The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

Intro

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. These are the top headline stories this Friday evening. Lebanese militiamen seized 24 U.N. soldiers as hostages and threatened to kill them. Adult unemployment was unchanged for the fourth month but rose for teenagers. FAA moved to correct the system in which hundreds of near misses went unreported. Jim Lehrer is off tonight; Charlayne Hunter-Gault is in Washington. Charlayne?

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Our NewsHour tonight consists of the news summary, two major focus sections and an update. Focus one is a two-pronged look at that ever-widening naval spy case, reassessing the extent of the damage with a former CIA man and a former Navy man, and reassessing our system of security clearances, who should and shouldn't have them. Focus two is on a pro-con on a proposal to help cure teenage unemployment, the subminimum wage. And Kwame Holman has an update on Albion, Pennsylvania, as its citizens try to put their lives back together after last week's tornado tore them apart.News Summary

MacNEIL: Lebanese militiamen today took 24 Finnish United Nations troops hostage and threatened to kill them. The Lebanese were members of the South Lebanon Army, a force backed by Israel to protect its borders against Shiite Moslems. Nineteen of the Finnish soldiers were seized as they returned from a vacation in Israel. The other five were taken after a confrontation with SLA forces. The SLA demanded the release of 11 of its own fighters who were captured by the Shiites. The SLA threatened to kill all the Finns unless its men were released. In New York, U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar asked Israel to help secure the release of the Finns. The U.N. said this was the first incident of such magnitude. Charlayne?

HUNTER-GAULT: The Federal Aviation Administration acknowledged today that there were cracks in the system for counting near-misses in the air. As a result, the reports of at least 352 incidents of planes coming dangerously close to each other in 1983 and '84 went untabulated. To remedy that, FAA Administrator Donald Engen said procedures would be changed.

DONALD ENGEN, FAA Administrator: We will draw a 500-foot bubble around an aircraft, and a near-midair collision will be defined as any time that bubble is penetrated or when either pilot feels that his aircraft is hazarded. Andquite candidly, there's a danger in doing this from an actuarial standpoint, because I -- the reason that we're doing this so slowly is I want to be sure that people understand that we're not doing this to dee-mphasize near-midair collisions; we're trying to include more midair collisions in there, because if we can report more we can do more about it. And I wouldn't want people to think that I'm taking this action so that it would appear like they were less.

HUNTER-GAULT: A federal appeals court today temporarily blocked next week's planned startup of the undamaged nuclear reactor at the Three Mile Island plant until further notice. Responding to an appeal by the state of Pennsylvania and other parties, Judge Collins J. Seitz agreed that an expedited review of the case was warranted. The plant has been shut down since March 1978, when an adjacent unit was crippled in the worst accident in U.S. commercial nuclear history.

MacNEIL: In San Francisco, a retired Navy radio man accused of spying for the Soviet Union was brought into court for a hearing on whether he should be freed on bail. Jerry Whitworth is charged with being a member of a spy ring that authorities say was headed by John Walker, the retired naval officer who was arrested in Virginia. Walker's son and brother have also been accused. The FBI says numerous classified documents were found in Whitworth's home and his fingerprints were found on documents in John Walker's home. Later in this program we'll focus on the questions of how much damage might have been done by the alleged spy ring and what could be done to improve security clearance for people who have access to secrets.

In Rome, the man who shot the Pope testified today that Bulgaria is guilty of fomenting an assassination plot. But Mehmet Ali Agca, appearing at the trial of three Bulgarians and four Turks accused of a plot against John Paul II, said he could not answer questions about the details. Agca said the reason is that he's been threatened by the Bulgarian and Soviet secret police. Agca is serving a life sentence in an Italian prison.

HUNTER-GAULT: NATO foreign ministers meeting in Portugal today refused to endorse President Reagan's Star Wars research program. The United States bid for approval of the space-based antimissile system was blocked by France, Denmark and Greece. They believe that the controversial plan could lead to an arms race in space. Meanwhile foreign ministers from 16 nations of NATO did declare strong support for American efforts to reach a nuclear arms agreement with the Soviet Union. Secretary of State Shultz said that endorsement made the meeting a success.

GEORGE SHULTZ, Secretary of State: A great encouragement from the very strong endorsement of our efforts at Geneva in all three of the negotiating groups, and the call on the part of all of our allies together for the Soviet Union to bring to Geneva a more positive approach. So I think that as an overall proposition this has been a most satisfactory meeting.

HUNTER-GAULT: Meanwhile in Washington, the United States has agreed to step up the supply of arms ordered by Costa Rica. In a statement, the State Department confirmed that Costa Rica had asked for a speedup of the deliveries, which include M-60 and M-30 machine guns. Costa Rica's request followed an increase of tension along its border with Nicaragua.

MacNEIL: For the fourth straight month the unemployment rate stayed at 7.3 of the workforce, in May. It was the longest period of no change in the rate for 14 years. The May report had mixed news. Employment in manufacturing fell by 28,000 jobs. In the 30 months of the recovery, the Labor Department said, only about 60 of the jobs lost during the recession have been regained. The commissioner of labor statistics, Janet Norwood, told the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, "The economy is on two paths. One path is the service economy, which is growing and growing fast; the other path is the industrial sector, which is continuing to lose jobs. As a result there are pockets of trouble which clearly need attention." One pocket is teenage unemployment, and we'll be examining that in a focus section later in the program.

President Reagan was again plugging his tax overhaul plan. Speaking at a White House gathering of economic writers, the President had a suggestion for business executives complaining about the proposal to reduce deductible lunches to $25.

Pres. RONALD REAGAN: It just doesn't seem right for a wage earner carrying his tuna fish sandwich to work to subsidize exorbitant business lunches at luxury restaurants. We'd still allow for legitimate expenses. But to those who complain they can't live quite so high off the corporate account, we can only ask, well, why not brown-bag it once in a while, why not find smarter ways to put our money to work than investing so heavily in executive lunches?

MacNEIL: The President also addressed those in high-tax states who oppose the plan to end deductions for state and local taxes.

Pres. REAGAN: Perhaps if the high-tax states didn't have this federal crutch to prop up their big spending, they might have to cut taxes to stay competitive. Some of the elected representatives from the high-tax states don't seem to like that idea much, but maybe they should take a poll of their constituents to see if their people think a tax cut is such a bad idea.

MacNEIL: A federal appeals court ruled today that the government should pay only two thirds of the legal fees Edwin Meese incurred defending himself against allegations about his financial affairs. Meese, now attorney general, incurred more than $720,000 in legal fees as a top White House aide in a five-month investigation of the allegations. He was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing, and the law says government figures can ask for reimbursement if no indictments result from such an investigation. But a three-judge panel ruled today that the government should reimburse him only $472,000 because one of his attorneys kept inadequate records.

HUNTER-GAULT: In Winston-Salem, North Carolina, eight men were found liable for damages in the death of one leftist demonstrator who was killed in a rally against the Ku Klux Klan. The eight found liable in the $48 million lawsuit are five men who are both Klansmen and Nazis, two police officers from Greensboro, North Carolina, and a police informant. Relatives of the five men who were killed at the rally claim the defendants conspired to deprive the victims of their civil rights by disrupting the rally. The federal court jury will now deliberate on how much damages are to be awarded. Spy Case: Weighing the Damage

MacNEIL: We focus first tonight on the Walker family spy charges. Attorney General Edwin Meese said today in Dallas the FBI isn't sure there will be more arrests in the alleged spy ring. That ring has raised fears that important Navy information may have been passed to the Soviet Union. Correspondent June Cross has filed a background report on what's known about the spy case some are calling the most serious blow to U.S. security since the Rosenberg atomic bomb secrets case 37 years ago.

JUNE CROSS [voice-over]: The file on the Walker spy ring reads like a novel. The principals even had their own code names.

John A. Walker, retired Navy communications specialist. Code name Jaws.

His son, Michael Lance Walker, operations clerk aboard the aircraft carrier Nimitz. Code name S.

His brother, Arthur J. Walker, antisubmarine warfare specialist. Code name K.

And John Walker's best friend, Jerry Alfred Whitworth, retired senior enlisted radio man. Code name D.

The ring became public almost three weeks ago. That's when FBI agents trailed John Walker from his Norfolk home on his way to a rendezvous with a Soviet agent. FBI agents say they watched Walker drop a bag filled with classified material at this site. The next morning agents arrested Walker in a Ramada Hotel in suburban Maryland. Other agents searched Walker's office. They found incriminating letters from Michael Walker, his son. Michael was a yeoman aboard the aircraft carrier Nimitz, cruising in the Mediterranean. Michael was detained and returned to this country May 25th. Authorities escorting him carried a 15-pound bag of classified documents, documents they said detailed the moves of American and Soviet ships at sea. Prosecutors say Michael Walker intended to smuggle those documents to his father.

The FBI found other letters in John Walker's office. These led to the arrest of his brother, Arthur J. Walker. During his 20-year career in the Navy, Arthur had taught antisubmarine warfare tactics in Norfolk. But for the past five years he'd been privy to maintenance and repair records for Navy ships while working for the VSE Corporation of Virginia Beach.

With three suspects in custody, concern rose in the Pentagon over how damaging the spy ring could prove to be.

CASPAR WEINBERGER, Secretary of Defense: The Walker case represents, I think it's fair to say, a serious loss, and gone on a very long time.

CROSS [voice-over]: Concern rose even higher this week. On Monday, FBI agents in San Francisco arrested the fourth suspect, an old Navy buddy of John Walker's. Jerry Whitworth, a former radio man, retired from the Navy two years ago. He's unemployed now and living in a trailer park in Davis, California. Authorities charged him with stealing documents from the naval air station in Alameda. Then on Tuesday John Walker's ex-wife Barbara said she had tipped off the FBI as to what was going on. John Walker served 21 years in the Navy, and federal prosecutors now think he was working for the Soviets at least 10 of them. That includes six years when he served on board submarines and at command centers in the Norfolk area. Walker had a top-secret clearance and access to internal Navy memos, memos which detailed plans for action in wartime. A documentary on antisubmarine warfare, completed around the time he resigned the Navy, gives a clue as to how important that knowledge could have been to the Soviets.

Major General ROY DIXON, NATO spokesman [documentary]: The submarine has changed from being merely one part of the armory, as it was in the Second World War, to being really the primary war-winning weapon system. Therefore, where it is, how it navigates about the place, how it is detected or not detected, how it communicates with its own headquarters and so on, have all become absolutely vital.

CROSS [voice-over]: Walker worked as a private eye. He had a fascination with gadgets and intrigue. That fascination, said one former associate, might explain why he turned to espionage.

EDWARD ULRICH, private investigator: He was a man wrapped up in fantasies. He loved theintrigue, he loved the disguise, he loved the game of intrigue. And that could have been what his motivation was.

CROSS [voice-over]: Besides his house, Walker owned a houseboat, a single-engine airplane and some land in the Bahamas. But in court this week, the Walkers claimed they had no cash to pay lawyers, so they were assigned public defenders. The judge hearing the case clamped a restraining order on the FBI, forbidding it or the Navy from discussing anything further about the case. And on Capitol Hill, Senators Sam Nunn and William Roth proposed measures to tighten the way security clearances are given.

Sen. SAM NUNN, (D) Georgia: We're not going to have a perfect system in a free society. But what we can do is take essential steps to make certain we do everything we can to prevent and to deter and to discourage and, when espionage is committed, to try to deal with it.

CROSS [voice-over]: But many people are still wondering how the Walkers were able to elude detection for so long. Assistant Attorney General Stephen Trott tried to answer that question.

STEPHEN TROTT, Assistant Attorney General [Face the Nation]: This is not a police state. The presumption is that people are innocent, and we don't surveil every citizen in this country all the time for everything. One of the byproducts of that, one of the prices that you pay, is occasionally going to get a seam in that type of liberty and somebody, for money or for other reasons, will take advantage of it and become a spy.

MacNEIL: We get an assessment of what the damage may have been in this case from George Carver, a 26-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency, where he served as a special assistant to three CIA directors, and Harlan Ullman, a former captain in the Navy, who's now director of defense and maritime studies at the Georgetown University Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Gentlemen, Secretary Weinberger says, we just heard him say it -- he thought there were very serious losses that went on over a long period of time. Mr. Carver, how serious do you think these losses have been? Assuming these men are convicted as charged.

GEORGE CARVER: One of the problems you get in a case like this is that the precise extent of the damage is in itself a piece of intelligence that would do the Soviets a great deal of good to have, and therefore these questions have to be a little bit fuzzed, particularly by people with official knowledge who are talking about them. I personally feel that the risk of damage was very high, and I feel that we may have suffered a loss almost on a par with the kind of losses we suffered in the Rosenberg case right after World War II.

MacNEIL: What is it that may have been lost that makes you put such a high value on it?

Mr. CARVER: What may have been lost is an understanding of how we go about communicating with our deployed ballistic missile submarines on patrol at sea. This is one of the most important of the three legs of the so-called triad, which is our basic strategic capability. And Walker himself served as a communications officer on board a Polaris submarine; he served as a communications watch officer at Atlantic Fleet Submarine Headquarters; and it's not so much any single message that he might have compromised as it is what he could have told the Soviets even 10, 15, 20 years ago about the ways in which we communicated with our submarines on patrol, and even more, the ways in which they communicated with their parent headquarters while they were on patrol.

MacNEIL: Mr. Ullman, do you agree, first of all, that the loss may have been very great, on a scale with the Rosenberg case?

HARLAN ULLMAN: No, I don't. I disagree, I guess perhaps fundamentally, with my close friend and colleague George Carver in three ways. First, I think that while the loss was serious, I don't believe in military terms it was as crucial as some people think -- and we can come back to that in a second. I think, however, where the loss may have been more damaging than some people seem to think first is in the psychological damage that has been done. This country is used to the occasional Benedict Arnold but not the family of Benedict Arnolds. And people serving in uniform and recently retired from uniform, it seems to me, are very discouraging to the public viewpoint when they're caught in these kinds of acts. And thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, I hope this does not cause a major overreaction in the sense that we put in place all sorts of security rules and regulations which are likely to be not very productive but restrain and restrict our constitutional rights.

MacNEIL: Let's come back presently to what might be done to tighten security and concentrate now on the damage. Does the -- Mr. Carver, back to you. Are the secrets that may have been lost, do they more concern the movements of U.S. submarines or the ability of the U.S. and the NATO navies to detect the presence and the whereabouts of Soviet submarines?

Mr. CARVER: Well, both come into play. The thing that concerns me the most is what the Soviets might have learned about the ways in which we communicate with our submarines and that our submarines communicate with their headquarters, which would faciliate their tracking. At the -- the Soviets tracking our submarines. At the moment we have a strategic edge in that our deployed ballistic missile submarine force is very difficult to detect, and the Soviets can never be absolutely sure where those particular elements of our strategic arsenal are located. Finding out how we communicate with them or vice versa, finding out, for example, the extent to which it can be done from underwater, the extent to which submarines have to surface in order to communicate; the procedures involved; the kinds of messages and their intercept activities they should look for, because those are the kinds of messages passing to and from submarines on patrol. This, I believe, would give the Soviets an incalculable edge and an extremely important edge in this constant cat-and-mouse game on which America's security, if not its survival, could easily hinge.

MacNEIL: Well, Mr. Ullman, wouldn't that be a very serious loss indeed, since, as has been pointed out, the deployment of these U.S. nuclear submarines is, if not the most, certainly one of the most, important parts of the strategic defense system.

Mr. ULLMAN: I think that there are two aspects to the answer. The first is that in a tactical or in an operational way, the loss can be significant, but that is very time-sensitive, because operations change. I mean, you're looking at somebody who's really been out of the operational game for four, five, six or seven years. The second point I would make is that technologies change, and the nature of Soviet submarines have grown a great deal quieter over the years, and therefore the Soviets, because of this quietness, have been able to elude forms of American detection simply because their submarines are getting better and better. So I think that because of technology and a number of other things, the actual loss due to the Walkers has probably been somewhat exaggerated.

MacNEIL: Wouldn't the U.S. Navy and intelligence systems know, because of some change of behavior by the Soviets, how much they'd found out?

Mr. ULLMAN: Not necessarily. Go back to 1941 when Stalin had alertment about Hitler's impending invasion of Russia and chose not to believe it. It seems to me that the Russians would have to act on that information, some of it they may choose not to. And those pieces of information on which they did act, it might be very difficult to know. And I repeat the point about changing technology. I mean, American and Soviet systems have improved during the 10 or 15 years that the Walkers were actively engaged, if in fact they're proven guilty of this espionage. And it seems to me that as these capabilities change, then methods of employment change. And I think that's a very important point to note.

Mr. CARVER: But it's a point easily exaggerated. The Japanese throughout World War II used the same basic systems of communication even long after they had learned that we had developed at least some facility and skill in reading their codes. And their persistence in using these systems of communications enabled us to win, among other things, the Battle of Midway and the naval war in the Pacific without which we couldn't have won World War II. Systems are a lot easier to change in theory and in discussion on a television program than they are in fact. And knowing how we communicated with our deployed ballistic missile submarines and long-range subsurface patrol, even as long ago as 20 years, would be of great value to the Soviets because they could plot our changes over time and learn how we may effect those communications today, which I believe -- and Mr. Ullman and I are good friends and we differ on lots of things, and this is one of the things on which we differ fundamentally.

MacNEIL: Well, Mr. Ullman, finally, Secretary Weinberger was reported today by the Pentagon to have ordered precautions to ofjfset any advantage the Soviets might have gained. Doesn't that suggest that the Pentagon suspects, or at least fears, that there may have been some ongoing advantage they could have gained which necessitated some change of orders or procedures or something to offset it?

Mr. ULLMAN: Not necessarily. And I think a point that needs to be made here is that when John Walker Sr. was in the most sensitive areas, which were in the command facilities of the submarine force Atlantic, he was really exposed more to tactical submarines, the SSNs, the attack submarines, rather than the ballistic missile submarines. And I think that even though Walker did serve in ballistic missile submarines, the difjference between the two has been so compartmentalized that I'm not sure that he had access to the operation of the ballistic missile submarine.

Mr. CARVER: Well, there again I have to disagree. In Atlantic Fleet Submarine Headquarters he was a trick or watch chief in charge of one of the three eight-hour watches in the communications center. And in that capacity he would have been not only privy to all the information that came, or messages that flowed back and forth; he would have had to have known about all the systems of communication, those with ballistic submarines as well as those with nonballistic submarines and other kinds of patrols.

MacNEIL: Can we assume that you two well-informed gentlemen disagreeing as you do reflect the kind of debate that's probably going on inside the people who are actively in the CIA and the other intelligence services, trying to figure out how much damage was done, if it was done, right now? Is there a similar debate, do you suppose, going on there?

Mr. CARVER: I would think the chances are very high, you get three experts, you get at least five opinions, as you well know. Keeping Secrets

MacNEIL: Okay. Let's move on to the question of what can be done about it. Among other issues, the Walker family spy charges have set off a storm of criticism about the sheer number of people who have access to classified information. Some 4.3 million are cleared to see some secret information. the clearances are divided into four basic categories: 333,000 people have access to confidential information; as many as three and a half million are legally allowed to see information classified secret; 600,000 have top-secret clearances, and that figure includes 100,000 who like John Walker have code word classifications that allow them to see some of the most sensitive information. Last year the government received 200,000 applications for security clearances. In 1974 there were half as many applications. And it's been estimated that the government eventually grants security clearances to 99 of the people who apply. To get more on this clearance issue, back to our two guests.

Mr. Carver, there are many calls -- we saw two on film a moment ago by Senator Nunn and Roth -- for reducing the number of people, they suggest halving it, who get some kind of security clearances. What do you think of that idea?

Mr. CARVER: Well, I think that Senator Nunn and Senator Roth are on the right track. I do think that you can curtail the number drastically, though you have to be prepared to cope with the fallout. Curtailing the number so that only those who actually need the information in the course of their duties get it and many who have clearances as a sort of status symbol or because they are the superiors of those who have daily access to classified information don't. But cutting it back requires a scalpel, not a meat axe. And if we cut it back too far, we will run the risk of exposing the very kind of information we want to protect. This is a very complicated question procedurally, administratively, and, above all, legally and even constitutionally.

MacNEIL: Mr. Ullman, what do you think about cutting back the numbers of people with clearances.

ULLMAN: I think that that's probably very important, and I certainly agree with George in the respect that it needs to be done with -- surgically rather in a wholesale sense. But the other part, it seems to me, is reducing or downgrading classified material so that it actually fits what its classification ought to be. We tend to overclassify; we classify virtually everything. And I think the other part of the problem is trying to tighten up our classification so when something is secret or top secret it genuinely reflects that level.

MacNEIL: The categories I went through, the most sensitive information, 100,000 people, is that the group of people, the code word classification -- you can see it there -- is that the group of people which would have to be narrowed in order to restrict the number who had access to material that would be of real interest to an enemy or the Soviet Union?

Mr. CARVER: Well, the number would have to be narrowed, but you've got a functional problem. How much you could cut back on that particular number is a very moot point, because many of those people could be performing a variety of different types of functions -- in the field of overhead photography, in the field of submarine communications, in the field of strategic targeting, et cetera -- and you might not be able to cut back too drastically without adversely affecting the capacity of the U.S. to perform those very functions.

MacNEIL: Well, what about the next less sensitive category, the three and a half million, which seems like an extraordinary number to a layman, who have access to top-secret information? What about that classification? Is that where the biggest cut could come?

Mr. CARVER: Well, I happen to think it is, because I agree with Harlan that lots of things are overclassified and that many things are classified top secret, even, which don't deserve or merit any such classification. What you have to do --

MacNEIL: Excuse me interrupting. Is that the point you're making, Mr. Ullman, that if you cut back the amount of information you wouldn't need so many people cleared to --

Mr. ULLMAN: That's probably correct, yes.

MacNEIL: I see. That's the point you're making. I'm sorry, Mr. Carver, I interrupted you.

Mr. CARVER: Well, what you're doing, Mr. MacNeil, is you're clearing your decks. You want to cut off the extraneously classified information and the people who don't really need the clearances, so that you can concentrate on protecting that which really does need to be protected. But that in itself is a difficult job.

MacNEIL: Let's go to another point. Mr. Walker, who's now been charged, was not found by the security services of this country; he was found apparently, his wife says, former wife, because she turned him in. Now, what can be done to people who legitimately have security classifications and should have them to ensure that -- or to police their suitability for having them, if you know what I mean? Mr. Ullman, do you have a --

Mr. ULLMAN: That's one of the most difficult questions. Generally security investigations and reinvestigations are based on detecting aberrant or abnormal behavior, and therefore it would be in the best interest, of the spy to behave normally. If he does that, then there's no reason to pick him up. If one then institutes a whole series of tests, lie detecter tests, so forth and so on, it seems to me that one runs the risk of imposing and infringing on constitutional rights. For example, if I may be allowed analysis by anecdote. About four years ago there was a story in The Washington Post which reported that the administration was underfunding its defense plans. A lie detector test was administered to a number of senior officials; one of them proved positive, a former West Point graduate with two Silver Stars in Vietnam, and he was relieved from his duties. The next day The Washington Post correspondent reported in the Post that they got the wrong guy. So if you overreact, you run a very, very real risk, it seems to me, of infringing on genuine rights and genuine need to know.

MacNEIL: Mr. Carver, how do you think you police the people who legitimately should have security clearance?

Mr. CARVER: With great difficulty, partly because of the problem that my friend Mr. Ullman just explained. There is no -- you have a balance question, and a very complicated balance question, between protecting that which the U.S. government has to protect in order to be able to protect our nation and our citizens and the things on which our survival itself could hinge, without doing undue infringement on people's civil rights and constitutional liberties. Now, I say "undue" advisedly, Mr. MacNeil. There is no way to do an efjfective counterintelligence job, to run an effective security investigation of the kind that's necessary to make a sensible judgment about issuing or withholding or withdrawing a clearance without being intrusive. You have to look into people's beliefs, you have to look into people's behavior, you have to look into their affairs, both literal and metaphorical, their financial activities, et cetera, et cetera. This requires a degree of intrusiveness that is unpalatable to the American ethos, and quite properly so. It also involves a mindset which is even more unpalatable. You can't be a good security officer assuming that everyone is innocent until you can prove him guilty. You have to start out with a presumption that he may well be guilty until you can satisfy yourself that he's provably innocent, and that's a very hard thing to do in a constitutional democracy.

MacNEIL: Well, gentlemen, thank you both for joining us. Charlayne?

HUNTER-GAULT: Still ahead on the NewsHour, a debate over a new proposal to cure chronic teenage unemployment, and Kwame Holman looks at how the residents of Albion, Pennsylvania, try to put their lives back together after last week's devastating tornado. Jobs for Teens

HUNTER-GAULT: Next we focus on a major administration proposal to stem the chronic and rising joblessness among American teenagers. According to government figures released today, almost one out of every five teenagers looking for work is unemployed. Joblessness stands at 16 for white youths, 24 for hispanics and 43 for blacks. The administration proposes hiring teenagers at below minimum wage of $3.35 an hour, arguing that will open up thousands of new jobs. For more on that story we have a report out of Chicago from correspondent Elizabeth Brackett.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT [voice-over]: The faces that make up the disturbing statistics on youth unemployment can be found on the street corners and in the parks of every major urban city. The mayor of the city of Chicago calls the statistics frightening.

HAROLD WASHINGTON, Mayor of Chicago: Dangerously high, dangerously high, particularly among those young people who have dropped out of school, who have no employable skills and who simply are just flotsam and jetsam out there.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: In Washington, President Reagan's response to the problem is to once again call for a subminimum wage for 16-to-19-year-olds.

Pres. REAGAN: Under the current minimum wage law, for example, many young people have been priced out of the labor market. To put these young Americans back in the market we have proposed the Youth Employment Opportunity Wage, legislation that would allow employers to hire young people at a lower minimum wage during the summer months.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: The proposal would lower the minimum wage from $3.35 to $2.50 an hour for summer employment. The Labor Department says the lowered wage could create as many as 400,000 summer jobs for unemployed teenagers. Chicago restaurant owner Jack Binyon says he would add summer help if a subminimum wage was approved. In the busy kitchen of the popular Chicago restaurant, Binyon says extra help is needed in the summer.

JACK BINYON, Binyon's Restaurant: It would be terrific for the restaurant business. That's the time of year where your steady employees are on vacation and you need a replacement for two to 20 weeks during the summer. And it's basically an unskilled job, the jobs of dishwasher and busboy, which can be taught to an employee very quickly, so it would definitely benefit us as well as the restaurant industry.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: Restaurants, particularly fast-food chains, have given strong support to the idea of a subminimum wage. McDonald's has quietly pushed for the idea in Washington. But not all of its competitors agree. Burger King's Charles Berle says the lowered wage level would not make much difference for his restaurants.

CHARLES BERLE, Burger King: We staff our restaurants based on the number of employees that it takes to service as our customers, and not on how much we pay them.

BRACKETT: So it wouldn't create jobs for you?

Mr. BERLE: It would not create jobs for us. It might create jobs in other aspects of the food industry, but a large organization like ours which is highly systematized would not materially add employees based on any lower minimum wage.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: Mayor Harold Washington agrees that the subminimum wage would not create the badly needed jobs for youths.

Mayor WASHINGTON: What it would purport to do it can't do. There is an assumption that by giving a subminimum wage you would create new jobs. But every pilot program that they've had didn't indicate that.

BRACKETT: Now, the administration says that 400,000 new jobs will be created. They've done surveys. Are those statistics just flatly wrong?

Mayor WASHINGTON: Absolutely wrong. The surveys -- I've seen the material. It's not adequately documented. They're highly speculative, the figures are spurious, and there's just no basic reason to believe that. It's all built upon a shell game. It's the wrong way to go with the wrong mindset, and it's a little late in the game to be trying to depress American wage earners, wages, It just doesn't make any sense.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: Teenagers looking for summer jobs don't think much of the subminimum wage either. These teens are working through federally funded job counselors in Chicago's largely hispanic neighborhood in an efjfort to land that elusive summer job. But they told reporter Bill Shebar they wanted to be paid as well as the rest of the workforce.

RITA GARCIA: You mean at $2.50? God, that's out of the question. I mean, you know, we can expect $3.35 an hour or $3.65, you know, because we're just as good as anyone else, you know. But $2.50? Us? We're no lower, man. Everybody's human, especially we us. We know what's going through pain and hard times. We know, we can speak about that, no matter how young we are. No, so that's -- $2.50 an hour.

BILL SHEBAR: Would you take a summer job for $2.50?

JOSE LEON: Well, if there wasn't anything else available I would take it, but you know, I would make certain that, you know -- I would let them know that I don't like that idea, you know, about $2.50, because, you know, it's just not the way it is, you know. The people, you know, they need money, you know, life is getting rough, you know, out there; expenses are getting pretty high. You know, it's hard to live, you know, on a low salary like that. It's pretty hard, you know, it's like living on the streets, almost.

BRACKETT: A better way to combat youth unemployment, say opponents of the subminimum wage, is to set up job preparation programs like this one in Chicago. This private, nonprofit group placed a thousand kids in jobs last year.

[voice-over] Agency coordinators say the key to their success is a two-year commitment to kids often called unemployable by others. Kids are required to attend a two-week job preparation course, then assigned their own job counselor. Counselors then match the young person's skills with those called for by the agency's participating businesses. Executive director John Connelly says this long-term approach is more effective in combating youth unemployment than just dropping the minimum wage.

JOHND. CONNELLY, Jobs for Youth: I work with two groups of people, young kids who want jobs who usually come from poor families, and businesses who want to run a business. And I know from the kids' perspective if you're paying him half of what the person next to him is getting, he's going to resent that. From the businessman's perspective, I know that the most important consideration is somebody who can do the job.

Mayor WASHINGTON: I urge the listening audience to not be carried away by the concept of a subminimum wage, but to really think in terms of how do you prepare our young people for a future economy which is going to call for the kinds of skills that many of them just don't have now.

HUNTER-GAULT: For more on the subminimum wage debate we have with us a key supporter and a major critic. Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, chairs the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources and is sponsoring the administration's minimum wage proposal in Congress. William Winpisinger heads the International Association of Machinists and is a vice president of the AFL-CIO.

First to you, Senator Hatch. How do you respond to Mayor Washington's charge that people shouldn't get carried away with this highly spurious shellgame?

Sen. ORRIN HATCH: Well, I was interested in the first part of this program because I thought it was highly one-sided. I'm not criticizing you, but to choose the one black mayor in America out of all the black mayors who support this -- you see, the National Council of Black Mayors supports the Youth Employment Opportunity Wage because they believe that we've got to give this opportunity to these young kids, give them a chance to get a job, give them a chance to have the self-esteem that comes from working, and give them some training so that they can make it. And almost every other black mayor in America is for this, so you picked the one mayor from the one city who literally is against it. For instance, Mayor Marion Berry here in Washington testified before our committee that although he feels that in Washington it's not that much of a problem, he feels that everywhere else in the country it is, and he's a strong supporter of giving this new approach an opportunity to work and see if we can't help our kids throughout our society.

HUNTER-GAULT: Are the Chicago businessmen atypical as well? I mean, those who said in the tape piece that this just wouldn't create new jobs.

Sen. HATCH: Well, again you picked one industry that is notorious because it's a specialized industry that may not be able to create new jobs for kids. But 50 of almost all small businesss say that they'll create at least one if not more new jobs for kids. The economists who have testified before the labor committee which I chair have ,indicated that we would have between 300,000 and 600,000 new jobs for kids that presently don't exist, and that that might be a way of solving this 19 youth unemployment problem across the board -- 43 of young black kids, almost 23 of young hispanic kids. And you know, to a kid who can't get a job because it isn't available, you know, I think they'd be willing to work. I had a young black kid come to me not too long ago and he said, "Senator," he said, "Look," he said, "I don't care if I get paid anything, just give me a job. Give me a chance. Train me. Let me know." He said, "Then I'll make more than the minimum wage." He had the right attitude. Not all kids do. But there are a lot of kids out there who'd give anything for a job, just like that young hispanic boy in your early part of the program. He said, "If that's all that's available, I'll sure take it." Well, we want to create some jobs.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I want to help restore what you perceive to be an imbalance here, because then there was the young woman in there who said that she couldn't work for that amount of money, the subminimum wage. Do you think she is atypical as well?

Sen. HATCH: Well, she looked to me as a young girl who's fairly well educated, who probably could get out and make the minimum wage or more. We're talking about kids that'll never have an opportunity unless somebody creates those jobs for them.

HUNTER-GAULT: Why? Are these kids not -- why is that?

Sen. HATCH: Well, kids that either haven't had as much education, haven't had any skills, are living in poverty-stricken areas or who otherwise would not have an opportunity. And there are 19 of them across the board. And like I say, it's one of the great tragedies of our society that 43 of our young black kids are unemployed and a great percentage of them will never get jobs because we're unwilling to try some new ideas. Now, if this idea doesn't work, let's get rid of it. But let's give it a chance. It's not going to cost the taxpayers anything. Let's give a chance to it.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right. Mr. Winpisinger, you've heard Senator Hatch respond to three of the major criticisms. What's your response? Are you persuaded, or are you still dubious, skeptical or totally antagonistic?

WILLIAM WINPISINGER: Oh, I'm totally antagonistic, quite clearly, because I agree totally with the statements made by Mayor Washington. Because I think he hits the nail precisely on the head based on a long experience in government both in the federal government and now at the local level, and he's seen the problem from beginning to end and he knows that this is not the solution. The minimum wage as we know it today, pegged back in the late 1970s at $2.65 an hour by the Congress after extensive hearings, after a real hard look at American society, youth, joblessness and all the rest of it, and it has inched its way up in small increments to the current $3.35 an hour, and that's up 26 . Meanwhile, inflation and other monetary factors, other things that work in the country, has caused the cost of living to rise by 56 in the same time period. And right today anyone who was working in 1978 at the $2.65 level, to preserve what they had then would have to have $4.14 an hour with a job right today.

HUNTER-GAULT: So your major objection to the subminimum wage is?

Mr. WINPISINGER: Major objection is that it's unnecessary, it isn't going to solve the problem. I see no empirical evidence that it will create these new jobs that I keep hearing about it all the time. And the principal reservoir for those kinds of jobs are people whom you have interviewed and displayed a few moments ago who tell you it isn't going to do it. I accept their word for that.

HUNTER-GAULT: What is the evidence, Senator?

Sen. HATCH: Well, in front of our hearing, our committee, Senator Kennedy brought economists in a few years back, I brought economists in, and even his economists admitted that it would probably create around 300,000 new jobs. Ours feel that it would create between 400,000 and 600,000 new jobs. My contention is if it creates only 50,000 to 100,000 jobs it's worth trying because it doesn't cost the taxpayers; it's a chance to give these kids a chance. And look, don't cite Mayor Washington to me. We're old friends; we appeared on this program together. He's a liberal Democrat. He was a liberal Democrat congressman; he has taken the union line on this particular thing, and he's never been willing to give this a chance. But all the other black mayors are. They say let's do something, let's try.

Mr. WINPISINGER: I'm not willing to accept that notion that that's the union line. I think that's an intelligent American citizen line.

Sen. HATCH: Of course it is.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right, but let me ask you about the Senator's point. The Conference of Black Mayors did say that a $2.50 job is better than no job at all, given the enormous nature of the problem.

Mr. WINPISINGER: That is what I resent the most, because even slaves had jobs. Jobs aren't the issue. It's the kind of conditions under which you work, what the remuneration for that work is. Does the pay equate with the job you're doing? And obviously with a $2.50 subminimum it will not.

Sen. HATCH: That's a lousy argument.

Mr. WINPISINGER: No matter what you do. And all the societal --

Sen. HATCH: Even slaves --

Mr. WINPISINGER: -- impacts that go with it.

Sen. HATCH: Come on.

Mr. WINPISINGER: Mothers and fathers lose jobs because the same boss that employed them can get rid of them and employ their children for $2.50.

HUNTER-GAULT: That is a major point. Senator, how do you respond?

Mr. WINPISINGER: That doesn't get young black kids out of poverty; that keeps them in it. They're locked in it at $2.50.

Sen. HATCH: So let's just write all these kids off and let's just not provide any opportunities. We no longer have ushers at theaters, we no longer have car washers, we no longer have bag boys and --

Mr. WINPISINGER: Your administration cut every program that was working on this problem.

Sen. HATCH: Oh, come on.

Mr. WINPISINGER: You voted for every one of them to be cut, that eroded this problem.

Sen. HATCH: Oh, come on. Hey, let me tell you something. I'm the author of a Job Training Partnership Act. That bill is a $4 billion bill contrasted to your $10 billion bill.

HUNTER-GAULT: Okay, but that's another whole discussion.

Sen. HATCH: We get an extra billion dollars in work. We've been doing a lot of things that are putting people to work. And this is another one that would if you give it a chance. Give it a chance.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right, let me ask -- [crosstalk] Let me ask you one quick question because we may run out of time. And I'd like to know, if you don't like Senator Hatch's proposal, what would you propose instead?

Mr. WINPISINGER: I would propose keeping in place a number of the programs that went to work a few years ago to erode this skilled -- the lack of a skill base that we have, to improve the educational system so that our children come out of the schools irrespective of race, color, creed, national origins or anything else, equipped to go to work and go to work at pay rates that'll keep them somewhere above the poverty level, which is a lot more even than $3.35 today, and not rivet them as slaves into a system that's going to imprison them in poverty for as long as they have to stay there.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right. Now, what's wrong with that?

Sen. HATCH: Well, he's saying sock the taxpayers. CETA was $10 billion; only $1.8 billion went for actual job training.

HUNTER-GAULT: That's the former job training program.

Sen. HATCH: Job Training is $4 billion and $2.8 billion goes for actual job training. We've created a million jobs in the private sector. They created makework jobs in the public sector. It didn't work, and those kids all left those jobs afterwards. What we want to do is put kids to work, give them a chance, train them to do something.

Mr. WINPISINGER: It's all right to sock taxpayers, to give it to employers who could create the jobs --

Sen. HATCH: Oh, come on.

Mr. WINPISINGER: -- with the gifts that they've gotten from this administration and from these conservative Republicans. And let me give you an example. This is important. When you go to produce something in this world, it takes capital, it takes labor and it takes physical plant and equipment.

Sen. HATCH: Well, he's right about that.

Mr. WINPISINGER: Then why is it every time we go to solve a problem we have to bait labor, beat labor down? Nobody ever says, let's give them a break on interest rates so that they can borrow capital and create jobs.

Sen. HATCH: Nobody's being labor down. Nobody's doing that. What we're saying is, look --

Mr. WINPISINGER: Well, how about lowering interest rates, how about your administration getting ofjf of some of these things that keep interest rates sky high?

HUNTER-GAULT: How about -- we've got 15 seconds left, and I want to know what's the harm in at least trying this one summer to see what happens?

Mr. WINPISINGER: Because the same kid who earned $3.35 last summer is going to go out and have to do the same job this summer for $2.50 --

Sen. HATCH: Oh, that's not true.

Mr. WINPISINGER: And there's no advancement to that, there's no incentive to do that, and there's no result that's good that'll come from it.

Sen. HATCH: Under the bill they would have fines and sanctions against them if youth lost any jobs or adults lost any jobs. No, what this does is create more and more jobs, to give kids more and more opportunity to get them into the workforce, the self-esteem and everything else of worth.

Mr. WINPISINGER: To stay in poverty.

Sen. HATCH: Oh, come on. They'll be in poverty without it. We want to get them out of poverty.

HUNTER-GAULT: We're going to be ofjf the air if we don't say thank you to both of you, Senator Hatch and Mr. Winpisinger, for being with us. Tornado Aftermath: Picking Up the Pieces

MacNEIL: It was a week ago tonight that savage tornadoes ripped through Pennsylvania, Ohio and the Canadian province of Ontario, killing 88 people. Today meteorologists examining the damage estimated that the tornadoes bore freak winds of up to 300 miles an hour. For the past few days Kwame Holman has been watching how some of the people who survived are coping with their shattered lives. He reports from Albion, Pennsylvania.

KWAME HOLMAN [voice-over]: An average street in Albion, a modest working-class village in the northwest corner of Pennsylvania. Last Friday, in less than a minute, half the homes in Albion were transformed from this to this. The deadliest tornado outbreak in Pennsylvania history struck with frightening speed and force. The violent winds ripped siding from homes, wallpaper from walls, carpets from floors, before reducing most structures to piles of debris. Twelve died in Albion. This week the TV cameras and reporters are all but gone, but the for the surviving victims of the tornado, the shocking reality of what's happened to their lives and the prospect of trying to rebuild are just sinking in.

BETTY PANKO: I wasn't going to come back again. I came the other night and I said this is it, I'm not coming back again.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Betty Panko survived by huddling in her basement. Her husband, Zip, was caught outdoors. He injured his arm but saved his life by clinging to a gas pipe.

Ms. PANKO: I was in at the hospital with him and I said, "Well, I've got to go home." I didn't say anything to him, but I thought, "Whatdo you mean you've got to go home? There isn't even home."

SUSAN LARSEN: Each day we find, you know, a few things that if they're not ours, then we try to return them to who they belong to.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Five days after the disaster, the people of Albion were still drawn to these demolished homes. They poked through the rubble hoping to find one more remnant of their former lives.

Ms. LARSEN: Each day I just -- it just sucks you right back here, it does, just to find one or two things that were yours.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Susan Larsen grew up in Albion. She and her husband were close to paying off the mortgage on their dream home here. Now, like Betty Panko, she is trying to come to grips with losing almost everything her family owned.

Ms. LARSEN: I should be doing -- like, my husband's found some, like, wet laundry and stuff. I should be doing that. I should be figuring out, you know, more of my paperwork. But I thought, well, we'll go dig a little more.

Ms. PANKO: I can't tell you how I feel. The material things don't matter, because we're both here. Our house and all our cars and garage and everything is gone, but that's okay.

HOLMAN: Still, they must have meant a lot to you, all the things here.

Ms. PANKO: Thirty years of -- this is -- our whole life was here. We've lived here for 30 years. And everything is -- means so much to you, and--

HOLMAN [on camera]: Most victims have salvaged what they could from the rubble. So what is next for these residents of Albion? Many say they want to start putting their lives back together. But there is so much to be done and so little of it that can be done right away that even the planning process is filled with frustration and uncertainty.

Ms. LARSEN: It's like picking up bits and pieces of your life here and there and everywhere. You don't even know what you have. You pass someone on the street and they -- you say, "Here's one of your receipts." In our life before Friday there was always a place for everything and everything was in its place. It was that simple. Once I got the family organized, here with our clothes, get my paperwork and my thoughts, then we'll know where we'll stand financially, how long maybe we'll stay here.

It's almost like a race. You were so far in a race, and something blew you back. And you're hurrying to get back to where you were.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Since the tornado, Susan Larsen and her family have been living with her in-laws. She has tried to keep herself busy, not only organizing the family paperwork, but sorting through donated clothes and mending the clothes given by friends. But still she feels she isn't doing enough.

Ms. LARSEN: I hated to go to sleep because I know there's so many things to do before we get our life back in order, and I know the more work that I do daily will bring us that much closer to getting into a home of our own again. It's almost as though I'm guilty: why can't you be going longer than you're going?

HOLMAN [voice-over]: But it will be days or weeks before lots are cleared, insurance claims are complete and final decisions are made on whether to rebuild here or elsewhere. The tornado survivors of Albion admit their frenzy of activity mostly helps keep spirits up and minds ofjf the storm and what their lives were before it. For the injured, like Betty Panko's husband, Zip, there can be no chores to occupy time. His thoughts return to the disaster.

ZIP PANKO: Last night when the fire siren blew, I started reliving it again. It's just -- you -- that's what I mean about psychologicaleffects. Somewhere along the line it's going to bother you to a certain extent.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Though Zip Panko and his wife are forced to live temporarily in a small house with their daughter's family, they are determined not to become depressed.

[interviewing] So you don't allow any frustration or depression to creep in?

Mr. PANKO: No, I don't think you dare to.

Ms. LARSEN: I'm doing fine.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: The Larsens also are wary of the potential for depression. For Susan's husband, Michael, one way to combat it was to avoid returning to his demolished home.

MICHAEL LARSEN: If I don't have the physical reminders I can drop it.

HOLMAN: The house isn't there anymore, so --

Mr. LARSEN: Close your mind and keep going.

HOLMAN: Do you have to do that to --

Mr. LARSEN: I do.

HOLMAN: Yeah.

Mr. LARSEN: Yeah, I was brought up in a macho world. Men don't cry and, you know, stuff like that.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: But the women of the families seem to recognize that there will be an emotional reckoning sometime in the future.

Ms. LARSEN: But sometimes a change, it takes a while to accept change, it's so devastating. It really is. I don't know.

Ms. PANKO: I'm trying to make everybody else feel better. Either I do or not, you know. I try to make my mother and everybody feel like it's okay. Maybe it isn't okay, I don't know.

MacNEIL: Good night, Charlayne.

HUNTER-GAULT: Good night, Robin. That's our NewsHour for tonight. Have a good weekend. I'm Charlayne Hunter-Gault. Thank you and good night.