The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, Gwen Ifill gets some non-legal views on breaking up Microsoft. Elizabeth Farnsworth revisits a village in Vietnam. Tom Bearden tells the story of a forest fight in the southeast. Terence Smith talks to Lou Cannon about Ronald Reagan. And a young marine reads his favorite poem. It all follows our summary of the news this Monday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Microsoft had a good day on Wall Street. Its stock rose more than 5% in the first trading since Friday. That's when the Justice Department asked a federal judge to break up the company. Analysts said investors decided it would simply create two strong companies. Overall today, the NASDAQ Index rose 97 points to close at 3958, a gain of 2.5%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 77 to finish at 10,811. We'll have more about Microsoft right after this News Summary. Overseas today, countries around the world marked May Day. The celebrations were mostly peaceful, but protesters clashed with police in some cities. We have a report from Philippa Meagher of Associated Press Television News.

PHILIPPA MEAGHER: In the U.K., security was tight after celebrations were marred by sporadic outbreaks of violence. The clashes came after a gathering of eco-activists in London's Parliament Square. The focus was less on workers rights than on what they perceive to be capitalism's wrongs.

MAN ON STREET: Capitalism basically is exploitation in any form, whether it be humans or animals. It's exploiting for their own ends, for their profit.

PHILIPPA MEAGHER: But London's celebrations also had a more festive side, with some revelers beating drums, dressing up as politicians, and promoting free love. The marching bands were out in full force, but the May Day celebrations in Russia failed to attract the masses they would have during Soviet years. However, groups of trade unionists did brave the chilly weather to gather on Moscow's main street. The capital's powerful mayor, Yuri Lushkov, addressed the crowd. About 7,000 dedicated Communists marched in another part of the capital, saying that with poverty on the rise, workers' rights are more important than ever.

JIM LEHRER: Elsewhere, leftists in the Philippines protested government policies they consider pro- business. Police in Manila used water cannons to disperse hundreds of people who threw rocks. Protesters also scuffled with police in Seoul, South Korea. In Cuba, thousands of people dedicated a May Day rally to Elian Gonzalez. President Fidel Castro charged that a Cuban-American terrorist mob has blocked the boy's return to Cuba. Elian and his father remain in the U.S., pending a federal appeals court session may 11. The Miami relatives have asked the court to order a political asylum hearing. A top Israeli official said today there will be a Palestinian state. He spoke a day after the two sides began a new round of talks in Israel on a final settlement. He said the time for debating statehood is past.

CHAIM RAMON, Israeli Minister for Jerusalem Affairs: To be frank, de facto a Palestinian state exists, and that's been named during the time of the previous government. Now what we are negotiating mostly, what will be the limitation over a Palestinian state as an outcome of the negotiation.

JIM LEHRER: Israel wants to bar a future Palestinian state from signing military treaties and obtaining heavy weapons. The two sides face a September 13 deadline for a treaty. But Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat said again today he would declare statehood after that date, even if there's no agreement. Back in this country, South Carolina became the last state to adopt a Martin Luther King holiday. The governor signed it into law with a bill that also established a Confederate Memorial Cay. The legislature is still considering whether to take down the confederate flag over the state capitol. Time-Warner today pulled ABC television stations from cable systems in New York, Los Angeles, and five other markets. It's having a dispute over transmission rights with Disney, which owns ABC and the stations. The cable systems ran a message explaining the action. Disney asked the Federal Communications Commission to intervene, and the agency said it was reviewing the situation. That's it for the news summary tonight. Now it's on to perspectives on breaking up Microsoft, a return to Vietnam, a forest fight, a conversation about Ronald Reagan, and a favorite poem.

FOCUS - MICROSOFT - BREAKUP?

JIM LEHRER: Gwen Ifill has the Microsoft story.

GWEN IFILL: Technology's future, economic growth, government regulation, cultural change: The case of "U.S. Vs. Microsoft" has it all. The Justice Department's proposal on Friday to break up the software giant is just the latest act in a drama involving one of the nation's best-known and most important companies, as well as its richest citizen, Bill Gates. Here with perspective is Katie Hafner, a technology reporter with the "New York Times"; Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist, artist, and author; and Paul Kedrosky, a former wall street analyst who teaches information technology and commerce at the University of British Columbia. Mr. Kedrosky, let's put the legalities aside for a moment. Who should win, who should be broken up, who shouldn't, and explain to us if there's something larger at stake. Is this a bigger deal than just about the legalities?

PAUL KEDROSKY, University of British Columbia: Yeah, I think in a lot of ways it is. I think there's... The legalities, I think, fascinate people for the same reason we kind of like LA Law and we like to see people battling back and forth, but at the same time, Microsoft is kind of at the center of a bunch of other interesting things happening. For starters, it's one of the most successful companies in the stock market, and with so many Americans and Canadian, for that matter, people around the world generating so much wealth by investing in the market, Microsoft becomes sort of the focal point for all of that. And so, on the one hand, people desperately want to seek Microsoft succeed, because Microsoft's success and the success of technology companies like Microsoft is money in their wallet. On the other hand, people look at it and they say, well, if they're succeeding and it's not fair play, maybe I'm not such a big fan of this. People go back and forth. And they say, on the one hand, this is money in my pocket. On the other hand, we all like fair play. And so people very much are torn in two direction, trying to decide whether or not they should be in favor of it or against what's happening. That look at their wallet and they look at what's happening, and you're seeing that kind of ambivalence reflected in the marketplace.

GWEN IFILL: Katie Hafner, is that so? Both sides are portraying this as a battle for the soul of capitalist society? Culturally, is it as far-reaching as all of that?

KATIE HAFNER, The New York Times: I think that's absolutely right, Gwen, if you think about it, what is it -- there are something like 60 million PC's in households, and 85% of those run Windows. And so it's... Microsoft is so ingrained in our culture, that it's hard to forget what life was like without them. Now, that said, I think it's important also to remember that Windows is actually very complicated. There's a lot of complexity that is sort of on top of complexity here with Windows. And people get very frustrated when they're using their computers and I think that plays into it, too. It's sort of the devil we know attitude. We don't want to touch a hair on Microsoft's head on the one hand, and yet, we're very frustrated by the computers that we use every day because they're constantly crashing. You know, there's always this funny analogy made to cars, and people say, "well, would we put up with this with car, if our cars crashed twice a day, is that something that we would tolerate?" So I think there's sort of this curiosity about what would life be like if it were different, if Microsoft were actually a different beast.

GWEN IFILL: Jaron Lanier, both sides seem to be battling for title of underdog. Microsoft took out these big full-page ad in newspapers today saying we're the innovators, we're the people that really mean best. What is your take on that?

JARON LANIER, Computer Scientist: Nobody in the technical communities think of Microsoft as being innovative. That's not to say that they're not admired in other ways, but for God's sake, Microsoft is essentially a company that's learned to corner the market on inventions that really came from others who were before them. The Windows design is essentially a copy of the Macintosh, which could be thought of a copy of earlier work at Xerox Park. And, of all of those, it's definitely the inferior one. It sort of breaks out hearts ina way, because if only Microsoft had gotten it right, if only they had been able to put out stuff of the same quality as what they copied, I think a lot of people would be much more friendly towards them. And that's the... That's what really gets me. I wonder if they had been able to do a better job, if perhaps we see more older people being more comfortable with computers, if we didn't have such a sense of a digital divide. I really blame them for some of that feeling.

GWEN IFILL: But Katie Hafner just talked about the devil you know argument, the whole idea that people are happy with what they have because they know it and they're willing to make excuses and accept a monopoly if that's what it takes in order to have what they know.

JARON LANIER: Well, look, any time you have a digital platform like this where you have a bunch of digital devices that have to connect together, you have to have a monopoly of sorts, whether it's private or public. You can only have one type of fax machine. You can't ask people to have five different ones so that people who own the different brands of fax machines will all be able to fax them. So you can only have one. So in the case of the Internet as a whole, there's a standard that it's monopoly, but it's public, and in this case the one that ended up being adopted is private. So there's an inevitability of monopolies here. And I think everyone recognizes that. And in that sense, this is different from other antitrust cases.

GWEN IFILL: Paul Kedrosky... Go ahead, Katie.

KATIE HAFNER: I was going to say it's very difficult to actually roll the clock back. What would have happened, for instance, if Apple and the Mack had become a great force -- versus what actually happened. We can't roll the clock back. And Jaron makes a good point about windows being based on work that came before it and is in many people's eyes not as good. And yet, we have to live with this. We have to live with what is basically we've all become kind of a captive audience here, because as I said earlier, it's so entrenched right now. You can't sort of throw the whole thing out and start all over again.

GWEN IFILL: Paul Kedrosky, I'm sorry, is that true? Is this different than Ma Bell or the railroads or the oil industry?

PAUL KEDROSKY: Oh, sure. I mean, the difference this time around is we did it to ourselves to the extent we did anything. By our action, by saying that this particular product is the one I choose to use, and as Jaron points out, because it's compatible with other product, it makes that decision somewhat easier. I need to use this particular word processor because everyone I work with uses that. So what if comes from Microsoft. There it is. Compatibility is what's - you know -- underneath this and driving it all. So there's really... There really is no way to step backwards. We need... You need compatibility, otherwise this whole world of technology falls apart. Things don't talk to each other, whether it's fax machines or computers. We've managed to drag this this far along where devices do actually talk, at least reasonably stable way. So to try and turn back and find some other way of doing things I think is very, very dangerous. One of the real problems I have with a lot of the arguments that get raised in this whole situation is we have no be case. We have no way of sort of turning our focus to some alternate universe where there was no Microsoft and having a good, close look at what happed. I think you saw exactly that struggle in some of the documents that came forward from the courts on Thursdayand Friday where they tried desperately hard to find out what would be... a world look like without Microsoft and without this current organization of standards --

GWEN IFILL: Microsoft says in a more cosmic sense, there's something more sinister at work here, and that's that they're being attacked because of their success.

KATIE HAFNER: But the fact, Gwen, is this wouldn't have happened in the first place if somebody hadn't had a reason to take notice of this. I don't really buy that argument that it's just all politics and it's not really about business.

GWEN IFILL: Anybody else want to jump in on that.

JARON LANIER: Oh, yes, for God's sakes, this is the most interesting part of the drama, that the Microsoft folks... They're all decent people. I mean, there are a lot of very difficult personalities in the computer world, and by and large, compared to the rest of them, the Microsoft folks are affable and pleasant, and yet they live in this bubble. They live in this bubble in which they jus cannot conceive themselves as others see them. They simply cannot conceive that they're not perceived as innovative and they cannot conceive that they're not perceived as the best thing that's ever happened to America. And this incredible bubble mentality really makes them have a distorted view. And they do tend to get a little paranoid. They do tend to have a dialogue that suggests that anything bad that could possibly happen to them, any criticism must be these product of some strange people out there, some weird minority of competitors.

GWEN IFILL: Mr. Lanier, is it possible we're in the bubble with them? Every poll shows that people aren't at all bothered by the idea of Microsoft being dominant.

JARON LANIER: No, no. Listen, I personally believe, and there's no way the prove this, but I believe that if people like their computers better, if the software was better designed, the antitrust case wouldn't have come about. I think that this is a sort of filtration politically. There's just enough people who get frustrated with them enough that it makes a political climate for this type of action more likely.

KATIE HAFNER: Jaron, excuse me, but this was an interesting point you brought up, this question of, you know, what is innovation. Microsoft claims that that's what they're doing, that they're innovating, and they are being hindered by all of this. But it brings up the most interesting fundamental question of what is innovation.

JARON LANIER: Well, innovation is creating something that wasn't there before that's considered good and desirable. And I mean, within tech circles, the most frequently desired remedy actually is completely different than any of the legal remedies that would be available to the government. What people keep on saying is can we just prevent them from buying anybody else for a while.

GWEN IFILL: Paul Kedrosky, I want to brick you back into this. Bill Gates has been seen up until now as kind of the American ideal of someone who worked his way up, got rich, did it all on his own. But now this government case, no matter what the stock market seemed to show today, in which Microsoft did quite well, seems to show him vulnerable. Is that so?

PAUL KEDROSKY: Absolutely. I mean, as people are pointing out all the time, in some sense he's a prisoner of his success. He's vulnerable precisely because he has been so successful and because he's become a kind of poster boy, a kind of masthead for all of our enthusiasm about technology. For many people, understandably, Bill Gates has become synonymous with wealth generated by technology, and technology companies. And Microsoft has become synonymous with those companies themselves, and it's become almost the one has become almost a replacement adjective for another. I think because of that, for better or worse, all of our nervousness about technology, all of this feeling like couldn't it be better or couldn't it work better, they become the focal point for all of that and we come right back to Microsoft, Microsoft, Microsoft, despite there being other companies in the industry who have equally dominant share, albeit in segments that aren't nearly as well known. So Microsoft, because of this focus on Gates and because of how well his company has done, because he's been such an astounding entrepreneur, becomes a lightning rod for all of this.

GWEN IFILL: Katie Hafner, do you agree with that?

KATIE HAFNER: That's interesting that you say that, because I was thinking about that, and I was thinking in the course of the last couple years in writing about this industry, it used to be a couple years ago it would always be, okay, let's get the Microsoft angle on any aspect of technology that we covered. And now it's much less the case. And I find that interesting that we don't feel compelled, we I'm talking about reporters now, or at least what I cover, which is sort of the consumer part of the technology story. I don't feel always compelled to put in the call to Microsoft to see what Microsoft is doing.

PAUL KEDROSKY: I think, though, that's true, but I also think that to be some somewhat uncharitable to government, I think government is a trailing indicator here. The muss rest of us may have moved on, but I'm not sure that institutions have. One of the things that disappoints me is it is a very back-ward looking remedy, trying the change the future of Microsoft based on its past rather than thinking about in the future, what's the appropriate measure the organizations will take. We've all moved on and said, look at how the Internet is change things and changing the way the future Microsoft would have to compete, but institutions like government are still very much backward looking.

GWEN IFILL: Jaron, are we looking backward or forward? You get the final word.

JARON LANIER: Well, listen. You know, if we're applying the law, you're always looking backwards. The law is based on precedents, and I think they did an amazingly good law at applying antitrust law as well as they could. And I think it's important to apply the law. So even though, yes, it's not perfect and things are moving very quickly, I'm happy that there's at least a decent attempt to do it.

GWEN IFILL: Okay. Thanks, everybody.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, a village in Vietnam; a fight over chip mills; a conversation with Lou Cannon; and a favorite poem.

SERIES - LEGACY

JIM LEHRER: Another in our reports on the legacy of the Vietnam war, 25 years after the American withdrawal. Tonight Elizabeth Farnsworth's return to a village near Da Nang, where she made a documentary ten years ago. She found a town still recovering from war.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: These are the faces of Vietnam's victory, the old soldiers, 25 years later, who survived wars against the Japanese, the French, and the Americans. They are gathered in the village of Binh Phu, about two hours Southwest of Da Nang, in what used to be South Vietnam, to receive recognition from the national government for their sacrifices. (Speaking in Vietnamese) A local Communist Party official told their story. Many of these men and women first fought to throw out the French, and defeated them in 1954. The Americans came next, and these veterans say that war haunts them still. Nguyen Tung has been a Communist Party leader in Binh Phu for more than 50 years. He lives in a house near where American troops had a firebase.

NGUYEN TUNG, Former Viet Cong: (speaking through interpreter) My father was shot dead by Americans. My elder brother and sister were killed, too. American troops had a base on that hill over there, and they destroyed most of the village. Everything was shelled and burned, and everyone had to flee.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The fields and paths of Binh Phu are so peaceful now, it's hard to imagine them in war. But fighting was fierce in the village because it was a base for the Viet Cong. They were the Communist revolutionaries of what was then south Vietnam. They fought a government based in Saigon that was supported by Americans. The top Viet Cong commander in the region was General Vuong Tuan Kiet.

GENERAL VUONG TUAN KIET, Former Viet Cong: (speaking through interpreter) The Binh Phu area became a place for major confrontations with the Americans. It was ideal for us to use as a stepping stone to attack Highway One and Da Nang. The Americans were very sensitive about this area, because they knew we had stationed some of our main forces there.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Beginning in 1965, American troops came roaring into this place. Thuong Khanh, at 75, remembers it well.

TRUONG KHANH, Former Viet Cong: (speaking through interpreter) It took the American and South Vietnamese government troops three days to fight their way into the village. They came in the back, and were able to separate our fighters. Since we were a revolutionary base, they bombed and destroyed everything. Not a leaf was left. My house was burned 21 times.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: For the ceremony April 26 recognizing Binh Phu's sacrifices, data was gathered on how many people were killed here. Dang Xuan Hoi, a village Communist Party official, said the population in the early 1960's was just over 4,000. 1,432 were killed-- about 35% of the village-- including civilians and soldiers. Those who survived fled, and only in the past few years has the population reached pre-war levels. But people in Binh Phu called the American war may be further in the past than when we came ten years ago, but wherever you look in this village, the scars of war remain. Walk the paths that connect the hamlets of Binh Phu, and you can't miss the injuries. This man, who fought for the South Vietnamese army, stepped on a mine during the war. This woman said she was hit by shrapnel from a bomb. There are birth defects, too. This child has Down's Syndrome, and villages blame it on Agent Orange, which was sprayed in great quantity here. Beside the paths are graves for people who were killed in battles and buried right where they fell. Nearby are more elaborate tombs, this one constructed recently by a villager now living in California for his mother and grandmother, both killed by a grenade, and his sister, killed by an American shell. And just down the way is the soldiers' cemetery, with graves of local Viet Cong, and also many North Vietnamese who came here to fight, too. Village records show that the people of Binh Phu have filled in 750 bomb craters and dismantled 3,600 mines and bombs. A blacksmith had bought American shells from scavengers and was shaping them into plows and animal traps.

BLACKSMITH: About five years ago, there were a lot of bombs and scrap pieces, but now most are gone.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: When villagers are asked what they think of Americans now, many find it hard to respond. This woman laughed at first, and then said she had hated Americans for only a short time during and after the war.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: How do you feel about Americans?

TRUONG KHANH: (speaking through interpreter) On the world scene, old enemies talk to each other now. There's no longer any reason for us to hate each other.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: To an outsider, Binh Phu looks much the same as in 1990. The government had just dismantled unproductive rice cooperatives then, and farmers could lease land for up to 15 years and decide what to sell and where. The semi-privatization had sent rice production climbing, but some families we interviewed then said times were still very tough. Ten years later, that grandmother and baby are better off.

DUONG THI PHAN: (speaking through interpreter) Last year was good. We have enough to eat. The years of the war were horrible. It's better now.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Good land in Binh Phu gives three harvests of rice a year now, not two as in the past. The national government has made funds available for irrigation and fertilizer, and this has improved production. Much of the rice is consumed here, but some is sold to traders and eventually exported. Since 1988, Vietnam has become the third-largest rice exporter in the world. Small profits from rice sales have made it possible for some people to open shops, and for the first time, Binh Phu has a kind of downtown. In 1994 the village got electricity, and with it TV. There's even a billiards parlor, where ten cents brings an hour's play. And most important, say villagers, roads are being improved, which makes it a bit easier to get crops to market, though carrying bags of rice on a bicycle is still a rough go. A new primary school was built recently with help from the private international aid group Worldvision. It costs about $1.50 a year to send a child to school, and the official recognition of Binh Phu as a village of heroes will make subsidies available for those who can't pay. The village survey found that 20% of Binh Phu is still very poor, and Communist Party leader Dang Xuan Hoi says more money is needed for development.

DANG XUAN HOI, Local Communist Party Official: (speaking through interpreter) We are still lacking classrooms and equipment for the school, and though the road has been improved, in the rainy season it is still very bad. We are trying to asphalt one kilometer in the year 2000, and we also appeal to overseas Vietnamese to contribute to the construction.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Some villagers have left to seek opportunities elsewhere. Pham Thanh, whose life we documented in 1990, had been taken to the U.S. for medical treatment after being brought out of the village by the same G.I.'s who killed his family. He is back in the United States now because he couldn't find a good enough job to stay in Vietnam. His wife, who is also from Binh Phu, and his children live in Da Nang, and are awaiting his return or visas to travel to California. Other villagers have also moved into cities for better schools and jobs. But most of the kids of Binh Phu must find their opportunities in the village itself. They're studying English, and are eager to practice with visitors.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: (talking to children) Very good. What is your name?

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: 60% of these kids will go to high school, and about 30% on to some kind of higher education. They have studied the war, and know when the Americans came and what they did. But it doesn't interest them much. They are moving ahead. And the older generation, the ones who fought, suffered, and won the war, are dying off. In ten more years, many will no longer be here.

FOCUS - FOREST FIGHT

JIM LEHRER: Now in this country the fight over forests moves to the Southeast. Tom Bearden reports.

PILOT: What we're doing right now is traveling North onto the Cumberland Plateau.

TOM BEARDEN: Ken Davenport and Doug Murray are on a mission to monitor logging in Tennessee.

HUME DAVENPORT: Looks like an intermission stream right there.

DOUG MURRAY: Yeah, it does.

HUME DAVENPORT: There's a stream crossing right there. Doug, look at this.

DOUG MURRAY: Yeah, we've got streams down there with a lot of trees laying in them.

TOM BEARDEN: They are the eyes in the sky for the Dogwood Alliance, a group of some 60 community organizations that are deeply concerned about the future of the forests in this region.

SPOKESMAN: That's one of the first cuts that Hume and I found when we started this project about three years ago. When we first found it, it was only probably 200 or 300 acres. Now it's up to probably 600 or 700 acres.

TOM BEARDEN: The alliance believes the native hardwood forest lands of the Southeastern U.S. are being decimated by a dramatic increase in clear-cut logging, a practice where virtually every tree is cut, as opposed to the selective cutting techniques used here in the past.

DOUG MURRAY: Now we're looking mainly at water quality problems. From the air we can see stream crossings, places where the trucks and bulldozers are running through the streams, across the streams. We can see debris left in the streams, and in some cases, we can actually see silt and erosion channels leading right down into the streams.

TOM BEARDEN: Environmentalists say the heart of the problem is an influx of wood processing plants called chip mills. The mills convert timber into small chips, which are then shipped to paper mills to make high-grade paper.

DOUG MURRAY: There's been an explosion of chip mills in the Southeast in just the last ten years. Ten years ago we had about 30 or 40 chip mills in the whole southeast. Now there's over 150. As logging is declining in the Northwest, all of those companies are moving into the Southeast, and so we're seeing this huge increase.

SPOKESMAN: Almost everything you're bringing in is either rotten, hollow, crooked, defective in some way.

TOM BEARDEN: The chip mills process relatively small logs that traditional sawmills won't buy, creating a market for timber that had no economic value before their arrival, and that's changed the way timber is harvested here. Herbert Volner owns a sawmill near Parson. For the past 50 years, he practiced selective cutting when he bought timber from private landowners. He took only trees big enough to yield lumber, leaving behind the younger ones to mature for a future harvest.

HERBERT VOLNER, Saw Mill Operator: When we cut this, we cut it 16-inch diameter, 12 inches from the ground.

TOM BEARDEN: Yet with chip mills buying smaller timber, some landowners started clear-cutting their property. That prompted an unlikely alliance between environmentalists and some sawmill operators. Volmer is quick to volunteer that he's no tree-hugger, but he's against clear-cutting, too.

HERBERT VOLNER: If we'd clear-cut this forest the first time we were in here, there wouldn't be any trees. This tree has done real well. This is pretty good soil here.

TOM BEARDEN: Volmer says if everybody clear-cuts, there won't be any suitable timber for his mill to saw. But landowner Robert Harrison is grateful for the opportunity to sell timber that he and his family considered unmarketable.

ROBERT HARRISON, Land Owner: Suddenly we had a value... or a market for a lot of low-grade hardwood that is prevalent here on the plateau.

TOM BEARDEN: Harrison says loggers took pains to keep the clear-cut environmentally safe and points to this clear-flowing stream as proof that clear-cutting can be done without harming water quality.

ROBERT HARRISON: The common reaction around here is, "I don't want nobody telling me what to do with my land." But if you look closely at a cornfield, it would look awful, too. Now, this is a bigger version of a crop. No one complains too much about a cornfield that's been harvested.

TOM BEARDEN: The forest products industry says clear-cutting actually makes southeastern forests healthier.

CARLTON OWENS, Champion International: Clear-cut about four years ago, and you see the profusion of young hardwood growth here.

TOM BEARDEN: Carlton Owens works for champion international paper. He says clear-cuts benefit forests that have been selectively harvested for too long.

CARLTON OWENS: The hardwood forest that has been over a period of decades high-graded, which is where the landowner comes in and takes out the best trees, comes back in a few years later and takes out the best trees. It's a little bit like a farmer who might have 100 cattle, sells the best bulls, the best cows. You do that repeatedly, you end up with a herd that's very much diminished. And if you don't sell the herd and start over, you're not going to be able to sustain the business long term.

TOM BEARDEN: Owens says selective cutting leaves behind genetically inferior trees that are near the end of their life cycles, trees that will never grow any bigger. And he points to property like this, which was clear-cut four years ago, as proof that the practice does not destroy the land.

CARLTON OWENS: It's amazing what the forest will do when you allow sunlight to reach the forest floor, the soil, the resurgence of the timber type. And you get all the diversity of not only the under-story species, but the trees are coming back, and they're all straight and shooting for the sun.

TOM BEARDEN: But John Evans, Professor of Biology at the University of the South, says selective cutting does not hurt a forest's commercial value.

JOHN EVANS, Biology Professor: The idea that if you go and you cut down certain trees and leave other trees, that the other ones represent genetically inferior individuals is nonsense in the sense that these trees, when they're cut, they resprout back. Resprouting back is the same genetic individual. The idea that you're changing the genetic composition of these forests in a high-grading or selective-cutting regime, there's no data out there to support this. (Sound of industrial saws)

TOM BEARDEN: Evans is worried that chip mills have created economic conditions that are fundamentally changing the nature of the region's forests. Some property owners are replanting their land with faster-growing pine trees in hopes of quicker profits. Evans calls them pine plantations. Evans found a 500% increase in pine acreage over the last 18 years.

JOHN EVANS: The concern that we have with the kinds of rapid changes that are occurring across the Cumberland Plateau, for example-- industrial forest reconversion of hardwood, native hardwood ecosystems, these complex, biologically-rich ecosystems to a monocultural pine-- is what does this mean down the line in terms of the natural heritage that future generations will be enjoying or living with in this region? And that's a big question.

TOM BEARDEN: Mike Steck thinks clear- cutting could threaten his industry: Tourism. Steck is head of Environmental Affairs for Dagger International, maker of kayaks and canoes. He says bad timber management threatens the billions of dollars the recreation industry brings to the region.

MIKE STECK, Dagger: We are directly dependent on a healthy environment. Without a healthy environment, we're not going to sell boats. And we employ 130 people in Rome County, Tennessee, which is a depressed area economically. We supply jobs. We supply a livelihood. People use our products to enjoy a wilderness experience, to get out on the water, to paddle beautiful waters. And chip milling and clear- cutting are in direct diversity to that.

TOM BEARDEN: But Champion Paper says it's an important part of the local economy, too, providing paychecks for hundreds of loggers and truck drivers, as well as mill employees, and providing income that allows landowners to pay the taxes on their land.

CARLTON OWNENS: Here we are talking about what landowners should do with their land. Those landowners have paid for that land. They had to pay taxes and maintenance. I believe it's unfair for society to say to a landowner that owns trees that "just because you own forest, you owe society more."

HUME DAVENPORT: So, do you see what I mean about flying that line?

DOUG MURRAY: Yeah.

TOM BEARDEN: Davenport and Murray want government to impose new regulations to stop what they consider to be the destruction of Tennessee's forests. To that end, they've spent much of their time flying state legislatures and policymakers over the clear-cuts.

HUME DAVENPORT: A lot of it really simply comes down to the fact that people who live here in this part of Tennessee on the Cumberland Plateau enjoy a quality of life that revolves around an intact forest system. That means hunting, fishing, earning a living off of the land, using the wood for productive building pieces and materials, building furniture, building musical instruments. And the clear-cutting, which is driven by chip mills, robs us of that existence and for future generations to have that same existence.

TOM BEARDEN: Four federal agencies have held public hearings and are currently studying the impact of chip mills. Their report is due out next year.

JIM LEHRER: Last month, the state of Missouri declared a two-year moratorium on permits for new chip mills, the first state to do so.

CONVERSATION

JIM LEHRER: Now, another of our conversations about new books, and to Terence Smith.

TERENCE SMITH: The book is "President Reagan, the role of a lifetime. It's an update of the book that former "Washington Post" reporter Lou Cannon first wrote in 1991, after covering Ronald Reagan for 25 years in California and for the two terms of his presidency. Lou, welcome.

LOU CANNON, Author, "President Reagan" The Role of a Lifetime:" Nice to be here.

TERENCE SMITH: We're pleased to have you. This book was so well received when it first came out in 1991, why update it now?

LOU CANNON: Well, a lot happened after Ronald Reagan left office that was related to his presidency. The Berlin wall came down, the Soviet Union collapsed, the independent counsel, Mr. Walsh, after a while issued a report on Iran-Contra affair, and tragically, Ronald Reagan contracted Alzheimer's. And I felt that all of those things needed to be... Needed to be recorded and updated.

TERENCE SMITH: Having read it, I know there is new material on Iran-Contra and other things in the book. Did it... Did the new material... Tell us what you think is important that's new and whether it changed your perception of Ronald Reagan in any way.

LOU CANNON: Well, actually, we knew pretty much everything about Iran-Contra at the time, as Mr. Walsh himself acknowledges. He spent seven years on this investigation, and he found there was no evidence that Ronald Reagan knew of the diversion. And he examined everything and had access to everything, so I think that probably is the historical word on that, and that was the question that was in everybody's mind.

TERENCE SMITH: So you concluded that as he actually himself acknowledged, that Ronald Reagan knew of and in fact authorized the arms for hostages to Iran, but not the diversion of the profits for the Contras.

LOU CANNON: There was no question that Ronald Reagan knew of the arms sales, and he acknowledged while he was in office that he did it... not only did he do it, but he did it against the advice of his secretary of defense and his secretary of state, and he acknowledged that he shouldn't have done it and apologized to the American people, which is something you don't hear too often. And I think had he not done that, he would not have been able to successfully complete his presidency-- not that he would have been removed, but that he emotionally would not have been able to do it.

TERENCE SMITH: Having covered him all these years and now having looked at the record even more recently, what's Ronald Reagan's legacy as president?

LOU CANNON: I think it's two things... it's a lot of things, of course, but I think it's two big things. One is I think there was a restoration of confidence in the government. Every poll showed that confidence in the country was at a very low ebb. There's an irony in this. Ronald Reagan was anti- government in most of his preachments, but people thought more of the government after he was President because so much of what we think about the government is bound up with what we think about the President. The even bigger part of the legacy is the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Condolesa Rice has said that the conservatives don't give Gorbachev enough credit and the liberals don't give Ronald Reagan enough credit. But clearly, it wasn't something that one side alone could do. I think Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev deserve a lot of credit, and I think that Reagan's policies do. And it seems hard to say that in retrospect. Ronald Reagan, you know, in 1980 came to the "Washington post," said that he thought an arms race would be a good thing, and it shocked a lot of people. And I wrote that story, but his point was that the Soviet Union would have to negotiate because it wasn't economically strong enough to compete. Now, we all know that in retrospect. In 1980, there were a lot of people, liberal and conservative, who wouldn't have agreed with that formulation.

TERENCE SMITH: So he meant what he said?

LOU CANNON: Yeah.

TERENCE SMITH: He meant that they would spend themselves into penury.

LOU CANNON: Yes, and I think he had... I don't mean he had a timetable where it all worked out that you arrived at the station at 3:42 on a particular day in March, but he had a plan. And his plan was, you have a buildup, you call the Soviets what they are, an evil empire, but you also negotiate. And you know, he didn't have much of a chance in the fist term. He kept saying the Soviets kept... leaders kept dying on him, as if that was a... you know, there was something personal about that. But the truth was, there was a succession of geriatric leaders in the Soviet Union, and it was not until, as you well know, Gorbachev came along that there was really an opportunity to sort of cash in on the buildup.

TERENCE SMITH: If he gets credit, then, for ending the Cold War and dismemberment basically of the Soviet Union, does he have to take responsibility for other things, like the huge deficits that he left behind?

LOU CANNON: I think he has to be responsible. I don't think it's fair to give any president credit for all the good things that happened on his watch and none of the blame or do the opposite. However, I don't think the huge deficits that he left are in retrospect as an important a negative as the achievement of the end of the Cold War is a positive. The reason I say that is that these deficits have got to be looked upon, I think, to some degree as wartime deficits. They would not have been so large if you hadn't had that military buildup. We ran huge deficits during the Civil War, huge deficits during World War II. The Cold War was a war. It was an expensive war.

TERENCE SMITH: Oddly, Ronald Reagan is playing a small role in campaign 2000. Every Republican candidate that I can recall in the primaries at least, from Gary Bauer to John McCain, wrapped himself, or sought to, in the mantel of Ronald Reagan. What do you think it was that they were trying to associate themselves with?

LOU CANNON: What they're trying to associate with, I think, is two things. One is this aura of success and optimism that Reagan projected. And the other thing is that they're trying to find their way. Ronald Reagan was a political leader, whether you liked him or not. He brought together his party. He campaigned for moderates, as well as conservatives. He was a unifier. After Ronald Reagan, the Republicans really never had a leader close to the dimension. And you can look at them now-- Bush's tax plan is like Reagan's, McCain's sense of humor is like Reagan's-- but it doesn't all add up to Ronald Reagan, it seems to me. And they're all looking to... You know, they want the find another Ronald Reagan, Terry, and they haven't found him yet.

TERENCE SMITH: Let's talk about Reagan the man for a moment. Was he or is he a difficult personality to penetrate and to understand?

LOU CANNON: Well, Ronald Reagan had a sense of... He had a reserve about him. I mean, he kept himself to himself, as you know. But in one sense, I think everybody knew Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan's audience wasn't you or me. Ronald Reagan's audience was the American people. And if you look at what he said over the years, what his policy was, he basically told them what he was going to do. I mean, Stew Spencer once said that Ronald Reagan's genius was that he said what the guys at the bar would say when you bought up an issue. And, I mean, he had that sort of... He had it inside of him. And I don't think... while he didn't wear everything on his sleeve, I don't think he was impenetrable. I think he was basically a pretty straight American guy from his generation, like he appeared to be.

TERENCE SMITH: You also are quite critical in this book, not in a personal way, but in an analytical way, about Ronald Reagan, about his tendency to confuse fantasy and reality, film and life. He did do that, didn't he?

LOU CANNON: Oh, he did. And in addition to that, while I think Ronald Reagan performed powerfully within the confines of this agenda, and I think it was the most important agenda because nuclear war was the most important threat, material that wasn't part of his agenda was off his screen, it was completely off the screen, it wasn't...people made fun of him for forgetting the name of the secretary of Housing and Urban Development. I thought it was extremely appropriate. He never went to HUD during the eight years he was there. That wasn't part of his agenda. But that was Reagan. You... He didn't pretend. He didn't pretend to have a great interest in things outside of his agenda.

TERENCE SMITH: In your view, looking back on it now, was he losing his faculties at all in his final year as President?

LOU CANNON: I don't think so, and I base it on two things. One is my own experience in interviewing him. Most of the interviews for the last part of this book were done after he was out of office. He didn't seem... I'd been interviewing him since '65. He didn't really seem any different. But the other thing was, if you look at his achievements, they're really in the last part of his presidency. I don't know if this is an answer to your question, but you know, conservatives cheer Ronald Reagan now. You know, you remember Bill Buckley came in and opposed the INF Treaty? George will called it moral disarmament. Paul Wyrick led a group of conservatives in there and said, "this is all a Soviet plot." I asked Paul, "what did Ronald Reagan say?" He said, "I know more about it than you do." And he did. And I don't know. What I do think is that he was slowed down in his last year. And so his... This notion of having this limited but powerful agenda became even more true. He just was not engaged on issues that did not deal really with this agenda that he had.

TERENCE SMITH: And the dissent into Alzheimer's, you believe, followed his presidency.

LOU CANNON: I think that's pretty clear. I feel confident of that because, as I say, I had dealings with him, and not just for this book. I wrote a piece for the "Washington Post" on his 80th birthday, which was after he was out of office. And I must say he seemed... he seemed the same as he always was, which means that you had to pull teeth in an interview to get anything out of him, but eventually you did.

TERENCE SMITH: Right. Lou Cannon, thank you very much.

LOU CANNON: Thank you, Terry.

FINALLY - FAVORITE POEM PROJECT

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, another from poet laureate Robert Pinsky's project of asking Americans to read their favorite poems. Tonight, a young Marine reads the poem "Politics," by William Butler Yeats.

STEPHEN CONTEAGUERO, U.S. Marine Corps: I'm Steve Conteaguero. I'm 28 years old. I was born and raised here in Miami, Florida, but I work and live in Buford, South Carolina. I'm a United States Marine. I'm an aviation logistics officer. My wife, Lourdes, is a pretty successful mortgage broker down here in Miami. We live in a sort of weekend relationship. My superiors, I believe, are pretty accommodating about letting me come down here. They respect the fact that she has a career, and I respect that, too. And so I come down, and we have fun. We love to go out. We go dancing. We'll go out and have drinks somewhere. We go out to all the hot spots here in Miami. We were high school sweethearts. We graduated, and I joined the Marines right out of high school. And then once I reported to my first duty station, which was Hawaii, we deployed to the Persian Gulf. And so I went to the Gulf War, and that gives you sort of a sense of urgency, you know, when you're in that type of situation. And so while we were out there, we decided that we would be married when I got back. You know, so it's been eight years now. But it's like it was yesterday, you know? (Band playing "The Star Spangled Banner") I went to the cemetery today so that we could pay our respects for the seven persons who died on November 26 of /99, while trying to make that arduous journey across the Straits of Florida through the Keys, to try to find freedom. And so the funeral, while it's a very sad moment, becomes a political statement, also. And so that ties in, you know, to my involvement and my family's involvement in exile politics. (Speaking Spanish) My father was a journalist in Cuba, and the thing is, he was a revolutionary. But then, after Castro came to power, little by little there was a suspicion that he was entertaining joining the Communist Party and turning the government over to the Communists and to Soviet Russia. And when my father found out, he denounced him on radio, on national radio, at the time. And that was pretty much the last thing he did. After that, he left the country, and he came to exile here. So throughout my childhood, I spent the time going to rallies with my father, and going to different events. He always maintained that place as a voice for the exile community, an anti-Communist voice, and that's where I got that feeling. Yeats was a guy who wasn't interested in the political scene in his home country of Ireland early on, kind of like me. And then eventually, he actually fell in love with a woman who was a revolutionary, and that's how he got involved. And so after that, he became a staunch revolutionary. And yet when he wrote that poem, "Politics," it was his final opinion on the whole matter of the comparison of politics versus love. And a person like William Butler Yeats chose love, and so I respect that very much. And I kind of like that, because he considers that his parting shot. And I think I'm not that old, but the fact that I joined the service, and the fact that I had that experience, that connection with my father, but the fact that I'm also very much in love, I can see where he's right, where that love is more important. It's the most important thing. So that's how I connected to Yeats. And I think that's going to be my parting shot, too. "How can I that girl standing there, my attention fixed on Roman or Russian or on Spanish politics, yet here's a traveled man that knows what he talks about, and there's a politician that has both read and thought, and maybe what they say is true of war and war's alarms, but, oh, that I were young again, and held her in my arms."

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Monday. Microsoft stock gained more than 5% in the first trading since Friday. That's when the Justice Department asked a federal judge to break up the company. And countries around the world marked May Day. Police clashed with protesters in several cities. We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.