The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, Susan Dentzer and Margaret Warner look at the competing Gore and Bush plans for retirement savings accounts. Gwen Ifill examines the business of smuggling human beings from one country to another. In an encore broadcast, Paul Solman talks about Zen with Phil Jackson, the coach of the new basketball champions. And essayist Anne Taylor Fleming considers our troubled teenagers. It all follows our summary of the news this Tuesday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Vice President Gore proposed a new retirement savings plan today. Low- and middle-income workers would get tax breaks for private retirement accounts that would be invested in the stock market. Gore said it would cost about $200 billion over ten years. His rival for the presidency, republican George W. Bush, has called for letting people invest their social security taxes in the markets. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. In the Microsoft breakup case, the presiding judge sent the company's appeal directly to the U.S. Supreme Court today. The Justices can accept it or t an appeals court review it first, as Microsoft wants. The judge also delayed new restrictions on the company's business practices. He had already delayed the actual breakup, pending appeals. A French utility and media company, Vivendi, announced today it will buy Seagram Company of Canada. The merger will create a communications and entertainment giant, Vivendi Universal. We have a report from Louise Bates of Associated Press Television News.

LOUISE BATES: Not since the marriage of America OnLine and Time-Warner has a media merger created such interest. The merger, which cost the French firm an estimated $34 billion, will make Vivendi a global player.

EDGAR BRONFMAN, CEO, Seagram Company: Today marks a beginning of the one of the world's leading communications and media companies, one which is best positioned to deliver to consumers the extraordinary array of brands, content, services, and access which they will increasingly require in the 21st century.

LOUISE BATES: Vivendi plans to sell off Seagram's $8 billion drinks business. However, it has no intention of shedding what's seen as the jewel in Seagram's crown, Universal Studios. The world-famous production house will give Vivendi- Universal much coveted access to the U.S. market, adding music to the company's burgeoning media empire. So far, investors have giving the deal a lukewarm reception, pushing Vivendi stock down a total of 22% since last week.

JIM LEHRER: The deal is subject to regulatory approval on both sides of the Atlantic. Dutch police today announced a second arrest in the deaths of 58 illegal Chinese immigrants. The victims suffocated in a Dutch-owned truck in the British port city of Dover. British police arrested the truck driver yesterday. The arrest was made in Rotterdam, but no other details were available. We'll have more on this story later in the program tonight. The Los Angeles Lakers won the NBA championship last night. They defeated the Indiana Pacers 116-111 to take their first pro-basketball title in 12 years. After the game, street celebrations in LA turned violent. Hundreds of fans vandalized businesses and torched police cars. At least 11 people were injured. We'll have a reprise of Paul Solman's conversation with Lakers coach Phil Jackson later in the program tonight. Also coming, saving for retirement programs; human smuggling; and an Anne Taylor Fleming essay.

FOCUS - RETIREMENT SAVINGS

JIM LEHRER: Health correspondent Susan Dentzer begins our look at the new retirement savings plans. Our health unit is a partnership with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

SUSAN DENTZER: Today Vice President Al Gore formally laid out a plan to buttress Americans' skimpy savings -- through a new system of private retirement accounts on top of Social Security.

AL GORE: I propose that we create new Retirement Savings Plus Accounts, tax-free voluntary accounts, that let you to save, invest and build on top of the guaranteed foundation of Social Security. Together we will make saving one of the easiest things a family can ever do.

SUSAN DENTZER: In effect, Gore dusted off and retooled a proposal put forward two years ago by his boss, President Clinton. Gore's plan would give families earning up to $100,000 a year the ability to squirrel away up to $4,000 annually that could accumulate free from taxes. What's more, much of that money would come directly from the government.

AL GORE: We will give people tax credits to max their own savings; the hardest pressed families will get even bigger tax credits... For a married couple making up to $30,000 a year, we'll match every dollar you save with $3 deposited right into your account. And you can do it on your tax return and have it done automatically, if you choose.

SUSAN DENTZER: Specifically, Gore said, each spouse of that couple earning $30,000 could contribute $500 to their Retirement Savings Plus accounts, for a total of $1,000 a year. In turn, those contributions would be matched with tax credits totaling $3,000. Individuals could invest those funds in specially designated broad-based mutual funds for stocks, bonds, and government securities. Although higher-income couples could contribute more, they'd get lesser amounts in tax credits. For example, a couple making $90,000 could contribute $1,500 each, or $3,000 in total. The government would kick in $500 per spouse -- or $1 for every $3 contributed.

AL GORE: If a young couple saves just $20 a week, together with our tax credits and the returns on their savings, they could reasonably expect to save as much as $400,000 extra by the time they retire 35 years later.

SUSAN DENTZER: Gore added that the accounts could be tapped for other purposes as well, such as buying a first home, paying for a child's college education or meeting catastrophic medical expenses. He also went out of his way to draw a sharp distinction between his plan to shore up Americans' retirement security and that of his presidential rival, George W. Bush.

AL GORE: My plan is Social Security plus, it's not Social Security minus. It's the best of both worlds, not the worst of both worlds - not the worst of both worlds.

SUSAN DENTZER: Unlike Gore's, in fact, Bush's plan would create private investment accounts within Social Security.

GEORGE W. BUSH: A younger worker can take some portion of his or her payroll tax and put it into a fund that invests in stocks and bonds.

SUSAN DENTZER: Although Bush hasn't said how much, it's likely that workers could have two percentage points of the taxes they pay into Social Security set aside in these accounts. Bush says his plan could be made to work by tapping the same looming federal budget surpluses that Gore proposes to tap for his plan. But Gore argues that Bush's proposal to divert payroll taxes out of Social Security and into private accounts would force sharp cuts in promised benefits to future retirees. Bush criticized Gore's proposal as a flip flop.

GEORGE W. BUSH: Now all of a sudden he's decide it's okay to be managing money in the stock market. First the stock market was roulette and risky, and now the heat's on, and he changes position.

SUSAN DENTZER: Now that the to two rivals have carved out such different stances on Social Security the campaign to win over voters on the issue gets underway in earnest.

JIM LEHRER: Margaret Warner takes it from there.

MARGARET WARNER: To debate the merits of Vice President Gore's new plan and compare it to Governor Bush's proposal, we turn to representatives of the two campaigns. Lawrence Lindsey is a former governor of the Federal Reserve, now resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and chief economic advisor to Governor Bush. Ron Klain is a former chief of staff to Attorney General Reno and to Vice President Gore, now a lawyer in private practice and a senior advisor in the Gore campaign.

Welcome, gentlemen. Well, now both candidates have embraced the idea of augmenting government-sponsored retirement savings by putting at least some tax revenues in the market. The big difference, as we just saw, is Governor Bush would do that within Social Security; Vice President Gore would do that on top of Social Security. Why from Gore's perspective? What's the advantage of doing it his way?

RON KLAIN, Senior Adviser, Gore Campaign: Well, Margaret, the advantage to doing it his way is to keep Social Security as a safe, secure, guaranteed benefit and to have all Americans know that that Social Security benefit isn't going to rise or fall on the stock market or depend on what year you happen to retire in. The benefit will be guaranteed. But he also believes, I think as a wide array of people believe that people need to save for their retirement on top of Social Security. Social Security is the foundation for retirement. People need more savings than that. And so the proposal he laid out today is targeted those people who need the most help, working families, middle class families, who find it hard to save for their retirement beyond Social Security. Fewer than 20% of them have IRA Accounts or 401(k) accounts. They need extra help to save for their retirement. And the plan the Vice President announced today by providing generous tax credits, 3-1 matches for those in the lowest income brackets, gives those families the help they need to get ready for retirement.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Now, what's wrong with that proposal? Why not have that secure little nest egg of guaranteed benefits in Social Security and then just add on top of it?

LAWRENCE LINDSEY, Economic Adviser, Bush Campaign: The problem is, is that Vice President Gore doesn't fix Social Security. The main problem we have is, according to the Social Security actuary, Social Security's $8.8 trillion short. There's three ways we can fix it: We can raise taxes. We've done that 22 times in the past for Social Security. We can cut benefits. Or we can get a higher return on the money that's now in the trust fund. And that is what Governor Bush is proposing.

MARGARET WARNER: So, in other words, you're saying there is no little real secure nest egg of guaranteed benefits because the Social Security trust fund will be depleted within, what, 30 years?

LAWRENCE LINDSEY: Well, I just got my personal Social Security account from the Social Security administration. And they told me that I'd have to watch it because starting some time in the 2030's, benefits would have to be cut by 30%. The one sure thing in Mr. Gore's plan is that Social Security benefits will have to be cut by 30% some time in the 2030's.

MARGARET WARNER: Is that a sure thing?

RON KLAIN: No...

MARGARET WARNER: If not, how do you prevent it?

RON KLAIN: You prevent it by having a fiscally disciplined approach of paying down the debt and putting Social Security in a position to pay off those benefits. The Vice President's approach has been certified by Social Security actuaries as extending the life of the trust fund to 2054. While I wish Larry the best of health, I think that will be well around for almost all of his retirement, if not most of it. Governor Bush, by the way... Larry talks about the Bush plan, but as we know, there is no Bush plan. He talks about six hypothetical plans, but they haven't really said which benefit cuts they would implement, how much they would move out of Social Security and what aspects of these six hypothetical plans they would adopt. The fact of the matter is, Margaret, that the Bush plan does rely on private sector returns to make those benefits. If they aren't there, where is it going to come from? As Larry said, tax hikes or benefit cuts or a massive s and l type bailout. That's the risk of the Bush plan.

MARGARET WARNER: Let me make sure I understand the Gore plan. You're saying that even though by 2015 the outflows will exceed the inflows in Social Security -- and by 2030 or whatever, that's going to be depleted, the trust fund -- that by paying off the national debt, we're going to somehow extend the...

RON KLAIN: By paying off the national debt, we extend the life of Social Security in two ways. First, we create the fund's available to pay back those IOU's in Social Security.

MARGARET WARNER: From general tax revenues.

RON KLAIN: The Vice President's plan wipes out all national debt by 2012. Secondly, by paying off the national debt, we increase capital flows, capital formation, raise productivity and help long-term economic growth. The Vice President's plan is good for Social Security, and good for the economy, too.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, he does point out, there have been critics who've said there are some shortfalls in the American plan, as well. And one is that... right now if I were to take part of my payroll taxes that are say supporting my parents and put them in my own private account, something has to make up that difference.

LAWRENCE LINDSEY: Sure.

MARGARET WARNER: What makes it up?

LAWRENCE LINDSEY: First of all, the plans are not hypothetical. All six plans have been proposed by the Congress. All six plans have been certified by Social Security and the General Accounting Office as solving the Social Security problem, not until 2054, at which time the nation's trillions of dollars in debt under Mr. Gore's plan, but solving it forever, fixing Social Security forever. These plans have all been certified as doing it. They're not hypothetical plans.

MARGARET WARNER: But let me follow up one other thing Mr. Klain mentioned. It is true, is it not, take me as a hypothetical, I choose to be one who puts my money, one-sixth of it or whatever, in this private payroll account, I will have to accept the fact that my little guaranteed Social Security benefit will be a little smaller than my colleague who chose not to.

LAWRENCE LINDSEY: Each of the six plans, by responsible members of Congress, deals with that issue somewhat differently. So the answer is we don't know. It will depend on what the political process moves on. The key issue is whether or not people should be allowed to invest a portion of their Social Security in personal accounts. That's the threshold issue in this election. It's... we think... the best way of making sure that the money is there for younger people to retire.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Let me ask you both the same question here. Neither of you are proposing any pain for anyone. Neither candidate is saying, "Benefits might have to be cut. Payroll tax might have to be raised. The retirement age might have to be raised." Is it really realistic over the long term not to talk about those things?

RON KLAIN: Margaret, I guess I disagree with that on both accounts. First of all, with regard to Governor Bush's plan, the six plans do exist. The Governor Bush hasn't told us which one of them he is for, but many of them do contain raises in the retirement age, benefit cuts and various other cutbacks in Social Security, so maybe Governor Bush is for them, maybe he isn't, we just don't know. On the Vice President's side, we're proposing is pain. We're proposing to pay down the debt instead of giving that money away in tax breaks that Governor Bush wants to. That's giving up consumption today to save for retirement tomorrow. That is giving something up, Margaret, something -

LAWRENCE LINDSEY: Vice President Gore's proposed $1.7 billion in spending increases over the next decade. I don't know where the money is coming from. The real pain in what Governor... Actually Vice President Gore is proposing is he would transfer $125 billion a year in income taxes into Social Security. That was something Franklin Roosevelt refused to do. He said if we did that, we would turn Social Security into a welfare program. I think it's a serious mistake. As far as how we would fund our program, right now the money in Social Security is earning a 2% real return. Historically, the stock market yields 7%. Real estate earns about 5.5%. Bonds earn about 4 1/2%. Einstein called compound interest the only miracle in the universe. You combine 4 1/2%, 5 1/2 %, 7% returns instead of 2% returns over a long period of time on the trillions of dollars, and you have real money.

MARGARET WARNER: Okay. That does raise another question to both of you. Both of you now would let people count partly on the markets. What if the stock market tanks, just at the time I'm getting ready to retire? I mean, under either plan, wouldn't I stand to lose a substantial amount of money, including money I put in?

LAWRENCE LINDSEY: All six of the plans out there have a guaranteed minimum benefit proposal. I don't know what the Congress will end up doing, but I do, as someone who studies politics, suggests that if all six plans to do the same thing, there will be a government backstopping of the program. And I think that that's probably an important consideration.

RON KLAIN: Well, they all six have a minimum benefit, but they're not the same as the current benefit. And as Governor Bush, I'll give him credit for honesty, he was asked about this a few weeks ago and said maybe yes, maybe no. The difference between the Gore plan and American plan is this: The Gore plan says that Social Security benefit will be guaranteed. And the risk in the market --

MARGARET WARNER: At the currently promised level with no reduction.

RON KLAIN: At the currently promised level with no reduction, and your market risk, Margaret, which you're right to point out, is a risk, in the Gore plan would just be for the additional amount on the top that you put in this private savings account. The Bush people can't say the same thing because their account doesn't work the same way.

LAWRENCE LINDSEY: Right. He is funding his accounts with higher taxes. So what we're going to do is, yes, we'll give you the same benefits that's promised, but we've got to take $125 billion a year from you in taxes in order to pay for it, plus we have to pay for the USA plan. What we've got to do is get Social Security on a sound footing the way it was set up, one that is self-financing, one that is guaranteed forever, not just until some fixed day in the future in which time the whole house of cards collapses.

MARGARET WARNER: And you think the markets are the way to do that.

LAWRENCE LINDSEY: We think that getting a higher return, be it in real estate, bonds, stocks, in private returns are the way of doing that.

MARGARET WARNER: And the fact that Vice President Gore wouldn't put any payroll taxes into the markets, does that indicate that he still has some ambivalence about how reliable the markets are?

RON KLAIN: Well, I think everyone has some ambivalence about how reliable the markets are. They are risky. And they do involve an element of risk. That's what the higher return is for. What he's saying is that everyone should have a guaranteed benefit and some choices on top of that. And we can do that, secure Social Security until 2054, not by raising taxes as Larry suggests we would do, but by taking some money today they want to give away in a huge tax cut and siphon towards the rich and putting it aside for retirement tomorrow. That's the fiscally prudent thing to do, and that will allow people to both save for retirement and have Social Security. That's the smart way to go.

LAWRENCE LINDSEY: Our supposed huge tax cut for the rich, by the way, gives $1,500 to a single mom with two kids, more than his.

MARGARET WARNER: Instead of - the tax cut -- Let me ask you one other question about the plans we're talking about tonight. If we'd been talking about this ten years ago or twelve years ago, I can't imagine either candidate for president would have talked about anything like this, putting tax revenues into the markets for retirement. I mean, what's changed in the political climate? Why is it even acceptable to talk about this?

LAWRENCE LINDSEY: Well, I think we've had experience now where about half of the American public owns some stock. People are much more financially sophisticated than they have been. We think that people can be trusted managing more of their own money. Until the... Until last week, Vice President Gore did not. But we welcome him on board on that issue.

MARGARET WARNER: And, it is true that after Governor Bush came out with his plan, that the public way preferred that to standing pat on current Social Security -- why do you think that is?

RON KLAIN: I don't think the public has yet had a chance to understand that the six plans that Governor Bush has yet to pick one of involve things like significant benefit cuts. I think Margaret once they understand that, they're not going to be enamored with the Bush plan. As to what's changed in the political dynamic over the past ten years, I think it's a good question. The answer is this. We've had a lot of experience with IRA'S. What we've learned with IRA's, they're great for higher middle-income people. But middle class and working class people can't afford to save. That's why Al Gore laid out a plan to help those families save for their retirement.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Ron Klain and Larry Lindsey, thank you both very much.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: The human smuggling business, the Zen basketball coach, and an Anne Taylor Fleming essay.

FOCUS - HUMAN CARGO

JIM LEHRER: Gwen Ifill has the smuggling story.

GWEN IFILL: British authorities made a gruesome discovery yesterday during a routine border inspection at the port city of Dover: fifty-four men and four women dead of suffocation in the back of a delivery truck. There were only two survivors among the dozens who were being smuggled into the country, officials said, from the southern Chinese province of Fujian. The Dutch-registered freight truck, also carrying a load of tomatoes, had been locked shut, its refrigeration unit switched off.

MARK PUGASH, Kent county Police: Just before midnight, Customs officials stopped the truck, searched it, and found to their absolute horror what turned out to be 58 dead bodies inside.

GWEN IFILL: British Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged to crack down on what has become a growth industry, the smuggling of human cargo.

TONY BLAIR: We're obviously still awaiting details of what has happened, and it's the subject, of course, of a major criminal investigation now. But it underlines once again the importance of stamping out what is an evil trade in people.

GWEN IFILL: Western immigration officials estimate that Chinese stowaways often pay up to $70,000 each for such journeys. Experts say human smuggling grosses $10 billion a year for the international crime gangs who sneak people into affluent countries-- countries like Britain, Germany, and the United States, where illegal immigration is on the rise. In 1993, a ship smuggling illegal entrants dumped 240 refugees from Fujian Province at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, then sailed back into international waters. A few months later, a freighter, the "Golden Venture," ran aground near New York City. The almost 300 Chinese stowaways on board had spent 114 days at sea. Too often, the stowaways risk life and limb to make their dangerous journeys. In January, 15 Chinese men emerged from a metal cargo container after the Cape may freighter docked in Seattle. Three more were found dead inside.

MELVIN AUSTIN: The ones that came out of that container were in bad shape. Seven of the fifteen that survived had to be hospitalized to get them back to good health. The other eight did come in here, but they also were dehydrated. They needed to be... you know, they needed good nourishment, they needed plenty of fluids.

GWEN IFILL: Officials say that up to 100,000 Chinese flee to the West each year, heading for jobs in flourishing Chinese immigrant communities in New York and London.

GWEN IFILL: For more on the causes and implications of this issue we're joined by Mary Robinson, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; David Bachman, chairman of the China Studies Program at the University of Washington; and Demetrios Papademetriou, co director of the International Migration Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Mrs. Robinson, we are hearing more and more of these smuggling incidents. Why is that?

MARY ROBINSON: I'm afraid it's an enormous problem - the trafficking in migrants, the trafficking in women for purposes of prostitution and sex; the trafficking in children. And it is a huge world problem with huge criminal gangs, and it is being addressed in various ways, but we need to have much more of a sense of urgency.

GWEN IFILL: Let's talk about those various ways. What is or what should be the international response?

MARY ROBINSON: There are different international responses. There was a problem in the certainties of trafficking from countries in Africa and France and from scandals, such as the terrible incident in Dover, where fifty-four men and four women were found suffocated to death. These are the kind of incidents that draw attention to a problem that's getting worse. And that led to an international convention of migrant workers and their families. That convention was adopted by consensus in the context of the United Nations, but as yet only twelve countries have ratified it, and it won't come into effect until twenty countries ratify it. Meanwhile, there is work going on at the moment in Vienna on two protocols - one on smuggling of migrants - precisely the issue that came to the terrible tragic attention in Dover this week -and the other - trafficking of persons and for purposes of prostitution. There are very complex issues. I'm aware, for example, of how much it was an issue in the Beijing Plus Five Review, the review of the World Conference on Women, because there is a concern that women could become victims all the more, depending on how we approach the problem of trafficking of women for the purposes of prostitution. Similarly, trafficking of undocumented migrants - it's very often the migrants who suffer because of border controls - and get trapped into a worse situation. So we have to have human rights principles at the forefront as we address this problem.

GWEN IFILL: Mr. Bachman, even though we have heard about similar cases like this in other countries involving immigrants from other countries, we are hearing more and more about Chinese immigrants or Chinese stowaways. Why China?

DAVID BACHMAN: Well, China faces a huge number of people on a very limited land base; they have a sense of rising expectation. China is growing very quickly, but there are still not enough opportunities to go around. In the particular case of Fujian Province, this is the center for Chinese immigration for the last five hundred years almost. So there are historical traditions and understandings that you go abroad to make your fortune, send it back to your family, and they do well by that. So there are a variety of things coming together, plus in the particular case of Fujian there's been a major case of corruption at the very highest levels of the government suggesting there are ties between criminal gangs and officialdom that have been in cahoots with this type of operation.

GWEN IFILL: Tell us a little bit more about Fujian Province. Are we talking about the physical location of the province in terms of ability for people to be able to leave, or is it because it's particularly poor, or is it just that the opportunities seem greater?

DAVID BACHMAN: The opportunities are greater. Fujian is on a per capita basis the sixth richest province in China. It's the province just Northeast of Guangdong, the province that borders on Hong Kong, So, in that sense, it's been one of the great beneficiaries of the open door policy, and it has grown very rapidly over the last ten or fifteen years, so it's clearly not the sense that Fujian is particularly poor. Indeed, it takes so much money to get these people out that it has to be from one of these richer provinces before you can do it - if you're going to put down twenty or thirty or more thousand dollars to be smuggled out of China, you're not going to do it from the very poorest parts of China.

GWEN IFILL: Mr. Papademetriou, one of the issues which comes up once these folks get to the western countries they're aiming for is asylum. Is this a question of people coming and seeking asylum that they're able to get, or what happens to these folks once they finally arrive, if they don't meet a tragic end before they get here?

DEMETRIOS PAPADEMETRIOU: Well, most of them will lodge the claim of asylum, and I suspect in the overwhelming majority of those cases that asylum, that application is going to be denied. This is fairly uniform across advanced industrial society. Now, clearly, in the case of the United States since 1996 we have created a small opening for people who can persuade examiners from the INS and the Immigration & Naturalization Service and/or judges of the service that they are fleeing China because of persecution of one sort or another. Again, very few of us will be able to make a successful claim on this.

GWEN IFILL: Is there a growing concern about this, or is this just - are we just looking at incidents and all - drawing our attention - or is there really a real concern that this is a growing issue?

DEMETRIOS PAPADEMETRIOU: I think it is a realization that is emerging across all national capitals in the advanced world that this is a growing problem. It is not isolated examples any longer, as it used to be earlier in the 1990s. And increasingly, the syndicates that are probably behind this entire effort are becoming more sophisticated and more diversified, so instead of using large votes that may start at Point A and then meander through - you know - a thousand ports of call before they actually find an opportunity to come to the United States or Canada or places in Europe you now have this container business because that has been identified somehow as a weak link in the chain of responses that the West has used against most illegal immigration but particularly the organized smuggling aspect of illegal immigration.

GWEN IFILL: Mrs. Robinson, is there an international response that could be mounted specifically to this idea of smuggling of what Tony Blair called "the evil trade in people?"

MARY ROBINSON: It is an evil trade and it raises huge human rights problems and also state responsibility. As I mentioned, there are a number of ways in which it can be and should be addressed. First of all, I believe that the international convention on migrant workers and their families should be ratified and my office is supporting a campaign for that.

GWEN IFILL: Can I - excuse me -

MARY ROBINSON: The developed countries that are resisting this, even though in 1990, following shocking incidents of Africans being smuggled into France and dying en route, and drowning on boats, they were so ashamed they came to a consensus on this convention, but now they have not implemented it; it has economic implications. Migration is a most relevant issue to the whole question of globalization. We have free movement of capital and free movement of goods. We do not have free movement of people. And this is causing huge shocking incidents of criminalization of trafficking of migrants and abuse of people. Some migrants learn that they can apply for asylum; very many others don't even learn that they might possibly be able to apply for asylum. They become modern slaves. We shouldn't underestimate this.

GWEN IFILL: You just started to touch on where I was going, which is how... can you explain to us exactly how this becomes a human rights issue?

MARY ROBINSON: Let me just describe one incident of a girl of 15 whom I met in Cambodia in Phnom Penh. She was brought by her relatives into Phnom Penh, and told she was going to work into a clothing factory. She was pushed in the door of a brothel, and for 18 hours a day, she was beaten into sex work, until she escaped. That's not an isolated story. There are hundreds and thousands of girls and women, some of them think they're going to do it voluntarily to start with. They reach a country, and there are countries like the United States, Israel, many modern countries, who are closing eyes to the amount of trafficking into their territory... and of women for sex slave purposes, or sex purposes, who lose their passports, who become completely dependent, lose all their rights. If it's undocumented migrants, equally, they lose all their rights, and far from being well-treated at borders or well-treated... and when they're found, and they're deported, and involuntarily back into an impossible situation. So there are huge human rights issues. They are being addressed, but very slowly, at the international level -- as I said, in Vienna, in the two protocols on smuggling of migrants and on trafficking of persons. And we must do it in a human rights context, recognizing the huge suffering of people. I mean, to talk about modern slavery in this century, and there's so much of contemporary slavery, and it's a reality that has certainly been very shocking to me, as high commissioner.

GWEN IFILL: Mr. Bachman, is this different than what is happening, especially with the China immigrant stowaway slave trade-- whatever term you want to use-- is it different from what we see coming into our borders, for instance, from Latin America?

DAVID BACHMAN: At its most basic, it's not. It's people looking for economic opportunities. There are people filling demands for labor that are not easily satisfied domestically, for a variety of reasons. There are connections between the family homestead and people here that make the connections possible. But basically for most people, it's an economic motivation. There's a sense in China that the United States is a land of great opportunity, and as a result, there is a surge of interest to get over. And I think most importantly, on the demand side, there are people here taking the risk of facilitating this, because they think they're going to make a lot of money, and unfortunately, in most cases, they do.

GWEN IFILL: So there is an economic incentive on this side, as Mrs. Robinson was alluding to, to, maybe, look the other way?

DAVID BACHMAN: Indeed. And then stories I've seen about the British case, much of the food processing industry, slaughterhouses, are being staffed by these illegal immigrants, who are picked up by employment firms, and the big supermarket chains are hiring through these employment chains,and they put the people into the, you know, fields or the slaughterhouses.

GWEN IFILL: So, Mr. Papademetriou, these immigrants, stowaways, slaves come here, and they finally have a chance to get what they think they want, and then they owe thousands -- tens of thousands of dollars to the people who brought them here. How do they pay them off?

DEMETRIOS PAPADEMETRIOU: By becoming, effectively, indentured servants. And you were asking earlier what is the human rights angle on this, and I think that there is nothing more perverse than what happens to these people in the kinds of relationships... that these particular arrangements through the smuggling networks, et cetera, et cetera, create. These people are not able to pay more than a down payment, and probably a small down payment on the fantastic, enormous fees that the smuggling networks demand, which means they basically have to work off the rest, and the rest is probably in the tens of thousands of dollars. This is something that we haven't really experienced in probably that scale since the 1860's, about 140 years ago. These people will do everything, because not only are they in physical danger for their own safety and life to these networks, but their families back home are basically exposed to the same kind of danger. This creates the worst possible conditions, not only for them, but also for Americans, the British workers that work with them, because exploitation to a certain degree creates more opportunities for exploitation.

GWEN IFILL: And Mrs. Robinson, finally and briefly, is there something that this event that we saw unfold in Britain... is that something that's going to spur people to action? What happens next?

MARY ROBINSON: Well, if it takes the shocking death of 58 people suffocating in a refrigerated lorry in the port of Dover to draw attention, but really governments must take the responsibility. And there are, in fact, very serious fights being fought in a legal sense over how to define trafficking, and, I think, my concern is that there must be a human rights framework because we mustn't make the situation worse. And for the women, for the children, for the undocumented migrants, and they are the vulnerable sector that we must have concern for. They desperately need our help, believe me, desperately, and there is more that can be done. And if more attention is being drawn to it, well, at least let's use that, and let's get more progress at the international level on the normative rules, but more responsibility, more monitoring of the criminal gangs, the flow of undocumented migrants, the pressures on women, and the way in which... and the traffickers must be attacked, but life must not become more difficult for those who have no choice in what they're doing, particularly women, who, deprived of their passport, are forced into prostitution or have become involuntary at one level, and then find themselves in a terrible sex slave situation. And these are the real problems. And there are hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, as we address the subject, who are suffering desperately as modern slaves.

GWEN IFILL: Thank you all very much.

ENCORE - COURT ZEN

JIM LEHRER: The Los Angeles Lakers became champions of the basketball world last night, another triumph for their unusual but highly successful coach, Phil Jackson. Last week we broadcast a conversation our man Paul Solman of WGBH-Boston had with Jackson. Here now is a post-championship encore. (Cheers and applause)

PAUL SOLMAN: It's finals time for the National Basketball Association, and this year the Indiana Pacers coached by a legend, Larry Bird, are pitted against the Los Angeles Lakers, coached by a curiosity, Phil Jackson. Bird was the master player, winning three world titles in the 1980's. But this is his first trip to the finals as a coach. Phil Jackson, by contrast, was a 6'8" backup teammate of Bill Bradley in the 60's and 70's who specialized in defense -- his arms so long, he could open both front doors of a car-- from the back seat-- at once. Mainly, he was known as the hippie maverick. These days, however, Jackson, is the most successful hippie in the history of NBA coaching, a new-age Philosopher of sorts who won six championships in the 90's with the Chicago Bulls, and is now bidding to become only the second coach ever to win a ring with two different NBA teams. Jackson has had the talent: Michael Jordan in Chicago, now Shaquille O'Neal in L.A. But Jordan never won a crown till Jackson took over, and this, Jackson's first year with the Lakers, is O'Neal's first real shot . So what makes Phil Jackson so successful well, say some, his innovations, like selecting books for his players. This year, he gave Frederick Nietzsche to Shaquille O'Neal.

SHAQUILLE O'NEAL, Los Angeles Lakers: Nietzsche was a difficult book to read. But from what I gather, Nietzsche was so unique, they thought he was crazy, so they put him in a mental home. I guess Phil thinks I'm very unique to a point where I may be crazy. (Laughter)

PAUL SOLMAN: Jackson's messages can be as enigmatic as his methods. The use of native American rituals in the locker room baffled 21-year-old star Kobe Bryant at first.

KOBE BRYANT, Los Angeles Lakers: Well, he used to do things like cleanse the room, you know, he used to get, like, evil spirits out of the room, like, lighting incense and all this other stuff.

PAUL SOLMAN: But Bryant bought in quickly, if not spiritually.

KOBE BRYANT: Some of it's funny, as far as cleansing the room or whatever, aromatherapy. It's nice. It keeps the team relaxed, it keeps it fun.

PAUL SOLMAN: O'Neal sounds like more of a convert: In using new age techniques to get position near the basket, for instance.

SHAQUILLE O'NEAL: Karate. Motions. Dancing. Breathing. See, like, when I try to get on position and they take that away, I just... (Breathing deeply) rub off and get another position.

PAUL SOLMAN: Not everyone follows Jackson's path, of course. Larry Bird has been compared to him, in that both feature a more consensual, less dictatorial approach than most coaches. So we asked Bird:

PAUL SOLMAN: Do you share any of Phil Jackson's so-called spiritual approach to coaching? There seem to be sort of similarities in the way you guys approach.

LARRY BIRD: Hey, I pray on every shot. (Laughter) that's as close as it gets.

PAUL SOLMAN: But despite what at times sounds like disdain from his colleagues, Jackson keeps marching to his own tom-tom, and will try almost anything. He splices scenes from movies into game footage his players study, recently, the menacing "American History X." Veteran backup John Sally, who won two championship rings with the bad-boy Detroit pistons in the late 80's, another with the Bulls under Jackson, is a Phil Jackson devotee: From yoga practice and meditation to lessons from the Lakota Sioux tribe.

JOHN SALLEY, Los Angeles Lakers: You want to learn from a chief like that so you can be a chief one day. And if you don't pay attention, you're an idiot.

PAUL SOLMAN: But don't guys tune out if "American history X" is spliced into a game film?

JOHN SALLEY: No, I think that would make you tune in.

PAUL SOLMAN: And so, on Tuesday, the Lakers up 2-1 in the series and, as it happened, on the verge of their third win, we tried to tune in to coach Jackson as well. He began by explaining what has shaped him: His coaches in the pros and high school; his fundamentalist Christian background, growing up in North Dakota,

PHIL JACKSON, Coach, Los Angeles Lakers: The fact that I wasn't really from a family that participated in athletics. It was a religious community that I lived in, a strict one. My parents were both ministers. This is kind of an aberration. I mean, it's not something that I was supposed to doing, but here I am doing this, and that I've spent a lot of my life g it is kind of a strange thing.

PAUL SOLMAN: What do you try to do, spiritually with your team? I mean, that seems different than what most other coaches say they're doing.

PHIL JACKSON: Everybody is trying to do the same thing. You know, when you develop a community, you're developing a spirit, esprit de corps, whatever you what to call it. And that's I think, you know, what every coach wants to do. Some of them do it from a standpoint of working out of anger, working out of fighting, working out of the challenge, working out of self-promotion. Some of the coaches get teams to dislike them, play and show them that I can... "I'll show this coach I can do this," or the challenging kind.

PAUL SOLMAN: Fear?

PHIL JACKSON: Fear is a great motivator. Fear and greed are two things that my former boss said everybody works hard under. And I was one to say love is something that-- or that community feeling is also something that I think drives people. And that's one of the places I go to.

PAUL SOLMAN: The way you try to teach spirituality is meditation, yoga, things that many of us think of as very personal kinds of roads to spiritual development, not necessarily as communal.

PHIL JACKSON: Yeah, I understand what you're saying. It does smack of that. But the real idea is that we call it conspiring together, breathing together, with breath, to conspire. And we sit in this attitude of, you know, being able to focus and hold our attention. So it's very important that they have that kind of sense of reading each other, and their level of alertness and awareness and being able to read what's going on on the court causes each of them to react in a certain way. And that's the beauty of basketball, that's the beauty of coaching.

PAUL SOLMAN: For you is that the point of coaching?

PHIL JACKSON: Yeah, definitely. I mean...

PAUL SOLMAN: You don't need another title. You've got six of them already, right?

PHIL JACKSON: Well, that's how you measure it. I mean, you measure by winning, you measure by titles, really what your expertise is. But the fun of this all goes on behind the scenes. And teaching the players, and getting them in a position where they can be retentive and then see them burst forth in this flowering kind of thing during a game is very rewarding.

PAUL SOLMAN: In his 1995 book "Sacred Hoops," Jackson speaks of group mind, the Tao of leadership, the mystic warrior. But do the players get his spiritual teachings? Do they even read the books he gives them? Ron Harper, relaxing before practice, has been with Jackson for years, and a frequent recipient of his literary gifts.

RON HARPER, Los Angeles Lakers: I didn't read none of them. I got six books now. Let me see. Yeah, six books. So, in my older age, I got something to read.

PAUL SOLMAN: Does it frustrate you at all to think that many of your players say, "well, we don't read the books?"

PHIL JACKSON: Not at all. They can't avoid it, these moments that we have together. I mean, they can't check out. The books themselves, I know a lot of them, maybe 25%, maybe 50% of them read the books. Some of them give them a shot and can't get through. But I know it's going to go somewhere that's going to be beneficial, whether it's on their library, and even if they pick it up 20 years from now, it's still going to be meaningful because it's a gift, and it's a meaningful thing.

PAUL SOLMAN: You gave Shaquille O'Neal Nietzsche.

PHIL JACKSON: Yeah. Actually, when Nietzsche wrote that book, he was 27, maybe 28, had a very, very pompous opinion about himself and wanted to tell the world, you know, "here I am," you know? And so I thought that, you know, Nietzsche was definitely appropriate for him because here's a guy who's 28 and hasn't won a championship yet. You know, Shaq didn't get all of these connections, I'm sure. But he knew that something very... there was something very subtle that I was sending him a message about, you know. He's a superman, man of steel, that sort of thing. But the books basically say, you know, is this something that corresponds to where you're at in your life, and can I connect with you at this intellectual level. And what I tell them is it's nice to have a companion besides the TV when you're on the road, something that you can, you know, turn that TV off, and you know, open a book and read it before you go to bed at night and understand that there is another world that can open up to you in your intellectual imagination.

PAUL SOLMAN: Any ideas that you've tried that simply were cuckoo, in retrospect, nutty, didn't work?

PHIL JACKSON: Yeah, there was one. There's a therapist that I was friends with and the team we were playing against, the Detroit Pistons, at the time, had a certain stranglehold on the Chicago Bulls. And he kept after me, "I've got something that you can try with these guys." And we got knocked out a lot in these playoffs by physical force, by the force of their physique, so this therapist had this clue. His clue was, you placed, you know, like a Popsicle stick between your molars, you grit your teeth, you eye contact with your companion, your other teammate, and you jump up and down and roar like a gorilla or like a bear or like an animal.

PAUL SOLMAN: You literally put a Popsicle stick in?

PHIL JACKSON: Literally. Grind teeth together, a you make... (Growling) -- So I said, I'm going to try this with these guys. First of all, clenching the jaw, you know, releasing this form of anger, you know, activating yourself by jumping, all of these things made kind of sense to me. I did it with the team, they fell on the floor laughing. I never tried it again.

PAUL SOLMAN: Well, you know, we were watching practice today, and have one drill where people are kind of, like, skipping and raising their hand in the air, and a couple of guys looked a little sheepish while they were doing that.

PHIL JACKSON: Uh-huh. Well, yeah, there's a variety of things like that. But you know, in coordinating your body, things that you do in basketball, you know, just your take-off or changing hand when you shoot lay-ups, and you know, spinning around in the air or just a variety of physical directions, those are all things that I incorporated a lot of times without a ball, that I think are necessary for the body to kind of accommodate and just to get used to doing.

PAUL SOLMAN: A number of your players said that what they took away from your splicing crazy films into the game films or evensome of your Lakota Sioux ceremonies, that they were, like, at least different. They weren't boring.

PHIL JACKSON: Right. It's entertaining.

PAUL SOLMAN: Yeah.

PHIL JACKSON: Yeah, that's part of me, that you just change things up, you know -- and I don't know, make the world mysterious -- make it mystical at some level.

PAUL SOLMAN: You define yourself as a Zen Christian. What is that?

PHIL JACKSON: Zen is a particular way of looking at life. It's the moment or, you know, being in the present, you know. Buddhism is compassionate, a compassionate Buddha. Christianity is based on love. So those two things I think coordinate very well together.

PAUL SOLMAN: Loving in the moment.

PHIL JACKSON: Yes.

PAUL SOLMAN: How can a person who's out to lose his ego, such as yourself, be so competitive that your wife is quoted as saying she won't play board games with you because she can't stand how competitive are in them?

PHIL JACKSON: Yeah, that's something entirely that I've worked on for a while. Yeah. I mean, what is it? What gives you satisfaction? You know, the next challenge? Yeah, that's what it is for a competitive person. Someday I'm going to let that go, and that's probably the day I'm going to walk away from coaching basketball.

PAUL SOLMAN: So are those your demons, is that what you're struggling with? Because it seems like an opposition, trying to be egoist, trying to be champion of the whole world.

PHIL JACKSON: Yeah, that's it. Part of it's there. But my theory is you've got to remember the journey. The journey is really where the joy is and that's really the fun of it. The games aren't that much fun; it's the things in between.

PAUL SOLMAN: Phil Jackson, thank y very much.

PHIL JACKSON: Thanks.

ESSAY - TROUBLED TEENS

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, essayist Anne Taylor Fleming considers America's troubled adolescents.

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: For some years now, we've been reading about the problems of adolescent girls. First, there was Carol Gilligan with her pioneering work; then, a few years back, the big best- seller, "Reviving Ophelia." The gist of their research was the same: Little girls are feisty and full of beans and hope in equal measure, but that confidence and sass gets knocked out of them when puberty comes, and the culture at large begins to send big-time messages to them about being female, feminine, appealing. They lose their way, their voice. They go underground, start wearing feminine camouflage: Tight pants and crop tops, lip gloss and hair gel. They go from subject to object, daredevils to dieters. I just figured that in the last couple of years, things had gotten a lot better, what with all the moms I know doing their dead-level best to counteract all those cultural messages and raise strong, vibrant daughters. Not just mothers-- fathers, too, have been in the trenches, encouraging their daughters on the soccer field and in the science lab. But a casual look at the teen magazines for girls gives grievous pause to one's optimism. They are ever more chock full of beauty and sex tips. These are just some of the how- to manuals for little Lolitas. From "Cosmo Girl" to "Sugar" to "Jump," there are date guides and kissing instructions and dieting tips, not to mention all the ads full of rail-thin modelettes in skimpy clothes and come-on poses. What's a 12- or 13-year old to make of all this? Of herself - the complicatedly burgeoning body? And just when you start asking those questions, along comes another cry of concern from a different phalanx of authors and researchers, this time about boys, and the analogies are quite startling. Obviously, the signs have been there, at Littleton and West Paducah and Jonesboro, America's sons-- some of them, anyway-- turned into homicidal adolescents. These are only the most damaged and damaging poster boys for the crisis. There's a whole sea of hurting and lost boys underneath them, suffering from much of what girls are suffering from: Low self-esteem, loneliness, an obsession with the way they look. If girls are looking at rail- thin models and rock stars, boys are measuring themselves against the pretty boy movie stars and muscle-bound sports icons of the society, including the jocks on their very own campuses, who often deride them as oversensitive wimps. Read the bios of the killer kids, of Harris and Klebold, of Kip Kinkel and Luke Woodham, and you'll read the same thing: Teased by jocks; called "faggot"; called pudgy and gay; teased for being fat. It's all there: The sexual putdowns, the "you're not good enoughs," all coming at that moment when boys are struggling to be men in a culture that fawns over the suave and muscled, leaving the awkward loners with their angst and anger and acne to withdraw into cyberspace, where they can practice video revenge that sometimes explodes into an actual schoolyard killing spree. In short, boys are now being as commodified as girls. They're being tyrannized by images of masculine perfection, just as girls are being tyrannized by images of feminine perfection, at a time when so many parents are working so many hours, they can't be there. Obviously, some kids-- perhaps a lot, girls and boys-- are doing great, defining themselves with moxie and individuality. But a lot of others are struggling, and all the rest of us can do-- parents, mentors, whatever, whoever-- is listen hard and care hard, and do our best to shepherd them safely through the commercialized minefield that is now American adolescence, circa 2000. I'm Anne Taylor Fleming.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Tuesday: Vice President Gore proposed a new retirement savings plan. Low- and middle-income workers would get tax breaks for private accounts that would be invested in the stock market. And a federal judge sent Microsoft's appeal of a breakup order directly to the U.S. Supreme Court. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.