The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington.

MR. MacNeil: And I'm Robert MacNeil in New York. After tonight's News Summary, is President Clinton being tough enough with North Korea? We hear from Sen. Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar and former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. Then Jeffrey Kaye reports on life in one earthquake-damaged neighborhood of Los Angeles, and Spencer Michels reports from San Francisco and efforts to defuse teen-age violence. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: The Senate passed a resolution today encouraging an end to the U.S. trade embargo against Vietnam that has been in effect since the Vietnam War. The vote was 62 to 38. The resolution was non-bindingand designed to give President Clinton a sense of Senate opinion on the subject. Supporters of today's resolution said lifting the embargo would encourage Vietnam to continue working with the United States to account for missing Americans. The chief sponsors included several Senators who served in Vietnam. They spoke at a Capitol Hill news conference.

SEN. JOHN KERRY, [D] Massachusetts: I believe that the vote today keeps faith with the families and the veterans who need answers, and by voting the way we did today I think we have helped the President to guarantee that over a period of time we are going to get those answers, so I think it is, indeed, a very significant statement by the United States Senate, and I hope it will help the President to move forward in our policy so that we keep faith with the veterans who are still waiting for answers and for the families who wait for answers and particularly keep faith with those who fought with us over there who did not come out and keep faith with the Vietnamese people who want democracy and want change.

MR. LEHRER: A spokesman for the Vietnam Veterans of America said the organization was disappointed with the Senate action. He said the embargo was necessary to keep the pressure on Vietnam for a full accounting of missing Americans. An American Legion spokesman said Vietnam had not earned any U.S. concessions. This evening, the Senate passed another non-binding resolution which calls on the President to end the U.S. arms embargo against the Bosnian government. The vote was eighty-seven to nine. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: The No. 2 person at the Justice Department resigned today. Deputy Attorney General Philip Heymann said he and Attorney General Reno had concluded the chemistry between them just wasn't right and they didn't work well today. Heymann was a Harvard law professor who headed the criminal division of the Justice Department during the Carter administration. He and Attorney General Reno appeared together at a Washington news conference this morning.

JANET RENO, Attorney General: I have a profound respect for Phil, and I just said, "I don't think it's working. What do you think?" And I think we reached a mutual agreement and it is -- I just have a great professional regard for him, and I want to make that absolutely clear.

PHILIP HEYMANN, Deputy Attorney General: About six seconds after the Attorney General said she didn't think it was working, we were talking about to unravel it in a way that would make sense for the Department.

MR. MacNeil: Attorney General Reno announced that one of her top aides was also resigning today. Lula Rodriguez handled scheduling for the attorney general. She had been under Justice Department investigation for possible voter fraud in Hialeah, Florida. She's denied any wrongdoing.

MR. LEHRER: Gunshots were the leading injury-related killer in seven states and the District of Columbia in 1991. That statistic came today in a report from the Department of Health & Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The report said shooting deaths had risen 60 percent between 1969 and '91. It said if current trends continue, firearms will surpass traffic accidents as the nation's leading cause of injury-related death by the year 20003 at the latest. Vice President Gore visited a high school in Washington, D.C., today where there was a gun battle yesterday. It broke out in a hallway and continued on the street in front of the school. No one was injured. The Vice President was questioned by some of the students?

STUDENT: What are you going to do, and when are you going to do it?

VICE PRESIDENT GORE: President Clinton and I are calling on the Congress to pass the toughest crime bill in the history of our country. When is something going to happen in our country to change this reality? The answer is, this year. Our nation is going to respond now.

MR. LEHRER: FBI Director Louis Freeh said today he was shifting hundreds of supervisors and administrators from desk jobs to street work. He said the first 100 would immediately be assigned to Washington, D.C. He said crime was so severe in Washington that extraordinary steps must be taken. He said he planned to ship another 300 supervisors from headquarters to field offices by the end of the year. He said like Washington, other parts of the country are also virtual war zones, and they too need more agents.

MR. MacNeil: Skater Tonya Harding today admitted she failed to tell authorities what she knew of the attack on Nancy Kerrigan, but Harding insisted she had no prior knowledge of the assault which took place three weeks ago in Detroit, where both women were participating in the national championships. Harding spoke to reporters in Portland, Oregon, today.

TONYA HARDING: When I returned home Monday, January 10, 1994, I was exhausted but still focused on the national championships. Within the next few days, I learned that some persons that were close to me may have been involved in the assault. My first reaction was one of disbelief, and the disbelief was followed by shock and fear. I have since reported this information to the authorities, although my lawyers tell me that my failure to immediately report this information is not a crime. I know I have let you down, but I have also let myself down.

MR. MacNeil: Harding apologized to Kerrigan and said despite her mistakes, she still hoped to be allowed to compete in next month's Winter Olympic Games. The U.S. Olympic Committee later issued a statement saying it was deeply concerned with Harding's comments. It said the U.S. Figure Skating Association had appointed a five- member panel to investigate the matter. The panel's findings will help the Olympic Committee decide whether to keep Harding on the skating team.

MR. LEHRER: There was more positive economic news today. The Commerce Department reported durable goods orders for U.S. factories rose 2.2 percent last month and 8.6 percent for all of 1993. The '93 advance is the best in five years, and the Congressional Budget Office predicted the 1994 federal deficit would fall to $223 billion. That's nearly 70 billion less than they projected a year ago.

MR. MacNeil: Iran-Contra Figure Oliver North today announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate from Virginia. He's seeking the Republican nomination for the seat now held by Democrat Charles Robb. North was a national security aide to President Reagan. He will face former Reagan Budget Director Jim Miller in the Republican primary in June. North was convicted of three felony counts for his role in the Iran-Contra affair. The convictions were overturned on appeal.

MR. LEHRER: And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to growing concerns about Korea, a California earthquake update, and doing something about teenage violence. FOCUS - STANDING GUARD

MR. MacNeil: First tonight we focus on the apparent quest of North Korea to develop nuclear weapons and how the United States and South Korea should respond. There has been no official confirmation but U.S. intelligence officials have said the Communist government of North Korea may have a nuclear bomb. Over the weekend, North Korea said it would not allow international inspections of its nuclear facilities despite an accord reached three weeks before with the Clinton administration agreeing to such inspections. Yesterday, administration officials confirmed reports that the U.S. may deploy Patriot anti-missile missiles to South Korea. Today, the Pentagon also confirmed the U.S. will modernize its forces in South Korea, nearly 40,000 soldiers, with Apache helicopters. It said the move was planned sometime ago. Our coverage begins with South Korea's official response to the growing tension on the Peninsula. Correspondent Elizabeth Farnsworth talked to South Korea's foreign minister just before the announcement of possible Patriot shipments. She asked why many South Koreans do not appear to be alarmed.

HAN SUNG JOO, Foreign Minister, South Korea: Well, for one thing, this crisis, so to speak, is not the same as say the Cuban missile crisis you had back in 1962. It's not as if we have ships coming in with missiles loaded, or North Korea with nuclear weapons, with warheads on missiles. This has medium to long-term implications. And of course, depending upon how we handle it, this can develop into a crisis situation.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Does your government believe that North Korea has a nuclear device?

HAN SUNG JOO: Many people, experts, believe that there's a good chance North Korea might have produced plutonium in the amount that may enable them to make one or two very crude bombs, but there's no evidence that they actually have manufactured one, but of course, there is always the possibility.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What do you think the North Korean leadership's goal is right now? What are they trying to do with this nuclear card?

HAN SUNG JOO: They're trying to make the most of what they have already -- the situation that they have created for some other purpose, but at the moment because they are in a very serious economic difficulty, they are terribly isolated, and they need some justification to change their course, and so they may want to trade this away for the opening to the outside world.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What is your view at this point of the North Korean leader, Kim Il Sung, and his son Kim Jung Yil, who is head of the army? In the U.S. press they're often portrayed as demon- like, paranoid, erratic, completely untrustworthy.

HAN SUNG JOO: They certainly are in a very desperate situation, and in the past, of course, we have seen aggressive behavior. For one thing, the Korean War was started by Mr. Kim Il Sung, and we don't know very much about his son, but all the indications show that his son is not much more peaceful or accommodating than his father. What we seem to find now is that the process of transition to the son from the father has been somewhat halted, and it seems that the nuclear issue which was handled probably mainly by, by the son, went back to his father, and certainly Mr. Kim Il Sung is much more visible in connection with the nuclear issue than before, and that may be one indication that North Korea might, might try to find a way out of this particular impasse.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Is there a kind of deadlock right now in this situation? It seems like the North Koreans want something more from the United States, from the Clinton administration, before they will open up the sites to International Atomic Energy Agency inspection. It doesn't seem that the Clinton administration is likely to give anything until the IAEA gets into those sites. Are we deadlocked?

HAN SUNG JOO: Well, right now, the IAEA is talking with the North Koreans concerning the inspection of seven declared sites. This North Korea is willing to do, and the only question is the extent to which the inspection is going to be carried out. So once this is done and when there is progress in North-South Korean dialogue, there will be a third round of talks between the United States and North Korea in which the issue of special inspections, the issue of making the North Korean nuclear program will be discussed.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What about military readiness? Are the South Koreans and American troops ready, if there should be a North Korean invasion? As you know, there was a study leaked to the press from the Pentagon that because of improvements in North Korean military forces and technology, they would overrun Seoul, and that South Korean and North American troops couldn't stop them.

HAN SUNG JOO: Well, these studies were based on some of the very hypothetical situations by freezing some variables and so on, and so they don't represent the real situation. We are convinced that the United States and the Republic of Korea combined have adequate force and readiness to deal with any military provocation by North Korea.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Do you think this is just a tremendously dangerous moment partly because of the danger of miscalculation, sort of a pre World War I potential?

HAN SUNG JOO: It is -- it is a situation that requires very, very careful attention and careful response at each step, and we have to be aware of, we have to take into account the kind of leadership structure, the kind of decision-making structure that we don't know well enough but I think there is danger of miscalculation actually on both sides and danger of the situation sliding back into greater crisis without either side intending it to be that way.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Mr. Foreign Minister, thank you very much for being with us.

HAN SUNG JOO: Thank you.

MR. MacNeil: Now we get three American views from Sen. Sam Nunn, Democrat of Georgia, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana. Both recently returned from a trip to South Korea. Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense in the Bush administration, is now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank. He joins us from Boca Raton, Florida. Sen. Nunn, do you agree with the Korean -- South Korean foreign minister's approach and sort of demeanor about this, that this is a situation -- well you heard him describe it.

SEN. NUNN: I thought he described it very well, and it confirms pretty much what we heard from the South Korean leadership when we were there about two weeks ago, when Sen. Lugar and I were there. I think we have to understand the South Koreans, first of all, are sitting there with about 45 percent of their population within twenty-five, thirty miles of the de-militarized zone, and right across that zone, you have several thousand, sixty-seven thousand artillery tubes of North Korea that are dug into caves that have, in effect, the capital city and about -- a huge amount of industrial power under their guns. Now, that doesn't mean that the North Koreans could prevail in any kind of conflict. I do not think they could. It does mean that they could cause great devastation on South Korea, so naturally, they do not want to press an isolated dug-in, somewhat paranoid, and economically broke regime into doing something rash. That's Point No. 1. Point No. 2, I think the South Koreans, and I tend to agree with them on this, believe that time is on their side. We all arecommitted to prevent North Korea from becoming a nuclear power, but we also want to preserve stability on that peninsula. We do not want a war, and I believe the South Koreans perceive that with the economic chaos in North Korea that time is very much on the South Korean side. So I think that's where they're coming from, and I think that our two countries together with Japan and our other allies need to be calm and determined and firm, but also keep in mind that we don't want to cause rash action on the other side or misperceptions.

MR. MacNeil: Do you agree with that, Sen. Lugar, that there's a danger of miscalculation on both sides and that very careful, calm steps are needed?

SEN. LUGAR: Of course. Clearly, as Sam Nunn has said, there can be a war of devastating consequences to our friends, and I might add that our 36,000 Americans are all in harm's way underneath that artillery. I think it's important to point out that the miracle of South Korea is that 44 million people as opposed to 22 million in the North have a disproportionate amount of wealth and hope going for them. And that is well worth preserving. We have to make certain that North Korea knows that we're solid, i.e., the United States and South Korea and the Joint Command, that we've done everything we can to prepare to counter the artillery, to defend our air bases, to make certain we're prepared for any contingency, and from that standpoint then to work very carefully not only with South Korea as the major partner in this, but with Japan, with China, and with Russia in a coordinated diplomatic strategy, because in a very real way, all four of the great powers converge on this Korean problem, and United States leadership really is at stake here in terms of the cement that holds together the whole Southeast Asian picture.

MR. MacNeil: Do you agree with that general description of the situation, Dick Cheney?

SEC. CHENEY: Well, I do, Robin, but I think there's another dimension here that's very important not to overlook. The problem because most dangerous if there's a lack of consistency and focus in U.S. policy. The United States, given our leadership role and our commitment to South Korea, our responsibility generally for stability in the region, is, is absolutely a vital ingredient. And the thing I worry about is the fact that I think the conduct of U.S. foreign policy over the last few months has sometimes failed to instill respect in our adversaries and inspire confidence in our allies. I think that it would be easier to make certain the North Koreans did not make a miscalculation if we'd been more consistent and careful in our policies. I think we need to be careful here not to be so concerned about the possibility of a conflict on the Korean Peninsula that we appear weak and vacillating in our commitment to South Korea and our determination to make certain that the North understands that any kind of an attack upon the South is an attack upon the United States and will be met with an overwhelming response.

MR. MacNeil: Do you think there's been a suggestion of that in the Clinton administration's posture to North Korea?

SEC. CHENEY: Not just within the Korean context but in the broader context, Robin. I think if your North Korean official has been told by the President of the United States that the development of the North Korean nuclear weapon's unacceptable, then you watch the performance of the administration in Haiti, in Bosnia, and Somalia, you have to wonder whether or not you have to pay attention to what the President's told you. I think the vacillation that we've seen sometimes in dealing with these other problems earlier in the administration has not helped create the right kind of framework and environment for success in this endeavor.

MR. MacNeil: How do you see that, Sen. Nunn?

SEN. NUNN: Well, I think the Secretary makes a valid point that everything in the world is in a psychological sense connected, and we don't want to display weakness anywhere, but that does not, I don't think, apply to the administration's policy on the Korean Peninsula. The President went there, himself, and made it very clear that an attack by North Korea would mean the destruction of their country, and I think that has been a consistent theme. I think it's important that we all approach this in a bipartisan fashion. The last war on that peninsula there were several million people killed if you include the Koreans, the Chinese, and the United States. So we have to understand that. Certainly I believe we ought to do everything we need to do to prepare our military forces. And of course the recent Patriot missiles that we talked about being sent, that's one step. But the main step that we need to jointly take with the South Koreans is to prepare better to deal with that artillery, and that means counter -- what we call counter battery fire, radar and other technology that can quickly determine where the fire's coming from and respond. That cannot be done just by America. It has to be done also by South Korea. So, yes, we need to make sure our troops are prepared, but we also need to make sure we do not give the North Koreans a sense that we're about to launch any kind of imminent attack which would cause them to do something very stupid that would end up in the destruction of North Korea but in the severe damage of South Korea.

MR. MacNeil: Sen. Lugar, some have suggested that the United States needs to be taking tougher measures even now, that it needs to back up its determination to support the International Atomic Energy Agency in insisting on its right to adequate inspections with introducing economic sanctions or to threaten them explicitly, or, in other words, generally just to take a tougher line and not be so patient with Kim Il Sung. Do you agree with that?

SEN. LUGAR: That may be required, and one reason why Sen. Nunn and I went over there was to have at least a bipartisan influence on the debate which we are certain is going to occur in the Senate on this, maybe even offer some advice to our President, because this is serious business. The reinforcement of our position there is technically something that can be done. We discussed very candidly with Gen. Luck and with the South Korean generals things that could be done to tighten things up. In many ways, the South Koreans perhaps were not as focused as they ought to have been for a while. I think they are now. We need to be. And so without forecasting what might occur, I think significant things may occur. Beyond that, we have to make certain we're determined and the American people understand that these negotiations must proceed until the North Korean nuclear program is terminated. Now that is some ways down the trail because we've not gotten even to the point of discussing the undeclared sites, the ones where the reprocessing probably occurred, if it did, and how that can be eradicated. But if we do not finally get a total solution to this problem, we have enormous problems down the trail with our friends in Korea, itself, i.e., the South Korean allies, the Japanese, with others who might be thinking about nuclear programs, and before long in this world in which many people have the technology to build ICBMS quite apart from nuclear weapons even while ironically we're winding up the problems with Russia and Ukraine and what have you, we could have a whole host of others.

MR. MacNeil: I didn't quite get I think in your answer whether you think the U.S. at this stage needs to show some tougher muscle to convince Kim Il Sung that we're seriously behind the United Nations International Atomic Energy effort.

SEN. LUGAR: Well, I'm going to be cautious in that reply, because it seems to me that the President of the United States has to make the calls on our negotiating posture and specifically on the military beef-up that is there. I tried to indicate in my answer that we have to be rock hard with regard to our determination and our preparedness and likewise unyielding in terms of our negotiations. Now, the timetable of that is for the negotiators, not for us to micromanage that, but the determination really has to be very clear. And I would hope the President will make this very explicit to the American people who need to be brought along to the dangers that are inherent in these policies.

MR. MacNeil: Sec. Cheney, do you think some tougher measures are necessary now to show that the U.S. is determined on this, or that the U.N., International Atomic Energy Agency negotiations can play out at their pace until they come back and tell the United Nations North Korea's not cooperating?

SEC. CHENEY: I think the key here, Robin, is U.S. leadership. I don't think anything is going to happen without U.S. leadership. That means that we not only need to provide for the military security of the South, and I agree with the statements of the Senators on that regard, but I think we need to go beyond that. We need to make it clear to the North Koreans they have two choices; they can either comply to the Non-Proliferation Treaty which they've signed up to, allow inspections and enjoy a better relationship with the rest of the world. Or, if they continue down the path of developing nuclear weapons, it needs to be made abundantly clear to them that that will cost them dearly. And I would --

MR. MacNeil: How should that be made clear to them?

SEC. CHENEY: I would think that involves the application of economic sanctions.

MR. MacNeil: Right -- to say right now?

SEC. CHENEY: As something that they clearly have to contemplate as they make this decision about whether or not they're going to comply with the Non-Proliferation Treaty. That clearly brings us into the point of how do we get the Chinese on board and the Japanese on board, because they're crucial in terms of economic sanctions on North Korea. And that again comes back to U.S. leadership. For example, Sec. Bentsen's recently been in Beijing lecturing the Chinese on the human rights record, threatening to withdraw Most Favored Nation status from the Chinese if they don't improve their human rights record. I think that's a phony issue. I think we ought to be talking to the Chinese about North Korea and getting them on board for a realistic policy to bring the North Koreans around, that that's far more important than lecturing the Chinese on human rights.

MR. MacNeil: Sen. Nunn, do you think sanctions should be threatened immediately? You heard what Sec. Cheney said.

SEN. NUNN: Well, I think the Secretary's correct that the Chinese are a key to this. It's not like we're trading with the North Koreans now. We already have an embargo on North Korea and have had for years, so it's the Chinese and Japanese that holdthe key here. It's important that diplomacy be perceived to have been explored fully before the Chinese are going to even consider joining in sanctions, and they probably will not agree to a United Nations resolution on it, which is essential for international sanctions, until diplomacy has been fully explored. So I think that is the course we're on.

MR. MacNeil: Excuse me.

SEN. NUNN: Certainly we need to be prepared to go to sanctions, and that preparation I understand from the Clinton administration is being undertaken.

MR. MacNeil: What is -- what does diplomacy fully explored constitute? I mean, how long do we wait for the -- Mr. Kidd of the IAEA to come back and say, we've reached a blank wall, we can't go any further?

SEN. NUNN: Well, I think we ought to avoid deadlines, but there is a meeting of the Board of Governors of the IAEA on, I believe, February 22nd, and if the IAEA tells us, look, the North Koreans told you they were going to comply and work with us, that they'd been stonewalling, then at that stage I think we have to be prepared to go to the United Nations and ask for a United Nations application of sanctions, but we have to pave the way with the Japanese, with the South Koreans, and with the Chinese, and as Dick Lugar said, with the Russians.

MR. MacNeil: All right. Sen. Lugar, this is something that I guess a lot of people haven't really focused on. How serious is this potentially, this situation with North Korea's intransigence?

SEN. LUGAR: It's very serious, because the North Koreans, despite all of our logic, might have a different drummer, and they could, in fact, attack the South. They could level a good part of Seoul and kill hundreds of thousands of people, including Americans. If Americans were upset -- and we were -- that people were killed in South Mogadishu, the fact that Americans are in harm's way here.

MR. MacNeil: We'd be in a war very fast.

SEN. LUGAR: Immediately, because, as Sam Nunn has said, 45 percent of the South Koreans within twenty-five or thirty miles, including your capital city and all the Americans. That is why this calculation must not occur. And that is why, it seems to me, we'd better line up our votes at the U.N. if we're serious about sanctions because the North Koreans have said there will be a reaction if sanctions are taken.

MR. MacNeil: Sec. Cheney, you heard the South Korean foreign minister saying, talking about the succession there, and the fact that the nuclear issue may have been handled by the son, but it may have now been taken back by the older Mr. Kim, and they may be looking for a way out. How do you read that?

SEC. CHENEY: I would hope that that's the case, that, in fact, they are looking for a way out, but I come back again with this basic proposition, Robin, that weakness and vacillation, uncertainty, lack of precision is most likely to generate miscalculation on their part and the United States in terms of not only how the North Koreans react but also how the Japanese and the Chinese and the South Koreans react can really, I think, determine the outcome here. And I think eventually with clear, consistent policy and with an effort to make it clear to the North Koreans what they stand to gain by virtue of complying with the Non- Proliferation Treaty, that is an opportunity for an opening to the West and the United States, improved economic circumstances, that it clearly would be in their interest to, to respond affirmatively. The problem though, as Sen. Lugar and Sen. Nunn have made very clear, is that this is a very difficult regime to predict.These people don't operate in accordance with the same logic we do, and you have to be careful in terms of how you proceed.

MR. MacNeil: Well, Sec. Cheney, Senators both, thank you very much. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, two stories from California, one on the Los Angeles earthquake, the other on teen violence. UPDATE - PIECE BY PIECE

MR. LEHRER: Now the earthquake story. The people of Southern California are still trying to come to terms with the impact of last week's tragedy. Jeffrey Kaye of Public Station KCET-Los Angeles reports from Granada Hills, a community just three miles from the quake's epicenter.

MR. KAYE: Do you live around here?

DAVE ARMSTRONG: Yeah.

MR. KAYE: How's your house?

DAVE ARMSTRONG: It's all right. It's all right. It's still in one piece, It ain't not like that place down there. [pointing]

MR. KAYE: It's the universal theme of conversation in Los Angeles, one of special interest to T-shirt salesman Dave Armstrong. It's the subject of earthquake survival. A $10 T-shirt tells only a partial story of survival in this badly damaged Granada Hills neighborhood. The community has a mix of stucco apartment complexes and modest houses. Mailman Dan Sayles has witnessed the broad scope of tragedy on his route.

DAN SAYLES, Mailman: I have 450 homes to deliver to, and it's really a mess. Every home is damaged.

MR. KAYE: Every home?

DAN SAYLES: In one way or another, a broken window or whatever.

MR. KAYE: A big part of the story can be detected in the distinctive colored posters, inspection tags that now adorn most neighborhood buildings. Green indicates apparent safety, yellow restricts access, and red means unsafe. So far, nearly 16,000 structures have been pronounced uninhabitable throughout Los Angeles. It was a red tag that Doris Below found when she revisited her Granada hills apartment building. The entire structure, 65 units, had been deemed unsafe.

MR. KAYE: Were you living here by yourself?

DORIS BELOW: Yeah, upstairs.

MR. KAYE: Upstairs?

DORIS BELOW: Yeah, in the back, upstairs.

MR. KAYE: And now you can't even get in?

DORIS BELOW: Can't even get in -- no, it's completely --

MR. KAYE: And everything you have is in there?

DORIS BELOW: What's left, except my clothes. I did -- I got my clothes out, and that was it. My television, you know, my, just everything -- I don't have anything.

MR. KAYE: Below has stayed with relatives in San Diego. A trip around the corner took her to the landlord's manager, where she hoped to obtain her $250 security deposit.

MANAGER: Fill out this application for me and bring it to me. In one week, they send your deposit back.

DORIS BELOW: Okay.

MANAGER: And all these days you lost.

DORIS BELOW: I don't have -- I didn't get any furniture out. My furniture is up there.

MANAGER: That is not in my hand, my dear.

DORIS BELOW: I just wanted you to know.

MANAGER: We all hurt, we all hurt.

MR. KAYE: Throughout the neighborhood moving vans have been pressed into service. The Dekermenjian family apartment was declared structurally safe, but the devastation was awesome, and the family was scared to remain there.

MIKE DEKERMENJIAN: For seven days now we have been sleeping in the car.

MR. KAYE: You've been sleeping in a car for seven days?

MIKE DEKERMENJIAN: Seven days, yes.

MRS. DEKERMENJIAN: We have a house, but we can't -- we're afraid.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: They are the victim of the war in Lebanon too.

MR. KAYE: Is that right?

MRS. DEKERMENJIAN: Yeah.

MIKE DEKERMENJIAN: We are Armenians from Lebanon.

MR. KAYE: You are Armenians from Lebanon. So you left there because of the war, and now you're leaving here because of the earthquake.

MR. KAYE: The neighborhood has the feel of wartime destruction. At an adjacent building, construction constructor James Shackleford was inspecting damage. He described the quake's impact.

JAMES SHACKLEFORD, Contractor: Apparently, the building has lifted --

MR. KAYE: Oh, wow!

JAMES SHACKLEFORD: -- and then came back down, because the building is shorter from the ceiling to the ground than it was the day before the earthquake, so the foundation got pressed into the ground.

MR. KAYE: So this thing just jumped up?

JAMES SHACKLEFORD: It jumped up. Boom! Look at the shift on that door and look at the square on the windows.

MR. KAYE: Right. Right.

JAMES SHACKLEFORD: While the entire building is lifting --

MR. KAYE: So what you're saying is that all that's holding this in place is the weight of the building?

JAMES SHACKLEFORD: The weight of the building, yes. It'd just take a very minor amount of disturbance for this to go completely. And what has to happen is --

MR. KAYE: Shackleford said that for between one and two hundred thousand dollars, the building can be reinforced and made safer than it was before the quake. But for some, the prospect of moving back in is less than enticing.

DANIEL GOMEZ: [taking Kaye on tour of apartment] That's going to come out as far as I'm concerned.

MR. KAYE: Daniel Gomez said his mother-in-law is offering to help finance his family's move out of the area, and he is jumping at the opportunity.

MR. KAYE: But you've got electricity?

DANIEL GOMEZ: Yeah, we had that two or three days ago. No water. Telephone we've had all the time.

MR. KAYE: Really?

DANIEL GOMEZ: That was really interesting. We had the telephone.

MR. KAYE: Would you like to come back then?

DANIEL GOMEZ: No. The reason why we're moving is my mother-in- law sent us some money on the conditions we get out of the San Fernando Valley, out of here. So we'll move to Burbank. That's pretty good.

MR. KAYE: Gomez's neighbor, Cristina Cummings, had similar sentiments.

CRISTINA CUMMINGS: They say repairs three to six months, but I don't think I want to go back to, to a two-story building anymore. I thought I was going to die.

MR. KAYE: Really?

CRISTINA CUMMINGS: It was so frightening. And I got bumps and bruises all over me.

MR. KAYE: Even for those not forced from their homes, the trauma was evident. Around the corner, Edi Singer anxiously welcomed building inspectors.

EDI SINGER: Well, how does the chimney -- we're worried about the chimney.

INSPECTOR: Okay. What I'm going to do is I'm going to rope it off. I'm going to put this tape around it so you can't come into that area.

EDI SINGER: Okay, because, you know, the man next door is worried that it could fall onto his roof.

INSPECTOR: Yeah.

MR. KAYE: The inspectors reviewed the damage to her home and tried to reassure Edi Singer that the problems were relatively minor.

INSPECTOR: Mostly cosmetic at this time, okay? If we have another earthquake and you feel that there's more danger, call the building inspection department, and we'll send a crew back out, another team.

EDI SINGER: You're kidding, because I -- all day hit the redial and Hildy called from next door, you know -- I couldn't get through. The chimney, like I say, scares --

INSPECTOR: Okay, we're going to rope it off.

MR. KAYE: Inspectors quickly determined that the precarious brick chimney was the only dangerous part of the Singers' house, and they declared the home safe by marking it with a green tag. But not all in this neighborhood have been heartened by the green tags. Mona Hutcherson accompanied the man from the gas company on a tour of the apartment building where she lives. The building has been declared safe, but Hutcherson feels much of it is inhabitable.

MONA HUTCHERSON: Yeah, well, the problem is, is that most of the downstairs apartments are really, even though it says green, they're really uninhabitable, because they have broken water pipes and they have broken heaters, heaters that have come out of the wall, so if the gas were turned on, it would probably explode. It'd be terrible.

MR. KAYE: In the front of the building, a handwritten sign marked the inspector's green tag. "Inspected by Stevie Wonder," it read, referring to the blind musician. The sign caught the eye of a passing building inspector who also questioned the judgment of his colleague.

INSPECTOR: It caught our attention, "Inspected by Stevie Wonder," and we checked. It got a green one.

MR. KAYE: You don't think that it should have been green- tagged?

INSPECTOR: I think they should have put, you know, a yellow tag minimum.

MR. KAYE: Yellow tag means what?

INSPECTOR: Umm, enter at your own risk, you know.

MR. KAYE: Some homeowners have abandoned their houses without the benefit of an official city assessment. Hannys and Alberto Quilez and their family camped out in a motor home outside their house.

HANNYS QUILEZ: We had to hire a private engineer that came and got in the attic, and, you know, the whole thing, and he said it's not safe to be in there, because the roof could collapse anytime.

ALBERTO QUILEZ: I'm just very upset, that's all.

MR. KAYE: Why?

HANNYS QUILEZ: Right now.

ALBERTO QUILEZ: I mean, the whole process is ridiculous.

MR. KAYE: Why?

ALBERTO QUILEZ: Imagine if you had a big one. Well, as far as getting the city to show up.

MR. KAYE: There are inspectors just down the street.

ALBERTO QUILEZ: Exactly. But they -- they didn't have a dispatch order; they wouldn't come here.

MR. KAYE: The call --

ALBERTO QUILEZ: And that, you know, maybe ten, fifteen days from today. So I guess we will have to live with that. The other inspector, and he said it's too heavy, the roof --

MR. KAYE: You could stay out.

ALBERTO QUILEZ: Stay out, and I don't know what else to do.

MR. KAYE: The Quilezes, who work at home, said they didn't know when they'd be able to resume a normal life. In addition to repairing their home, their emotions also need recuperation.

ALBERTO QUILEZ: And there is dealing with paranoia and all these other things, you know.

MR. KAYE: What do you mean paranoia?

ALBERTO QUILEZ: Well, you know, you become paranoid about --

MR. KAYE: Is it going to happen again?

ALBERTO QUILEZ: Yeah, exactly. When is it going to happen again.

HANNYS QUILEZ: I'm lucky.

MR. KAYE: You're lucky?

HANNYS QUILEZ: If I compare myself to her and to people that die and to people that lost, you know, these are things that hopefully we'll be able to --

MR. KAYE: Was that a shock? I didn't feel anything.

HANNYS QUILEZ: I don't know if it was a shock, but something moved in there, so I'm getting out.

ALBERTO QUILEZ: It was just a door. See then you have to deal with that too. [laughter]

MR. KAYE: Frayed nerves are among the quake's lingering aftershocks, so too is a common tendency for the trembler's victims to compare themselves to those who are less fortunate. John Barker, for example, was helping his ex-wife move out of her place when an intruder stole what was left of the valuables in his apartment.

JOHN BARKER: I'm still more fortunate than a lot of people. We're financially able to be in a motel, so, you know, we count our blessings.

MR. KAYE: It seems everyone is saying, well, it could have been worse.

JOHN BARKER: Right. Like tonight, with the rain coming and people in parks and the kids, and that's going to be tough for them.

MR. KAYE: Toughest of all on those, an estimated 7,000 area wide, who remain homeless in parks and shelters. Four families were living in a party tent leaking with rain erected in Pettit Park in Granada Hills.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Would it be possible for us to stay? That's not possible because you have many kids in here.

MR. KAYE: How old are you?

MARY SHOMAF: [eight-year-old child] Eight.

MR. KAYE: Eight. And what happened in your house?

MARY SHOMAF: Well, our house, you can't go in anymore, because it's all, it's all -- fell down, and they have to build a new one. That's why.

MR. KAYE: And where have you been sleeping?

MARY SHOMAF: Really in the park in our tent.

MR. KAYE: You've been sleeping here. Yeah. How are you doing?

MARY SHOMAF: It's no fun.

MR. KAYE: It's no fun, I bet not.

MARY SHOMAF: At all.

MR. KAYE: The immediate prospects for Mary Shomaf and her family are uncertain.

MARY SHOMAF: There is no place to go.

MR. KAYE: So how many of you live there now?

MARY SHOMAF: Well, four.

MR. KAYE: The Federal Emergency Management Agency is promising relocation assistance, but the family doesn't expect any aid for at least three weeks. In the meantime, the nights are wintery. FOCUS - FAMILY MATTERS

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight, another look at the problem of teen-age violence. As stories about high school shootouts and drive-by shootings make daily headlines across the country, many communities are searching for ways to stop the violence. Correspondent Spencer Michels has the story of an organization in San Francisco that thinks it has some answers.

MR. MICHELS: Geneva Towers is a high-rise ghetto near the southern limits in San Francisco. Kiki Burch grew up here. He was arrested for the first time when he was 12. Since then, he's now 17, he's been kicked out of high school and has been taken to juvenile hall 21 times on a variety of charges.

EDMUND "KIKI" BURCH: Stealing cars, you know, stuff like that. That was one of my main hustles.

MR. MICHELS: Stealing cars?

EDMUND "KIKI" BURCH: Yeah.

MR. MICHELS: And what about drugs?

EDMUND "KIKI" BURCH: No. I wasn't, you know, I wasn't all that good at selling drugs. You know, I did it part-time or whatever, you know, whenever I needed some money in my pocket.

MR. MICHELS: Did you ever say to yourself during all this time that stealing cars is wrong, doing drugs is wrong?

EDMUND "KIKI" BURCH: At the time that I was doing it when I had a reason for it, I didn't feel it was wrong. You know, I felt that it was something I had to do, because that's all I really knew how to do to get some money in my pocket, you know.

MR. MICHELS: Kiki Burch says he never shot anyone, but violence has been a part of his life.

EDMUND "KIKI" BURCH: That's just how it is, you know. There's violence everywhere you go. I mean, you know, just violence, really, to me, is just that you're trying to protect yourself, or something, you're trying to protect your friends or whoever you're around, your family or whatever, you know. So violence, if that's what happens, that's just what happens, you know. That's just how other people look at it is violence, you know. Ijust looked at it as another day in the hood.

MR. MICHELS: Did you ever think to yourself, you know, I might get killed?

EDMUND "KIKI" BURCH: Yeah. I thought about that all the time. Everything I did, you know, I thought about it. All the cars and stuff I was stealing, you know, if I don't cut this out, one day I might get killed.

MR. MICHELS: Burch now says he wants to cut it out, and he thinks the Omega Boys Club is the way to turn his life around.

EDMUND "KIKI" BURCH: I just said to myself, pretty soon I'm going to be 18, you know. And I've already been through the county and stuff, you know, and been through all the prisons, walk-throughs, and all that, you know, so I done like seen the light for myself.

MR. MICHELS: The Omega Boys Club is an organization dedicated to stopping the violence by bringing a sense of family and caring to youth 11 to 25, most of them African-American. Without dues, membership cards, or basketball teams, Omega gives classes, provides counseling and holdings meeting like this one.

JACK JACQUA, Omega Boys Club: I want to say the spirit of this Omega that we want to be saved, the spirit of the young brother "Kiki," Mr. Edmund Burch, who spoke here earlier, this is a powerful family, this is a force as we walk alongside the spirit we talk about that can't be stopped. It is a force that is not afraid.

MR. MICHELS: Jack Jacqua, a former teacher's aide, founded Omega in 1987, along with Joe Marshall, a San Francisco high school teacher. Their talk is intense, personal, and aimed straight at kids in serious trouble. The youngsters have come to trust these adults.

JOE MARSHALL, Omega Boys Club: You know, the interesting thing about Omega, see, Omega is like it's family and brothers always think there ain't nobody goin' through this shit but me. Everybody goes through it.

MR. MICHELS: In these weekly meetings, youngsters who've been in trouble, themselves, try to convince their skeptical brothers and sisters to accept responsibility in a rough world.

RAYMOND ROBERTS: The biggest thing you've got to do is realize why it's like that, bottom line, flat out, no questions asked, because your daddies ain't there, period. Not no dope, not none of that. Daddies ain't there, period. Whether we took 'em out, what's takin' 'em out, or why they're disappearing is irregardless, they're not there, and for your sons and your daughters, future whores, bitches, or tough-ass niggers, gang bangers of the next generation, you got to step in and stop that. That's on you.

MR. MICHELS: The message doesn't always get through or not in time. Jack Jacqua tells a pointed story of a troubled young man who came to the first few Omega meetings but then dropped out.

JACK JACQUA: This morning they had his funeral. That's right, a young brother named Emmanuel Powell, who was shot and killed last week. Now, I had to bring that up because, you see, this is real life. Remember also that Brother Powell left the house, according to his brother, every day packin'. He chose another way. This morning they buried Emmanuel Powell.

MR. MICHELS: Sandy Close is an Omega board member as well as a news service editor who works with at-risk youth.

SANDY CLOSE, Omega Board Member: These are kids who would as soon kill each other as talk to each other. I mean, to imagine these kids in the universe they're growing up in is to imagine a protagonist in a Stephen King novel where their sense is that they're having to navigate in a world where there are forces beyond their control, where families are too, too feeble to intervene on their behalf, and where if they don't acknowledge evil, they're going to die.

MR. MICHELS: She says Omega works because it's small and personal. It brings a sense of belonging to youth who lack a stable family and need that individual contact.

SANDY CLOSE: There's no other way to do it but one by one by one. You can't hug a kid from Washington. And the problem is half our kids have never been hugged.

MR. MICHELS: San Francisco's Juvenile Hall is an all too familiar place for such kids, and this is where Omega finds many of its prospects. Two evenings a week, club participants, along with Jack Jacqua, meet with teen-agers held here for serious offenses.

ANTHONY RICE: My name's Anthony Rice. I'm up here for a gun charge and a strong-arm robbery.

ROBERT SLOAN: I'm a placement failure, you know, and I guess everywhere they send me I can't stay.

CHRIS ROBINSON: Me, I kind of went off the deep end. I just, I really wasn't carin' what I was doin'. That was my biggest mistake, but lately I just kind of changed my whole actions around.

MR. MICHELS: Omega meetings both inside and outside Juvenile Hall are not exactly religious but there's a revivalist spirit about them.

JACK JACQUA: It's time for you to start talking like bull talk, and just say, "I'm okay, man. God damn, I'm all right. There ain't nothin' wrong with me. I'm not crazy. I'm not special ed. I'm not a bad person."

MR. MICHELS: The hope Omega preaches seems infectious. At least in encounters like this, locked up juveniles say they get the message.

UNIDENTIFIED JUVENILE: They people that sayin' we can't change, they ain't tryin' to help us or help somebody. You know what I'm saying? They ask me how it was, and I'll say, man, this ain't botherin' me up here, there ain't nothin' cool about being up here. Don't let nobody tell you this is cool being up here. Ain't nothin' cool about shootin' somebody. You know what I'm saying? Ain't nothing cool. Ain't cool being locked up. Being locked up is cool?

MR. MICHELS: "Kiki" Burch came back to Juvenile Hall for this meeting trying to influence his brothers to put aside violence and to fight for education and family.

EDMUND "KIKI" BURCH: I need to just focus in on school while you're up here. Take heed to this education which you all say you are not getting -- but if you all keep shoving the dope and doing all these crimes and stuff, that's going to get you all back up here. That's just where you're all headed. You all just don't know it. You know, what I'm saying, because you're all young. You all will realize it though when you get older. That's all I got to say. [applause in room]

JOE MARSHALL: Get the family around. We got a very special "Street Soldiers" tonight, and we'll be here for the next four hours as usual.

MR. MICHELS: The Omega Boys Club reaches outside its face-to-face meetings with troubled teens. From 10:30 until 2 AM on Monday nights, highly rated San Francisco Radio Station KMEL beams the Omega message throughout the Bay area.

JOE MARSHALL: KMEL, this is "Street Soldiers." Hi.

CALLER: How you doing?

JOE MARSHALL: Fine. How are you doing?

CALLER: I'm calling to check in. This is Brother Freeman.

JOE MARSHALL: Freeman.

CALLER: How you doing, Mr. Marshall?

JOE MARSHALL: Let's get that right. "Free man."

MR. MICHELS: Omega's Joe Marshall and Margaret Norris, both teachers, are hosts to "Street Soldiers." The call-in show they are told reaches up to 160,000 listeners.

CALLER: I went from weed at age 13 to cocaine at age 13, crack cocaine had me dancing, drugs took control of me, and I'm notsuggesting for anybody to get in control of the drug, because it's going to get you sooner or later like it got me, but you know, thank god, I fought back. Man, it feels good. It feels good to be a free man, no more a slave.

JOE MARSHALL: You know, Freeman, you battled, and you continue to go through the fight.

CALLER: It's going to take, it's going to take a lot of work and everything, but the goal, the goal is to die clean and sober. That is my goal.

MR. MICHELS: Some callers say they have not committed crimes because of the show. Nothing is taboo, and the hosts dispense advice and analysis.

MARGARET NORRIS, Omega Boys Club: And when you talk with these young girls especially, you'll find that you get to the nitty gritty, you ask them, why did you -- why did you have sex in the first place? Why did you start going to bed with someone when you were 11, 12, 13, or so? You find out that they were looking for love, much like the young brother who's out on the corner selling drugs so he's got a gun and says, I get to get my respect, these little girls are saying, I've got to find love. And they get pregnant not by accident.

SECOND CALLER: And what they think is out of this love is going to come a lifetime commitment to this man that they is having his baby, and that's not true.

MR. MICHELS: On the air, Marshall often repeats Omega's belief that the whole community must act as a family.

JOE MARSHALL: All of us has to be -- what's the proverb -- it takes an entire village to raise a child.

MR. MICHELS: The people who run Omega point to this college prep class taught by Margaret Norris as evidence that their approach works. More than 100 alumni of this class and other club programs are not attending college. Joe Marshall believes the reason for success is fairly simple.

JOE MARSHALL: The fact that we're just reaching out to people, providing them with a friend, a family connection, people say that, you know, it sounds like we're generally interested in them. And that's true, because we are.

MR. MICHELS: Norris adds another guiding principle that applies to "Kiki" Burch and hundreds of others.

MARGARET NORRIS: We really believe that everyone is salvageable. Everyone is savable. That's not to say that people are to just go with impunity for crimes committed, but that you give up on a person, no, we never give up. Eventually the light is going to come on.

MR. MICHELS: Despite Omega's successes, Michael Fuller, director of the San Francisco Juvenile Justice Commission, says the club is only one ingredient in the recipe needed to fight youth crime.

MICHAEL FULLER, Juvenile Justice Commission: When you talk about the Omega Boys Club's programs, the good ones, the peer mentorship programs, what you really have there is only a small piece of the puzzle. There's a whole continuum of different kinds of responses that we've got to make to this youth crime problem.

MR. MICHELS: Fuller, a criminologist, would like to see a court and probation system that is tougher on repeat offenders added to the mix, a mix that needs groups like Omega.

MICHAEL FULLER: If this kid, Kiki, has a chance at all of making it, he has a chance of making it because of Jack Jacqua and how good that program operates.

MR. MICHELS: What do you think your chances are of staying out of trouble at this point, going to college, getting a life?

EDMUND "KIKI" BURCH: I don't know. To me, it's like going to be a 50/50 chance. You know, I'm looking at it on the bright side, you know, on the positive side.

MR. MICHELS: "Kiki" Burch's mother and sisters see him infrequently these days. He's living in a transition house, enrolled in school, attending Omega Boys Club meetings, and trying to change his life. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Thursday, the Senate passed a non-binding resolution urging the Clinton administration to end the U.S. embargo against Vietnam, and a government report said shooting deaths have become the leading cause of death by injury in seven states, and the District of Columbia. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim. That's the NewsHour for tonight. We'll see you again tomorrow night. And as usual on Friday nights, we'll analyze the week's politics. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.