The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight a look at how Argentina is dealing with its violent past; the Cuban Missile Crisis 35 years later with Michael Beschloss, Haynes Johnson, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and the son of Nikita Khrushchev; and a David Gergen dialogue with a victim of the Unabomber. It all follows our summary of the news this Thursday.NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: There will be a 2.1 percent cost of living increase for Social Security recipients next year, the smallest since 1987. The director of the Social Security Administration said it works out to an average monthly increase of about $16. Forty-four million Americans are on Social Security. The annual inflation rate is used to calculate cost of living adjustments, and that rate continues to remain at a 30-year low. New inflation numbers were released today. The Labor Department reported the Consumer Price Index rose .2 percent last month. Energy costs were up 1.3 percent but declines in food prices helped keep the overall numbers down. The CPI so far this year has risen at an annual rate of 1.8 percent, compared to 3.3 last year. On Wall Street today the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 119 points, to close at 7938.88. The stock market drop came after the U.S. Maritime Commission barred Japanese cargo ships from U.S. ports. Those already docked here will be detained. It followed Japanese shipping companies' failure to pay $4 million in fines. They were imposed when negotiations failed to win U.S. shippers more access to Japanese harbors. The order will go into effect tomorrow. The army's former top enlisted man was arraigned today on 20 charges of sexual misconduct. Sgt. Major Gene McKinney appeared before a military judge at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia. His court-martial date was set for January of next year. McKinney was not required to enter a plea, but after the charges based on the accusations of six women were read, he said he was not guilty. In Buenos Aires today President Clinton confirmed that he will designate the status of "major military ally" on Argentina. Congress has 30 days to object. The special standing would make Argentina eligible for economic development programs and other assistance. It would give the country the same status of Israel, Egypt, Australia, and Japan. Mr. Clinton spoke in an outdoor ceremony with President Carlos Menem. He praised Argentina's participation in 16 peacekeeping missions from Haiti to Bosnia in the last seven years.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I have notified our Congress of my intention to designate Argentina as a major non-NATO ally under our laws. Our alliance of values goes beyond our efforts against threat to peace and security, but it begins there. It also includes a commitment to freedom and democracy, a conviction that open markets are engines for progress, a determination to give all our people a chance to contribute and be rewarded for their efforts in the future we are building.

JIM LEHRER: Later, the President attended a town hall meeting televised live from Buenos Aires. He took questions from young people there and in studios in Los Angeles and Miami. We'll have more on Argentina right after this News Summary. Also during his trip the President cut $854 million in extra retirement benefits for federal workers. He did so with a line-item veto, the fourth time he's used that new authority. Mr. Clinton said the additional funds had not been requested and were added to a spending bill at the last minute. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to making amends in Argentina, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and a David Gergen dialogue. FOCUS - CONFRONTING HISTORY

JIM LEHRER: Argentina is first tonight. Elizabeth Farnsworth in San Francisco has the story.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The President and First Lady arrived in Argentina's capital, Buenos Aires, yesterday. Mr. Clinton has made a celebration of democracy a key focus of his South American trip, but Argentina's democracy is still confronting difficulties related to the past. Mrs. Clinton acknowledged those problems in a private meeting today with women whose relatives disappeared during the military dictatorship 20 years ago. Now some background on how Argentina is dealing with its past.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: These women--known as the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo--have become famous in Argentina because they refuse to forget. Almost two decades have passed since their loved ones disappeared in what is often termed Argentina's "dirty war." To have "disappeared" in those years--as an estimated 30,000 people did--is almost certainly to have been killed. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo want an accounting of what happened to their relatives and punishment of those responsible. The organization has been demonstrating in downtown Buenos Aires every week since just after a 1976 coup brought a military junta to power. Tex Harris was a political officer at the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires in those years.

F. ALLEN "TEX" HARRIS, Former Embassy Official: For the most part the state terrorist system worked with a kind of numbing brutal efficiency. People were disappeared by what was called the Left Hand. They were tortured for information. They were identified for extermination, and they disappeared.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The "exterminations" continued until 1982, when Britain defeated Argentina's generals in the Falklands War, and military rule ended. Three years later, Argentina's elected President, Raul Alfonsin, ordered trials of the nine admirals and generals who ruled the country during the years of military dictatorship. Five of the nine were convicted and given sentences ranging from several years to life imprisonment. But in 1989, Alfonsin's successor, Carlos Menem, the current president, pardoned some leftist guerrillas and the convicted generals and forbade any future trials, saying this was the only way to heal the wounds of the past. Adolfo Perez Esquivel was among those upset by Menem's action. Esquivel had been Imprisoned and tortured in the 70's, and won a Nobel peace prize in 1980 for his non-violent resistance to the military government.

ADOLFO PEREZ ESQUIVEL: [speaking through interpreter) President Menem freed criminals who had been tried and who had not yet been sentenced, which is unconstitutional and violates treaties and international law. So what are the consequences--now--of this impunity? All the criminals are free and of them hold public office.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: In 1995 this book was published and it added weight to the arguments of those who opposed the pardons. In the book ex naval officer Adolfo Scilingo admits that on orders from his superiors he and other officers dumped "The disappeared"--still alive--from airplanes into the South Atlantic.

ADOLFO SCILINGO: [speaking through interpreter) I participated in two flights. It may be easier than killing someone face to face, but I wiped out 30 sleeping, naked, defenseless people without even knowing what they did and, in fact, now knowing that the great majority never did anything. The use of airplanes--the transfer of the people onto the planes--all the logistics of these flights--I believe only a monster could have designed such a sophisticated killing machine.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: In the two years since Scilingo's confession the movement against impunity has intensified but so has violence against government critics. This demonstration last March commemorated the murder two months earlier of photojournalist Jose Luis Cabezas. He had been investigating police corruption in Buenos Aires Province for "Noticias" magazine when he was abducted from a party and killed. Then last month four men showing police identification abducted the ex-navy officer Adolfo Scilingo and carved three initials into his face. They were The initials of journalists to whom Scilingo had told his story. Those who oppose president's Menem's pardons argue the lack of accountability for past crimes is partly to blame for these more recent acts of intimidation. Alicia Portnoy was taken prisoner during the 1970's but survived.

ALICIA PORTNOY: If you don't do justice in those cases, this is going to sound very trite, it's been said so much that it sounds trite, but if you don't do justice, this can happen again.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Now three perspectives. Susan Bilello is director of the Freedom Forum's Latin American Center in Buenos Aires. Claudio Grossman, who is Chilean, is dean of the Washington College of Law at American University; he is also a member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Joseph Tulchin is director of the Latin American program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Thank you all for being with us. Joseph Tulchin, help us understand why President Menem declared the amnesty. He himself had been a political prisoner.

JOSEPH TULCHIN, Woodrow Wilson Center: When Menem came to power, he assumed office five months early because the country was going through an episode of hyperinflation. The corrosive, socially destructive experience of hyperinflation convinced him that the reforms he wished to make, the economic reforms he wished to make could only be accomplished by putting behind him and his government at least for a while the nation's trauma of the dirty war. So he made a calculated political decision, and at that time, the polls indicate that it was the correct political decision. Today, almost a decade after he came to power, the consequences of that decision, the anticipated consequences which he was prepared to pay, are now coming home to roost, and the issues, which the film suggests, are every day more significant and more important in Argentine political discourse.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Claudio Grossman, explain why that's true. There was also a truth commission report in Argentina, which was very extensive, about what happened. So it's not like Argentina didn't do something about the past and yet, it's the country that has this large movement looking for accountability. Why in Argentina?

CLAUDIO GROSSMAN, American University Law School: Well, Menem's predecessor created the commission to investigate the situation of the disappeared persons, but I'm not sure that President Menem's political decisions were right. I think that there is a continuum between issues concerning impunity and economic decisions as well. I think that whether these decisions were right or wrong are going to be seen in light of further developments. I tend to believe that it is not possible to ignore these widespread atrocities that took place in Argentina and resulted in around 30,000 disappeared persons there. We're talking there of a state organized during the military regime as a criminal enterprise, and I don't think that long term and strategically is possible simply to turn the page, not only because of a moral imperative but due to the impact that those decisions have a role in the organization of Argentinian society.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Suzanne Bilello, why do you think Argentina has this rather large movement of--for accountability where other countries who have had similar problems don't have that movement in Latin America?

SUZANNE BILELLO, Freedom Forum: Well, the press is one of the institutions in Argentina that is functioning well in the democratic context. It has moved on. It has evolved. It has become democratic, and the-- it is responding to what the society wants. I think the largest issue here is impunity. A photographer was murdered earlier this year and it reminded people that the dirty war is over but that the past is not that far behind. And there's a tremendous fear of returning to that past. There's concern about the lack of rule of law. There's a concern that there's an ambience of aggression that's being fueled, in part, from the government's intolerance of the media, and the concern is that the country cannot go forward unless these issues are dealt with.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Suzanne Bilello, why is the media such a target?

SUZANNE BILELLO: The media is a target, I believe, but it is very aggressively pursuing corruption. It's very aggressively pursuing the--what's lacking in the process of the democratic evolution of the country. I think that it's threatening to some people in power, and there's a lack of understanding of the media's role in a democracy. I mean, the press suffered tremendously during the dirty war. A hundred journalists were disappeared and murdered. Also within the press during the dirty war it wasn't the proudest moment. There was overt censorship on the part of the military dictatorship and a lot of self-censorship. And the press is one of the few institutions that has made a decision to break with that past and to fulfill its role and also to respond to what the society wants. There is a sense of anxiousness among the society to realize the promise of democratization, and it's been slow in coming in these last 14 years. And that's basically what the society wants and what the press is trying to provide.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Joseph Tulchin--I should say, by the way, we did ask the Argentine embassy and the UN mission to provide guests for us but most people were in Argentina because of the President's visit. But Joseph Tulchin, what is the relationship between the acts of intimidation now and the past? I think President Menem would say they're not really related, that these current problems are very different.

JOSEPH TULCHIN: I think the President would make that assertion but most people in the country wouldn't believe him. I think the film clip makes perfectly plain that there is a widespread malaise or uneasiness on the part of voters in Argentina today that perhaps the kinds of impunity to which Suzanne referred to just a moment ago is, indeed, closely related to the use of the state as a dirty enterprise. I think, however, two points have to be added at this juncture: First, that when Menem came to office, he felt the only way of moving the country forward, to pull it out of this dizzying spin of hyperinflation, was to focus on economic reform. He did that. And you might say in a jocular fashion, if you can allow a slight--some levity-- that Menem's become captive of his own press releases, and that in reading the "Wall Street Journal" over the last five years, which has been singing the praises of the Argentine economic miracle, Menem and his closest advisers have come to believe that he could disregard the political signals, the malaise about corruption, about police impunity, and about these attacks. And let's not forget unfortunately or fortunately perenism has an historic past that includes these episodes of violence. And Menem came to power with his muchachos. And he's put them aside but they are there. And whether they acted in concert with elements of the state, or whether they acted independently of it in a kind of Beckett fashion is irrelevant. The point is that the President is now caught in a trap that he, himself, set, and he has to move very quickly on judicial and police reform; otherwise, I'm afraid his government will suffer the consequences.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Grossman, do you agree with that, that the President is caught in a trap that he himself set?

CLAUDIO GROSSMAN: Well, I think there is a lot of truth in that assertion, and I think that the future of Argentina will depend a lot in moving ahead in terms of--with the past, the reform of the judiciary is also important--and again not only due to an ethical imperative between justice to the atrocities that took place in the past but an economic system and its--civility of functioning and honest judiciary--I think is very important also to perch the police--particularly the provincial police--there is a widespread perception in Argentina that the same people who make people disappear in the past now are engaging in corruption and certainly continue with the methods used that are not proper at all in a democratic environment. I would like to say, however, that it is very important to consider that the current situation in Argentina is not today as it was during the military dictatorship but that moment there was a state policy they elected towards extermination of human beings. Now, the elections and existence I would say of a critical mass of people who complain--who go to the streets-- creates a space that really has a promise that things are going to go to a different direction. That democratic culture that exists among the masses of the Argentinians and as a result of the experience is certainly something that we need to value and value in a positive way.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Suzanne Bilello, there are elections coming up and this whole question of impunity is a major issue, is it not, so this continues at the fore of Argentine thought.

SUZANNE BILELLO: It's definitely at the fore of the society's thoughts, and there are expectations, you know, that the elections will provide more diversity within the legislature. But the press is keeping this issue alive, and in many ways has made it--put it at the top of the agenda--and, again, it's something that the society wants, and it's an effort to make government accountable.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Joseph Tulchin, what should the United States Government be doing about any of these issues, if anything?

JOSEPH TULCHIN: The United States Government should try and be balanced in its dealing with Argentina, as with the rest of Latin America. The United States, I think, has been very fair in trying to get the Argentine government over the last five or six years to understand the importance of these issues, which in Spanish translate into English, our judicial insecurity, as well as corruption. Amb. Chic while he was in Buenos Aires was a very powerful and outspoken advocate of judicial reform, as well as police reform. Of course, as you know, we don't have an ambassador in Buenos Aires, and perhaps that's an answer to your question. One of the first things we should do is Mr. Clinton should nominate and send to the Senate for confirmation an ambassador in Buenos Aires. That would help enormously. The second thing--and I think Mr. Clinton is doing that--in speeches during his trip--that is to de-emphasize the economic side, not without devaluing it. That's an important success of the Menem government, but it's not the only success. The Menem government must now focus its attention on these issues that we've talked about tonight. And in fairness to what's been said to both critics and supporters of the government, up until very recently the government turned a cold shoulder to its critics on this issue, but very recently a close friend of the president, who was ambassador in Washington--Compo--was named minister of justice, and I can only hope that that nomination will indicate an aggressive stance on judicial reform. I have to say, however, that our friend, Raoul Granigio, has not accomplished a great deal in his short tenure, and I hope this show helps to spur him on a little bit, keeping the focus on these issues in the international community as broadly as possible, journalists and others, is what the United States can do.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay.

JOSEPH TULCHIN: It's not just economics but democracy is much more.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Thank you very much, all of you.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight some Cold War history and a David Gergen dialogue. FOCUS - TIME OF CRISIS

JIM LEHRER: It was 35 years ago today that President Kennedy first saw photographs of Soviet missiles in Cuba. Thus began the Cuban Missile crisis. We begin our look back at this critical event in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union with this report by Kwame Holman.

KWAME HOLMAN: For nearly two weeks in October 1962, world peace and perhaps the world itself, hung tn the balance as two superpowers slid toward a nuclear confrontation, but the people of the world knew nothing of the potentially disastrous drama that was unfolding.

[BASEBALL SEGMENT)

KWAME HOLMAN: Instead, Americans were engrossed the seventh game of the World Series at Candlestick Park, and the entire U.S. west coast was inundated by the worst rainstorms in 50 years. On the other side of the world in Rome, Catholics held a nighttime ceremony in St. Peter's Square to celebrate the Church's Second Ecumenical Council in four hundred years. The near-cataclysm had its beginnings earlier in the summer of 1962. American U-2 spy planes secretly overflew Cuba. Their high-tech cameras detected possible signs Cuba's superpower benefactor-- the Soviet Union was engaged in military construction on the island just 90 miles off the coast of Florida. At the same time, Cuban refugees also were reporting an increased Soviet build up. In Congress, Republicans seized on those reports and called on Democratic President John F. Kennedy to take tough action against Cuba. Meanwhile America grew increasingly nervous as the relationship between Soviet Chairman Nikita Khrushchev and Cuban Leader Fidel Castro became cozier and more public. In fall of 1962--on October 14th--the spy planes uncovered more dramatic evidence of new Soviet missile sites which--once operational--would be capable of delivering nuclear warheads onto much of the continental United States. Two days later, with the aerial pictures in hand, President Kennedy convened the first of a series of crisis meetings with his most trusted advisors. Their aim: to find a way to get the Soviet weapons out of Cuba. Unbeknown to the participants, President Kennedy had the meetings taped. Transcripts of hundreds of hours of the conversations that depict the tension and drama of the time were compiled by Harvard University Historians Ernest May and Philip Zelikow in a book published this month. According to the transcripts, on the morning of October 16th , the President's men feared the worst. Secretary of State Dean Rusk said: "I think we'll be facing a situation that could well lead to general war." Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara: "I don't know quite what kind of world we live in after we've struck Cuba." And the President: "We never had a case where it's been quite this--well, it's a goddamn mystery." The group, known as the Executive Committee, weighed three options laid out by Defense Secretary McNamara: First, the U.S. could attempt a diplomatic solution by talking directly to Khrushchev and Castro. That view, however, got little discussion in the White House meetings. A second option called for continued U-2 surveillance, coupled with a blockade to prevent more weapons and material from arriving on Cuba. And the final alternative-- a direct military assault against Cuba. Two days later, on October 18th, more aerial photos came in showing nuclear capable Soviet bombers known as BEAGLES on the ground in Cuba. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Maxwell Taylor, called for an all-out air assault to be followed by an invasion of Cuba by U.S. forces. General Taylor asked the defense secretary: "What is your objection to taking out the missiles and the Soviet aircraft?" Mr. McNamara: "My real objection to it is that it kills several hundred Russians." Later that afternoon, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko came to the White House. He bluntly accused the United States of pestering Cuba. He acknowledged the Soviet military build-up but said it was aimed at defending the island, not striking at the U.S.. President Kennedy later said he was tempted to pull the photographs of the Soviet bombers from his desk drawer and confront Gromyko. The Executive Committee met late into the night and for the next three days, debating the implications of direct military action or a Naval blockade. At a midnight meeting in the Oval Office, the President summed up the day's discussions.

PRESIDENT KENNEDY: During the course of the day, opinions had obviously switched from the advantages of a first strike on the missile sites and on Cuban aviation to a blockade.

KWAME HOLMAN: Kennedy and his advisors were especially worried that a move against Cuba would trigger Soviet action against the divided city of Berlin. Cuba would trigger Soviet action against the divided city of Berlin, which was the flashpoint of the Cold War. General Maxwell Taylor: "Our strength in Berlin, our strength any place in the world, is the credibility of our response." President Kennedy: "That's why we've got to respond. Now, the question is: what is our response?". Air Force General Curtis LeMay objected to a Cuban blockade, saying it "would be considered by a lot of our friends and neutrals as being a pretty weak response to this. You're in a pretty bad fix, Mr, President." By the weekend news of the mounting crisis reached reporters, then the public. On Monday night, October 22nd, President Kennedy went on national television. He told the nation of the presence of the Soviet missiles and announced his decision: to impose what he called a naval quarantine of the Island of Cuba.

PRESIDENT KENNEDY: To halt this offensive buildup, a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba, from whatever nation or port, will be found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons be turned back. It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the western hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union. I call upon Chairman Khrushchev to halt and eliminate this clandestine, reckless and provocative threat to world peace and to stable relations between our two nations. I call upon him further to abandon this course of world domination.

KWAME HOLMAN: The blockade was a first step and did not rule out a U.S. attack later. American armed forces were put on high alert. Bombers and troops were mobilized to the southern states in preparation for a possible air campaign and invasion of Cuba.

MAN: I'd hate like heck to see us go to war, but if it's necessary to prevent a nuclear war, I think the action has to be taken at this time.

WOMAN: Well, I think it's high time we stopped Russia from having things their own way.

SPOKESMAN: I have a few more months to go--I just hope they don't grab me, that's all.

KWAME HOLMAN: The morning after the President's national address, a message arrived at the White House from Soviet Premier Khrushchev. He called the blockade "a serious threat to peace" and reiterated the missiles "are intended solely for defensive purposes." In Cuba, Fidel Castro put his armed forces on alert and told his people: "We don't have to give an account to the imperialists." In America, the Cuban Missile crisis sparked renewed public interest in fallout shelters. People flocked to grocery stores, emptying shelves to stock up on one food in the event of a crisis. A the United Nations, U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson challenged the Soviet representatives.

AMB. ADLAI STEVENSON: Do you, Amb. Zoren, deny that the USSR is placing missiles in Cuba? Yes or No.

AMB. ZOREN: You will have your answer in due course.

AMB. ADLAI STEVENSON: I'm prepared to wait for my answer until hell freezes over if that's your decision.

KWAME HOLMAN: In Washington and throughout the United States, Americans watched and waited. On the morning of October 24th, the day the blockade officially went into effect, 16 Soviet ships bound for Cuba reversed course. After many exchanges by diplomatic cables and through official and unofficial negotiators, on October 26th, Khrushchev offered to withdraw his missiles from Cuba. The next day he coupled his offer with a demand the U.S. remove NATO missiles from Turkey, across the Black Sea from the Soviet Union. Defense Sec. McNamara wasn't pleased. At Saturday afternoon's meeting in the cabinet room of the White House, he said: "Hell, that's no offer. There's not a damn thing in it that's an offer. You read that message carefully. He didn't propose to take the missiles out. I don't think attack is the only answer. I think we ought to be prepared for attack, an all-out attack.

KWAME HOLMAN: Finally, on October 28th, Khrushchev gave in. He agreed to stop construction of missile sites and bring the weapons back to the Soviet Union. In exchange, President Kennedy conditionally promised not to invade Cuba and, secretly, agreed to remove the missiles from Turkey. One month after the crisis began, President Kennedy announced the lifting of the blockade. In a speech to the nation on November 20th, he tempered his decision with a warning.

PRESIDENT KENNEDY: There is much for which we can be grateful as we look back to where we stood only four weeks ago. The unity of this hemisphere, the support of our allies and the calm determination of the American people--these qualities may be tested many more times in this decade, but we have increased reason to be confident that those qualities will continue to serve the cause of freedom with distinction in the years to come.

JIM LEHRER: Now, NewsHour regulars Presidential Historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Michael Beschloss, journalist/author Haynes Johnson, joined by Sergei Khrushchev, the son of Nikita Khrushchev. He's now a senior fellow at Brown University. I talked with him earlier in the week. Doris, how real was the fear that we were on the brink of nuclear war?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN, Presidential Historian: Well, there's no question in the White House it felt very real. My husband, Richard Goodwin, who worked there at the time, said there was this immense race among all the government high officials to see who was on the real list to be able to be evacuated to the emergency shelter. It was the "A List" to be on. The emergency helicopters were waiting outside the White House. I mean, some people now looking back on it say that maybe we weren't as much to the brink as it seemed at the time, but when you look at the way wars happen, like World War I, one step leads to the next. If Khrushchev had decided not to respond to that quarantine and we had had to fire on one of his ships, he lost prestige, we lost faith; that's the way wars come in those little steps. And I think that's what really could have led us to a nuclear confrontation, even though it would have been an irrational thing on all sides.

JIM LEHRER: How do you read the fear 35 years later?

HAYNES JOHNSON, Journalist/Author: The same way exactly, Jim. I mean, the sense here in Washington- -I was a reporter then on the Washington Star, and I remember following this process--we all did--and the sense it was developing, building. And you had the sense not only from within the White House but around the country and here particularly, you really did believe that this might go up. And in a way it almost seemed inevitable because to understand the Cold War mentality at the time that we fought this war, a Cold War, from Berlin, all the way through the Berlin Wall, going up, all these things were happening, and this process of the Berlin airlift, and finally we're coming in this process where the two sides are poised at each other.

JIM LEHRER: It had to happen.

HAYNES JOHNSON: You know, there were people in this country who--Doris is so right about miscalculation. We had these enormous powers on either side unrivaled in history. And you had people who were pushing. We had to take out a first strike. And there were people in this country that talked about better dead than red, and the same thing was true on the Soviet side, where you have a situation where there were people pushing that we had to sort of move in this way. So I think it was very real.

JIM LEHRER: Do you think it was very real, Mr. Khrushchev, from the Russian point of view?

SERGEI KHRUSHCHEV: I think that our feeling was a little bit different because in this--in your case the press--public opinion created much more fear about all these events, and in Russia everything was fully controlled.

JIM LEHRER: Nobody knew about it.

SERGEI KHRUSHCHEV: Ordinary people knew that only Americans violated the freedom of the navigation in the ocean, nothing more. And in Kremlin I think that my father was very scared not to be pushed in the corner, he told until doors open, nothing will happen, but he wanted to be prepared. And there were no preparations to the escape, no helicopters, and even in the evening he decided to make the meeting of the Politburo in and his office at the home--at the residence--not in the Kremlin because he told American journalists he is searching around Red Square what we are doing, we don't want to show them that we are nervous. Let's go and let's sit there where they will not see us.

JIM LEHRER: Did your father ever say anything to you or other members of the family, hey, look, we got a problem on our hands?

SERGEI KHRUSHCHEV: He more talk to me because at that time I worked with the missiles, and I knew something about these. I was designer--the missiles--Cruise missiles for the submarines against American Navy. So each day it was like usually he kept his work around our house and I was with him. Sometimes he was silent. Sometimes he told me some things. Sometimes I feel that I kept asking questions and he told me--give some answers.

JIM LEHRER: Did you personally feel that your country was on the verge of nuclear war with the United States?

SERGEI KHRUSHCHEV: Well, I was too young, but I don't remember any real fear. It was a fear that something can happen. But because when I ask my father, he never told me, he told yes, we're trying to solve this problem; we're trying to understand each other. I send this letter. I send this letter.

JIM LEHRER: Michael, you've looked at the records on a lot of this written about this incident and particularly involving Mr. Khrushchev, as well as President Kennedy. What does the record say about this?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Well, the record, including my interviews with Sergei--and we talked about it years ago--suggest that there was a very big chance that this could have spiraled into a general nuclear war, just as we heard Dean Rusk saying on the taped piece that we just heard. And one way it could have happened could have been if, let's say, John Kennedy had had to make a decision within 24 hours, rather than having six days of secrecy to deliberate. Because if he had made an immediate decision, it might have been to attack the missile sites and invade Cuba. And if there was an intention by the Soviets and the Cubans to use nuclear weapons in response to that kind of an invasion, to save Cuba for the Soviet bloc, that could have very quickly gone to nuclear war.

JIM LEHRER: What is your reading of that? Was the Soviet Union prepared to do that? If the United States had decided to take out those missile sites, would they have responded, do you think?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: There is a lot of evidence on the Soviet side that there was not the kind of control down to the local level that we would have liked to see, in retrospect, and the great irony is that--and this comes back to what Doris said at the beginning--it's one thing if you've got a war that's over real issues, but in 1962, there were no particularly greater issues between John Kennedy and Sergei's dad than there were between Truman or Stalin or--Truman and Stalin or other leaders of the Cold War. So if it did happen and if a balloon had gone up, it would have happened for reasons that were really not that momentous.

JIM LEHRER: Doris, what do you make of Haynes' point that there was in the air a kind of an inevitability to this, that we had had this Cold War, we've had this confrontation that had to be resolved some way and the way you resolve these things is through conflict?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: I mean, that's true. You think of a whole decade that has preceded this. I mean, I was the first of that generation that grew up with the fear that a nuclear war could end everything we knew at an instant, that generation that had to go under the desk for those instant atomic fallings. I never could figure out how the desk with its ink well and scratchings are going to protect me from the atomic bomb. [laughter] But, nonetheless, I went under the desk. And at night I would somehow practice these fallings out of my bed. Between saying all of my prayers and practicing these fallings I hardly ever got to sleep. But, nonetheless, it was a whole generation conditioned to this on the public level, and then on the policy making level you had Kennedy feeling that he had to take a stand, that he couldn't lose prestige, and the sense that perhaps Khrushchev was under similar constraints, that it had come to a forced confrontation--even, as Michael says--even if this issue may not have needed to bring it back but it did.

JIM LEHRER: But, Mr. Khrushchev, then in the Soviet Union there was none of that under the desk kind of mentality at all, right, in terms of whether or not there's going to be a nuclear war?

SERGEI KHRUSHCHEV: You know, we can all be drilled in school but because we were the generation of the Second World War our feeling was different that people who lived in your safe country. We think that we went through the Second World War--it was German--they bombed, they destroy our country--maybe it will be a little bit different. You know, we must understand that mentality of the nation was very different.

JIM LEHRER: Haynes, there have been a lot of tapes released lately. Isn't it fascinating to realize that nobody in that room knew that those meetings here in the United States were being taped, except the President?

HAYNES JOHNSON: And Robert Kennedy, who also knew that they were being taped--two of them--two leading participants in this case. And what's fascinating to listen to those words now and to hear them and you have all this Texan that is real, palpable, and yet, you know it's also going to be if they survive at the end of this do no--this great human drama taking place, there's going to be a marvelous piece of history because all of these conflicting participants are telling how they felt at that moment. And it's particularly riveting in the conversation we're having here that the first response, as Michael said, from the military--or Doris--the military was strike.

JIM LEHRER: Strike, go.

HAYNES JOHNSON: Take them out. We have to take them out; brought in Dean Acheson, the old secretary of state for Truman. His first response: Take them out. When they brought it to the congressional leaders, Bill Fulbright, whom I wrote a biography of, "Architect of Peace in Vietnam," take them out. So the immediate, first reaction in these private rooms was to strike.

JIM LEHRER: What was that pressure like?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: It was enormous, and it was immediate. And you have to think if it had taken place in 1997, there might have been an attack, an invasion, and there might have been a nuclear war because in 1962, you could keep a secret like this for six days. They were able to do this behind closed doors. Nowadays you'd probably have a television network satellite discovering the missiles at the exact same moment the CIA did, and you had angry Senators on television saying John Kennedy promised us this would never happen. He said he would invade an attack in retaliation for something like this. Under that kind of political pressure, JFK would have had a very hard time taking the moderate stance he did. As it was, he had the luxury of being the person who could announce to the nation and the world that there were these missiles in Cuba that he promised would never be there, and couple that with the best possible presentation of his reaction. And that made him a lot more stronger politically, and the result is that he had almost total support among the American people.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Khrushchev, did your father just miscalculate what the United States' reaction to this would be?

SERGEI KHRUSHCHEV: Yes. It was one of the--maybe not miscalculation--a misunderstanding of the two different cultures--because for my father like the European country, the presence of the missiles near your borders was something unpleasant but usual; all the time we have this. And you all the time were safe and you still have this feeling. When you see them near borders, you can do everything to dig them out. And I am agree that all the left and right, the hopes and all of them tried to do this push them out because it was fear of the nation. And I think it is most dangerous because it was not really calculated political decisions because the people in the White House understood if they will accept these missiles, they will be kicked out of the White House next day, what you just told us. It was the biggest miscalculation of my father's and he had to make improvisation later after the beginning of the crisis.

JIM LEHRER: And in the final analysis he turned those ships around and he took those missiles off because he thought that United States really was going to bomb Cuba, really was prepared to start a war.

SERGEI KHRUSHCHEV: He understood that if the strike will begin, he will lose the control of the situation and then nobody know who would push the button, general, sergeant, colonel, and all this fire on this distraction. At that time it was no technical possibility to prevent it. You can turn the key, like in the car, push the button, and destroy New York City and then begin the war. So he wanted to prevent that.

JIM LEHRER: And it was remarkable, the final analysis, was it not, Michael, how quickly this whole thing started and was over.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Absolutely. And it ended like a historical fable. Nikita Khrushchev and John Kennedy both made very bad mistakes that brought about this unnecessary practice but they were both extremely wise and courageous in ending it just before it was on the verge of going to nuclear war and possibly ending civilization.

JIM LEHRER: Doris, gentlemen, thank you very much.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: You are welcome.

SERGEI KHRUSHCHEV: Thank you. DIALOGUE

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight a David Gergen dialogue. David Gergen, editor-at-large of "U.S. News & World Report," engages Yale Professor Stephen Gelernter, author of "Drawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber."

DAVID GERGEN: David, June, 1993, you walk into your office at Yale one morning and your life changes forever. Tell us what happened.

STEPHEN GELERNTER, Author, Drawing Life: Well, let's see. We had been out of town for a few days, and mail accumulates naturally when I'm away, while I'm away. Among the stack of stuff was a book package, a very normal-looking book package. It looked like it had a Ph.D. dissertation in it, which students are always sending around to people in the field. I blew--I opened it, and it blew up in my face. There was a hiss of smoke, followed by a terrific flash. I was badly hurt. This was clear immediately. It was a big explosion. Shrapnel ripped through steel file cabinets. I tend to get to work pretty early by academic standards. It was 8, a quarter after 8, something like that. So the building was empty, and I needed to come up quickly with a strategy for not dying. And it struck me that I probably shouldn't wait for a ride. The way the campus is laid out the health building is near my office, so I was able to make my way down to ground five flights or thereabouts.

DAVID GERGEN: You staggered down.

STEPHEN GELERNTER: Yes. I walked down. I figured I shouldn't wait for the elevator, which is kind of unreliable in our building anyway. The--I staggered down to ground. I made it across a parking lot and up a shallow hill and across a street and into the health building and soon after wound up in an ambulance and so forth and emerged after many, many operations and many weeks later somewhat transformed.

DAVID GERGEN: The doctors felt you almost didn't make it.

STEPHEN GELERNTER: Yes. They told me afterwards it was good I decided to walk. I would likely have bled to death otherwise. The claim was that my measurable blood pressure was zero at the point I arrived at the clinic.

DAVID GERGEN: George Will has read your book and says that you've emerged physically damaged but that you've been strengthened in spirit.

STEPHEN GELERNTER: It was nice of him to say. And that is certainly the way I'd like to think about it. I--any man who's seen a blast like this up close and survived it, for one thing, thinks of himself the rest of his life as the luckiest guy on the face of the earth, as I believe I am. I also could have been hurt much worse than I was.

DAVID GERGEN: You found great solace in music, Beethoven quartets I think you said, and the poetry you learned as a child.

STEPHEN GELERNTER: It turns out I know a lot of poetry by heart, which is something I didn't realize until I wound up in the hospital with both hands bandaged and out of play and unable to hold a book. My wife spent many hours reading to me and other members of my family as well, but the fact that I had words to listen to in mind was tremendously valuable and the fact that they were great words, the fact that they were true words and beautiful words meant a lot clinically. Great art has enormous clinical value, and our refusal nowadays so often to teach this to our children, even to admit that there is such a thing as great art, is a current point of view in some academic circles--is a tragedy. I mean, I can tell you that this material helps. The late Beethoven quartets are probably the spiritually deepest of all human utterances--strengthened me and inspired me, as they have millions of people and as--will go on happening through centuries and millennia to come.

DAVID GERGEN: Yet, even as you were inspired by beauty and the truth of poetry, an anger seemed to build up--not just at the Unabomber, whom you didn't know, but at what was happening inside society, and it seemed--your anger seemed to start with the press.

STEPHEN GELERNTER: Yes. I don't know that I'm, per se, angry at the Unabomber at all. I think of him with revulsion, with contempt. I don't really have a personal sense of anger. I am angry at the press, and not the entire press. The press is not a monolithic entity. There were first rate reporters, I thought, who did excellent work on my case anyway. But there was an attitude in the press that was so striking and so astonishing that it brought me up short. And I think anybody who saw what I saw from the vantage point that I saw it would have been forced to ask what is going on in this country, how could the press behave this way, where does this come from.

DAVID GERGEN: In what way?

STEPHEN GELERNTER: I was approached repeatedly and relentlessly to speak as a victim. People asked me to come forward and talk about victimhood, speak up for victims, represent the victims of America, claim my fare share of victimhood. I don't know any man--no man in his right man would fail to be revolted by such an offer. No man wants to think of himself as a victim. When a person has been hurt and knocked down, he wants to stand up and get on with his life and as best he can, without denying what's happened to him. But the idea that you would enjoy wallowing in victimhood--and this is--it's difficult to overstate how relentless this obsession is in the press. It's not a word that comes up once or twice but something you hear again and again.

DAVID GERGEN: But with regard to the Unabomber and the attitude toward the Unabomber.

STEPHEN GELERNTER: And I think, even more important, it is--it's natural to be fascinated with violent crime and violent criminals, and it's not that I fault people for wanting to read about this case and hear about the man who didn't understand him. It's natural, but so much of what was written and appeared in the press came morals free, without any moral framework. This evil, cowardly, cold-blooded murderer, squalid cutthroat, described by "People" Magazine as one of the most fascinating men of the year, described by major "News Weekly" as a "mad genius"--there is no evidence that he's mad. He may be, but there's certainly no evidence that I know of or they know of, or they adduced. The idea that he's a genius is preposterous. To have a major newspaper print my alleged views of technology side by side with his with a respectful "hands off" neutrality, as if this were a gentlemanly debate, the press seemed to be willing to do anything to avoid hinting that this was an issue of evil and that an actual crime had been committed.

DAVID GERGEN: You've thought a lot about where this kind of attitude comes from in the press, and you concluded in your months of recovery that intellectuals have taken over the elite, and that's changed the framework in which we look at things. Tell us a little bit about that.

STEPHEN GELERNTER: Yes. It's kind of a sweeping hypothesis and compressed into a sentence it certainly--it requires some qualifications, nuances; however, here is the question I face. Why do we go around telling each other don't be judgmental? It's a bizarre thing to say. It's contrary to every moral instinct we have. My most important goal in rearing our children is that they should be judgmental; they should learn how to be judgmental, learn how to judge right from wrong and good from evil, and true from false, and beautiful from ugly. I have to ask myself, where did we get this craziness of discouraging our moral facility, and where did this come from? And we know where it came from. I mean, this approach towards morality, this liking for a plaintive sophistication that seems to transcend piddling, small potatoes distinctions like that between good and evil is a pose that intellectuals have struck for generations, not all of them, of course. I mean, the intelligentsia know more than the presses is monolithic. But if you look at the nature of life among the intellectuals since the turn of the century, you see foreshadowed in the intelligentsia all sorts of attitudes that used to be miles away from mainstream in this country and now are mainstream: The unwillingness to judge or be judgmental, the belief in tolerance not merely as a virtue--I believe it is a virtue--but as "the" absolute virtue, trumping all over virtues, including justice and common decency; the casual contempt for traditional family, for traditional sex roles, for the military, for authority in general. These attitudes for religion, for organized religion, for traditional religion, the intelligentsia has gone about its business feeling and thinking this way for many generations. And it's only recently that they've become mainstream, as today I think they are, certainly where I come from.

DAVID GERGEN: David Stephen Gelernter, thank you. You've packed a great deal in this--in your book.

STEPHEN GELERNTER: Thank you. RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Thursday, federal officials announced there will be a 2.1 percent cost of living increase next year for Social Security recipients, the smallest since '87, and author James Michener died in Austin, Texas, tonight, just days after taking himself off kidney dialysis. He was 90 years old. We'll see you on-line and again here tomorrow evening with Shields & Gigot, among others. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.