The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

INTRO

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. Here are the day's top stories. Washington is reported encouraged by a Moscow proposal for high-level talks. The Federal Reserve Board lowered the discount rate as factory orders dropped sharply.The death toll in Mexico City's explosions is now 334 and may go higher. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: After we summarize the news of the day, reporter Lyle Denniston will summarize General Westmoreland's week as a witness. Then we'll have a major focus segment on the problems of the homeless, those Americans who live on and off the streets of this country, and a debate over what can and should be done about them. And, finally, Kwame Holman has a holiday update on all those crowds of airplanes in the skies.

MacNEIL: Soviet President Cherneko has reportedly proposed a meeting early next year between Secretary of State Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko. U.S. officials said the message was delivered to the State Department last Saturday and has been enthusiastically received by the Reagan administration. Moscow and Washington are now discussing an agenda and place, which could be Moscow. An administration official told the Associated Press that the message was truly encouraging. While unnamed officials discussed the proposal in dealt with the AP and The New York Times, the administration refused to confirm on the record that it had been received at all. The talk at the State Department was not cooperation but lies. Washington says Moscow is still telling the world's press that the U.S. was involved in the assassination of Indira Ghandi. Spokesman Alan Romberg made this protest.

ALAN ROMBERG, State Department spokesman: Despite our denials, the allegations have continued and provide a case study, in fact, of how the Soviets attempt to manipulate public opinion through an active acmpaign of disinformation. And we'd note that legitimate papers and journals can unwittingly become caught up in such campaigns, even though they cite the Soviet source of the allegations and question their veracity.

MacNEIL: The authoritative British magazine Jane's Defense Weekly reported today that the Soviet freighter which caused the MIG scare in Nicaragua did unload a cargo believed to be MIGs in Libya. The freighter, the Bakuryani, loaded the type of crates used for MIG fusillages in the Soviet port in October and was observed unloading similar crates for Libya before crossing the Atlantic to Nicaragua.

Jim?

LEHRER: Here at home the Federal Reserve Board this afternoon provided some pre-Thanksgiving good news. It lowered the interest rate it charges its member banks to 8 1/2%. Analysts say the half-point drop will reverberate well throughout the economy.

Also today the Commerce Department reported the consumer price index grew just 0.4% last month, a signal of little inflation through the new year. But orders for durable goods dropped 4.1% in October. Government economists say the decline was felt across the board.

And, on a subject that has become big news in recent weeks, efforts to aid the world's hungry, there was some pre-Thanksgiving criticism today of U.S. and international relief efforts. The critic was Senator John Melcher, Democrat of Montana.

Sen. JOHN MELCHER, (D) Montana: We have 1.3 billion pounds -- that's billion pounds -- of dry powdered milk, almost a billion pounds of cheese; in wheat we have 300 million bushels. I don't know why on this Thanksgiving we're sitting on mountains of food that is available here in the United States and not sharing that with the malnourished and hungry both here in our own country and particularly the millions abroad.

LEHRER: Melcher said the United States has more than a humanitarian reason for sharing its food wealth. Trade follows aid, all of which would help the U.S. farm economy, he said. Robin?

MacNEIL: The government of Ethiopia was also accused today of withholding food relief from the people of Eritrea who oppose the central government. In Washington, Paulos Giorgis, the chairman of the Eritrean Relief Organization, charged that aid intended for the people is not getting through because Ethiopia is using food as a political weapon against its own people. The Ethiopian Embassy denied the charge.

On the ground in Ethiopia the Soviet presence in the international relief effort is becoming more apparent. Brian Stewart of the CBC reports.

BRIAN STEWART, CBC [voice-over]: The famine has so devastated northern Ethiopia, the crowds of hungry are growing so fast, that large numbers are now being permanently evacuated. Neither the land nor relief agencies can support the estimated six million people believed to be in peril. The first airlift of famine refugees to the south began at Kally [?] in Tigre Province. The operation was conducted entirely with Soviet planes, at least seven large Antonov cargo carriers. The refugees crammed into cargo holds were the first batch of 8,000 now being moved south. Ethiopia hopes to eventually move 250,000 to more fertile resettlement areas, one of the largest planned evacuations in African history. This first airlift was conducted hurriedly and under tight security. Evacuees were shepherded aboard by armed guards. Government troops were seen moving into defensive positions around the airstrip perimeter. In the hills beyond, Tigrean separatist rebels maintained a tenuous ceasefire around relief operations. But it's not known for sure whether they'll permit evacuations. The Soviets' presence here has been boosted recently, perhaps in reaction to the regular arrival of British and private U.S. Hercules relief flights. Six Soviet military helicopters have started moving supplies into countryside stations, an operation thought too risky only a few weeks ago. Some relief agencies fear the operation has been rushed too quickly, but most seem to feel there's simply no alternative. The numbers must be thinned out.

MacNEIL: In Mexico City, 275 unidentified victims of Monday's gas explosions and fire were buried in a mass grave on a hillside near their devastated neighborhood. The official death toll in the catastrophe now stands at 334, but is unofficially more than 350. The afflicted area was still closed to survivors today to permit fumigation and to stop looting. A long line of ambulances bore the bodies to the burial site, on the hillside not far from the neighborhood where the victims died. The timing of the funeral was moved up because of the risk of infection, and that cut off efforts to identify the remains of some of the dead. A huge mass grave was scooped out by a bulldozer on the hillside, and there the coffins, some made of metal and some of wood, were stacked in rows and layers. In the meantime the government promised to provide financial assistance to the survivors, including the 10,000 people who've been left homeless. The initial amount was put at $20 million. One Mexico City newspaper reported that two previous explosions had occurred in the liquid propane gas facility where the disaster occurred on Monday. The newspaper said residents of the area reported both of the earlier explosions, but nothing was done and the residents of the stricken area were too poor to move away.

Israeli troops opened fire at a crowd of demonstrating Palestinian students on the occupied West Bank today. One student was reported killed and six wounded. The incident took place at Bir Zeit University outside Ramallah. Israeli military sources said an army officer was hit on the head by a stone before the shooting. Others, including an NBC reporter, said they saw the troops open fire without warning.

Meanwhile, Israeli and Lebanese negotiators held another round of talks on the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon. A communique mentioned no progress.

Jim?

LEHRER: In the two big New York libel trials today, former Israeli defense minister Ariel Sharon denied he knew Phalangist militiamen were out to massacre Palestinian refugees when he approved their entering the Beirut camps two years ago. Time magazine lawyers cross-examining Sharon today attempted to prove otherwise. Sharon has sued Time for $50 million for saying he did know. In the other case, General William Westmoreland had another stormy day of cross examination from a CBS lawyer in their struggle over Westmoreland's $120-million libel suit. Our favorite court reporter, Lyle Denniston of the Baltimore Sun, will update us on the Westmoreland trial later in the program.

Robin?

MacNEIL: In Lake Buena Vista, Florida, three persons were killed and two were injured when a single-engine plane crashed into the parking lot at Epcot Center, the newest addition to Walt Disney World. The pilot apparently was trying to make an emergency landing in the parking lot, but one of the wings hit a light pole. The plane crashed amid several parked cars which were empty, so no one on the ground was hurt. The plane was headed for a nearby airport carrying five people. The two adults and one of three children aboard were killed, and the other two children survived. Federal officials are investigating.

In this week's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, a medical researcher reports finding a drug that might be the first effective treatment for premenstrual syndrome. Dr. Ken Muse wrote that the drug could have side effects, including brittle bones and an increased risk of cancer of the uterus, but he said some women may be willing to take the drug anyway to escape the headaches, fatigue, bloating and changes of mood that millions suffer during the monthly cycle.

Jim?

LEHRER: Our final news summary item is from the Smithsonian Institution. Yesterday it made headlines by accepting Mr. Rogers' red sweater. Today it took possession of a yellow diamond. It's the largest uncut diamond in the world -- 890 carats, the size of a lemon, worth unknown millions. Zales Jewellers in Dallas own it, but they won't say what it's worth or where it came from except that it was somewhere in Africa. Zales says it plans to cut and polish it over the next 18 months, and when that's done it will be the largest polished diamond in the world. But it will stay at the Smithsonian, so it's not for sale. Sorry. Westmoreland: On the Stand

MacNEIL: As we reported a moment ago, General William Westmoreland was on the witness stand again today in his $120-million libel suit against CBS, and that'll be the subject of our first focus section tonight by Judy Woodruff. Judy?

JUDY WOODRUFF: Robin, General Westmoreland has been on the witness stand for five days now. Late yesterday and all day today the trial has been devoted to cross-examination by the attorney for CBS, David Boies. Yesterday the general said he was humiliated by the CBS documentary which is the focus of the libel suit. The questioning by Boies today centered on a meeting which took place in May, 1967, at which Westmoreland was told that enemy troops strengths were much higher -- greater, that is, than had been estimated. The journalist covering the trial whom we have asked to bring us up to date on it is Lyle Denniston, legal reporter for the Baltimore Sun.

Lyle, it looks as if we've had some fireworks finally in this trial.

LYLE DENNISTON: Well, one could say today, I think, Judy, that the civility went out of the case for the first time in the seven weeks. I think this was as close as you come in a trial to street fighting, or, if you will, hand-to-hand combat. The general and Mr. Boies went at it throughout the day, a full three hours of testimony in which each was holding his own pretty well and coming at the other one very hard.

WOODRUFF: Well, tell us about this whole question of estimating enemy troop strength, which, as we said, is the heart of the debate here.

Mr. DENNISTON: Well, the theme of the CBS documentary two years ago in January was that the intelligence officers working for General Westmoreland had come up with much higher estimates of the non-military forces -- that's the guerrillas and the defenders -- and the general was really troubled about that because this came up at the very time that he was trying to get more troops back home, and he was getting more troops, he hoped, on the premise that we were winning the war, and so "just give me a few more and we will finish the job." So he encountered this report by his intelligence officer saying, "Oh, my, we can't possibly report that back home. It won't be understood. The press will misread it and come to erroneous conclusions, and the antiwar movement will be strengthened." The key reading in all that was an encounter that he had with General Joe McChristian, who was then his intelligence chief, at which General McChristian said there are double the number of non-military forces out there, and the general supposedly said something to the effect that we cannot report that back because it would cause, according to General McChristian's statement, a political bombshell. According to Mr. Westmoreland's statement it would cause political repercussions.

WOODRUFF: So what did Westmoreland say today about the meeting, about what took place?

Mr. DENNISTON: Well, he tried to dismiss the meeting as inconsequential, and in fact he said it was so inconsequential to him that he did not even record it in his diary. But then Mr. Boies had brought out the general had put in his diary, his historical diary, such things as the fact that he met with his nephew, who was in Vietnam on military duty; he had advised a traveling congressional aide who had a cold to see the general surgeon -- that kind of minutia was put in, why didn't the general put in the material about his meeting with General McChristian?Then, of course, the general's response again was that "I just don't regard it as an important meeting." He's trying really, I think, to demonstrate to the jury that he was above this conflict that was going on between the CIA and his military intelligence officers over just how to estimate the enemy strength.

WOODRUFF: But Boies, the CBS lawyer now, is trying to bring out some contradictions, I gather, between what Westmoreland is saying now and what he said --

Mr. DENNISTON: Yes, and he succeeded in doing that today, Judy. For example, in contradiction to the general's argument that this was inconsequential, at other points the general has said that this was a matter of tremendous importance because it would in fact mislead the media and mislead in fact the leadership back home, including, presumably, the White House.

WOODRUFF: How critical is that meeting? Is that going to be the crux around which the trial --

Mr. DENNISTON: Well, I think you'll have to wait and see how General McChristian does when he is called to testify by Mr. Boies. Because, you see, one of the advantages that the general, General Westmoreland has at this point is that he's a very credible witness. He looks like a hero figure; he acts like a very stable and solid citizen. And he's got a long and very distinguished military record. When General McChristian comes and gives a very directly contradictory story, we are going to see another man with a similarly distinguished record. It'll become then a question of how the jury wishes, if it will, then, to choose up sides between two men who are essentially national heroes.

WOODRUFF: Well, how would you say Westmoreland is doing so far? Do you think he's helping himself, or is it just too early to say?

Mr. DENNISTON: I had the impression yesterday that the general was not particularly helping himself, because yesterday he lost his military bearing, he was nervous, he seemed wary, he was hesitant. He seemed combative when he didn't need to be. Today I think he was more back in his own element. He was kind of the take-charge commander. He used some things that some might consider almost near-profanity. He offered a couple of four-letter words, and he was acting very much the military commander on the scene. And my first impression was I wonder whether or not that will go over well with the jury, but I think it may, because the general was really behaving like himself today. And, by the way, fortuitously I just ran into his lawyer coming back to Washington, and his lawyer was very pleased with his performance today and said, "I thought the general was himself today," and was pleased about his performance.

WOODRUFF: But a lot is hinging on the extent to which Boies can get under Westmoreland's skin, right?

Mr. DENNISTON: Yes, and I think it's important to remember that however the jury reacts to this, Mr. Boies is also playing to the judge, Judge Pierre Leval, because at the end of the case, even if a verdict comes in in favor of CBS from the jury, then CBS is going to ask the judge to throw out that verdict and rule in favor of CBS on the theory that the libel just was not proved by the general. So much of the kind of refined questioning that Boies is doing now and will continue to do, not only during cross-examination but when Mr. Boies' case comes on, in about another three or four weeks, really seems to be aimed at the judge on a much higher and sophisticated level.

WOODRUFF: Who would you say so far is coming off better in all of this? Although I know it's early.

Mr. DENNISTON: Well, I think it's very common to conclude, when one side is still in control of the case. And remember, we are still, even after seven weeks, only focusing on General Westmoreland's case. I think it looks as if they're doing very well with it.

WOODRUFF: Westmoreland?

Mr. DENNISTON: Westmoreland is doing very well it. It also had the impression today, however, that if Mr. Boies can kind of keep his temper under control, because it was obvious that repeatedly he was straining, and he could not, in fact, avoid a couple of utterances of pure sarcasm today. If he can keep that under control and doesn't mistreat the general, who I think is a sympathetic figure, then I think Boies is a very clever lawyer and is going to be able to do quite well when his side of the case comes out.

WOODRUFF: Can you lay out for us quickly what we can expect to come next in the trial? McChristian's --

Mr. DENNISTON: I think what will happen -- no, General McChristian probably will not appear until after Mr. Boies' turn comes. What we're going to have to do if the next, I think, three weeks or so will be the CBS witnesses. Now they're going to show what Mr. Burt, General Westmoreland's lawyer, says is the bad way in which this program was edited, the way the witness testimony was -- or the interviewees, comments were twisted, turned and distorted. In other words, what we're now gong to see for three weeks is a lot of CBS witnesses, presumably including Mike Wallace, the correspondent, and George Crile, the producer, testifying under very rigorous and difficult questioning by Mr. Burt to make the point that these people just did a bad job of putting this story together on television so that it came out worse for the general than the story was in reality.

WOODRUFF: So a lot of interesting material yet to go.

Mr. DENNISTON: Yeah, and then they will take --

WOODRUFF: I'm sure we will have you back to conclude.

Mr. DENNISTON: Thank you very much for having me.

WOODRUFF: Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Still to come tonight on the NewsHour, a major issue-and-debate focus segment on the homeless people of America and what should be done about them, and a Kwame Holman report on how things are going up there in the crowded skies among the crowded airliners. A Street is Not a Home

MacNEIL: Our major focus section tonight concerns a problem that is evident in just about every city in the country -- the people who have no homes. The estimates of how many homeless Americans there are range from 300,000 to three million, but all authorities agree that the number is growing, and as it grows so does the moral and political dilemma for federal agencies, state and local governments and private charities. It also becomes more of a political football. Tonight we look at some of the questions and answers, but first, correspondent June Massell looks at the plight of the homeless in just one city, Philadelphia.

JUNE MASSELL [voice-over]: Thirtieth Street Station, Philadelphia, late at night. The thousands of commuters who pass through here each day have all gone home. There are still people waiting, but not to get on trains. These are people with no homes to go to. They come here seeking shelter from the cold. Chris Sprowal, an activist fighting for the rights of homeless people, also comes. One night a week, he and Sister Mary Scullion bring sandwiches, hot coffee and words of encouragement.

CHRIS SPROWAL, Dignity Shelter: Yeah, fine, you come down and eat breakfast with us. Okay? I'll be looking for you now.

MASSELL [voice-over]: Sprowal and Sister Mary recently won a battle with Amtrak and the city to allow these people to stay in the station until the city can find shelter for them.

Mr. SPROWAL: Well, right now you'll find anywhere from 50 to over 100 people staying in the 30th Street Station. The 30th Street station, for some people, is the most secure place in the city of Philadelphia to go. There are plenty of police around, so women aren't sexually harassed, men aren't mugged or preyed upon. They're able -- there's heat there, and it's open so they don't have to worry about security or anyone bothering them.

MASSELL [voice-over]: Sprowal has been working with the homeless full time for almost ayear. A college graduate with a degree in political science, Sprowal has been a labor and civil rights organizer and an independent businessman. But his concern for the homeless stems from his own experience. When his business failed, Sprowal became one of them.

Mr. SPROWAL: If someone had ever told me that I would be penniless, hungry, cold and on the streets literally begging for food and a place to stay, I would have thought they were crazy.

MASSELL [voice-over]: Sprowal spent two years on the streets, living part of the time in abandoned buildings and part of the time in a city-run shelter. His main concerns were the concerns of all the homeless people -- warmth and food.

Mr. SPROWAL: When I was homeless I spent a great part of my day in the courtrooms listening to trials, but I was -- it was a place I could get heat, where I was warm at. I used to be over at City Hall West Plaza and late some nights, hungry, and I used to see these nuns coming through there late at night giving out sandwiches. I used to think something was wrong with them. And I got to know Sister Mary and Sister Clare, and they're the ones who started to give us the inspiration, the push and the drive and the believing again that we were someone and that we could do something about our situation.

Mr. SPROWAL: You didn't get a sandwich.

MASSELL [voice-over]: The city estimates that there are close to 2,300 homeless on Philadelphia's streets each night. City-run shelters provide beds for only 1,300; the rest make do as best they can -- from cardboard huts to sidewalk steam vents. These are the stereotyped homeless, often referred to as bums, bag ladies and winos. According to a city study, alcoholics make up 15% of the city's homeless, the mentally ill 25%. But they are just part of the picture; the remainder, the less visible, are people who simply don't have enough money to afford housing.

Mr. SPROWAL: Have a good meal, enjoy your night, be ready for struggle tomorrow morning.

MASSELL [voice-over]: A year ago Sprowal gathered his energy and strength and old political skills together and obtained a city grant to open up a private shelter called the Committee for Dignity and Fairness for the Homeless. It provides counseling and a temporary home for many different kinds of homeless people.

Mr. SPROWAL: There are battered women who have fled abusive situations and who would rather live on the street or from shelter to shelter rather than live in danger of their lives anymore. They're young people who have been raised in the child welfare system, and who will reach 18 years of age and have been literally put out into the streets. There are workers who have lost their jobs, who've exhausted their unemployment benefits, welfare benefits --

MASSELL [voice-over]: They are people who have nowhere else to turn. They either have no families or have been rejected by their families. For example, Army veteran Patricia Flowers and her three young daughters. A single parent, she was counting on veterans, benefits to help pay for an apartment, but her paperwork was lost and her benefit checks delayed.

PATRICIA FLOWERS: I have done just about everything I can think of to alleviate this situation. I didn't plan to be homeless when I came here. My relatives, they just don't have time for me. They -- it's been expressed to me that they have their own lives to live and they have things that they want to do with their time, and that I'm an intrusion.

MASSELL [voice-over]: Pat Reed was a truckdriver and president of an AFL-CIO local in Bucks County, but he spent the last five years homeless and without steady work.

PAT REED: If you don't have an address in this city, you don't get a job. You cannot get a job in this city. And if you give a shelter as an address, nobody wants you. You're a vagrant, you're a bum, you're an alcoholic, you're a nobody.

MASSELL [voice-over]: Louis Morton thought he had it made. A graduate of an Ivy League university, he is now unemployed, looking for work and homeless since August.

LOUIS MORTON: -- survived. On what have I been surviving? Odds and ends jobs where it could be found, sleeping in old buses, sleeping in cars, bathing where you could bathe, washing your clothes where you could wash them, drying them where you could dry them, at a friend's house, relatives' houses, public bathrooms, etc., whatever you could to survive.

MASSELL [voice-over]: Sprowal's Dignity Shelter provides a place to sleep for about 100 people a night. Sprowal says his shelter is more sensitive to the needs of the homeless than public shelters because most of his staff have been homeless themselves. They know that even hardworking, educated people can end up on the streets.

Mr. SPROWAL: It's no longer the little old bag lady or it's no longer the mentally ill. I can say to myself that I got fantastic grades or skills. I'm in the prime of my life, and if this could happen to me, what could happen to other people?

LEHRER: That report by June Massell. There are varied opinions on how many homeless Americans there are, on who they are and how they got that way, and on who is responsible for solving their problems, among other things. We sample some of that variety now, first with the official in Washington most in charge of finding solutions. Dr. Harvey Vieth, director of the Office of Community Services at the Department of Health and Human Services and head of a federal task force on the homeless, and with the mayor of a major U.S. city, Mayor Federico Pena of Denver, Colorado, who is with us tonight from our studios in Denver.

First to you, Mayor. Who are the people in Denver who are homeless?

Mayor FEDERICO PENA: Well, that's the difficulty. The people who are homeless is a very complex population. There are some people who have chronically mentally ill problems. There are people who are simply unemployed. There are people who are hungry. There are seniors, who are a growing part of the homeless population.And so what makes this problem so difficult is that we're not dealing with a homogeneous group. It is a very complex population, and that's why we need, I think, a very diverse and flexible response to trying to deal with the problem of homelessness.

LEHRER: Dr. Vieth, did you have any figures nationally how it breaks down? June said in her report that it was 15% alcoholics, 25% mentally ill, and the rest all kinds of things. Is that correct?

HARVEY VIETH: I think that's right. We find that about 30%, about a third, would have mentally ill problems. And the de-institutionalization that's been going on for the last 20 years has been a big factor, and we found that there has been 600,000 beds about 15 years ago, and now there are 125,000 beds --

LEHRER: That's the mentally ill who've been let out.

Dr. VIETH: Yes. So they've been de-institutionalized and now they've gone into the streets and we haven't really seen that the money has followed them from the state mental institutions, or whatever the situation would be. So they're in the streets and they don't have access, many times, to the drugs that they're supposed to be able to take to keep them in a position they can take care of themselves.

LEHRER: How do you explain, as Robin said at the very beginning, the estimates range nationally between 300,000 and three million. That's an amazing gap.What is the figure?

Dr. VIETH: Well, I yhink it's a real problem. The HUD report that a lot of people are talking about, and some people say it's controversial, says there are 350,000. Now, that's 350,000 on any given night, where a person is not necessarily homeless for a whole year. In fact, most people are not homeless for the whole year, so that number could be multiplied times three or four. We could be talking about, even in that report, a million people who could be affected by homelessness within a year. Now, the other figure, the two- to three-million figure, I haven't seen really any data or any scientific data. That's a number that, you know, that the coalition has been using, saying that that many people are homeless.

LEHRER: Mayor Pena, what are the numbers -- can you shed any light on the numbers question from your perspective in Denver?

Mayor PENA: Yes, I can, and I think Denver's example is typical of major cities across the country. We have a little under 1,000 beds in Denver through the help of many different resources. And we know that during very harsh, cold days every one of those beds is full. And, in addition to that, we have people sleeping on floors, in hallways, etc., so our estimate is that we have a population of somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 people who are homeless. I'm talking about people who are in bus shelters, in public facilities of one sort or another. We in Denver can't estimate precisely how many we have, but you can see that we know it's somewhere between 900 and 2,000, and that's the problem I think with the national figures, and that's what makes it very difficult. Let me add one thing about the new kind of people we have in Denver. We have people who are coming to Colorado looking for employment. They come with families, they have children. These are not people who have mental illness. They're a new kind of people who are homeless, and they are unemployed. They are looking for work, and we have to find facilities for them, too. That makes it very complex.

LEHRER: Mayor, is the problem growing? Is it capping now, now that the recession is over? What's happening?

Mayor PENA: No, the problem is growing. Every one of the studies that the Conference of Mayors has conducted indicates that 71% of the cities last year, in '84, indicated an increasing problem with a larger number next year.That is our problem in Denver. The number we estimated last year is going to grow in 1985, and that is in a city which is in a very relatively strong state economically. We're in the Sun Belt. I can only imagine what the situation is with cities up East that are having more severe economic problems.

LEHRER: Dr. Vieth, that brings us to the question of what can be done about, what should be done about this.You're the head of the federal task force. What in fact is your task force doing?

Dr. VIETH: Well, the purpose and the policy of the task force that was established a year ago by Secretary Heckler of Health and Human Services, and we saw that the problem was coming and we had people discussing it, and I was already dealing with a food program with the Department of Defense, so basically what we are doing is we are coordinating the federal food and shelter initiatives, and we work with local groups and with mayors, with governors.And we feel it's very important to work with anybody at the local level, because if this is going to --

LEHRER: Work with them doing what?

Dr. VIETH: Work with them trying to free up, if there are federal buildings, we try to do that.If it's food, equipment, supplies, a surplus, that's also freed up to try to help the homeless in those communities. Another thing that we do is we have a task force that's made up of 13 major departments -- Agriculture, HUD, FEMA -- so we sit down and all we talk about are the homeless and what can be done --

LEHRER: That's Federal Emergency Management --

Dr. VIETH: Yes. And the purpose of this is to see if there are any impediments in the law that might interfere with the homeless people getting entitlements that they should have, because we feel this is very important.

LEHRER: From your viewpoint in looking at it from Denver, Mayor, is the federal government doing you any good?

Mayor PENA: Well, I can say that in this particular instance the federal government is helping us in Denver. For example, we do have a federal facility and we have, through Dr. Vieth's office, been negotiating on how we can put that facility to productive use, specifically for a shelter facility. But let me say that, having said that, and we welcome that kind of support, it's -- if you look at the problem across the country it's simply not enough. You know about the millions of dollars that were supposed to be used in the defense budget, which was not used in 1984. I understand the FEMA program, which had about $140 million last year, is going to be cut to about $70 million. At least that's the proposal, a 50% cut. So from Denver we're thankful that his office has been out here and helping us, but I think we need more across the country.

LEHRER: You going to give him more?

Dr. VIETH: I'd just like to say in reference to the Department of Defense, I think that they're getting somewhat of a bad rep. They had $8 million and they were going to free up military installations to help the homeless, and they would include some rehab and taking care of some of the things that need to be done. And Secretary --

LEHRER: And did they do it?

Dr. VIETH: Secretary Weinberger twice went to the National Conference of Mayors and offered this. Now, it's true, they had 600 military installations, some of which wouldn't have worked, and there were some problems. But they did offer it, and I think they were enthusiastic in trying to put this together. Now, this year they've centralized it so it should be a lot more efficient, and we're working with them. And we've been to San Diego, we've been to Denver, which has to do with the Defense Department. So we're working with that.

LEHRER: The Mayor says he appreciates that very much but that isn't enough. Is the federal government going to do any more than they're doing right now for what the Mayor says is a growing problem?

Dr. VIETH: Well, I think that the whole role of the federal government is to put partnerships together with local communities, with the private sector, public-private partnerships, to go into cities to try to put some information out that has to do with what can be done, models that we know about, and I think we have somewhat like a clearinghouse situation. As far as a massive federal program, I have a lot of doubts whether that would even be effective. And the reason is is because it's a local problem, it's very difficult to deal with. Like the mayor of Denver says, they deal with a different group of people -- and it's true. They have a younger group, a healthier group, and New York has a different group and San Francisco has a different group. So it has to be addressed at the local level. And the other thing that's important is that you have to be able to -- if I had four buildings right now in Washington, D.C., to take care of the homeless, I would have problems going in and saying take these buildings because you have zoing problems, you have neighborhood problems, and another thing, it'd be hard for the federal government to go out and deal with the homeless people. A lot of these people have been institutionalized, they're frightened. So you have to build this relationship with them.

LEHRER: All right, I hear you. Robin?

MacNEIL: One of the places where the homeless are most visible and the debate about them sharpest is New York City. In 1979 the city was sued, and in 1981 signed a consent decree promising to provide shelter to any single adult who claimed the need. The lawyer who brought that suit is Robert Hayes. But not everyone applauded. One author who has criticized the decision is Thomas Main, former editor of the magazine, The Public Interest. We'll come to some of these more general questions in a moment, but I'd like to ask each of you, first of all, what is your estimate -- you represent the coalition. What is your estimate of the number? You heard the discussion before.

ROBERT HAYES: Mr. MacNeil, it's very hard to count homeless people because you typically cannot find them. They're living in hidden-away places like abandoned buildings or the corridors. The secretary of health and urban development -- housing and urban development estimated 350,000. Most folks in the country who reviewed that found that to be a gross underestimate. Other estimates in the two- to three-million range seem like reasonable guesses, but there's only one way to count the homeless with precision, and that's to offer them beds inside so they can be counted.

MacNEIL: What's your estimate, Mr. Main?

THOMAS MAIN: Well, I agree that it's very difficult to count the homeless. There have been a number of estimates of the number of homeless people in New York City, none of them particularly accurate. I guess the most famous was an estimate of 36,000, which was publicized by the Community Services Society. That wasn't based on an actual nose count; it was based on a guess made by the state office of mental health. And it didn't turn out to be terribly accurate. If you look at what happens to the census at the shelter immediately after snowstorms and such, it remains about what it had been before the inclement wheather set in. So there appeared not to be scores or hundreds of thousands of homeless people on the streets of New York just waiting for a bed.

MacNEIL: Now, what is the basis in law of the right to shelter that you think the city governments or other levels of government owe the homeless?

Mr. HAYES: Well, again, Mr. MacNeil, it depends on state to state. In New York, which, incidentally, signed a consent decree agreeing to provide shelter only after a court found the right to shelter existed, the basis was the constitution of the state, which during the Depression was written to include a public obligation to care for the needy. The court found caring for the needy, at a minimum, means providing shelter. West Virginia, California and New Jersey courts have already recognized the right to shelter, which really isn't a matter of principle so much -- at least, not to this lawyer -- but it's a practical need. I don't think Mayor Koch would be sheltering as many homeless men and women as he is without a court injunction requiring him to do it. Other mayors don't to it without a court order. There are times that court orders are necessary to lead a society into a proper direction. I don't think, for instance, if a court 30 years ago had not decreed that small black schoolchildren had a right to go to school with white schoolchildren and get an equal education we'd have an integrated society today. I think some jurisdictions the courts are leading this country into a civilized state of affairs where people are provided a right to shelter, and not left out on the street to freeze.

MacNEIL: Now, you don't agree with that.

Mr. MAIN: Well, I don't agree that there is a constitutional right to shelter. If you look at the language in the Constitution to which advocates of a right to shelter point, it's invariably some vague wording speaking of the general welfare. It doesn't contain the specific reference to shelter. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that if the shelter system in a city operates under the assumption that there is a right to shelter, this actually creates certain problems towards helping the homeless.

MacNEIL: I was going to ask you what is wrong with assuming that there is a right to shelter, with providing it?

Mr. MAIN: What is wrong is this. First of all, I don't agree with its legally weak position. But the problem is that if there is an unconditional right to shelter, then it is not possible to require everyone who comes into the shelters to participate in therapeutic programs -- for instance, a work requirement. Because you have to give shelter even to people who don't want to participate in the program. So now New York City is attempting to implement a work program where everyone who is capable of working gets a chance to work, but they're not able to impleient it throughout the system because there is supposedly a right to shelter.

MacNEIL: What's wrong with just giving people shelter and not requiring anything of them?

Mr. MAIN: Well, first of all, it's to their benefit to work if it's at all possible. There's a therapeutic value to work, however ill-paid. At least it keeps one from falling into a passive sort of lifestyle which is characteristic, sometimes, of life in the shelters. The other problem is that if there is a right to shelter, unconditional right to shelter, and it's not balanced by some kind of programs like a work requirement, which will also discourage inappropriate use of the shelter, you will have a tendency for people to transfer out of bad housing into the shelter. So for both those reasons it's best not to operate shelters on --

MacNEIL: You're saying you'll attract people who strictly don't need it. Is that what you're arguing?

Mr. MAIN: Well, in New York City there was a study done by the Human Resources Administration called First Time Clients. It was a look at just where people had been immediately before they came to the shelters, and it was found that approximately 46% of the people in the shelters had the very night before been with family or friends or in their own apartment or in a single-room occupancy hotel. So it's clear that the shelters are drawing not just on people who are actually on the street, but also people who were in bad housing, and you want to try to discourage any displacement.

MacNEIL: What about that?

Mr. HAYES: The problem is that my friend Mr. Main ignores the real cause of homelessness, which is that there is such a tight housing market for the poor people in this country, not just in New York City, that literally the least competitive people are getting squeezed out of the housing market. So if you look at the folks who are homeless now, they tend to be, in some cases, single mentally ill people, probably the people least able to compete for the scarce resource that we call housing. Over the past several years, in the early 1980s, single unemployed people who are badly educated, badly trained and with work skills became homeless because they fell out. In the past two years, from coast to coast, the explosion in the number of homeless people have been homeless families. Invariably that's mothers, single parents --

MacNEIL: So you agree with the Mayor?

Mr. HAYES: Absolutely. And they're single-parent families, usually with young children. They're folks who just can't compete well for housing. Now, you can look at folks in shelters and see that they don't look like what maybe Mr. Main thinks homeless people should look like -- old men with coats three sizes too big -- but the real profile of homelessness in New York City and across the country are homeless kids -- babies.

MacNEIL: Okay. Let's turn now to what should be done about this. You two won't agree on whether there should be a right to shelter, and we don't all agree on the number of the numbers, but first of all, who do you believe, in terms of government, has the responsibility? We have a big-city mayor with us, we have the top federal official with us.Who do you believe should be -- is responsible and should be taking care of this?

Mr. HAYES: There's a joint responsibility, and that's a problem because every level of government will point somewhere else, starting with the federal government. I think it's great, Harvey Vieth has been quite tireless in trying to open up military installations to serve as dormitory shelters for homeless people around the country. He should be commended for that. They haven't done very good because there haven't been very many buildings made available that were usable. Okay. But that ignores what's really been going on in Washington that has spawned this explosion in homelessness. We've had a repudiation over the past four years of the housing policies of presidents like President Eisenhower, President Nixon and President Ford. There's been a radical shift in public support for the creation of low-income housing. We had half a million people cast off the rolls of disability Social Security over the past four years. Most of that was illegal. A lot of those folks, many of them mentally ill, became homeless. We've had a rapid cut of food-assistance programs, mostly for young mothers with children. We have hungry kids living in shelters now, mothers who are bearing children who are not getting sufficient food and medical care.

MacNEIL: So you're arguing that federal budget cuts have been responsible for a lot of the new homeless?

Mr. HAYES: A lot of the big cause. Now, meanwhile, it's Thanksgiving Eve. It's cold in many parts of the country and people are out there on the streets. So you have to have a quick emergency response that will deal with the downstream victims of these upstream causes of homelessness.I think it's an imperative for local governments to go and open up buildings, whether they be churches or synagogues or post offices -- anything -- because literally people will freeze.

MacNEIL: Whose responsibility do you think the homeless are?

Mr. MAIN: Well, I would agree it's a general responsibility. We should keep in mind, however, that since the homeless population is very heterogeneous -- many different sorts of people are homeless -- different levels of government should respond to different aspects of the problem. Now, I see that in New York City that the local level has been very responsive. From the time Mr. Hayes first brought his suit against the city back in 1979, we were spending about $7 million a year on the homeless, and it's now gone up to about $75 million. So there's been some response at the local level. I think where the response has been particularly disappointing, however, is at the state level, because it is true that a great number of the homeless are mentally ill. If you take a look at just the people in the shelter, about a third are mentally ill, and there's even a higher percentage of people on the streets who are mentally ill. As a matter of fact, the study that was done recently by Frank Lipton, who was director of emergency psychiatric services at Bellevue Hospital, found that of homeless people who came to the city for non-psychiatric help virtually all of them, 96%, had gross psychotic disorders.

MacNEIL: So you think the state should --

Mr. MAIN: Respond to the problem of the homeless mentally ill, definitely.

MacNEIL: Dr. Vieth, what do you say to the charge that it's Reagan administration policies that have created a lot of the new homelessness?

Dr. VIETH: Well, I don't think that Bob Hayes can substantiate that, because just in the food stamps there was a cut in the poverty line from 150 to 130 percent, so those people wouldn't automatically drop down and become homeless. Not only that, but there's been a real spending of 19% increase over those years of real dollars. And that's in the food assistance of all kinds, and commodities. Food stamps has also gone up 19%. So I don't think that can be the whole issue. And as far as the housing, it is true that there's a different policy. It's not a policy of building new units. That's very expensive. There's a lot of units that can be rehabbed, and HUD policy is to rehab because it's less expensive, so you can get more for the taxpayer's dollar. Also, they've had some bad experience with low-cost housing, as St. Louis has seen.

MacNEIL: Well, if you think that federal policies are not responsible for creating this, whose chief responsibility do you think it is for solving it, Dr. Vieth?

Dr. VIETH: I think it's two things. I think it's the state's, as has just been mentioned. The deinstitutionalized mental patients, the money did not follow those people, so therefore there is either an increase in the state budget or the states continued to keep the mental institutions functioning to capacity. And also there's another thing that we haven't talked about, and that's gentrification of cities. In other words, you're tearing down SROs. A million SROs -- single-resident occupancy-hotels or buildings -- have been ripped down, and they've put up hotels. That has increased the tax assessed valuation in those areas so millions of dollars could be made, and I think some of it has been made on the back of these homeless people.

MacNEIL: Mayor Pena, where do you see the responsibility?

Mayor PENA: Well, I think one could debate all day who is responsible and what are the causes. I could make an argument that policies which have cut social programs, unemployment benefits, training programs, housing 60%, etc., is all the responsibility of the federal government, and that's why we have homelessness. I don't think that's very constructive, frankly. I think the issue here is how I as a mayor can work in partnership with the state and with the federal government to deal with this problem. It is a national --

MacNEIL: What do you need to do that?

Mayor PENA: We need assistance such as we have received very recently as respects a shelter, helping refurbish that shelter, it's an old federal building. We don't have the millions of dollars that's necessary to refurbish it. We need some programs to help us with job training. We need some assistance to help us with health care. We need some assistance, it's financial assistance, to take care of the broad needs. If we only look at this as an emergency, short-term problem and simply provide somebody with a roof, that will not take care of this problem for years to come. It is a long-term issue. And to deal with it we have to come up with a very comprehensive strategy, more than simply providing a roof and some food.

MacNEIL: Yeah. What do you say to that? Where do you think the aid should come from?

Mr. HAYES: I think Mayor Pena is primarily right, but I've also been through Denver and can tell Mayor Pena that he will not begin to even to stop the increase in his homeless population until they get some housing up. Sure, some people who are homeless need more than housing. They need some support. The mentally ill may not make it in housing alone, but most homeless people, and again, most of them are families in this country now, need housing if they're ever going to get off the streets or out of emergency shelters, which tend to breed dependency, and don't get those folks back into polite society.

MacNEIL: Okay. Well, I'd like to thank you all, Mayor Pena in Denver, Dr. Vieth in Washington, Mr. Main and Mr. Hayes in New York, for giving us some insight into this problem. Jim? Air Travel: Still Stacked Up

LEHRER: Our final bit of focus tonight is for the benefit of those contemplating air travel during this holiday or any other upcoming season or occasion. It's crowded and slow out there, out there at the big airports, out there in the sky after the planes take off. The federal government, the airlines and others have been trying to deal with the crowding and the slowness, and from Denver Kwame Holman has this report on how they're doing.

KWAME HOLMAN [voice-over]: This is Denver's Stapleton Airport, sixth-busiest in the country, headquarters for three large airlines and no stranger to congestion and delays.

GEORGE DOUGHTY, airport director: Projections were made that we'd be about 14 million passengers by 1985. We're almost to 1985, and we have got 26 million passengers coming through the airport.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: George Doughty is airport director at Stapleton, and airport where passengers say the delays are commonplace.

SAM HAGER, air traveller: I have a flight out to Knoxville today, and it's scheduled to leave at 10:56, and it's been delayed until approximately 11:35.

RICHARD HUGHES, air traveller: Well, if they get here within 30 minutes or leave within 30 minutes that's more or less on time.

HOLMAN: Was there a time when that wasn't the case, when you didn't have to accept 30 minutes as the average?

Mr. HUGHES: Yeah, but that's been a number of years ago.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: The problems of flight delays and congestion are the results of big increases in the number of air travellers. Deregulation of the airlines in 1978 led to the creation of new, cut-rate airlines, lower fares and new passengers. In the past 10 years, passenger volume on the commercial carriers grewfrom 202 million to 318 million, a 50% jump. If the economy stays strong, volume could read 350 million in 1985.

Mr. DOUGHTY: I think it's good for the aviation industry. I think it's been a great thing for the passenger in terms of choices of flights and fares. The problem is created by decisions made by the airlines in the free-market environment, and our capacity in major airports is simply not there to handle it.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Doughty is referring to the airlines' decision to center flights at the nation's major airports. Though there are 281 airports in the U.S., 10 of them in major cities handle almost half of all air traffic.

[on camera] But there's another problem that makes congestion at America's 10 busiest airports even worse, and you can see it here at this concourse at Denver's airport. It's between three and four in the afternoon here, and things are relatively quiet. In fact, between three and four only 79 flights go in and out of Denver. No overcrowding, and minimal delays. But now let's move ahead just about an hour.

It's now 5:35 and it's a different scene. Between five and six 133 flights go in and out of Denver, pretty close to twice as many as about an hour earlier. The peaks and valleys are caused by the so-called hub system. Airlines schedule flights in and out of a central airport so that passengers can connect easily and quickly from one flight to another. The hub system ensures that United passengers take United connections to their final destination.

[voice-over] The Federal Aviation Administration said the airlines were causing delays by scheduling their flights too closely together, and last summer, in the midst of record delays, told the airlines to adjust their schedules. The airlines did adjust their schedules, but Tom Lamm, a veteran executive with Frontier Airlines, says the adjustments were minor and will do little to alleviate delays.

TOM LAMM, Frontier Airlines: Well, we have been asking the FAA for several years to create a system that can handle the market demand for air traffic control, and that probably means more controllers. It means a redesign of the air traffic route system in the sky. It means better computer aids for their controllers. And it's going to mean more concrete, more runways, at places like Denver.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: The FAA is training new controllers and counters that its system already is handling more air traffic than before the PATCO strike. But one flight delay factor remains beyond the control of the FAA. Bad weather has always plagued the airlines, but with the hub system, weather delays at one major airport impact air travel nationwide.

Mr. DOUGHTY: It begins to have a ripple effect with cancellations of flights throughout the country, and if there's a major snowstorm in Chicago the same kind of thing would occur through the rest of the country. So if you lose one at Christmas you've got a big problem, and that's happened in a couple, last few years.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: But even with good weather some experts say the demand for air travel will continue to outpace the air traffic system.

[interviewing] The bottom line may be that there is not an immediate solution for delays?

Mr. DOUGHTY: I think that's right. I think we're going to be dealing with delay problems at the major hubs, and I think the situation is going to get worse before it gets better.

Mr. LAMM: I don't see that there can possibly be any better than last summer. And if the economy stays as good as it is, it's probably worse. I'm sure many airplanes have been bought and delivered since last summer, and they're going to be in the air.

HOLMAN: Except for the Thanksgiving weekend, November is a relatively quiet month at airports, and so far this month there have been fewer delays than last month. Still, delays this November are running slightly ahead of comparable figures for last year. In a statement issued today, the FAA reasserted its position that rescheduling will result in significant decreases in delays. But the agency admitted that rescheduling is not the only answer. The FAA also insisted that its air traffic controllers are doing the job of handling air traffic safely.

MacNEIL: Once again, the main stories of the day. The United States and the Soviet Union are discussing a time and place for high-level talks on arms control.

The Federal Reserve Board reduced the rate of interest it charges for loans to its member banks.

The death toll in the Mexico City gas explosion rose to 334, and may go higher.

Good night, Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin. Have a nice Thanksgiving Day, and we'll see you here tomorrow night. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.