The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MAC NEIL: Good evening. I'm Robert MacNeil in New York.

MS. WARNER: And I'm Margaret Warner in Washington. After our summary of the news this Tuesday, Betty Ann Bowser covers Janet Reno's testimony today at the Waco hearings, then Kwame Holman reports on the EPA's reversal of fortune, Spencer Michels updates the story of workfare in California, and Charlayne Hunter-Gault continues her series of conversations about cyberspace. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MAC NEIL: The House joined the Senate today, voting to lift the arms embargo against the Bosnian government. The vote was 298 to 128, large enough to override a threatened veto by President Clinton. Like the Senate vote last week, the measure had bipartisan support in the House. Here's a sample of today's debate.

REP. HENRY HYDE, [R] Illinois: When the Holocaust Museum was dedicated by the President, he stood there, and I'm sure he meant it, he said two words: "Never again." What did he mean never again? Never again will the Jews be killed in Germany in 1940? Or does he mean never again will we permit holocausts against ethnic groups because somebody doesn't agree with their religion or their color, or their way of living? Never again. Let's put some flesh on those words and start by lifting the embargo.

REP. JACK REED, [D] Rhode Island: Frustration and outrage, as sincerely and keenly felt as they may be, should not be the rationale or measure of our policies, rather, we must look to the consequences of our actions, the consequences for ourselves, and for the people of the former Yugoslavia. By lifting this embargo, we will guarantee only one thing, the level of violence in the former Yugoslavia will increase.

MR. MAC NEIL: This morning, before the vote, President Clinton said the situation in Bosnia was changing and enough members of Congress might subsequently change their votes to sustain his veto. He spoke in the White House briefing room.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: The Rapid Reaction Force, after all, is showing some strength there. And I would remind you that the only thing that has ever worked in the last two and a half years is when the Bosnian Serbs thought the United Nations would permit NATO and the Americans who are working with NATO to use air power to stop the aggression so that there would have to be a negotiated settlement, and in the last several days, the last couple of weeks in Gorazde, you know, we've gotten five convoys through, there has been no assault on it, and I think that this new strategy will work if we can hammer out a negotiated settlement, there's a new effort there.

MS. WARNER: NATO ministers today expanded their threat of air strikes against the Bosnian Serbs. Diplomats meeting in Brussels said they would call for strikes if the Serbs attacked any of the remaining United Nations safe haven areas in Bosnia. Previously, NATO had threatened strikes only if Gorazde was under attack. UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali warned today of the growing threat of an all-out war in Croatia. His warning followed fighting between Croatian Serbs and government forces in the area of Knin. Boutros-Ghali said a new Croatian war appeared imminent but representatives from both sides have agreed to hold negotiations later this week.

MR. MAC NEIL: Attorney General Janet Reno insisted today that cult leader David Koresh was to blame for the lives lost in the Branch Davidian raid. She testified in the final day of Waco hearings on Capitol Hill. The attorney general rejected Republican charges that she had been careless in the way she ended the 51-day siege in which more than 80 people died. She also disputed Republicans' claim that President Clinton had swayed her decision to go ahead with the final assault.

JANET RENO, Attorney General: I tried to do everything I could to make the best judgment I could as what has been characterized in the position of chief law enforcement officer of this country. I wanted to make sure it was done the right way. Clearly in this situation, we did it the right way. We conducted a law enforcement review. We made a law enforcement decision. I advised the President. He asked good questions and said he was going to back me up.

REP. CHARLES SCHUMER, [D] New York: Did he back you up?

JANET RENO: He certainly did.

MR. MAC NEIL: We'll have extended excerpts from today's hearing after the News Summary.

MS. WARNER: Hurricane Erin lumbered toward Florida's Atlantic Coast today. Governor Lawton Chiles declared a state of emergency and 500,000 people were ordered to evacuate coastal areas. Beach houses have been boarded up, and residents are stocking up on food and supplies. Forecasters predict the storm will strike late tonight or early tomorrow. Its winds have been clocked at up to 85 miles per hour. The storm is not expected to be as powerful as Hurricane Andrew, which devastated the area in 1992.

MR. MAC NEIL: There was a second major deal for a television network in as many days today. Westinghouse Electric announced it will buy the CBS television network for $5.4 billion. Yesterday, the Walt Disney Company revealed plans to buy Capital Cities/ABC. The CBS-Westinghouse deal is subject to approval by shareholders of CBS. The announcement was made at a New York news conference by Westinghouse chairman and CEO Michael Jordan and CBS chairman Laurence Tisch.

LAURENCE TISCH, Chairman, CBS Inc.: For nearly 70 years, CBS has served the public as a driving force in news, sports, and entertainment. Now with Westinghouse, it will realize a fuller potential as the two join forces to create a family of 15 television and 39 radio stations reaching 1/3 of all American households. This is really a world of potential we are creating today.

MR. MAC NEIL: In other economic news today, the Commerce Department reported construction spending rose .9 of a percent in June. It was the largest gain in nearly a year. The Pentagon's top medical officials said today there is no clinical evidence of a single Gulf War illness. Assistant Secretary of Defense Dr. Stephen Joseph said he drew that conclusion after studying more than 10,000 Gulf War veterans and their families. Many veterans had complained of various ailments after the 1991 conflict. Dr. Joseph said the problems were not unusual for returning veterans and were similar to those found in the general population.

MS. WARNER: Mickey Mantle has been diagnosed with lung cancer. The 63-year-old baseball legend was released from a Dallas hospital today after undergoing chemotherapy treatment. Mantle said the lung cancer was discovered two weeks ago and that it had spread from his liver. He received a liver transplant in early June. Doctors said they would not have performed the transplant if they had known his cancer had already spread. That's it for the News Summary. Now it's on to the Waco hearings, the EPA's loss, workfare in California, and a conversation about cyberspace. FOCUS - FINAL QUESTIONS

MR. MAC NEIL: After 10 days of testimony, the Waco hearings came to an end today. Attorney General Janet Reno was the final witness. Betty Ann Bowser has our report.

SPOKESMAN: Would you raise your right hand. Do you swear or affirm--

BETTY ANN BOWSER: When Janet Reno made the decision to end the 51-day siege in Waco, she had been attorney general for 38 days. She said then and still says it was the toughest decision of her life.

JANET RENO, Attorney General: We will never know whether there was a better solution. Had we not acted when we did and Koresh had brought things to a sudden and violent finish, as he had rehearsed, we would probably be here today anyhow, and you would be asking me why I hadn't taken action earlier, why we had not tried to use tear gas to resolve the situation. Everyone involved in the events of April 19th made their best judgments based on all the information we had. This was the hardest decision I have ever had to make, probably one of the hardest decisions that anybody could have to make. It will live with me for the rest of my life. I'm accountable for it, and I'm happy to answer your questions.

REP. CHARLES SCHUMER, [D] New York: Thank you, Attorney General Reno. I would like to ask you a couple of questions about the President's role. I didn't think we'd be asking those here, but since we've had so many innuendos and allegations, I think we should put them to rest. First, did the President change any material aspect of the plan as developed by the Department of Justice and approved by you?

JANET RENO: No, he did not.

REP. CHARLES SCHUMER: And second, did the President or anyone in contact with the President pressure you in any way or in any suggest that you should speed things up to end the siege?

JANET RENO: No, he did not.

REP. CHARLES SCHUMER: Thank you. And the third question which is a general question is: What precisely was the President's role in the development and approval of the gas insertion plan?

JANET RENO: I think this is--is one of the most curious issues to come in here, because I think the President of the United States did absolutely right. He asked to be kept informed. He knew that he would be informed if plans changed. We informed him. He did not intervene in law enforcement issues, except to ask good questions and to make sure that we had explored every opportunity to resolve the matter peacefully. He was concerned. He left the tactical decisions to us.

MS. BOWSER: Reno said there were many reasons she ordered the tear gas plan be implemented when she did.

JANET RENO: There had been two intruders into the compound. We had received information concerning a militia that might be coming to assist Koresh, and there were general concerns about the perimeter, remembering that one of those weapons could fire a distance of from here to the White House as it was--I asked them, what is the distance that big weapon could fire, and from here to the White House, and so they were very concerned about the perimeter.

REP. MELVIN WATT, [D] North Carolina: Was there specific information about a particular militia group that, that you are able to make available to us?

JANET RENO: Yes. And the name of it--I wanted to make sure I had the exact name--it was the Unorganized Militia of the United States. The call had gone out nationwide from an attorney for armed people to come to Waco.

MS. BOWSER: Reno said she was also concerned about the readiness of the hostage rescue team or HRT, which had been negotiating with Koresh for almost a month and a half.

JANET RENO: No one person changed my mind. It was--I was not prepared to move with the additional statements from the FBI that they were going to ultimately have to pull that HRT team back and that they were reaching the limit. This seemed to be the best time, not knowing if six days later--

REP. HENRY HYDE, [R] Illinois: In other words, the fatigue-- and I mean that not pejoratively--of the hostage rescue team drove you to say we--it's now or never, so let's do it?

JANET RENO: They did not characterize it as fatigue. They characterized it as a need to retrain in terms of the skills, and they characterized it as a diminution in terms of skills, of judgment of being on the front line for 51 days.

REP. BILL McCOLLUM, [R] Florida: Ms. Reno, I have listed very attentively during your testimony this morning, and I have heard you say what contributed most to your decision on the 17th of April: The belief that there really was an impasse in the negotiations; the fatigue of the hostage rescue team; and the need to put 'em in down time at some point soon; concern over the condition of the children and the possibility they were continuing to be abused; and the fear of an imminent violent break-out by Koresh if you waited and let him do it on his terms. There are other factors, but those four I've heard you say pretty strongly. What bothers me about what you've said so far is that the evidence we've taken over the last eight days before today does not corroborate or substantiate the basis for any one of the four.

JANET RENO: First of all, let me make clear to you that I did not feel pressed to make a decision except by the facts. Secondly, let me make sure that you have said that I made a mistake--no one will ever know whether you'd been in the same position using the same analysis that you have made today you would have made a mistake.

MS. BOWSER: The attorney general was repeatedly asked why she failed to read an FBI briefing book on April 16th, the day before she made the decision to go ahead with the tear gas plan.

REP. BILL ZELIFF, [R] New Hampshire: Accountability absolutely must mean that when information is brought to your attention, you do not set it aside and assume the best. Not to read the materials available in the briefing book for a matter of this magnitude, even if they turn out to be flawed or incomplete, seems to be unbelievable or at least careless.

JANET RENO: This is a briefing book that was presented to me on April 12th. It's a briefing for the attorney general. This is what I read as I started to consider whether to even consider the gas plan. I went through it in detail, and that's--it's this book and some of the descriptions of what gas could do that precipitated my questions. So this is a book that I read. As the week went on, there were various pieces of information being collected, and I wanted to make sure that we had on paper what we had done. A summary was prepared. I read that summary and asked them to provide the back-up to the summary. I can't--it was not a gut feeling early on and it was not go/no go. It was, I don't have the--I can't say at this point that we should go. All of the factors were important: The fact that the perimeter was unstable; the fact that negotiations had reached an impasse according to Sage; the fact that the food and water supply could last up to a year; the fact that he had rehearsed a suicide plan and could, based on what the experts were telling us, based on his--some of the religious statements--could possibly commit suicide; he talked about Lake Waco causing a catastrophe of some sort. Based on all of this, as we discussed it and as the FBI talked about the state of readiness of the HRT team and the fact that they did not have a back-up capable of substituting with adequate security in place of the HRT team, I made the decision to go ahead.

MS. BOWSER: And committee co-chairman Zeliff questioned the use of military tanks in Waco.

JANET RENO: With respect to the use of military weapons, these- -these pieces of equipment were unarmed, as I understand it, and were contracted--I mean, it was like a good rent-a-car. They were- -

REP. BILL ZELIFF: A good rent-a-car, a tank going into a building?

JANET RENO: These tanks were not armed. They were not military weapons. And I think it is important, Mr. Chairman, as you deal with this issue not to make statements like that that can cause the confusion. These tanks were used to protect FBI agents who were on the front line, who were exposed to men who had killed four FBI agents, who had--ATF agents, who had wounded fifteen, who we knew were armed with very high-powered weapons. I don't think you would want them to be unprotected, Mr. Chairman.

REP. BILL ZELIFF: I don't.

MS. BOWSER: Reno was also asked by she disregarded an April 14th letter that Koresh's attorney, Dick DeGuerin, said clearly showed Koresh was willing to come out.

REP. BILL McCOLLUM: That's the point, though, is whether or not you were told specifically what DeGuerin told us here, and that is that he advised Mr. Sage and the negotiating team on the 14th that he really believed that DeGuerin would come out within about 10 days.

JANET RENO: That Koresh would come out.

REP. BILL McCOLLUM: That Koresh would come out within about 10 days, that he would have completed these seals in that short a period of time. Now I'm not asking whether you believe it, whether- -obviously the FBI didn't believe it--I really want to know if that particular strikingly relatively comparatively short time point was even given to you as a piece of information. That's all.

JANET RENO: This was so important, because it came immediately, the letter to DeGuerin, immediately after the letter of April the 14th, was a part of all of our conversation. I looked at the letter. I analyzed the letter. I said, what do we have to show that it's for real?

MS. BOWSER: Some Republican committee members have complained that no one in law enforcement has been punished for mistakes made at Waco. The attorney general said so far as she's concerned, the FBI didn't make any.

JANET RENO: Mr. Chairman, I have been over and over and over this case trying to find out anything that anybody did wrong. We--I don't know if anybody would ever have been right, but I didn't find what I perceived to be any negligence. I didn't find any misconduct. I didn't find any basis for disciplining somebody. I can assure you that the anguish of those deaths will be with us all.

MS. BOWSER: Reno said she would not have ordered the tear gas assault on that final day if Koresh had given any serious sign of surrender, or if she had known he would set fires.

REP. BILL ZELIFF: Would you have waited?

JANET RENO: One of the things I haven't done is do too much Monday morning quarterbacking, but what I am saying is that we were asking for some tangible evidence, something to show that he was as a matter of good faith proceeding, and if he had come out with a letter saying, yes, I'm going to do it, but I'm not going to tell you when, that would be one thing. If he had come out with the first seal and said, see, I did the first seal in two days, just as I said I was going to do, I wouldn't have gone forward.

MS. BOWSER: The hearings will eventually produce an oversight committee report making recommendations on how to avoid another Waco.

MS. WARNER: Now that the hearings have ended, the joint committees expect to issue a final report in two months. Still to come, a defeat for the EPA, workfare in California, and a conversation about cyberspace. UPDATE - CHANGING COURSE

MS. WARNER: Next tonight, House Republicans turn defeat into victory, for now. At issue is the budget and power of the Environmental Protection Agency and the broad movement toward regulatory reform. Last week, we reported on a rare loss for House Republicans. But last night, the tables turned. Kwame Holman reports.

KWAME HOLMAN: This was the scene in the House of Representatives last Friday.

SPOKESMAN: On this vote, the yeahs are 212, the nays are 206, the amendment is agreed to.

MR. HOLMAN: The cheers came from a coalition of Democrats and moderate Republicans who won a surprising victory on an appropriations bill. They voted down 17 riders or restrictions that would have blocked the Environmental Protection Agency from enforcing many of its clean air and clean water regulations. Bill Richardson is Democrats' top vote counter in the House.

REP. BILL RICHARDSON, Deputy Minority Whip: Well, it was a great vote, great victory after many thunderous defeats, speaking up for the environment, and a coalition of Republicans and Democrats came together.

MR. HOLMAN: But the margin of victory was only six votes, and since seventeen members did not vote on Friday, House Republican leaders promised to bring back the amendment for a second vote in hopes of defeating the measure. Tom DeLay is the Republicans' top vote counter.

REP. TOM DeLAY, Majority Whip: We were caught a little bit by surprise. We didn't whip this vote because we thought we were okay. We had six of our votes absent.

MR. HOLMAN: The second vote on the EPA restrictions came last night. Republican Sherwood Boehlert, co-sponsor of the amendment protecting the EPA, urged members to hold their position.

REP. SHERWOOD BOEHLERT, [R] New York: This House sent the American public a clear unequivocal, bipartisan message on Friday, and it was this: That Congress cares about the environment. I hope we repeat that message this evening. If we do not, if we fail, the burden will be on those who switched their votes.

MR. HOLMAN: When members did cast their votes last night, only three switched and two of them voted for the pro-EPA amendment. Nevertheless, on this second go-around, the numbers didn't add up to a repeat of last week's victory.

SPOKESMAN: The yeahs are 210, the nays are 210, the amendment is not agreed to. [cheers]

MR. HOLMAN: A tie means defeat for an amendment, and this morning's headlines trumpeted the House's reversal on the EPA vote. But the reason behind the reversal isn't found among those who voted for or against the amendment. It's among the members who didn't vote at all.

REP. BILL RICHARDSON: It wasn't a screw-up. It was fate. It was also the weather. It was also the Republicans effectively juggling the schedule, changing the time of the vote. Majority party has that advantage; we used to do that too.

REP. TOM DeLAY: We were watching who was there and who wasn't there. We were counting that, and we watched who was consistently absent so to make sure no one popped in on us.

MR. HOLMAN: Republican Martin Hoke voted for the amendment on Friday, while his colleague, Don Young, voted against it, but Hoke was in Cleveland last night with House Speaker Newt Gingrich, while Young is hospitalized after an angina attack. Their votes cancelled out. Essentially, the amendment lost because eight Democrats who had voted for it on Friday weren't there to vote for it last night. Their offices gave us a variety of reasons. Xavier Becerra has a sick newborn. Floyd Flake was detained in traffic. Harold Ford was at home in Tennessee. Gene Green was holding a town meeting in Texas. Pete Stark was attending a childbirth class with his wife. Karen Thurman was with her husband, who was hospitalized with a kidney ailment. Walter Tucker missed his early flight from California, and Sidney Yates felt ill and went home.

REP. BILL RICHARDSON: Well, you know, you can't always control adult members of Congress. Many of them have many obligations; they have schedules. We've been working till 11 o'clock almost every night. They want to be home with their families. A lot of members are just plain tired and exhausted and frustrated, and perhaps those that missed the vote wanted to spend a little more time with their families. That's human.

REP. TOM DeLAY: It's a process here. If you expect to win anything, you make sure your votes are present.

MR. HOLMAN: This morning, President Clinton blasted those who worked for the defeat of the amendment.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I was very pleased last week when a bipartisan majority voted to reject the extreme anti-environment provisions adopted in the House committee. That was the right thing to do, but then the lobbyists for the polluters went to work. They got the leadership of the House of Representatives to call the bill back up, and last night, in a remarkable exercise of special interest power, the House voted to gut environmental and public health protections. It was a stealth attack on our environment in the guise of a budget bill.

MR. HOLMAN: The President made no mention of the fact that just one of those eight missing votes would have made the difference, but House Democrats say the Republican victory will be seen as a vote against environmental protection, and that has political value for Democrats.

REP. LOUIS STOKES, [D] Ohio: The people who won--the people who won on that amendment were the polluters of this nation. They won that vote, and the people of this nation lost. But I'm going to tell you, as I said earlier, this is one that's not going to go away. People are going to remember this vote for a long time.

MR. HOLMAN: But for now, the House Republican leadership has moved a rare defeat into the more familiar victory column. UPDATE - GAINING INDEPENDENCE

MR. MAC NEIL: Next, welfare. The National Governors Association meeting in Vermont was unable today to reach a consensus on how to reform federal welfare programs, reflecting similar divisions in Congress; however, there is agreement among virtually everyone on the objective of getting people off welfare. Spencer Michels has this update report on a California program designed to do that.

MR. MICHELS: When she was in the 10th grade, Aisha Williams dropped out high school in Oakland, California. Today, at 21, she has two kids, both in child care. The three of them live on $607 a month from Aid to Families with Dependent Children, AFDC. Getting off welfare didn't seem possible to her at first.

AISHA WILLIAMS, GAIN Participant: I was--got pregnant at 15, had her when I was 16. I didn't know what I was doing or where I was going. The next thing I knew I had another one.

MR. MICHELS: Aisha tried briefly to care for her children while going to school, but it was too much for her. Without a diploma or skills, she figured AFDC was her only choice.

AISHA WILLIAMS: First, I was like it's free money so you don't have to do anything, so you don't. And then the next thing you know, it's five years. Then the next thing you know it's 10 years.

MR. MICHELS: When her children were no longer infants, Aisha decided to break the pattern and get off AFDC. She enrolled in California's welfare-to-work program called GAIN, Greater Avenues for Independence. Alameda County, across the bay from San Francisco, stresses education in its GAIN program which is voluntary. Aisha thought she was finally ready for it. Today, she has her high school equivalency certificate and attends Laney Community College, working toward a career as a biological technician. Books, child care, which is very expensive, and transportation are paid for by GAIN. The aim is to move people like Aisha, whose mother and grandmother were also on AFDC, off the welfare rolls.

AISHA WILLIAMS: I'll make it, 'cause I owe it to myself, because, umm, I was supposed to--it's like, I guess, a written rule you're supposed to graduate from high school, go to college, get married, have kids. Well, I did it sort of backwards.

MR. MICHELS: GAIN provides school counseling for its clients, plus help in finding jobs. Richard Williams, a GAIN academic counselor, explains that education is emphasized because his clients must compete with the Bay area's highly educated work force. Without training, he says, welfare recipients will get stuck in menial jobs.

RICHARD WILLIAMS, GAIN Academic Counselor: Because they acquire these jobs that are relatively low paying, no skilled kinds of dead end jobs, and they get laid off, and then they're back on AFDC or assistance again, because there's no child care available for them and there's no medical plan available for them. A lot of people believe that AFDC recipients are lazy or they don't want to work. I don't believe that. I think that here in Oakland, it's just real difficult based on the economy to find a job.

MR. MICHELS: Nearly 35,000 families receive AFDC in Alameda County. Because of budgetary restraints, the GAIN program serves only 6 percent of them. In this county, the mostly federally funded GAIN program spends $4,000 per family. That's on top of $7,000 or so in regular welfare payments for a family of three. GAIN's goals, getting welfare recipients to work, are the same as President Clinton's.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: [April] We all know what we need. We need time limits for welfare recipients. We need strict work requirements. We need very tough child support enforcement. We need more flexibility for the states.

MR. MICHELS: Tracy Vaughn, a 28-year-old single mother of two, also from Oakland, may well epitomize the potential success the President wants to achieve. She's using GAIN to pay for child care while she gets trained on computers, hoping eventually to get a public relations job.

TRACY VAUGHN, GAIN Participant: There's no way I'm not going to succeed. I think if you really want to do this and get off of AFDC, you're going to do whatever it takes to do that. And GAIN is a stepping stool.

MR. MICHELS: Tracy agrees with the President that two years on AFDC is enough.

TRACY VAUGHN: People that just sit on welfare and have more children, that get more welfare, it's not fair. I mean, not to people like myself who want to get off, I think that you should have to get off.

MR. MICHELS: What happened to participants in GAIN like Tracy and Aisha was studied in a comprehensive, three-year evaluation of the program. On the plus side, they had increased earnings averaging 22 percent. As a result, welfare costs dropped an average of 6 percent in the county's study. Nevertheless, more than half those participants remained on AFDC after three years. That should give pause to those who hold up GAIN as a promising national model for welfare reform and to those like the President who want to end welfare payments after two years. That study was conducted by the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, a prestigious, New York-based non-profit organization whose president is Judith Gueron. She talked with reporter Susan Adams.

JUDITH GUERON, Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation: The Alameda program was successful in a central city area in making a difference in terms of the earnings of recipients. It got people better jobs, and it did some action in moving families out of poverty. The down side is that the program was expensive and that it didn't succeed with the most disadvantaged of the group that it served.

MR. MICHELS: In Alameda County, that group consists of poorly educated people who have been on welfare and out of the job market for more than two years. The study looked at six representative California counties, urban and rural. The results in Alameda, which includes Oakland, were mildly encouraging at first but got better over time. However, in Riverside County, East of Los Angeles, the report found the most impressive results of any study to date. By lowering welfare costs, GAIN returned $2.84 for every tax dollar spent. In Riverside, partly urban, partly rural setting, the GAIN administrators, unlike their counterparts to the North, de- emphasize formal education or training and instead push jobs.

INSTRUCTOR: So, tell me something about yourself.

PARTICIPANT: I'm very hard working, reliable, dependable, very responsible.

MR. MICHELS: All able-bodied AFDC recipients with children over three years old must take part in Riverside's GAIN program or have their welfare payments reduced substantially. The program trains people in how to finda job but now how to perform once they have one.

[INSTRUCTION SESSION]

MR. MICHELS: The chief architect of the GAIN philosophy here is Riverside County Welfare Director Larry Townsend. The three-year study vindicated his jobs first approach.

LARRY TOWNSEND, Riverside County Welfare Director: The research thus far--and it's kind of amazing--is that research shows that there's no real relationship between training, job placement, and reduction of welfare costs. And that's absolutely shocking.

JUDITH GUERON: The Riverside program had really stunning results, increasing earnings 50 percent, reducing welfare payments by 15 percent, paying back taxpayers quickly for their investment in the program. Well, the downside to Riverside is that families weren't moved out of poverty. People didn't get better jobs. If that's your goal, you have to make a larger investment to get there.

[PROGRAM PARTICIPANT SEARCHING FOR JOB OVER PHONE]

MR. MICHELS: GAIN participants must hit the phones. They call this "Job Club," and admittedly the idea is to find any job.

LARRY TOWNSEND: It is not optional. You don't have the luxury, if you're a welfare recipient, to stay home. In fact, we insist that you come here, and we use motivational techniques in sales, in marketing, about the wonderful things that employment can do you for you, but if they don't even come and show up, we will cheerfully reduce their welfare grant.

ROSLYN ST. MARY, GAIN Participant: They're making us get out there and look, seriously look. We have to come back with five leads a day, some of them -- most of the class have gotten jobs already.

MR. MICHELS: Roslyn St. Mary, who has two children, was on AFDC for 11 years.

ROSLYN ST. MARY: You can get lazy on the system and just sit there and wait for that first and fifteenth check.

MR. MICHELS: Did you do that at some time?

ROSLYN ST. MARY: Yes, I did. At times I did.

MR. MICHELS: Now she's enthused to be on the verge of a job.

MR. MICHELS: What kind of job do you hope to get?

ROSLYN ST. MARY: Which kind would I hope to get? Preferably office work. I like looking pretty and sitting behind a desk.

MR. MICHELS: Some AFDC recipients resent being forced to take part in GAIN. Thirty-nine-year-old Nancy Singh Leas, mother of a 15-year-old, is getting a divorce and recently had her car stolen, unique circumstances that she says put her on AFDC.

NANCY SINGH LEAS, GAIN Participant: They didn't take and ask me personally what I needed.

MR. MICHELS: So you think they put everybody into the same boat?

NANCY SINGH LEAS: Right. I think that they stereotype everyone and thinking they have kids and they really don't want to work. And they make you feel like--inferior.

MR. MICHELS: Riverside cranks 9,000 welfare recipients a year through GAIN, and officials admit their program is aimed at large numbers, not in as Alameda County, educating relatively few people.

LARRY TOWNSEND: You can get a few individuals into higher paying jobs, but you're going to be investing a lot more money in them. We can get out and with our low cost services help to get new futures for a much higher volume of client. And so it's sort of like the greater good for the greater number.

MR. MICHELS: California's governor, Pete Wilson, is a major booster of GAIN, especially Riverside County's no-nonsense approach to jobs. He's using the results of the new study in his re-election campaign.

GOV. PETE WILSON, [R] California: The Riverside model is much the better one. If you simply say we are going to educate you and train you but never require that you go to work, a lot of people are never going to go to work. It is, I think, creatively impatient. I think it's the right thing. It's sort of like having a mother or father in the household who's saying, get out and get a job, go ahead and better your lot by getting some additional education but in the meantime start paying some rent.

MR. MICHELS: Even in recessionary times, proponents argue, jobs are available. Laura Harris is one of many job developers for the Riverside County GAIN program.

JOB DEVELOPER: [talking to woman] I told the employer that you have the skills it's looking for and that you would be an asset.

MR. MICHELS: Job developers are paid to find jobs for welfare recipients, and they say they find plenty. Many of those jobs are in the low paying, fast food industry.

MR. MICHELS: It might be kind of hard to get pumped up over that kind of a job, wouldn't it?

LAURA HARRIS, Riverside County Job Developer: Not for me. And I feel that my philosophy is any job that will get you back out into the job market, it's going to have some potential. You might be really nice to a customer that you're giving a Big Mac to, and they might be the president of some company that wants to hire you. You just never know.

MR. MICHELS: Back in Alameda County, where education and training remain the focus, the GAIN program has only one job developer, Marlene Vidal. Here she talks with a new 28-year-old client who has held a paying job for only one month in her life.

MARLENE VIDAL, Alameda County Job Developer: Right now she doesn't have a high school diplomat. She hasn't worked, and what I see is important for her is she gets that GED.

MR. MICHELS: Now, if you were in Riverside, you might say that what's important for her is to get a job.

MARLENE VIDAL; What I think is important for her is to get a job that's going to keep her working or a skill that's going to keep her working for the rest of her life. It's the same old adage. You give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime. And there won't be this revolving door of the AFDC.

MR. MICHELS: The way to close that door and reform welfare, according to Gov. Wilson, is to stop AFDC payments after two years, which also reduces public expenditure on welfare. But unlike President Clinton, Wilson does not want the government to create jobs for hard to employ welfare recipients.

GOV. PETE WILSON: What we are proposing is that you have two years in order to find a job and get off welfare. If you haven't, then unless you are really unable to work, legitimately incapable of work, then you are off welfare.

MR. MICHELS: If you take someone off of welfare after two years, however, and you don't give them any job if they can't find one, what about the kids?

GOV. PETE WILSON: What happens is the children still are going to, obviously, receive some assistance in some fashion.

MR. MICHELS: Both Wilson and Clinton are looking for quick fixes to complex problems, some critics charge, so in espousing welfare reform, they are not addressing the underlying cause: long-term poverty. Jill Berrick writes about welfare and lectures in the School of Social Welfare at the University of California at Berkeley.

JILL BERRICK, University of California, Berkeley: The answer to the welfare problem is huge, and that's why politicians are scared of the problem and that's why they quickly turn to issues like GAIN and say that must be the answer. Part of what's so astonishing about the GAIN study and about the results from that study suggest that even the most successful families, the families who are most likely to get off of welfare or the families who are most likely to get a job and reduce their welfare benefit are still living in poverty at the end of their experience in the GAIN program.

MR. MICHELS: The Mission Inn in Riverside employs several GAIN participants, but even in this county, three years after entering the program, only one in five GAIN participants had a income above the poverty level. And fewer than one in four were both employed and off welfare. Kimberly Hunt, for example, remains on AFDC even though GAIN helped her get a job in room service. A single mother of a four-year-old with another child on the way, she is earning enough here to be almost off welfare. She's looking forward to that.

KIMBERLY HUNT, GAIN Participant: It's not just a money matter. It's the self-esteem. It's the motivation. It's feeling better about yourself. It's having people look at you in a different way. Yeah, I'm still on welfare, but you wouldn't look at me, if you see me in the store or something like that and you see me with food stamps, I don't look like a welfare recipient. I don't act like a welfare recipient, and I never will, you know. I'm not going to be a welfare recipient forever. I mean, that's one thing that I've sworn to my grave. I will not die on welfare.

MR. MICHELS: A few others like this Mission Inn housekeeper who earns less than $6 an hour have gotten completely off welfare through GAIN. Yet, that is a rarity. While critics admit that GAIN can show positive results, they point out that it is not a panacea to the intractable problems of poverty. SERIES - CYBERFUTURE

MR. MAC NEIL: Next, another in our series of conversations on the meaning and consequences of the new world of cyberspace. Tonight, Charlayne Hunter-Gault speaks with Kathryn Montgomery, president of the Center for Media Education, a non-profit advocacy group that works on media and communications policy issues.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Kathryn Montgomery, thank you for joining us. What's your definition of cyberspace?

KATHYRN MONTGOMERY, Center for Media Education: Well, cyberspace is one of those terms that is kind of thrown out there that nobody quite understands like the information superhighway. I think the fundamental thing to understand here is that the entire communications system is undergoing dramatic change with the introduction of computers and with convergence of computers and television, all our traditional communications technologies are merging. So we're talking about a new communications system that will be very much expanded from the one that we have now with an unlimited potential for information.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: In the best of all possible worlds, how do you envision life in cyberspace?

KATHYRN MONTGOMERY: In the best of all possible worlds, I would envision a future where we had the opportunity for much more information, much more educational opportunity for children who haven't had that opportunity, the ability for each person to be able to produce as well as to receive information.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So that more information is--can be a good thing?

KATHYRN MONTGOMERY: Yes. And a world where we're all empowered; we're not restricted to a very closed media system, but we're empowered and are able to produce our own media. This new world, which--where we will be linked by computers, where we will have this incredible kind of interactivity, will be the world that you have to be hooked into in order to participate in society, in order to be educated, in order to get critical information that you might need, in order to do your job.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: When you talk about empowering people, what exactly are you talking about?

KATHYRN MONTGOMERY: I'm talking about giving the average citizen the opportunity to communicate more effectively with the government, with your leaders. Even now, we're able to see that with computer technology you can talk back to, for example, a journalist. There's a story that you--that you read in the magazine, and you can actually communicate directly to that journalist in a way that you're not--were not able to do before.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: To ask questions--

KATHYRN MONTGOMERY: Right.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: --or to say that doesn't make sense, or to challenge the information.

KATHYRN MONTGOMERY: Right. And I'm talking about groups that up till this time have not had the opportunity to be able to create communications, to be able to produce video, for example, and to speak to the world. We've had a pretty much closed media system, so I'm talking about a lot of non-profit groups that, you know, might be environmental groups and others that have sort of had to beg to get covered by the traditional news media, you know, African-Americans and native Americans and others and Hispanics that have had a really difficult time being able to be part of the traditional media system, particularly television. There could be opportunities here for that kind of expression, for these groups to be able to communicate more directly, and also, you know, if we really look at what the potential is with video, interactive video in the future, if you could imagine live theater being able to be communicated, you know, in a community and other forms of performance that we don't usually see in the media. The possibilities are certainly opening up with these technologies.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, what concerns you about the future of cyberspace?

KATHYRN MONTGOMERY: I--my concerns about the future of cyberspace revolve around the fact that we are at a moment right now when this new universe is emerging, and it's being shaped by very strong market forces, by policy decisions that are being made right now, and my concern is that it may not live up to its full potential by certain decisions that are being made.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Like what?

KATHYRN MONTGOMERY: We did a study that looked at the initial plans by companies developing video dial tone systems, phone companies providing video services, and found that in the plans, the companies were bypassing communities of color, bypassing lower income communities, because that's the way the market was working, and that means that these communities are behind. It may take years and years for them to catch up. And I'm particularly concerned about children. Children will need access to this infrastructure in order to be literate to operate in society. And yet, at precisely the time that this new system is emerging, more and more children are falling into poverty. We're seeing a division that is widening between those who have access to these kinds of technologies and those who do not, and we already know that families with incomes of $50,000 to $75,000 are more likely to have computers. Computers are 50 percent of those homes, home computers. But if your income is between $15,000 and $20,000, it's closer to 10 percent of homes that have access to computers. There is no national policy at this point to ensure that everyone will have access to those technologies, and that's an issue that's going to be very critical for kids. Even schools, and in particular schools where we would want to make certain that all kids had equitable access to this technological infrastructure, it's, it's really quite pathetic what the numbers are. Only 3 percent of classrooms have access to the Internet.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You mean nationally only 3 percent of classrooms?

KATHYRN MONTGOMERY: I mean nationally, yes, and it's very likely that we could see a bifurcated system emerge in the next generation where some classrooms in the more affluent communities will have access to these technologies and others will not. And yet, it really has not been part of the national debate about the information--national information infrastructure. Instead, the debate about children has been rather narrowly focused on issues of protecting kids from pornographic or violent content. Now that is a concern but it is not the major issue about how we ensure that children will be well served by this emerging system, and I think it's really unfortunate that we've not broadened that debate, and we need to do that.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: To the basic question of who has access, period, let alone what the content is?

KATHYRN MONTGOMERY: That's right. And in addition to that, ensuring that what is there will be serving children and really, really nurture the best in kids. My fear is that we will have a 500-channel shopping mall, with a lot of services targeted at kids, created for kids, that will be infomercials, for example. Various experts about this new world, this new cyberworld, are talking about how it's all going to be infomercial, and if you look, you can see that in order to get an advertising message in there, sometimes it's more effective to blend it with programming. We're seeing a blending of programming and advertising. When it comes to kids, that can create first of all a kind of product that is not going to live up to the standards that we would hope for kids but also an inherently deceptive kind of programming. I do think that when we look at the potential for some of the deceptive advertising, for example, advertising that--interactive advertising that records information from the child--that collects information- -we need to look into some safeguards there to protect privacy and to ensure--

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What do you mean?

KATHYRN MONTGOMERY: There are some companies that are developing some services for children where they will entice the child to interact with an advertisement and will track every interaction between the child and that advertisement. And, unfortunately, when you have a totally unregulated marketplace, there will be some who will, will not have scruples about what they do. They will do whatever they, they can get away with in order to, to target kids.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Who do you think should do this oversight and essentially what you're saying is regulation? Who should do this?

KATHYRN MONTGOMERY: I think that this is something that we have to have a national debate about, and I think that corporations need to make the commitment. I don't think it needs to be a government regulation approach particularly. Parents, educators, child advocates, all those who care about kids, need to be part of the debate about what this future is going to look like.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: On the flipside of this, what do you see as the potential for education?

KATHYRN MONTGOMERY: Oh, I think we're really just at the beginning of what the capabilities could be for educational services for kids, and services to the classroom, as well as to the home, that technology would make it possible for kids to have access to information from all around the world to engage in the kind of exciting, interactive educational work that we've been able to see with the educational software in the CD-ROM market. The potential is certainly there. I think one of the other issues is that the educational institutions need to be better trained. Teachers need to understand and embrace these technologies and know how to use them. But we're in a beginning here, and that's why I think it's very important to ensure that there are some mechanisms in place that enable everyone to have affordable access.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What would the future be like if this kind of division continued, and you had a class of computer haves or cyberspace haves and have-nots, what would be the cost of this?

KATHYRN MONTGOMERY: The cost would be very serious because without access to these technologies, it's going to be very difficult to find work in an increasingly information age economy. You are not going to be well equipped to participate in the job market. We could end up with a very, very bifurcated society, a real underclass of people who remain there because they do not have the kind of access to these technologies that will be essential. And it could take a very, very long time to make up for that, if we do at all.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Kathryn Montgomery, thank you.

KATHYRN MONTGOMERY: Thank you very much. ESSAY - A FEW GOOD MEN

MS. WARNER: Finally tonight, essayist Anne Taylor Fleming talks about men.

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: I am tired of angry white men. More to the point, I am tired of hearing about them. Oh, I know they're out there, alleged Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh chief among them, the angry, alienated, unskilled vigilante for lost masculinity. That's the way many of the post bombing pundits summed him up. They weren't wrong. Obviously, he's full of rage--and plenty of other men are too, running off to join gun-toting gangs of the armed and aggrieved. I've seen these angry men and heard them up close and personal and in concert halls. And as we all know, neither the United States Navy nor apparently the United States Senate is bereft of men throwing their sexual weight around. But let me be clear--I come not to bury men, but to praise them. Whenever I read about the angry men, I keep thinking about all the others, all the not-angry men, the ones who have made amazing and unsung journeys over the past couple of decades--and what a couple of decades it has been. An extraordinary revolution-evolution has taken place since the women's liberationists took to the streets back in the early 70's, demanding to be let into male worlds. Women are now firmly in those worlds, doing all the things that men do, practicing surgery, flying to the moon, flexing muscles, running multi-billion dollar companies, even doing their own version of raw and raunchy stand-up comedy, all of this just a handful of years since we were confined to being help mates and housewives. We've gone from Donna Reed to Sally Ride, from June Cleaver to Rosie O'Donnell in the blink of an eye. And in nearly half the American households, women now earn about as much as their husbands. So men have had enormous changes to reckon with since the "Father Knows Best" days, emotional and economic changes both. Jobs have disappeared as women have come on strong, and the workplace is a far different place than it once was. I have empathy for men, though that's not something I usually go around admitting out loud. It's a little politically incorrect, given the obvious problems still remaining for many women. But there are a lot of nice men out there, men who have changed, grown, and even while they might not always admit it, reveled in the changes. I watch men greet each other now, touched by their intra-gender tenderness; instead of those manly pin-striped handshakes of yore, there are big, open bear hugs. I watch men with their small children, faces alight, hearts on their sweatshirts, joyous at the emotion they now feel free to display. I watch them coach their daughters in Little League or on soccer fields with full tilt, undiscriminating pride, and I watch them with their successful, sometimes saucy, wives, and I don't see fear or anger or envy but love and pride. I see this, and I forget how new it all it is and how exciting, and that there has been a revolution, at least a part of one. And with all the miles still to go, all the inequities still to be addressed, these men need to be recognized because their voices, the voices of not- angry men, are the missing voices in this culture. We hear from the angry ones, the talk show hypesters and their constituents, and we hear from the angry women in whose number I sometimes count myself. But today I'm not angry, and given all the attention to the angry white male, perhaps we ought to pay respects to the not-angry white men for a change, to all the not-angry men for that matter, the ones who don't hate everyone different, men who like women and like themselves. I'm Anne Taylor Fleming. RECAP

MS. WARNER: Again, the major stories of this Tuesday, the House voted to lift the arms embargo on the Bosnian Muslims. Hurricane Erin took aim at the Florida cost, and Westinghouse announced plans to buy the CBS television network. Good night, Robin.

MR. MAC NEIL: Good night, Margaret. That's the NewsHour for tonight, and we'll see you again tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.