The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. Leading the news this Thursday, a special commission recommended closing down 86 military facilities around the country. The Federal Aviation Administration announced new airport security measures and President-elect Bush said he would punish severely those responsible for the Pan Am jetliner bombing. We'll have the details in our News Summary in a moment. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: After the News Summary, we look at the political and economic pain of closing unneeded military bases. We talk to a member of the base's commission, Gen. Bryce Poe, and to three people affected by the closings, Congressman Robert Smith of New Hampshire and Wayne Owens of Utah, and Mayor Jan Coggeshall of Galveston, Texas, then a News Maker Interview with FAA Chief Allan McArtor about problems with aging airliners and the new security measures in the wake of the Pan Am bombing. We close with a Bob Maynard essay about troubled children. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: The bomb was lowered today on 86 U.S. military installations. A special non-partisan commission recommended closing them down as well as making other changes that would affect 145 facilities in all. Commission Co-Chairman Jack Edwards, a former Republican Congressman from Alabama, told reporters the action would result in more efficient and cost effective operations for the army, navy and air force.

JACK EDWARDS, Commission Co-Chairman: Our report presents an opportunity to reduce training costs in terms of man power, overhead costs and fuel, to improve command and control, to consolidate training and improve economies of scale and to move unnecessary administrative burdens to our defense managers. Add to these improvements and opportunity to eliminate some future military construction costs and to save almost $700 million a year in base operating costs with a 20 year net present value of $5.6 billion.

MR. LEHRER: The recommendations must now be approved by the Secretary of Defense, then Congress would vote, the choice under a new base closings law being either to accept all of the recommendations or none of them. Congressional reaction today was mostly favorable. Here's a sampling.

SEN. SAM NUNN, [D] Georgia: This process is a step forward. I have a positive reaction. We'll look at it very carefully. We'll particularly look at the assumptions, and I believe from what the commission, itself said, that we shouldn't consider that everything has been done in this area now that can be done.

SEN. JOHN WARNER, [R] Virginia: I say that it is clear to this Senator that unless Congress does accept this recommendation of the commission and the Secretary of Defense, then we'll lose credibility in the eyes of the American public that we're not doing our job to help remove the inefficiencies and the waste in the defense structure and this is foremost in the minds of the public.

MR. LEHRER: There was some criticism from members of Congress who felt facilities in their own areas should not be closed. Illinois's two Democratic Senators, Paul Simon and Alan Dickson, complained about the loss of two Illinois bases. They said the commission should have first looked at those overseas before those at home. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: The Federal Aviation Administration today announced new stricter security measures for U.S. air carriers operating in the Middle East and Western Europe. FAA Administrator Allan McArtor said the action was necessary because last week's Pan Am bombing showed that current security was insufficient. The measures include the X-ray or physical inspection of all checked baggage. Currently, bags are only randomly inspected. McArtor made the announcement late today at a Washington News Conference.

T. ALLAN McARTOR, FAA Administrator: These new directives are comprehensive and far exceed existing international standards. These measures are currently in coordination with affected carriers and foreign governments and will be effective within 48 hours. Today's announcement may result in additional passenger delays and inconvenience at some selected airports, but I am confident that the public will support these more stringent measures to re-establish the balance in the wake of the criminal action taken against Pan Am 103.

MR. MacNeil: President-elect George Bush today called for reprisals against those responsible for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Mr. Bush made his comments at a brief news conference at an airport in Texas, where he's been on a hunting vacation. He was asked what should be done to those who placed the bomb.

PRESIDENT-ELECT GEORGE BUSH: Seek hard and punish firmly, decisively those who did this if you can ever find them. I'm not going to discuss the kind of action. The most imprudent thing a responsible official could do is to discuss what kind of action would be taken or would not be taken. That would be imprudent and I wouldn't do that. And when I say punish severely, that's what I mean.

MR. LEHRER: Eastern Airlines defended its Boeing 727 problems today. Company officials held a news conference in Miami to say fuselage cracks like those found recently in two of its 727s are found literally every day. They said it was an industry problem, not just one for Eastern.

JOE LEONARD, Eastern Airlines: The fact of the matter is every airline in the world experiences cracks virtually every day. New airplanes crack, medium aged airplanes crack, and old airplanes crack. It is a way of life. They are under control and the maintenance programs are adjusted to learn from the experiences that we realize in the process of our inspection of our aircraft.

MR. MacNeil: Israeli Premier Yitzhak Shamir said today that he hopes to offer a peace initiative within two months that would give Egypt a key negotiating role with Arab states and Palestinians. He said the talks would be under the auspices of the super powers. Shamir told Reuters News Agency he would consider allowing Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to elect representatives to the negotiations if they ended their uprising there. In Southern Lebanon, Israeli helicopter gunships destroyed a Palestinian guerrilla base. We have a report by Richard Vaughan of Worldwide Television News.

RICHARD VAUGHAN: The two Cobra gunships made their attack in the morning. Their target was an Amal base near the Lebanese village of Tebnin. Several rockets scored direct hits on this building. The Israelis said it was a command post used by Syrian backed Shiites. Eight militiamen were wounded and the building was almost completely destroyed. Announcing the raid, the Israeli army said it was in retaliation for an attempt by Palestinian guerrillas on Wednesday. The Israeli spokesman said Amal fighters had assisted in the Palestinian operation. Later, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said Palestinian guerrillas had increased their attack since the U.S. decision to open talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization. In the last week, there have been three attacks from Lebanon. They've fueled speculation that anti-Arafat factions are trying to destroy the latest Middle East peace initiative.

MR. MacNeil: The Israeli Government also announced that its troops shot dead three infiltrators from Egypt and are searching for a fourth man who escaped. The incident happened last night, but Israeli military censors delayed publication of a report for nearly 24 hours. Troops opened fire on the group's vehicle after they refused an order to stop. An army spokesman said no weapons or documents were found in the car. And those two little French girls held hostage by the Abu Nidal terrorist group arrived home tonight. Seven year old Mari Lor and her six year old sister Virgini were reunited with their father in Libya early today before boarding a plane for France. The girls' mother remains in captivity in Lebanon.

MR. LEHRER: A merchant ship sank off the Northeast Atlantic Coast of the United States today. Four crew members were rescued but one died and seven others are still missing. The Coast Guard said the 250 foot cargo ship named the Lloyd Bermuda began sinking after a storm caused its load to shift. It happened at a spot about 160 miles South of the Massachusetts Island of Nantucket, 200 miles due East of New Jersey.

MR. MacNeil: That's our News Summary. Now it's on to the pain of closing military bases, FAA Chief Allan McArtor on airline security after the Pan Am bombing, and an essay about troubled children. FOCUS - EMPTY BARRACKS

MR. LEHRER: The base closing story is our lead tonight. It is another episode in the new Congressional way of doing things, calling in a commission to do its dirty work. The work in this case is closing down U.S. military bases in order to save money and efficiency. Today the commission issued its report which calls for closing or otherwise affecting the futures of 145 installations around the country. We'll hear from a commission member, two members of Congress, and a mayor of an affected city right after this excerpt from the commission's news conference this morning in Washington.

ABRAHAM RIBICOFF, Commission Co-Chairman: There are 86 for closure, 5 for partial closure, 54 bases have been realigned. The estimation is $693 million saved per year in base operating costs and $5.6 billion to be savedover 20 years on the net present value.

JACK EDWARDS, Commission Co-Chairman: The first thing we looked at was military value without a doubt. I mean that was our touch stone, and if a base had military value, then we didn't bother it. If a base was lacking in military value, then it became a candidate to look at.

REPORTER. Sen. Ribicoff, what, having gone over this list, is this the end of it in your mind or can a year from now a similar commission come back and recommend a similar number of bases? I mean, a $5.6 billion savings over a certain number of years is rather insignificant when you consider the total defense budget.

ABRAHAM RIBICOFF: We'll make a recommendation in our report. This shouldn't be basically the job of a commission constantly like ours. We think the basic responsibility should be in the hands of the Secretary of Defense. There should be an ongoing study to see what changes should be made in the bases. We've recommended that there should be a high level small group of people to go over this with the Secretary of Defense. But I would hope that there wouldn't always be a commission like ours that would be necessary to do the whole job over again.

REPORTER: But that never worked. In the last 15 years that hasn't worked.

ABRAHAM RIBICOFF: Well, maybe we've started something new. Maybe the thinking will be different. We hope so. I think that this hasn't been an exercise of futility. I think that the Congress could have a different point of view should this not be disapproved, and we hope it will not be disapproved, and I think that the Defense Department presently feels this is an important exercise that we conducted and I would hope the next Secretary of Defense would continue his interest in how to handle bases that are no longer necessary, the substitute bases, the training is altogether different with a new technology. We're going to have to acquire larger tracts of land. Many of the present bases are limited because they've been surrounded by large urban areas and their effectiveness have been destroyed. So I think the country is going to have to take a good hard look and the Defense Department as to what future training will have to be for future wars and the changes that are going to take place.

REPORTER: As two former members of the Congress, how do you think this will be, the reaction on the Hill will be?

ABRAHAM RIBICOFF: I believe that the leadership of the Armed Services Committee, both the House and the Senate, are, favor this exercise taking place. There's no question that many Congressmen and Senators are going to be upset when they see this list, especially as it's affected the community. I would anticipate from my own general conversations during, from the time we were appointed to the present that the Congress will accept it.

REPORTER: Mr. Edwards --

MR. EDWARDS: I agree. The thing that makes this different from the Pentagon sending a request over to the Congress is that the leadership of the appropriate committees were in on this from the first, Sec. Carlucci met with Sen. Nunn, Sen. Warner, Congressman Aspin, Congressman Dixon, they signed off on what we were trying to do, and I think, and the vote on the bill that passed in October confirming what we were about passed overwhelmingly in both bodies, and of course anybody's who's on this list is going to be unhappy and we understand that, but we, we feel like that the majority of the House and Senate will report what we've done.

MR. LEHRER: Some specifics on the bases that would be closed, in the East and Atlantic Coast area, the major closing is Peas Air Force Base in New Hampshire, the best known Ft. Dix, New Jersey, an army basic training camp through three years now to be reduced to standby status. Also closed former missile bases in Aberdeen, Maryland, and Philadelphia, a Naval station in Brooklyn, a Navy hospital in Philadelphia, an army base in Virginia, and some smaller facilities around Washington, D.C. In the South, the Alabama army munitions plant, the New Orleans new military ocean terminal, a Naval station in Lake Charles, Louisiana, the Lexington, Kentucky, depot, a navy reserve center in Coconut Grove, Florida. In the Midwest, Illinois, two hits, Chanute Air Force Base and Ft. Sheridan Army Base near Chicago. Indiana lost an army munitions plant on the Jefferson proving ground, Ft. Des Moines in Iowa will be partly closed. In the West, the Presidio Army Base in San Francisco, also in California, three air force bases, the Hamilton Army Air Field, and the decision not to operate a new naval station at Hunter's Point. Other closings include Ft. Douglas in Utah, the Navaho Depot in Arizona, Ft. Wingate in New Mexico, and the naval air station in Galveston, Texas. Some bases because of consolidations will come out with even more personnel. They include Ft. Belvoir, Virginia, near Washington, Ft. Devons, Massachusetts, the Letter Kinney Depot in Pennsylvania, and the Staten Island Naval Station in New York, Ft. Harrison, Indiana, in the Midwest, Ft. Jackson South Carolina in the South, and in the West, air force bases in New Mexico, California, Washington, Idaho, and Texas, naval stations in Washington, Texas, and at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Now to a member of the commission that made all of these recommendations. He is retired Air Force Four Star General Bryce Poe. He flew combat missions in Korea and Southeast Asia and was the commander of the Air Force Logistics Command, among other things. General, welcome. Military value was the major criteria in making these decisions, is that correct?

GEN. POE: Absolutely.

MR. MacNeil: How did you determine military value?

GEN. BRYCE POE II, [Ret.], Base Closure Commission: Well, you bounce it against the mission of that particular service and their ability to perform that mission. It's made up of many many facets. It could be the distance to ranges that you have to fly, it can be the weather you have, it can be your ability to use tankers if you have bomber. I'm talking about air force. With the army in particular it has to do with whether or not they can take trainees in and turn them out in the time allowed and the kind of ability to fire the certain weapons that they have. As encroachment comes to these various bases, you would soon find that the kind of things you could do a few years ago, you can't do any longer.

MR. LEHRER: You mean building up around it, that sort of thing?

GEN. POE: That's right. That's right.

MR. LEHRER: When you made the decision on military value, that was based, did you take information only from the military to determine this?

GEN. POE: No, not at all. First we had the advantage of the commissioners, themselves, and I've never served with quite as knowledgeable a group.

MR. LEHRER: Let's run -- there were 12 of you altogether, right?

GEN. POE: That's correct, yes.

MR. LEHRER: Three members of Congress.

GEN. POE: That's right.

MR. LEHRER: Former members of Congress. Three of you retired military types, right?

GEN. POE: That's correct. And we had businessmen, and we had, for example, Mr. Trane, who is one of the leading environmentalists in the country, everybody brought something to that table. Then we had a superb staff, and that staff half of which by the legislation was non-DOD, worked with us to get the information. Now the bulk of the information came from the armed forces, but the armed forces did not make that list and they do not present all the information we use. You're seeing McArtor later. The FAA provided a great deal of information that we needed.

MR. LEHRER: What kind?

GEN. POE: Air space use. Once again, like you have the civil build-up around bases keeping you from firing, you have the great amount of air travel that restricts bases from the kind of flying you need.

MR. LEHRER: Was this, would you call this a pure process? That's a concern, of course, that everybody's going to have over this.

GEN. POE: No. We had for example cost models that the staff presented that were good enough that the services are now looking at them. That was changed several times. They may use them themselves. In the final analysis, you had to make subjective decisions based on the knowledge, the information you were given and the knowledge you had.

MR. LEHRER: And how -- just out of curiosity, how did you go about that, 12 of you sit around a table like in a jury and say, okay, everybody who's in favor of closing the Presidio of San Francisco, raise your right hand, and is that how it worked?

GEN. POE: Well, there were times when there was a vote to determine whether we should proceed on a certain course or not. But usually we sat around that table or we worked in smaller committees and we went back to people for different information. If we came forward, a commissioner would raise a question, and if we had the answer, the group that had worked on it, fine. If we did not, we would go back again. There are a lot of people that will never forget how many times we went and said we needed certain information by tomorrow noon.

MR. LEHRER: Any time there's a military facility closing, this has an impact in the community where that facility is. How did you rate that? How did you figure that into your equation, or did you at all?

GEN. POE: We certainly paid attention to it. There's no question about that. But the bottom line, of course, with the kind of budgets that you're looking to in the future predictably, the military value came in again. We're concerned about that. We have a whole chapter in the report that tries to lessen that impact on those individual bases. We did a lot of study on that and we talked to a lot of people who had successfully managed to go through that process and make the closed base something very useful.

MR. LEHRER: But you didn't leave a base open just because of the devastation it would cause in the community around it?

GEN. POE: First, no, and second, we didn't, I don't think we've closed any that are going to result in devastation.

MR. LEHRER: You don't believe that?

GEN. POE: There are going to be some hard times, don't mistake me, but the devastation is in pretty strong order.

MR. LEHRER: As far as going back to the process, now you came out of the air force. The other former military people, what branch of the service were they from?

GEN. POE: Gen. Stari was from the army and Adm. Rodden from the Navy.

MR. LEHRER: Are you convinced that you and your colleagues also sat there in a pure environment, not trying to carry the water for the air force and the other generals trying to carry, the admiral trying to carry the water for the navy, pardon the pun there, none intended?

GEN. POE: No, it's understandable the question is asked, but I don't believe so because what we were carrying the water for was to get additional funds for those services at a time when they're going to desperately need them.

MR. LEHRER: So the services, it's in their interest to cut these bases, right?

GEN. POE: Absolutely. We've been precluded -- if I say we for the services -- for almost 11 years during which time we've had enormous changes in force structure and mind you you must look at the title, it's base closure and realignment. We've even been precluded from moving units as small as thirty or forty people, when it was the thing to do to consolidate, safe, and that sort of thing. This is a great opportunity in my way of thinking.

MR. LEHRER: All right, General, thank you very much. Don't go away. Now to three varied reactions to what Gen. Poe and his colleagues have wrought today, those of Congressman Wayne Owens, Democrat of Utah, who joins us from Salt Lake City; Congressman Robert Smith, Republican of New Hampshire, who is in a studio on Capitol Hill, and Jan Coggeshall, the Mayor of Galveston, Texas, who is in Houston tonight. All three represent localities with bases on today's list.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman Smith, to you first. Peas Air Force Base is in your district and you don't like the idea of closing it. What's the complaint, sir?

REP. ROBERT C. SMITH, [R] New Hampshire: Well, I think the people of New Hampshire are very willing to make sacrifices for deficit reduction and if, in fact, the base is vulnerable to submarine attack, nuclear submarine attack, as is indicated by the plan, by the commission's report, I think we're willing to accept this kind of a decision. I voted for the bill initially. I think what concerns me and in listening to Gen. Poe, what concerns me very much is some of the bases that aren't on the list. He discussed military value. I'd like to know what the military value of Ft. Monroe, Virginia, is. It's a War of 1812 base surrounded by a moat whose primary mission is to stop the attack of British frigates against the Eastern shore of Virginia. Now if he could please tell me why that wasn't on the list, I might be able to stomach this a little better.

GEN. POE: Well, it's a good question.

MR. LEHRER: It certainly is.

GEN. BRYCE POE II, [Ret.], Base Closure Commission: And the first thing that you take a look at are bases just like that and wonder why they don't belong to the Park Service as a museum. But we have 4,000 people in a major headquarters there and one of the most limiting factors in our charter was a six year payback and when you take a major headquarters such as the army has on Ft. Monroe and you move that, including all the communications, and as a headquarters that works with the air force and the navy in great detail, that is an expensive exercise and you don't pay it back in six year, especially since the place is full of discarded munitions and that moat is full of old explosives.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman, how do you feel -- does that answer you?

REP. SMITH: No, it doesn't. I think that's a very poor answer for those in Ft. Smith, New Hampshire, who are providing a military support for a very active military base, and I, you know, again, the fact of the matter is whether you make the savings in six years or make them in sixty years, the point is if it's an outdated, outmoded base, it ought to be closed, and if it takes six years to get the savings or sixty years, it's irrelevant, it ought to be closed.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman, what will be the impact of closing that air force base in New Hampshire?

REP. SMITH: Our delegation, both Senators, Sen. Humphrey and Rudman, and myself and the other Congressman and the Governor are resigned to working with the federal, state and local officials to see to it that we do the best we can. We've got 2500 personnel who are leaving, 400 civilians. I might add, I don't know if the general is aware of this or not, but New Hampshire is losing 47 percent of its DOD personnel as a result of this one action. And that's higher than any state has had to face and it's also very interesting to note, and you know, yes, there's some frustration and anger here, although I do understand the reason, I'm not terribly upset about the fact that Peas was on the list as much as I am that other things were not considered. It's very interesting to note that Maine, where Sen. Mitchell, a very prominent Senator, nothing in Maine, nothing in Wisconsin, Congressman Aspin's state, nothing in Georgia, Sam Nunn, you know, we look at some of the things here; it's -- I don't like it. Abraham Ribicoff, a member of the commission, here he's the co- chairman of the commission, Connecticut, nothing in Connecticut. You know, I think you open yourself up to charges. I'm not saying that these people influenced you nor that you listened to their influence. That's not what I am saying. What I am saying is that you made a decision here, you wanted to be sure that it was supported and the way to do that is to ignore some very prominent people who really ought to have had some bases cut out of their states as well.

MR. LEHRER: General, politics, are you saying politics had nothing to do with this?

GEN. POE: I am saying that, absolutely. I wouldn't have put up with that. I wouldn't have stayed on the commission if politics had something to do with it.

MR. LEHRER: You listened very carefully as the various people that the Congressman just outlined and nobody was there protecting Wisconsin or Georgia or --

GEN. POE: No member of the commission was. Lord knows we had plenty of mail which incidentally we did not answer. We passed that to the staff and passed it on to them to say we will take the information given us, take a look at it, but we will not discuss this.

REP. SMITH: I'd just like to say -- could I just quickly say, I'm not accusing the General of that, nor am I accusing any of the gentlemen I mentioned -- what I am saying is that you are going to ensure that this passes a lot easier if you don't antagonize any of the gentlemen that I mentioned and they didn't antagonize them.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Let's bring in Mayor Coggeshall of Galveston. Your new naval base will be closed and I take it you're just as upset as the Congressman, is that correct?

MAYOR JAN COGGESHALL, Galveston, Texas: Yes, I am. I am very frustrated because this is a very unusual situation. We have a base under construction and the Defense Department just recently signed an agreement with Galveston and asked that the State of Texas and the local Galveston folks come up with $8 million, which we have done, and we have worked four years to get this base under construction and now we are going to lose a potential $25 million payroll which will just go somewhere else after all the things that we've done. And it just seems like we're being used as a pawn in this battle between the deficit and the Congress who seems unwilling to look at these bases on a case by case basis.

MR. LEHRER: General, why are you closing down something that's in the middle of construction, that they have worked so -- well, you heard what she said.

GEN. POE: Well, in the first place, I certainly understand how you feel. It's a thing of serious concern and the commission thinks about those things, but you've got to look at it the other way. Unlike the air force where the budget has been greatly constrained in the last two years and there's drawdown, which includes drawdown from aircraft --

MR. LEHRER: What's drawdown?

GEN. POE: That's where aircraft are being moved and that's leaving a blank place in the mission. That gives you an opportunity to look at something. The navy has approved by the Congress a very large program, 600 ships. That may not come to pass, but it wasn't our place to work on that. So we could not look at the force structure, but what we could do was say can we stop some of this construction and handle the force structure somewhere else, and that's where your four ships are going to go to another place in Texas where they can be handled without additional construction. There are some costs and I've been stationed down there. I know how supportive you are of the military and you've made some sacrifices, but we could not in good conscience say we continue to do this if we can support that force structure somewhere else at less cost.

MR. LEHRER: Mayor.

MAYOR COGGESHALL: Well, I think that the fact that this is a state of the art base, this is a base being built for the 1990s, the largest, the second largest number of reservists in the navy in the United States live in the Houston Galveston area, which is why it was placed here to begin with. And I think it's going -- you're going to find that it's much more cost effective to keep this base open than to pay the construction costs of shutting this down and having to move other people for reserve training somewhere else. So I just feel that within the last year nothing has changed strategically from the original Defense Department request that the base be built here.

MR. LEHRER: Was that a military value decision?

GEN. POE: Absolutely. And the thing that has changed has been the money to respond to the threat and the reservist question is a good one. You have superb reservists in large quantity at Houston, but we're talking about four ships with less than five hundred people. They are 60 percent manned by active duty personnel, so we're talking about a couple of hundred people that we're going to have to find to man those ships 175 miles away on the reserve side.

MR. LEHRER: What's going to be the cost of this to Galveston, Mayor?

MAYOR COGGESHALL: Well, of course, we had built a lot of our hopes in the diversification for the recovery of the Texas economy on the Galveston home port and the frustrating thing is not only going to be psychological but for four years, the community has worked on this as our project for diversification. So needless to say the businesses that might have come to Galveston are not going to come and there are going to be tremendous economic problems.

MR. LEHRER: Did you have a smell that this was coming, or did this just come out of the blue today?

MAYOR COGGESHALL: Well, I think I had heard some rumors about 10 days ago. I honestly thought for months that they were looking at outdated bases and it never occurred to me that a brand new state of the art base was going to be included in the list. I think it's a very clever thing that Congress did because they don't have to discuss the merits of individual bases and it's a total package.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman Smith brought up, raised the ugly subject of politics a minute ago. Here you said in a state with the President-elect from Texas, the Speaker of the House,the whole name, the whole list, didn't do you any good.

MAYOR COGGESHALL: Well, my argument is not really political. It's strategic. I don't see what has changed in the last 12 months and why the Defense Department put this facility here and asked us to come up with the money to help pay for it. It was one of the first kind of projects where they went out and asked the local communities to buy into the base, and we have bought into the base psychologically, economically, and now we are going to suffer a tremendous penalty for having done that.

MR. LEHRER: Let's go to Congressman Owens now in Salt Lake City. Now you have a closing in your district as well. Tell us about that.

REP. WAYNE OWENS, [D] Utah: Ft. Douglas located on the East side of Salt Lake City in terms of military value may well be outdated. In terms of economic worth, I think it carries its own weight. But in military value, it is conceivably inefficient. It's been rumored for many years here so we're kind of prepared for it, and I think willing to accept it if it was done fairly and they had the right data.

MR. LEHRER: Do you feel that it was done fairly?

REP. OWENS: Well, I'm going to have a briefing in Washington tomorrow afternoon, but my judgment is it probably was done fairly. The people on the commission are competent, able people. They looked at military value. They looked at the fact that the military budget had increased 42 percent in real dollars in the last eight years, and that it was moving in that direction, if we don't do something about the bases and the exotic weapons systems as well which is driving it, but they understand that there's a job to be done. And I think they're competent and able and unless I can turn up something that really shows an unfairness, I strongly support passage of the entire package.

MR. LEHRER: Are the people in your district going to understand your attitude about this?

REP. OWENS: Well, I hope so, Jim. In my profession they get a chance every two years to express displeasure. But I think the people of Salt Lake County are willing to take their share of the pain of doing something about spending, the growth of the defense budget and of course the $150 billion of deficits. It's interesting, as you look at this, the $5.6 billion, which they say these '86 closings and these efficiencies will bring over 20 year isn't much if we spend at this year's level for 20 years, that's about $6 trillion, and that $6 billion saving is less than 1/100 of 1 percent of the total expenditure but it's movement. And it's done I think by competent, able people and unless it's done unfairly I hope that we've fashioned this legislation so that it can't be overturned except on a basis of unfairness or inaccuracy on military value. I hope it'll stick.

MR. LEHRER: General, the Congressman's right, is he not? I mean, $5.6 billion in the Pentagon budget world is not very much money over 20 years, is it?

GEN. POE: No, but you can't have it both ways. You can't go after the services for waste and force us to keep stations that we don't need.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman Smith back to you. You heard what Congressman Owens just said. His view is slightly different, faced with the same situation. How would you draw the differences between your situation and his?

REP. SMITH: I don't think we are that different. I agree with what he said. I think that the issue here is one of fairness. I think that if you're going to close Congressman Owens' base and he knows more about that than I do out there, or Peas Air Force Base, I think his people, he said his people are willing to accept that, I think my people are willing reluctantly to accept the change in mission at Peas Air Base, but the question again goes back to fairness. Did the commission look fairly at every other base? And you know, I wasn't there and I'm not making accusations against anybody, but when I hear the general's explanation of Ft. Monroe, Virginia, he says, well, it costs too much to close it down, well, that's not what he said in his opening statement. His opening statement was much different than that. He indicated there that the decision was made on military matters and whether or not it was needed or not, and if it's not needed, close it down. And I'm just, I'm not just so much concerned with the bases that were on the list as those others that were not.

MR. LEHRER: Those that were not. General.

GEN. POE: Well, there are two things to make. Back to Ft. Monroe again, the point is that on that base is a required function, a very major headquarters with a big job to do. The second thing about that is that we had a chartered message that we could not close anything unless we could do it in six years. I would have been delighted if we had had 20 years. We could have perhaps saved more money. The other thing that I must say about this is that we have a set of circumstances in force structure that makes a difference and if you have a base that --

MR. LEHRER: Force structure means --

GEN. POE: What you have to bed down, army, navy and air force, you have to find a home for, in order to meet your mission. And there have been times when a base has been very vulnerable and we have not been able to close it. And immediately thereafter you finally go and say you aren't going to let me close, I'm going to put a mission in there, you've got to help me build it up. So this base then is built up and it once was vulnerable -- when we look at --

MR. LEHRER: You mean vulnerable to being closed.

GEN. POE: Vulnerable to closing.

MR. LEHRER: Right.

GEN. POE: And now we look at it again some years later, this same kind of force that was able to stop us from closing it has the clout to give us the facilities to keep it open.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman Owens, back to you, you heard what the Mayor of Galveston said. Do you have any sympathy at all for her story?

REP. OWENS: Well, you have to be sympathetic. Part of the purpose of the commission is to streamline the whole military establishment, and where they had just started a new base, then you have to -- I think it bears scrutiny to see why this high-tech operation they closed down, but in the end it cannot become a political thiefdom. Bases, there's over 4200 of them which they looked at, somehow there has to be a group above politics, competent people who say it is in a powerful Congressman's district but it does not serve a military purpose. And whether it's in President Bush's and Speaker Wright's state or in my state, I think they're going to have to make some military judgments and it's got to be done. And we set it up that way by confident able people who are not susceptible to political pressure. Now can we pass it or can we avoid passing, better said, a resolution disapproving it? Eighty-six bases, that creates a lot of pain in a lot of places. I hope and believe that we ought to sustain it unless some basic unfairness -- and by unfairness I mean that they've not taken some special hit based on a prejudiced viewpoint not on the fact that one state may have, may lose more personnel than another -- if the unfairness thing doesn't hold, then I think that we can hold against overturning it.

MR. LEHRER: Now, Mayor Coggeshall, your point is not that politics is involved. It's just stupid, right?

MAYOR COGGESHALL: Well, it seems to me that it's not cost effective to say to the City of Galveston that we have a base that we want to build there and we want you to contribute to it, which we did, and then --

MR. LEHRER: Then close it down --

MAYOR COGGESHALL: -- say that the strategic value has disappeared just a year later. I think it is a state of the art base and I'm really surprised that the Defense Department is changing their mind, although I don't think it's the Defense Department. It sounds like it's this commission.

MR. LEHRER: Are you going to call every clout string that you have in order to try to turn this thing around, in other words, get this resolution defeated in Congress?

MAYOR COGGESHALL: Well, of course, I'm going to be working with our Congressional delegation because I think that people do not understand the fact that these contracts have been let. For example, a $20.4 million contract is out there preparing the pier and the roads and they're going to end up, you know, I guess paying that contractor off and they're going to end up with nothing for that money.

MR. LEHRER: You mean the work has already begun?

MAYOR COGGESHALL: Oh absolutely. The base is in the middle of construction. And that's the irony and why it's going to be so devastating here for Galveston.

MR. LEHRER: General, that's going to be a hard one to explain not only to the people of Galveston, but other people too, is it not? I mean, they're actually building the people down there.

GEN. POE: It's hard to explain to people who are impacted by it. There's no question. It would be very tough if I lived down there. I have a daughter in Texas. I know what the problem is on the economics down there. But we've been talking as though this state of the art base exists. It does not exist. And we are saving a good deal of money. There are sunk costs. There's no question about it. Unfortunately, some of them are --

MR. LEHRER: Sunk costs means it's gone?

GEN. POE: Gone, never get them back, okay, but in the final analysis, we took a close look at this, the navy has $799 million for their home porting. We will move these ships. They will not go over the 799. They will probably save money and we will certainly save money in the long run in the operation. There is not one person assigned to this base today. It sounds like it's a state of the art thing that exists. There's nobody there. There's a lot of effort put in there, but the point is that we can move those ships who have never been there, put them somewhere else, and save some money.

MR. LEHRER: Okay. I think we have to leave it there, having resolved this beyond a shadow of a doubt. We have to leave it. Mayor of Galveston from Houston, thank you very much for being with us. Congressman, thank you. General, thank you.

MR. MacNeil: Still ahead on the Newshour, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration on tough new measures to make air travel safer and an essay about troubled children. ESSAY - NEWS MAKER

MR. MacNeil: Next tonight a News Maker Interview on airport security with FAA Administrator Allan McArtor. Late this afternoon, Mr. McArtor announced that tighter security measures will go into effect for American Airlines in Europe and the MidEast. Mr. McArtor joins us now in our studio in Washington.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. McArtor, welcome.

MR. McARTOR: Thank you.

MR. MacNeil: Which airlines and which airports will be affected?

T. ALLAN McARTOR, Federal Aviation Administration: Well, this will affect all U.S. carriers operating out of airports in Western Europe and the Middle East, but it affects all airlines equally.

MR. MacNeil: And who are the personnel who will carry out these tighter security measures?

MR. McARTOR: Well, the airlines are responsible for the most part for conducting their own security programs, the checking of passengers and the checking of bags. This new security program, which is a greater emphasis on things that are sometimes done now in part, but we're making it 100 percent mandatory to do it all the time, but this new program will be run by the airlines at their individual airports.

MR. MacNeil: So no FAA personnel involved?

MR. McARTOR: No, but we're going to have more inspectors helping to supervise this activity as well.

MR. MacNeil: I see. So in other words, the same people who do it now will be doing it?

MR. McARTOR: That's correct.

MR. MacNeil: Is that going to -- are you going to require that the airlines train and pay people differently than they do now to carry out this work?

MR. McARTOR: Well, there's no question that the quality of any security program is directly proportional to the training and the motivation of the people that actually carry it out, and we would encourage the airlines, have been encouraging the airlines for over the past year to make sure that their personnel are well trained and well motivated to do their jobs.

MR. MacNeil: The point was made on this program last night by Mr. Arad who is a well known expert on airport security that that is one of the weak links, that airport security personnel employed by the airlines are often paid at a very low rate, are not well trained, compared for instance to air hostesses are very badly paid. Is that something the FAA feels is one of the inadequacies in the present system?

MR. McARTOR: I think that's a fair assessment, particularly on the domestic side, but here we're talking about the international threat to civil aviation and we find that the security personnel who are engaged in the international scene are perhaps better trained because we do have more stringent security programs for the U.S. carriers that are flying international routes?

MR. MacNeil: What will a passenger notice different checking in on say a TWA flight in Paris next week -- these are to go into effect in 48 hours -- that he wouldn't notice this week? What will he feel different?

MR. McARTOR: Well, I suspect they'll find more delays. Unfortunately, these new programs will probably generate some delays in some selected airports. He'll also notice that in some airports once they've checked their bags, they no longer have access to those bags, so that may be a change for them. But some of these things will be behind the scenes. For instance, they won't actually know that 100 percent of the luggage will be X-rayed or hand searched. That will happen in the baggage area perhaps. So I think that the passenger may not actually see a lot of this going on, but it's going to be going on behind the scenes.

MR. MacNeil: What is the point of X-raying checked baggage if present state of the art X-ray machines cannot detect plastic explosive?

MR. McARTOR: It's not a matter of detecting the plastic explosive, but the detonating devices and the cavities used to store these plastic explosives can be detected by X-ray, so we find that the X-ray machine in conjunction with these other security measures is an effective program.

MR. MacNeil: Another thing that's frequently recommended is personal interviews with passengers in the presence of their baggage. LL, for instance, has been doing that for years. Is that going to be one of the requirements?

MR. McARTOR: Yes. All our U.S. carriers already do that. They quiz you as to whether the bags have been in your possession, whether you packed them yourself, whether somebody has asked you to carry something for them. Those questions are asked on a routine basis right now.

MR. MacNeil: What additional steps are going to be taken to check non-passenger baggage, the cargo and so on?

MR. McARTOR: Well, this is one of the emphasis areas. We're going to make sure and require that all bags that go on the aircraft are directly correlated with a ticketed passenger who is on that airplane and if that person decides not to take that flight or gets off that airplane, those bags must be removed from the aircraft. That's the 100 percent bag match that we're going to require.

MR. MacNeil: What about cargo?

MR. McARTOR: Cargo, the small parcels that come across the ticket counter as part of the air freight, they must be X-rayed or hand searched as well.

MR. MacNeil: I see. Have you incidentally any new developments or anything further to report on the Pan Am incident, anything to add to what was reported yesterday?

MR. McARTOR: Nothing that you haven't already had access to. We certainly are working very very closely with the FBI and the law enforcement officials in the United Kingdom to try and understand as best we can not only the cause of the accident from the placement of the explosive, but what was that one thing, a part of the security program, that allowed an explosive device to get on board Pan Am 103?

MR. MacNeil: The fact that you are taking these measures and you are going to require the airlines to do things that will cause a lot more inconvenience to passengers presumably means that you assess the risk to passengers as quite high at the present.

MR. McARTOR: Well, I think that's pretty obvious. I mean, an explosive device of some high yield brought down Pan Am 103. And this heightened tension makes us obviously take note of the fact that the balance between passenger screening or passenger processing and security precautions is now suddenly imbalanced. And so we've got to go into greater depth now with our security programs to try to restore that balance.

MR. MacNeil: Are the passengers at risk because a vulnerability in the system has been demonstrated or because of the terrorism atmosphere or other warnings or whatever of information available to you?

MR. McARTOR: I don't consider the passengers to be at any inordinate risk. But after all, we do have a heightened level apparently of terrorist activity here or criminal acts against civil aviation and we must do everything we can to tighten up the security where these high tension areas might be. And that's why the airports in Western Europe and the Middle East are the ones that are being affected by this particular order.

MR. MacNeil: Are you as the FAA going to make any changes in the policy of passing on to the public any warning, specific warnings, or intelligence that makes a particular flight or pattern of flights at risk?

MR. McARTOR: Well, we're reassessing all of the policies along with the State Department and the White House as to what information is appropriate to pass on to the general public. I think it's been a recognized premise though in our society that the threats that are known through our intelligence sources, law enforcement and security officials, that those threats should be communicated well between these agencies and the information given to those that can do something about it. Keep in mind we receive dozens and dozens and hundreds and hundreds of these threats all the time, and we must make an assessment as to the significance of the threat and in balance with the rest of the tensions in the world and then call for additional security measures. If, in fact, we find that the security program in place at the given airport say is not adequate to meet the perceived threat, then those airplanes don't fly.

MR. MacNeil: Okay. On the other aviation story this week, the two Eastern Airline planes grounded because of tears or rips in the fuselage, today Eastern said the problem of aging aircraft is an industrywide problem, it's not just theirs. What is the FAA doing about this problem now?

MR. McARTOR: Well, the short answer is we're doing a lot. Aging aircraft or the phenomena of cracks in airplanes or pressurized hulls has been with us since World War II and we understand a lot about it. But we have convened two international conventions, here recently brought the experts of the world together, the manufacturers, the air carriers and the FAA to look at the aging aircraft problem and try to understand whether we know as much as we thought we did before and what we can do better for inspections and directed maintenance. Then we're taking each aircraft by type, we started with the 737, if you recall.

MR. MacNeil: After the Aloha incident where the roof ripped off.

MR. McARTOR: Right, to follow the Aloha accident, and now the 727, we'll look at the DC 9's and DC 8's and 747's and right on down the line, and we issue what's called air worthiness directives which are orders which direct the air carriers to either inspect in a certain way or to use electronic inspection or to actually go fix the aircraft, replacing rivets so that we don't have this risk of crash.

MR. MacNeil: But do you only issue those orders after there's an incident? I mean, the Aloha thing, there was a whole renewed interest of aging aircraft after the Aloha incident where one person lost her life. The 727 inspections have followed this incident the other day where that Eastern Airlines jet plummeted four miles in two minutes, although no one was injured. I mean, I guess what I'm asking is do these incidents show that the problem of aging aircraft may have wider parameters or may be greater than you and the industry have assumed up till now?

MR. McARTOR: No, I don't think the problem is more acute than what we'd thought before and no, we didn't wait until after the incidents to issue air worthiness directives. These were already in process and already being issued and being done. Certainly we learn something from all of these incidents, the Eastern incident and naturally the Aloha accident, because after all the process that was in place to look for cracks, that Aloha aircraft had actually been signed off that that had actually been done. So somewhere the system broke down. So we want to make sure that we know what are the inspection processes, how frequent must they be and where we know there might be a manufacturing process that will give problems in the future, we have now directed the airlines to go fix those things. Don't just look for the problem. Go fix it right now.

MR. MacNeil: Okay. Well, Mr. McArtor, we have to leave it there. Thank you very much for joining us. ESSAY - CHILDREN IN CRISIS

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight Essayist Robert Maynard looks back at the Tawana Brawley story which grabbed headlines earlier in the year.

ROBERT MAYNARD: The saddest thing about the sad case of Tawana Brawley is that we may never know just what happened to her. The nation was gripped and baffled by this tail of the black teenager who said she was abducted and abused by a group of racist white men. A controversial New York grand jury decision said her story is almost certainly a fabrication. They concluded there was no abduction, no rape, no mutilation by others, no villainous smearing of her body with dog excrement at the hands of hate mongers. If that is true, then we must search elsewhere for explanations. Millions have asked the question, if she did those things to herself, why? The grand jury report contains a good set of possibilities. Once they're addressed, another aspect of reality attaches itself to the name Tawana Brawley. The grand jury's findings suggest Tawana is more typical than she might at first appear. Indeed, her plight is shared daily by thousands of teen- agers across the nation, kids you see every day and wonder why they're doing some of the things they do. Look in Times Square, San Francisco's tenderloin, and the adult districts so called of a dozen large cities. You'll see the other side of Tawana Brawley, the kids who run away, hit the streets to escape sexual abuse at home. They're boys and girls, black and white and every other shade. Often they are like Tawana Brawley not the best behaved of children. What's different about her is that she didn't physically run away. She ran away mentally. That's the essence of the grand jury finding. She took a flight of fancy in which she created a circumstance intended to garner sympathy and deflect the violence she feared at home from her mother's live in boyfriend. She was aware of his violent history. He killed his first wife and served time in prison for murder. That, the grand jury says, is why Tawana Brawley did those terrible things to herself. She made up a tale to escape. Other kids faced with some of the same fears of violence and abuse make their way to the streets. There they find themselves enmeshed in a world of crime, especially drugs and prostitution. At the other end of the country from the Tawana Brawley case another example is unfolding of what happens to the group some call America's throw away children. Several prominent San Franciscans, a former mayoral candidate and a police officer among them, are charged with sex crimes involving children, throw away children. As the prosecution tells it, an enterprising couple in San Francisco recruited run away kids to serve as prostitutes for a clientele of men older than their grandparents. For this particular clientele, the younger the appearance of the children, the more appealing. These are children from homes in which the fear of violence, abuse and neglect is so great that they prefer the life of the streets. Social workers say some come from homes that do not want them back. Keep them, the families say, when child welfare workers call. That is why they are known as throw aways. Nobody wants them, nobody that is, except for drug dealers, pimps, and old men in search of innocence to corrupt. Many who might wish to go home again are afraid. They fear being beaten, sexually molested or psychologically abused. They are children at risk in their own homes. The New York grand jury and the FBI believe Tawana Brawley was such a child. That, the jurors say, explains this bizarre case and answers the question of why a child might do such terrible things to herself. She had worse things to fear. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again the major stories of this Thursday, a special commission recommended closing 86 military bases around the country and taking other actions that would affect 145 installations in all. And as we heard from Mr. McArtor a few moments ago, the Federal Aviation Administration announced new airport security measures as a result of last week's Pan Am jetliner tragedy. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim. That's the Newshour tonight and we'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.