between the Soviet Union and especially the Eastern European countries. Mind you, this distortion has promoted what many find the most upsetting part of these games, the chauvinist nature of the media coverage, the behavior in many of the venues of American fans, this sort of U.S.A! U.S.A! America first! Everybody else is here to be, if you will, sort of our cannon fodder. Which, ironically, has in fact most upset countries, delegations who are our allies. The Australians, the Irish, the British, the Germans.

MERCHANT [voice-over]: Macaloon's interest in the Olympics extends beyond the sports arena to the crowds and festivities outside.

Mr. MACALOON: Being here and watching it on television are typically two very, very different experiences. Our television media typically don't much cover the spontaneous urban festival that's going around in the streets around the stadiums. Many Americans, when they come to an Olympic games for the first time, will say -- they'll get entranced with all of this interaction in the plazas, the missionization teams, the jugglers and the clowns, the hawkers of souvenirs, the simple feeling of ambience outside the stadiums, and will say, "My God, I never knew this existed."

MERCHANT: What about the people's ritual of exchanging pins?

Mr. MACALOON: It's quite remarkable. It's spontaneous development over the years. Nobody organized it. Nobody ordered it. It has become a way in which festival-goers themselves, ordinary citizens who come as spectators or fans or pilgrims, if you wish, find their way of creating interactions across cultural lines. After all, what are the Olympic games really supposed to be about? Well, the people have, if you will, created a means to make that easier, by trading pins with persons. And, of course if you're out in those plazas, you see all sorts of marvelous interchanges in which, by being able to focus, come up -- have an excuse to come up to somebody, you can attempt to communicate across these lines and go away feeling like a diplomat.

1st CITIZEN: I'll give you a Mercedes for an Antigua.

2nd CITIZEN: Is that right? A model?

MacNEIL: That report was by Larry Merchant.

Once again, the main news stories of the day. The House voted $70 million in emergency aid to El Salvador, about 60% of what President Reagan asked for.

The government reported wholesale prices rose by a modest 0.3% in July, indicating that inflation is still in check.

A state of emergency was declared and a curfew imposed in Lawrence, Massachusetts, after two nights of rioting.

Egypt's minister of defense said he's 70% sure Iran and Libya sowed the mines in the Red Sea.

And, in Reno, Nevada, Harry Claiborne became the first federal judge ever convicted of a crime while serving on the bench. He was found guilty of tax evasion.

Jim? Tales from Route 89: Katie Lee

LEHRER: Finally tonight, our third and last story from Route 89, the Arizona section of U.S. Highway 89, which runs from Page on the Utah border on the north to Nogales and the Mexican border on the south.

[voice-over] We stop this time at Jerome, a town nestled along the side of the Mingus River. Once a mining town where copper and gold were found, it had been pretty much a ghost town since the '50s until people started moving back in. Now 500 people live there, and one of them is a native Arizonan who returned after pursuing a career and glory elsewhere. She's Katie Lee, the folk singer. In the '50s and early '60s she was fairly well known, appearing on radio shows such as the Great Guildersleeves and nightclubs and an occasional movie or television program. She reached the peak of her career in the early '60s when her album, "Songs of Couch and Consultation," reached the bestseller charts.

But at the age of 64, Katie Lee is still going strong in Jerome.

KATIE LEE [singing]: "And time is a lover, a planter in ripeness who'll harvest your dreams/And time is a river that sweeps us along in his stream./He brings us together, then forces us surely apart./And there is no wrinkled crone in her dry skin and bones who's not a young girl in her heart."

[talking] I think at one time I was probably the most popular folk singer in the country, female. This was after Burl Ives and before the Weavers, and around the time of -- before Travis -- Bud and Travis; certainly before the Kingston Trio. And I traveled all over the country. Burl Ives was instrumental in letting -- getting me out of Hollywood, and I left there in '54, and I worked all over the East and Midwest, California, Blue Angel, Downstairs at the Upstairs -- all the important clubs all over the country. And I was singing nothing but folk songs at that time.

[singing] "Was born and was reared on the south side of town/With eyes holding midnight the face of an angel come down/In softness and beauty she grew like a rose without thorn/At 15 she married, at 16 her first child was born."

[talking] I came to Hollywood as a very young and -- not so young, maybe, but young to me. I mean I was green. And I had never been involved in politics. And I found all of a sudden that folk singers were looked on as communists. This was during the McCarthy era. And they seemed to be very hot to know all about Woody Guthrie and Cisco Houston and other people of that group, and these were people that I went to hootenannies with. I learned from them and they learned from me. And this is where you get your education. It's imperative that you learn that way, firsthand. And the next thing I knew, I was being questioned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. So I called them up one day and I said, "Hey, listen. This is where I'm from and this is where I'm coming from, and I don't know anything about labor and couldn't care less, and I'm not involved in that, and I sing with these people and that's it." And then they would call me periodically and ask me where these people were. They'd say, "I understand there's a party at such-and-such up in Topanga Canyon tonight. Would you tell us who's there?" And I said, "Why?" I said, "I already know who's going to be there, and so do you." Well, it got to the point where I just had to say, "Don't call me anymore. I'm not an informer. Leave me alone." And I don't -- I didn't behave in any way that I'm ashamed of, it's just that when I think back on that, even that slight contact with the Federal Bureau of Investigation kind of makes me cringe. I just -- I wonder what they thought, or if they had any feeling about it or if they even knew about it.I remember telling Woody Guthrie one time that somebody was trying to check up on him, and Will Geer, who was another one in Hollywood, I mentioned -- I said, "They seem to be interested in your whereabouts." And he said, "Tell them to go to hell." And so I did.

[singing] "And time is a traitor, yes, time is the villain who stalks on our stage./The bringer of heartache, the bringer of wrinkles and age./He brings us together then tears us most cruelly apart./There's no wrinkled crone in her dry skin and bones who's not a young girl in her heart."

[talking] I did exactly what I set out to do, and I'm very satisfied with my career. Made a lot of money. I got a lot of publicity, and probably one of the reasons I was no more popular than I was is because I demanded privacy. I just quit when I decided I -- I had managers telling me I had to go here and I had to go there, and I had to be here and I had to be there, and had to be in San Francisco one day and New York the next day. And I said, "I'm sorry, I'm going on the Colorado River. I have to get myself straightened out; my ego is out of shape. I would like to go down there and sit in the canyons for awhile." So I used to do that every, well, two, three months in the summertime. And they'd say, "But you're going to make a lot of money," and I said, "I don't care about that. I care about me.I care about how I am, how I fit and how my songs sound. And my head's out of joint and I would like to go get it straightened out." And that's what I would do.

[singing] "Maria Consuelo Arroyo, her man fell in battle across the dark sea./Her children were scattered like feathers that ride down the breeze./She kneels in the darkness, nine candles she lights every day/And Padre Alfonso remembers their names when he prays."

[talking] I kind of have to laugh at these people who don't seem to know when I leave my name at the box office or with their manager. That's one of the questions you asked me before. That's one of the things I never wanted to become or do. I never wanted to get so far out of line that I couldn't remember my old friends. Harry Belafonte does not call me back anymore when I leave a message. Even Judy Collins doesn't call me back when I leave a message. I know who'd call me back if I left a message. Josh White would, but he's dead."

[singing] "And time's the black angel, the dark curandero who brings the long sleep./And time is a shepherd who's keeping a watch on his sheep./He brings us together, the souls that he once tore apart/And he comforts old crones in their dry skin and bones/For he still loves the girl in their hearts./And time is a lover, a traitor, an angel who'll harvest your dreams."

LEHRER: Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: Good night, Jim. That's our NewsHour tonight. We'll be back on Monday. Have a good weekend.We'll see you then. Good night.