The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Jim Lehrer is away. On the NewsHour tonight, the ValuJet crash in the Everglades. We have interviews with an NPR reporter on the scene and two federal officials, including FAA administrator David Hinson; economic reform in India, Fred De Sam Lazaro reports; the day's decisions in the Supreme Court, Stuart Taylor explains, and a Roger Rosenblatt essay on inherit the wind, it all follows our summary of the news this Monday.NEWS SUMMARY

MS. FARNSWORTH: Navy and police divers today recovered a flight data recorder belonging to the DC-9 ValuJet that crashed Saturday in the Everglades. They also found some human remains. Investigators probed nine-foot sawgrass and swampy alligator- infested waters for the bodies of 109 passengers and crew on Flight 592. The flight data recorder may help explain why the plane filled with smoke and plummeted into the subtropical wilderness. Inspectors from the Federal Aviation Administration will ride in ValuJet cockpits over the next 30 days as part of a stepped-up scrutiny of the airline. We'll have much more on this story right after the News Summary. At the White House today, President Clinton announced he will send Congress new legislation aimed at fighting youth gang violence. He laid out initiatives that would allow juveniles to be tried as adults in some drug and gun cases. He also wants to toughen penalties for adults who lure children into selling drugs. Mr. Clinton spoke at a briefing by law enforcement officials. He warned all gangs, starting with the big West Coast gangs called the Blood and the Crips, that they will find it tougher to escape the law.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: The message today to the Bloods, the Crips, to every criminal gang preying on the innocent, is clear: We mean to put you out of business, to break the backs of your organization, to stop you from terrorizing our neighborhoods and our children, to put you away for a very long time. We have just begun the job, and we do not intend to stop until we have finished.

MS. FARNSWORTH: The President said he hopes Congress will pass the legislation this year. Also in Washington today, the Supreme Court made it harder for minority defendants in drug cases to claim they were being prosecuted because of their race. The Justices overturned the lower court ruling in the case against five black defendants in Los Angeles. A U.S. appeals court had dismissed the case because prosecutors refused to reply to claims of racial bias by the defense. In today's eight to one ruling, Chief Justice Rehnquist said defendants making such claims must first show that government would not prosecute members of other races for similar offenses. We'll have more on this decision and others later in the program. In West Africa today, a freighter carrying as many as 4,000 Liberian refugees returned to Ghana after a generator malfunctioned. The ship was headed to Nigeria after being turned away from Ghana and Ivory Coast. A Ghanaian government spokesman said the crew would be allowed to take food and medical supplies on board. The ship will then be sent back to the Liberian capital of Monrovia. The refugees were temporarily allowed to disembark so repairs could be made. In Washington, State Department Spokesman Nicholas Burns said their condition was "desperate."

NICHOLAS BURNS, State Department Spokesman: The United States believes very strongly, and we have so informed the Ghanaian and Avorian government, that it is the responsibility of those governments to come to the assistance of the people on that ship. They deserve--these people are fleeing savage fighting in the streets of Monrovia. They deserve the assistance of the international community, and it is the responsibility of the neighboring states involved in the West African region to help them, and we have consistently reminded them of that responsibility.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Burns said the United States and the United Nations are prepared to help the countries that have granted asylum to the Liberians. More than 750,000 refugees have fled the West African nation since its civil war began in 1989. In Beijing today, U.S. trade negotiator Lee Sands met with Chinese officials in an attempt to avert a trade war. The Clinton administration said it will impose trade sanctions on $2 billion worth of Chinese imports in mid June if China does not move to prevent the widespread theft of intellectual property. U.S. officials have claimed Chinese factories are producing millions of counterfeit compact disks, computer software and video. A Chinese official said today his government would retaliate against any U.S. sanctions. Talks continue tomorrow. At Arlington National Cemetery today, family and friends attended a private funeral service for former CIA Director William Colby. Colby died April 27th, when his canoe overturned near his vacation home on the Chesapeake Bay. A memorial service is planned tomorrow at Washington National Cathedral. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the ValuJet crash, business in India, today's Supreme Court decisions, and a Roger Rosenblatt essay. FOCUS - THE AFTERMATH - VALUJET FLIGHT 592

MS. FARNSWORTH: The crash of ValuJet Flight 592 is our major story tonight. We begin with background and the latest from the crash site. Margaret Warner has that.

MARGARET WARNER: The area where ValuJet Flight 592 crashed is a flat, desolate expanse of the Florida Everglades. The Atlanta-bound DC-9 left Miami at 2:05 Saturday afternoon. Eight minutes later, the crew reported smoke in the cockpit and in the passenger cabin and asked to return to the Miami Airport. The plane was turning when it disappeared from the radar screen at 2:25 PM.

GREG FEITH, NTSB Chief Investigator: They had asked for the closest airport. They were being vectored, and then, uh, the last transmission by the air traffic controller was a statement of Opalaca Airport, 12 o'clock and 15 miles.

MS. WARNER: According to eyewitnesses, the plane plunged nose first into the thick muck of the Florida swamp. There were no survivors.

DR. JOSEPH DAVIS, Retired Dade City Medical Examiner: I feel that it's going to be difficult, if not impossible, to identify everybody. But that remains to be seen. So far, there is not much hope that we're going to recover any intact bodies.

MS. WARNER: The plane and its 109 passengers were simply sucked into the water and mud. The only access to the crash site is by helicopter or air boat. Small teams of searchers held hands for their own safety as they carefully stepped through the swamp looking for parts of the aircraft and human remains. Divers also have been working their way through the fuel-soaked water and mud.

GREG FEITH: Depending on the reports that we've gotten back from the divers that have already been out there, because the visibility is very low, they're down to less than an inch as underwater visibility. A lot of it's being done by feel, either walking or feeling their way into the wreckage area.

MS. WARNER: ValuJet, founded in 1993 as a low-priced carrier, has grown rapidly. It holds costs down in part by frequently buying older aircraft that have been retired by other airlines. ValuJet has had at least three accidents since it began operations. The most serious, before now, was a runway fire that injured one person. According to Federal Aviation Administration records, the DC-9 that crashed Saturday was forced to return to the airport seven times in the past two years because of maintenance problems. Yet, the 27-year-old plane had passed an annual inspection last October and a routine inspection just last week. Secretary of Transportation Federico Pena said yesterday that the airline came under intensive scrutiny in an investigation this winter.

FEDERICO PENA, Secretary of Transportation: Back in February of this year, because of four incidents that ValuJet experienced and because they had gone through a rapid rate of growth, we launched a very intensive review of their operations. We had seven full-time inspectors working basically for an intensive one-week period. That continued for 120 days. Any time any airline in our country experiences an accident we intensify and broaden our review of their operations. That's what we announced yesterday because of this, and now we will go even further into their entire operations to ensure that they are complying with every detail of our safety regulations.

MS. WARNER: This afternoon, President Clinton directed the Transportation Department to report this week on any additional safety measures that might be required for airline safety generally.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I have directed Sec. Pena to report to me this week on additional measures the Department of Transportation and the FAA can take to ensure that all our airlines continue to operate at the highest level of safety. I'm determined to do everything I can to make sure that American aviation is the safest in the world.

MS. WARNER: In the meantime, rescue teams and investigators in the Everglades continued their work. National Transportation Safety Board Vice Chairman Robert Francis spoke to the press earlier today.

ROBERT FRANCIS, NTSB Vice-Chairman: There are five teams of divers out there, and I guess there are about thirty divers altogether. These folks, the conditions are such that they're doing 20 minute stints out in the water. They're having to dress up ahead of time in bio-hazard equipment, gloves, taping everything on, then putting on large rubber suits on top of that, masks, so that the whole process for them, I suppose, is taking an hour, 20 minutes to get ready, they go out on a boat, they spend 20 minutes out there, and they come back and have to be decontaminated. So it's not the most efficient of operations. And for these folks, it's, it's tough going. We've asked the Navy to help us out, as they have in the past. They now have spent two specialists that we worked with in the Dominican Republic. And they're here, and we'll be meeting with them after this conference. They're going to help us, No. 1, with trying to identify through a pinger that's on each of the recorders and they hopefully will be able to pick up with sonar, and then we're also going to take them around the site and hopefully they'll have equipment that can give us a better feel for the spread of the accident and the wreckage and how we might best approach the recovery.

MS. WARNER: We get the latest now from the crash site from National Public Radio reporter Derek Reveron. Derek, thanks for joining us. What is the latest? What can you tell us about what's been found and recovered?

DEREK REVERON, National Public Radio: [Dade County, FL] Well, the latest is that they found the flight data recorder, which, as you know, is crucial to investigating the cause of the accident. Earlier yesterday they had recorded that they were finding sections of the tail and had hoped to find the flight recorder in the area where they found the sections of the tail and, indeed, they've done that so far.

MS. WARNER: And we just heard Mr. Francis say that they'd been- -they brought in these Navy teams to help them try to, one, find the two recorders and also to outline the scope of how broad this area is. Do you know how much else the Navy divers have been able to help them with?

MR. REVERON: Well, what the Navy divers are trying to do is to try to--try to find out exactly how big the area is. So far, the estimates are like a hundred yards by two to three hundred yards, but more than that, the Navy people using a sonar want to try to find out exactly where the wreckage parts are, and the location of the wreckage parts are key to investigators trying to set up a plan to move in heavy equipment to dredge out these heavy parts. There are several things under consideration, including setting up pontoon bridges, some sort of floating deck out in the water to hold cranes, and dredging, dredging up a section of the Everglades to lower the water so that the parts are more accessible. So the Navy, their in put is very key in determining which approach investigators will use.

MS. WARNER: So what you're saying is that until they know the scope, they can't decide on any of those one approaches?

MR. REVERON: Indeed, indeed, and investigators hope to know the exact scope pretty soon. There's going to be a briefing tonight at 8 o'clock and at that briefing we expect to get more on exactly which approach they may use.

MS. WARNER: Now how about recovering the parts of bodies of these victims? How much progress have they made in that regard?

MR. REVERON: Well, they're recovering parts of bodies, very small parts of bodies. The latest is that they've recovered more than three body bags full of human remains, and they say that the largest human, piece of human remain they've discovered so far is a knee.

MS. WARNER: Now, how do the investigators explain the fact that this huge plane goes down and almost everything, I gather, just disappeared? I mean, there was nothing to be seen by the human eye, even though this water is only four or five feet deep. How do they explain that?

MR. REVERON: The angle. The plane drove--dove straight down at an amazing speed and just disintegrated upon impact, and as soon as the plane disintegrated, all the parts sank into the swamp.

MS. WARNER: Have they found anything yet, other than, of course, we just mentioned the recorder, which I guess is going to be analyzed, but have they found anything yet that helps them understand the cause of this crash?

MR. REVERON: If they have, they haven't revealed it so far. There were reports that they discovered a large chunk of the plane's fuselage, but according to Robert Francis, the National Transportation Safety Board person, the largest chunk they've discovered is eight feet long, and they're not saying exactly what part of the plane it came from.

MS. WARNER: And what are the investigators saying about the likelihood of ever getting to the bottom of this if, as you say, the plane was virtually pulverized in many respects?

MR. REVERON: Well, with the black box, they have a very good chance of getting to the bottom of it now. I mean, that's the key. This particular black box, I believe, recorded 11 different parameters of the airplane's functions, you know, speed, altitude, et cetera. So that's very, very valuable information.

MS. WARNER: Even though I gather that's a very old-fashioned black box. Modern ones record hundreds of different kinds of data.

MR. REVERON: Yes, yes, it is. It is an old-fashioned one.

MS. WARNER: And how long are they--do they think that the human remains that are there will remain there and not be totally decomposed, given what I gather are very humid and wet conditions?

MR. REVERON: Well, they are very worried about decomposition, which, you know, has begun already, and, uh, they're sort of being very vague about the window they have to recover complete remains.

MS. WARNER: And now are investigators talking yet to reporters about any theories they have about the cause based on the fact that say there was smoke in the cockpit, or, as you said, there was this very sharp angle of descent?

MR. REVERON: The investigators have gone out of their way not to discuss any particular theories of what may have caused the crash. They've been very, very mum on that. And they will be for quite some time.

MS. WARNER: And have they started interviewing people yet, for instance, eyewitnesses, people in the control tower?

MR. REVERON: They have been interviewing people. They've been interviewing eyewitnesses. They say that some of the eyewitnesses confirmed many of the facts that the NTSB has uncovered so far, and they say that some of the eyewitnesses are--have been giving false information or inaccurate information.

MS. WARNER: Well, Derek, that's all the time we have. Thank you very much for being with us.

MR. REVERON: Thanks.

MS. FARNSWORTH: We now get two perspectives on the crash and the question of airline safety. First we turn to David Hinson, who heads the Federal Aviation Administration. Thank you for being with us, Mr. Hinson.

DAVID HINSON, Federal Aviation Administration: Yes, Elizabeth.

MS. FARNSWORTH: First of all, do you have anything to add to that report?

MR. HINSON: Well, I was pleased, of course, that they were able to pull from the water apparently one of the recorders that we're looking for. We're also looking for another one, and I don't know whether this is the flight data recorder, which records the parameters of the airplane, or the voice recorder, which records the conversations in the cockpit through the flight attendants in the back of the airplane. In any case, these recorders have a small sonar emitting device about the size of a D-cell battery that will last for 30 days, and I'm sure that's what the Navy's using to help them find them.

MS. FARNSWORTH: The FAA has had some very tough cases before, I know, but this has got to be one of the toughest.

MR. HINSON: Well, I've, in my career, been to several accidents, and Mr. Francis, who is the senior investigator on site, and I talked yesterday. Sec. Pena and I toured the site yesterday by helicopter and met with members of the families yesterday afternoon, and that was a very difficult chore on our part but very necessary. We expressed the President's concern to them about this tragedy. This whole episode will be very difficult for the NTSB to recover with respect--

MS. FARNSWORTH: The National Transportation Safety Board.

MR. HINSON: Yes. The National Transportation Safety Board, I'm sorry, and it is a very--from an engineering perspective--a very difficult site. And I can tell you when I was there yesterday, I was very impressed with the rescue efforts that are underway by Dade County, and now today by the NTSB, the Army Corps of Engineers, and a host of others who are helping.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Have you learned anything new about what might have happened?

MR. HINSON: No. Of course, the accident investigation is under the purview of the NTSB. They really own the accident. The FAA provides technical support, if asked, and we do that on occasion, so we work closely with them. But the board owns the accident.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Let's talk about ValuJet. They had been under investigation--

MR. HINSON: Yes.

MS. FARNSWORTH: --because of a series of mishaps, including an explosion and a fire which injured a stewardess and several people inside the jet. Could you talk to us a bit about the problems they'd had and what happened--what you found in the investigation.

MR. HINSON: Yes. ValuJet is a very rapidly growing airline that started operating in late 1993 and today has approximately 50 airplanes. They've been financially very successful and have carried, to date, about 10 million passengers. We look at ValuJet just like we look at every other airline all of the time; however, in January of this year, as the Secretary said at the outset of the show, they experienced four operational difficulties. Our inspectors are very sensitive to this, and when they see something like this, they sit down and make a decision, and in this case, said, look, ValuJet may not be having any problems, but, on the other hand, they may, so let's take a closer look. So we instigated a special inspection starting in February that was to last 120 days. During that 120-day period, we did a special inspection, seven days, that was especially a focus of their daily operations. We brought in 11 inspectors from the outside, that is to say not assigned to ValuJet, so we had a fresh look, and in that special inspection, we did turn up some issues that we thought the airline should deal with but none which would be disqualifying or particularly unsafe. The airline responded. They addressed those issues. We were to end our inspection on June the 16th. The tragedy on Saturday has caused us to reassess that, and the Secretary and I both agree that we should expand and broaden the investigation that was underway so that we go back and reassure the American public that ValuJet is, in fact, a safe airline.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What about the rapid growth of ValuJet? It went from a couple of airplanes to fifty-two or fifty-one, I believe, in, what, two or three years?

MR. HINSON: Yes.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Isn't it very difficult for, for even a very well-run company to keep up with that rapid growth?

MR. HINSON: Well, it would be if they were starting without experienced people, but our regulations require that the management of an airline be experienced. And they are. They were fortunate to be able to hire a number of airline pilots who have been furloughed from other carriers or carriers that have ceased operation. Their initial cadre of pilots was highly experienced in the twelve to fifteen thousand hour area, and, and so they have a fairly highly experienced group of pilots, similar with mechanics; nevertheless, we think that we need to look at it a little bit closer.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What about off brand airlines in general, these cheaper airlines? There were--there was testimony in a Senate subcommittee late last month about various companies, Aero Air, ValuJet, Ameriflight of Burbank, all offering discounted air fares and all, according to at least some of the testimony, having some safety problems. What do you think about that?

MR. HINSON: Well, let me start with sort of the regulatory framework, if I may. From the FAA's perspective, the price of a ticket is irrelevant. If you carry passengers in airline service in the United States, you have to meet our safety requirements. It is the same for any airline, large, small, high price, low price. That whole issue is irrelevant from our perspective. Now, let me say, for example, that the low cost airline in the world is considered to be Southwest. They have flown for 25 years without a fatality. There really is no strong correlation between the fact that an airline is small or "low cost" in safety and, indeed, all of the airlines must meet our requirements.

MS. FARNSWORTH: And you know that that same testimony an FAA inspector testifying from behind a screen and not using his real name said that he'd actually been asked to inspect planes, that he'd never been trained, that he didn't even know, he didn't even know in one case he said how to open the door to get on the plane. What--how do you respond to the kinds of criticisms that have come out about the FAA inspection process?

MR. HINSON: One of the things that the Secretary and I've tried to do since we came to Washington with the President is to redirect the FAA, and I accept some of those criticisms as they are, and we have worked very hard to address those issues. The IG's been quite helpful in her criticisms, strange as that may sound, to help us find the right solutions.

MS. FARNSWORTH: The inspector general.

MR. HINSON: Yes. And we are actually changing a number of things that we're doing, and in fact, last summer, I commissioned a study by a consulting firm called Challenge 2000 which basically brought in experts from all over, looking at the FAA to say how do we want to manage certification and regulation at the turn of the century? That study will be made public Thursday, coincidental with this tragedy, but it is giving us some good direction.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Thank you very much, Mr. Hinson.

MR. HINSON: You're welcome.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Now for more on this we got to Mary Fackler Schiavo, the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Transportation. She is responsible for auditing and reviewing all department activities, including those with the Federal Aviation Administration. Thank you for being with us. MARY FACKLER SCHIAVO, Inspector General, Transportation Department: Thank you. It's my pleasure.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Would you tell us, please, what your view is of ValuJet, having looked at the evidence of the various mishaps, the fire, there were a couple of runway--overshootings of runways. What do you think about ValuJet?

MS. SCHIAVO: Well, I'll tell you, I got into this in a very serendipitous way, and that is that an article appeared which had worked on for "Newsweek" which was finished at 11:40 AM on Saturday raising a number of concerns about flying in the US, and of course, the crash occurred after 2 o'clock in the afternoon, so I was quite concerned about that.

MS. FARNSWORTH: And you raised some questions about ValuJet. You said, in fact, that you wouldn't fly ValuJet.

MS. SCHIAVO: Well, actually, the first time I said that was on February 7th in a meeting in my office with my deputy inspector general, Mario Lauro, and others present. I said I wouldn't get on the airline because of the number of incidents that have been reported, not because they had not been credited their safety creditation but because of the number of incidents, and on that day we started asking questions of the FAA about ValuJet on February 20th, and of course, the FAA started this special emphasis review.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Do you feel that the FAA investigation that took place--there have been--there was one a couple of years ago--do you feel those investigations have been thorough?

MS. SCHIAVO: Well, there's continuing investigations by their maintenance inspector. Then there was the Nasive inspection in the fall of '95, and then there was a special emphasis inspection. There were things found in the special emphasis inspection that were not uncovered by the Nasive inspection and that were not touched upon by the regular inspector inspections. And since this current inspection is ongoing and has been the most critical to date it remains to be seen what will come out of it.

MS. FARNSWORTH: When you say things found, what are you referring to?

MS. SCHIAVO: Oh, there were a number of issues raised, such as things about pilot experience and qualifications, about maintenance issues, and about the number of incidents.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Are you saying that you feel, given the number of incidents and what was found in inspections, that ValuJet should have been closed down? If you wouldn't ride on it yourself--

MS. SCHIAVO: Well, my comments need to be taken in context. I-- I am not the entity that makes the decision on whether an airline is safe to fly. I'm just saying that in my own experience, given all that I've seen--and remember, my job is to find problems in the Department of Transportation, and people always ask me, with all the problems that you find, don't you have difficulty flying, and the fact of the matter is, I do. The problems I have found have taken a toll on me over the years, and I am concerned, which is why I said, and why we started asking questions about the FAA--that the number of incidents was too great for me in my book, and that caused me concern.

MS. FARNSWORTH: And then you've been critical overall of FAA inspections. Could you talk to us about that, please.

MS. SCHIAVO: Yes. And that started shortly after I commenced my tenure five and a half years ago. The first major review that we completed was on FAA inspections. This was back in 1990/1991, and we had a number of criticisms of their inspection. In fact, we questioned whether their inspections were really accomplishing anything for many reasons, but particularly because they didn't target and check the problems. They didn't use their resources to target the problem areas, and they did not target and track problems within the system. In fact, another study we did on what FAA does with maintenance and design problems, for some of the problems we found they literally fell into a black hole, and I was greatly troubled by that.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What do you mean by that, black hole?

MS. SCHIAVO: Well, we found that they did not use service difficulty reports for tracking of problem trends.

MS. FARNSWORTH: I'm sorry. What does that mean?

MS. SCHIAVO: Well, when somebody reports a problem with a plane or an airline, you might think that the FAA would have a program to take all of these problem findings into a system where they would chart out and do projections to find where the problems are. We found that there was no use made of trend analysis. They just didn't do it, and that was one of the things of which we were very critical.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Do you have concerns about the safety of the other discount airlines, the off-brand airlines, as they're sometimes called?

MS. SCHIAVO: Curiously, there's a wide, a wide discrepancy in the safety rates of the airlines, and the three of the low-cost carriers seem to account for a disproportionate number of the incidents, at least of the planes that the Department--airlines that the Department was tracking, and if you leave Southwest Airlines in the mix as a discount carrier, the rates with the majors are comparable, but if you take Southwest out, which has a great--perfect track record, if you take them out, then the accident rate for the low-cost carriers is significantly greater, many times greater than the majors.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What were the three that you were thinking of?

MS. SCHIAVO: Well, given the unbelievable furor over simply mentioning that I did not care--based on the--the number of incidents to fly, umm, ValuJet, I guess I will leave it for others to discover what the other three are, and I'm sure there will be lots of requests for that to the Department.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What do you say to those who say that even looking at these figures, at the figures you're talking about, that air travel is by far, by far the safest way to travel, and that you are hyping this a little bit, that--

MS. SCHIAVO: Oh, well, that's, what's why I wrote the article. My job is to find problems, and after a while, finding problem after problem, it takes a toll even on me, and so I am a concerned flier, and I think everybody who works with me knows that. And so I wrote the article and, and the timing is very sad, but I wrote the article to discuss what I do and just because an airline passes, just because you pass the safety inspection, for me, that's not good enough. I want to be on the airline that got an "A," and that's why I wrote the article, and, in fact, to tell people that I fly all the time--even though I'm concerned--because I just out of habit and just to make myself feel better try to fly on the ones with the best records, and it takes some digging, but, for example, my concerns about ValuJet, which I used to raise the February 7th concerns, I actually got from the media. The Cleveland Plain Dealer had reported them.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Well, Mrs. Schiavo, thank you very much for being with us.

MS. SCHIAVO: Thank you.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Mr. Hinson, what about these criticisms? The FAA's come under some attack in the last couple of months.

MR. HINSON: Well, indeed, we have. We have worked very hard since the President asked me to join his administration here to sort of reshape the FAA. A number of the problems that Mary refers to are problems that the Secretary and I inherited, and we've been trying to deal with and work through.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What had caused these problems, if you inherited them?

MR. HINSON: Well, how much time do we have?

MS. FARNSWORTH: Well, just briefly.

MR. HINSON: Well, there's a long tenure of--a long list of issues that go way back. First, my predecessors, we had a rapid turnover of FAA administrators, one every 18 months, long periods with nobody in the job at all, and uh--

MS. FARNSWORTH: I understand.

MR. HINSON: --a whole host of issues like that. So let me say that, uh, I don't agree with everything that Mary said, but I do agree with some of the things that she said, and we're working very hard to address those issues.

MS. FARNSWORTH: So you think right now that if people are going to some of these airlines, the FAA has inspected them and they are safe?

MR. HINSON: Well, they are, indeed, and so is ValuJet.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Uh-huh. What are the figures on--give us some sense of the safety record of American Airlines.

MR. HINSON: Well, I mean, it's exceptionally safe. Umm, one is statistics that I cite occasionally as people who create odds would tell you that in order to be in a fatal accident on a scheduled U.S. air carrier, you'd have to fly every day two hours for five thousand years to statistically be involved in an accident. Those are pretty good odds. And we are "the" most professional country in terms of our civil aviation in the world.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What about the criticism some people have made that the FAA is in the position of both promoting airline travel and promoting all these new airlines because they--after deregulation, competition was considered a good thing, but you're also regulating them?

MR. HINSON: Yes. Well, this, this idea and the question about a dual mandate is because a lot of people do not understand what the Congress intended. When the Congress said the FAA should promote aviation, here's what they meant. We should have a reasonable and skillfully drawn regulatory framework within which aviation can flourish. We should provide an aviation infrastructure, air traffic control, runways. We should do research and development to advance the state of the art. We do all of those things. When you put all of those in the context of promotion, you create an advancing aviation organization and industry, and we make sure it's safe. That is the payoff. In fact, they go together. They're really not separate at all.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Okay. Well, Mr. Hinson, thank you for being with us.

MR. HINSON: You're welcome. FOCUS - INDIA'S BUSINESS

MS. FARNSWORTH: Still to come, the new India, today's Supreme Court decisions, and a Roger Rosenblatt essay. The India story is next. The victors and vanquished in last week's elections are maneuvering now to put together coalitions to control parliament, and business leaders are watching closely. The Congress Party, which ruled India for five decades, has in recent years overseen sweeping free market reforms. Fred De Sam Lazaro of KTCA-St. Paul-Minneapolis was in Bangalore, India, just before the voting and filed this report.

FRED DE LAZARO: The India of 1996 is very different from the India of just five years ago. Huge public buildings symbolize the India of the past with a strong government that kept a tight rein on the economy through a myriad of licensing and regulatory laws. Except for four years, that government, since independence in 1947, has been led by the Congress Party.

SPOKESMAN: It is our duty to bring to your notice, bring to the people what has been done.

MR. LAZARO: In 1991, Prime Minister Narasimha Rao began to open the economy to private foreign investors and competition. In a sharp departure from his party's past, he eliminated protections enjoyed by a few domestic industries. Nowhere have the reforms borne bigger results than the southern city of Bangalore. Dozens of multinational, high technology companies were first to arrive, attracted by the reforms and by India's large supply of software and engineering talent, second in number only to the US.

SUBROTO BAGCHI, Business Executive: You must give the devil its due. The government in the last five years has only reduced standards, has taken away restrictions. I think they realize that there is more good for the country by letting business do its own business, rather than meddle in business.

MR. LAZARO: Subroto Bagchi is vice president of Research & Development at Wipgro, an Indian company specializing in software systems and engineering. Its annual revenues have risen several- fold in the last five years to $500 million.

SUBROTO BAGCHI: Because of economic reform, it was possible for Indian companies to go out of India and instead of designing only for Wipgro let us design for the world at large. In five years' time because of the enabling conditions of economic reform from 80 people we have grown to 600 people.

MR. LAZARO: Wipgro's work force is spread across three continents. Wipgro has labs here in Bangalore and in California's Silicon Valley, where it has partnerships with several U.S. firms.

SUBROTO BAGCHI: Together we create what we call a 24-hour development environment. What that does is that as the sun sets in US, the sun rises here. So we are like a virtual team with our U.S. counterparts where we pick up the trade from where we leave and hand it over as the sun sets here and the sun rises there.

MR. LAZARO: Literally?

SUBROTO BAGCHI: Literally, absolutely.

MR. LAZARO: It's hand-off?

SUBROTO BAGCHI: Yes.

MR. LAZARO: It's a shift change across the ocean?

SUBROTO BAGCHI: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. This is what we call the future of work. This is in a way how technologies of tomorrow will be showcased, will be delivered, will be used, largely thanks to not only economic reforms. I think we should also thank Internet.

MR. LAZARO: The economic reforms have also begun attracting smaller scale entrepreneurs from abroad. Eager to tap a vast new market, Daniel Eldredge arrived in 1993 hoping to sell water purifiers patented and assembled in the United States.

DANIEL ELDREDGE, U.S. Business Executive: They're very impressed in the U.S., in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

MR. LAZARO: Today, Eldredge and his Indian partner have moved production of most components to a plant in Bangalore.

DANIEL ELDREDGE: Everything in this product is made here in India, except the cartridge and the filter. When we first started out, we were going to have to sell this for about $45 including tax. By manufacturing here, we've brought the price down to about $30, $31, $32.

MR. LAZARO: Under the new rules, foreign investors like Eldredge can keep a greater share of the joint venture's profits, and they can keep trade secrets, in this case the patented purifier's secret. That's also a change from the past. All this has prompted a steady stream of expatriate Indians to return. M. T. Raghunath, a graduate of the University of California-Berkeley, left a comfortable position at IBM to join the Wipgro Bangalore Laboratory.

M.T. RAGHUNATH: There is a lot of interesting work going on. And I'm sure that I can--if I find my niche--and be happy doing stuff here, the opening up of the economy here and sort of general openness that's come in is very good, and something always prompted me to come back. Had this been five years ago, might have took place, now I don't have any--I didn't think twice about having to move back.

MR. LAZARO: Raghunath is part of the middle class that has grown significantly in recent years to an estimated 200 million people with a growing appetite for consumer comforts. In a country used to chronic shortages and goods of poor quality, the economic reforms have brought an array of choices for families like Subroto Bagchi's.

SUBROTO BAGCHI: We have all the material comforts that one could think of in a society like this. We can afford two cars. We can afford two cars. We have a house. We live in a house like this. We have everything else that you would want in a house, whether it's a French television and cooking range and--

SUSMITA BAGCHI: As I was growing up, we never had a fridge in our house, so now I cannot imagine life without a refrigerator or even without a cooking range.

MR. LAZARO: Their unprecedented prosperity has made India's middle class the staunchest supporters of economic reforms. However, for the poor, who still outnumber the middle class by at least three to one, images of consumerism is all the dividend they've seen from the economic reforms. Despite its prosperity, even Bangalore is not an island from the country's pervasive poverty. What the poor do share with the rich far more than the past is access to food. India has become one of the world's major food exporters. In fact, this year, it will produce more wheat than the United States, significant for a country once synonymous with famine. Still, many basic human needs go unmet. Kushwant Singh is a leading columnist and author.

KUSHWANT SINGH, Columnist: Nobody goes hungry. We haven't--we don't know what the word "famine" means. It's gone back into history. Where we haven't succeeded is in giving housing to everyone, giving employment to everyone, illiteracy--more than half of us are still illiterate, and under the party line, we eat enough to survive, but not really become strong people.

MR. LAZARO: Despite the immense problems India faces, few experts expect dramatic change in economic policy no matter which coalition emerges to form the new government. The Hindu Nationalist BJP, which will likely have the largest number of seats in parliament, has railed against foreign investment in the past but did not make that much of an issue this time.

KUSHWANT SINGH: Even the Communist Parties keep quiet about it. They talk but tongue in cheek. The BJP, as I mentioned, have already accepted this liberalization as a good thing. It is a part of the Congress' list of achievements which they claim, so there's not going to be any dispute, but the liberalization will continue no matter which party wins.

MR. LAZARO: That's reassuring to Bangalore's business executives like Subroto Bagchi.

SUBROTO BAGCHI: I'll be more worried about probably the U.S. elections or what happens in Japan, or, you know, how the European Community actually implements its European unification agenda than who comes to power in Delhi.

MR. LAZARO: Bagchi notes it's the hard currency investment from those nations that's driven India's economic growth in recent years, and despite some nervousness in financial markets in the election aftermath, he and other business leaders expect that foreign investment to continue to pour in.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Since no one party received a majority in the election, the leaders of the various parties will now try to coalesce and form a government. The Congress Party and several leftist parties are discussing a coalition but one obstacle to that is Congress's commitment to free market reforms which some leftist parties have opposed. FOCUS - SUPREME COURT - WATCH

MS. FARNSWORTH: Next today, a big day in the Supreme Court. Charlayne Hunter-Gault has the story.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: It was an also all-over-the-lot day for the high court as they handed down opinions in a series of controversial cases. In a unanimous decision, the court struck down the Rhode Island ban on liquor advertising aimed at promoting sobriety. Also, in an eight to one decision, the court ruled against five black defendants on the issue of racial disparity in a California crack cocaine case, and finally the court refused to review Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczinsky's appeal for fast action to avoid prosecution. For more on these cases, we turn to NewsHour regular Stuart Taylor, a correspondent for the "American Lawyer" and "Legal Times." Stuart, thank you for coming tonight. Tell us first about the 44 Liquor Mart vs. Rhode Island case. What was it all about?

STUART TAYLOR, The American Lawyer: Rhode Island had a law that bans all price advertising of liquor, except in the store itself. You can't advertise in a newspaper, on a billboard, for an example, and the issue in the Supreme Court was whether that violates the First Amendment, freedom of speech, and the court was unanimous in holding that it did, although it took them four separate opinions in order to explain all the differences in their analysis, and that confuses the process of figuring out what this means for other laws and future laws and for such matters as the Clinton administration's proposed limits on cigarette advertising, for example.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So what are you saying, that this is not dispositive in terms of that--in terms of the cigarette advertising?

MR. TAYLOR: It certainly isn't dispositive in terms of cigarette advertising but it may be a little bit of good news for the tobacco industry because the Supreme court seems a little bit more protective, if you read all the opinions in this case and add them up and see how many people signed which sentence, it seems a little bit more protective of what's called commercial speech, including advertising, than other recent Supreme Court decisions have been. Commercial speech has traditionally enjoyed less protection than say political speech, but this decision seems to give a little bit more protection to advertising than recent trends would suggest.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Based on what?

MR. TAYLOR: Umm, well--

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Reasoning that is. I'm sorry.

MR. TAYLOR: Yes. Justice--several of the justices--four by my count--indicated that they would give strong First Amendment protection to all forms of advertising, except if they're false, misleading, or involved, particularly aggressive sales practices designed to take advantage of people. Now that and tobacco advertising probably would get that kind of protection, so those Justices may have indicated that they would give some protection to tobacco advertising. One question is whether they could get another vote to do so. Another question is whether the reasons that have been advanced for the administration's proposals on tobacco advertising, including particularly protecting children, would distinguish them from this case, for example.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What are the implications of this as far as you can see now? Are they grand implications, or is it just too murky right now to tell?

MR. TAYLOR: It's a little murky, but there are about 11 other states that have limits on liquor advertising, different kinds of limits than the ones in this case perhaps, a range of limits, but all of those laws will at least come under attack and possibly be struck down on the basis of this decision and beyond that, there are other areas of advertising that states or the federal government might want to restrict that could be affected, but the big one is tobacco.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: All right. Let's move on now to the U.S. vs. Armstrong. We visited this one when it went up, the crack cocaine and the, well, you explain it.

MR. TAYLOR: Well, the case involves a large controversy over whether the laws creating huge criminal penalties for crack cocaine offenses are racially discriminatory because crack is used predominantly by these acts because prosecutions, I should say, for crack use are predominantly black people and they get enormous punishments compared to users of other drugs. This case operated in the periphery of that controversy. The particular issue raised by five defendants was they want to prove that they were chosen on grounds of their race for prosecution, and the Supreme Court said here today that they have to do more to make a preliminary case of that before the court will allow the prosecution to be ordered to come forward with detailed data to help the defendants prove their case and before the prosecution will be required to explain just how it does choose who to prosecute for crack offenses.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So what is the significance of this ruling today?

MR. TAYLOR: It makes it a lot harder for anyone claiming that the reason I was prosecuted is my race in any kind of a case to get to first base in attacking the prosecution for that reason.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And you had said when we visited the case, when it went up, that you expected the Justices to go this way?

MR. TAYLOR: Yes. One reason I expected it is when you listened to the oral argument in the case, you could sort of tell that a lot of the Justices were coming that way and the vote in the case was eight to one so that forecast proved true. The other reason is that the defendants in this case made a particularly weak showing of selective prosecution. They came forth with the fact that 24 of the 24 people in a certain area of Los Angeles who were prosecuted for crack in a certain year--I think it was 1992, and they were all black, but that was not a large enough set in the view of the Supreme Court to prove very much in terms of--and in particular, the court said before we're going to let you go to first base with this sort of a claim, you have to show us some non-black people who could have been prosecuted for crack use who were not prosecuted, and that was not done in this case.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So the burden of proof is on the defendants.

MR. TAYLOR: And it's a very heavy burden of proof.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And so is this likely to be revisited, do you think?

MR. TAYLOR: Umm, someone else may come forward with a stronger showing because the statistics in the crack area really are dramatic in terms of over 90 percent of those prosecuted nationwide for crack are black, and the majority of crack users, according to some studies are white. So someone may come forward with better statistics and give it another try, but based on the lop-sided nature of today's vote, it's very doubtful they'll get anywhere.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Now briefly, there was also a ruling in the Unabomber case. Tell me about that.

MR. TAYLOR: The accused Unabomber who hasn't been indicted for that yet, Mr. Kaczinsky, has argued that because of outrageous leaks by the government of, for example, what was allegedly found in his cabin being proof of his being the Unabomber, he can't get a fair trial anywhere, or can't even get a fair hearing before a grand jury before he's indicted, and he's asked the courts to throw his case out before it even really gets started for that reason, and the Supreme Court today--

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You mean throw the whole case out?

MR. TAYLOR: The whole case out.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: To say there's no basis for this.

MR. TAYLOR: Not to say there's no basis for it, but to say the government has poisoned the well of the prosecution beyond repair.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And it can't be repaired.

MR. TAYLOR: And he can't get a fair trial. The Supreme Court, as everyone expected, said, we're not, in essence, today--with that comment said we're not ready to listen to your case yet. This doesn't rule out the possibility that he could make the same argument later.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So on what grounds did they say they weren't ready to make the ruling?

MR. TAYLOR: There was no opinion. They simply declined his request for an expedited ruling in the case, as was expected. In fact, the Justice Department was so confident they would do this it didn't even bother to file a brief arguing why they should.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: All right. Well, Stuart Taylor, thank you.

MR. TAYLOR: Thank you. ESSAY - THE RIGHT TO WRONG

MS. FARNSWORTH: We close tonight with some thoughts from regular essayist Roger Rosenblatt about the revival of an old play that is still relevant today.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: The first Broadway production of "Inherit the Wind" in 1955 starred Paul Muni in the Clarence Darrow role, Ed Bailey in the William Jennings Bryan role, and a young newcomer, Tony Randall, in the role of E.K. Hornbeck, the character who represented H.L. Mencken and journalism and wit and unfettered sharp-tongued modern right thinking. The subject is the trial of John T. Scopes, a high school biology teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, in the 1920s, who was charged as violating a state statute prohibiting the teaching of Darwin's evolutionary theories. This was the famous "Monkey Trial" of 1925, with Darrow for the defense, Bryan for the prosecution, and Mencken, in a sense, for intellectual victory. This year, the play was revived on Broadway by Tony Randall, himself, now in his seventies and the head of his own production company, the National Actors Theater.

CLARENCE DARROW: [Played by George C. Scott] How in perdition can you have the gall to whoop up this holy war against something you don't know anything about? How can you be so cock sure that the body of scientific knowledge, systematized in the writings of Charles Darwin is in any way irreconcilable with the spirit of the Book of Genesis?

SECOND ACTOR: Would you state that question again, please.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Forty-one years after the original, it still has great actors in the leads--George C. Scott and Charles Durning- -and the very good actor, Anthony Heald, as Hornbeck. The producers have posted a recent quotation from Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan in the Royale Theater Lobby, stating Buchanan's support of creationism. But that strawman, while amusing, is misleading. "Inherit the Wind" was never about the superiority of Darwin to the Bible. It is about greatness versus smallness, which is made plain in the scene in which the humiliated Bryan dies and Hornbeck calls him a Bible-beating bastard. Darrow, who lost the case but won the argument, replies, "There was greatness in the man."

DIFFERENT ACTOR: I charge you with contempt of conscious, self- perjury, kindness of forethought, sentimentality in the first degree.

CLARENCE DARROW: [Played by George C. Scott] Why? Because I refuse to erase a man's entire life?

DIFFERENT ACTOR: Be kind to bigots week, since Brady's dead, we must be kind. God, how the world is rotten with kindness.

CLARENCE DARROW: [Played by George C. Scott] I'm telling you, there was a giant there!

ROGER ROSENBLATT: The point of the two playwrights, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, is that the world is even close to being right with kindness or bigness of spirit. Intellectual correctness and human generosity are illogically opposed. So one looks around in the 1990s and sees the abortion wars and the cultural wars and the multicultural wars, each side assuring itself that being right is the most important thing in the world. We still have the creationists versus the evolutionists. A recently defeated bill in, yes, the state of Tennessee would have called for the dismissal of teachers of evolution today. Who would say in Tennessee in 1996 with the bill's defeat, as Darrow said to Hornbeck--

CLARENCE DARROW: [Played by George C. Scott] You smart aleck! You have no more right to spit on his religion than you had to spit on my religion, or lack of it!

ROGER ROSENBLATT: America is a highly educated country, but one of the penalties of our higher education is that it teaches a narrow definition of argument. Thanks to the rise of the social sciences, the country has grown adamantly divided among causes, lobbies, theories. People walk the streets with pickets in their minds. Because they believe this, they denigrate those who believe that. Winning isn't everything. It's the only thing. But "Inherit the Wind" knows better. The likely theory of how we came to be is not morally superior to the unlikely theory. It is simply more intellectually persuasive. The play was never about right and wrong theories. The play was and is about the right to be wrong, as Darrow tells Hornbeck, the right to think. And having established that, it is about something more important still and more fundamental to the question of not how but why we came to be. It is about the wisdom and necessity of being kind. This may be why the author's original production notes specify that every performance should feel like opening night, happening now. [applause] I'm Roger Rosenblatt.

MS. FARNSWORTH: A final note about "Inherit the Wind." Last week, George C. Scott left the cast because of poor health. As a consequence, the play closed over this past weekend. RECAP

MS. FARNSWORTH: Again, the major stories of this Monday, Navy and police divers recovered a flight data recorder and human remains at the site of Saturday's ValuJet crash in the Everglades. On the NewsHour, FAA Administrator David Hinson and the Department of Transportation Inspector General disagreed on the safety of low budget airlines like ValuJet, and President Clinton announced he will send Congress new legislation to fight youth gang violence. We'll see you tomorrow night. I'm Elizabeth Farnsworth. Thank you and good night.