The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

MARGARET WARNER: Good evening. I'm Margaret Warner. Jim Lehrer is on vacation. On the NewsHour tonight, Paul Solman looks at the year's surge in technology stocks; two experts explain efforts to avoid a nuclear weapons disaster during the Y2K date change; Mike James reports on how technology is changing the lives of the disabled; historians Doris Kearns Goodwin, Michael Beschloss, Haynes Johnson, and Richard Norton Smith about the significant events of the year. Richard Rodriguez has our millennium essay, and Robert Pinsky offers a poem for a special new year. It all follows our summary of the news this Thursday.

NEWS SUMMARY

MARGARET WARNER: A gunman opened fire at a hotel in Tampa, Florida, this afternoon, killing five people. Police say three of the victims were gunned down in the hotel lobby, and another died by the pool. A fifth was killed when the gunman stole a car and tried to get away. At least three other people were wounded. Police have a suspect in custody. They say he and four of his victims were hotel workers. The hotel was packed with fans for a New Year's Day bowl game between Purdue and Georgia. Federal prosecutors said today that two people arrested recently at separate points along the Canadian border are linked to the same Algerian extremist group. Prosecutors in Vermont said a Canadian woman arrested there had clear ties to the same organization as Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian arrested near Seattle, Washington, carrying bomb-making materials. At the request of government lawyers, a federal magistrate ordered the woman held without bail. The Indian Airlines hijacking standoff is now in its sixth day, with the plane sitting on an airport tarmac in Kandahar, Afghanistan. We have this report from Kevin Dunn of Independent Television News.

KEVIN DUNN, ITN: In what may be a further sign that the Afghan authorities are losing patience with the hijackers, scores of Taliban fighters were deployed around the Indian Airlines Airbus. A spokesman for the Taliban denied they were preparing to storm the aircraft, but the move was clearly aimed at increasing pressure on the Kashmiri extremists who have been holding more than 150 people hostage for almost a week. One passenger was briefly released by the hijackers for medical treatment, but was later returned to the plane. But continuing negotiations by Indian diplomats gave United Nations officials cause for cautious optimism.

ERICK DE MUL, United Nations: I hope that everybody can keep his cool, because it's I think it may come to a point where it may lead to a good development and that is very important to everybody -- that everybody keeps using common sense and keeps a cool head of course.

KEVIN DUNN: The U.N. has dispatched food and supplies for the hostages onboard the aircraft, where conditions after six days are said to be almost unbearable.

MARGARET WARNER: On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 31 points at 11,452. The NASDAQ Index was down four, at 4036. It closed above 4000 yesterday for the first time. We'll have more on this year in the markets right after the News Summary. Former Beatles guitarist George Harrison and his wife were attacked this morning by a man who broke into theirhome outside London. The 56-year-old musician was stabbed in the chest, but the knife missed a major artery. Harrison was in stable condition at a London hospital, and doctors said he should make a full recovery. His wife suffered superficial injuries. Police said the couple battled the intruder and finally overpowered him. A police official said the motive for the attack wasn't clear.

EUAN READ, Detective Chief Inspector, Thames Valley Police: There has been speculation that this was a burglary that went wrong. My view -- and it is dangerous for me to speculate. My own view is that it didn't a burglary that went wrong, that he probably came here on purpose.

MARGARET WARNER: Another former Beatle, John Lennon, was shot dead outside his New York City apartment by an obsessive fan in December, 1980. Tipper Gore does not have thyroid cancer. That's the word from her doctor, in a statement issued today by the vice president's office. He said the lump removed from Mrs. Gore's thyroid gland this week was a benign tumor called a follicular adenoma, and that she probably won't require further treatment. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to surging tech stocks, watching over nuclear weapons, technology and the disabled, historians' views of 1999, a millennium essay, and a Robert Pinsky poem.

FOCUS- FLYING HIGH

MARGARET WARNER: Paul Solman looks at the markets' high-flying year.

PAUL SOLMAN: Stocks were down a touch today, but for 1999, the tech-heavy NADSAQ Index is up a whopping 84%, the Dow up 25%. Here to help us take stock: James Cramer, money manager and cofounder of Thestreet.Com, an online financial publication; and Elizabeth Mackay, chief investment strategist at Bear Stearns, the Wall Street investment and brokerage firm. Welcome to you both there in New York.

Mr. Cramer, is there a touch of madness in the stock market at the moment?

JAMES CRAMER, TheStreet.com: Paul, to say that it's all rational would make a little too much sense of it. However, there were opportunities this year if you were willing to accentuate growth and pay up for growth that I think turned into a sensible picture. I'll give you an example. In the 80's if you had just bought all the software companies and kept Microsoft all the others kind of disappeared but Microsoft made you a fortune. Many people were making the same bet in the 90's. They're saying, let's just get all the Internet plays, and if we get one big one, it will make up for all the losers, and I think that has worked.

PAUL SOLMAN: So Ms. Mackay, do you buy this argument? I mean, if you bought every Internet company, I guess is the argument here, and one of them dominates the Internet in the future, then you'll be okay because you will have Microsoft of 2000?

ELIZABETH MACKAY, Bear Stearns: Well, it seems that there are an awful lot of Internet players in the same spaces as it is called and i think the problem eventually may be one more of supply than demand. I don't think anybody would argue that the Internet is not an amazing phenomenon, that it's changing society as well as the economy as well as the way we do business. But what investors are willing to pay or how far out willing -- investors are willing to look to discount future earnings does change. And I think as we see more and more companies doing very simpler things with respect to the Internet, I think some of those companies, inevitably, are not going to be making money and I think investors may well lose patience with those.

PAUL SOLMAN: You are saying discount future earnings so you are talking about how much these companies are going to make in the future.

ELIZABETH MacKAY: Right. Anticipating that eventually they will make money.

PAUL SOLMAN: Well, let me ask Mr. Cramer -- is that what investors now think? I mean, is the point that just like historically if you buy a stock because you have a share in the company, and so eventually it will make profits eventually and you'll share in the profits? Is that what it federal government on now?

JAMES CRAMER: No, not at all. What is going on is there is a momentum gain, and we're very much driven, as Elizabeth said, by supply and demand. I happen to believe that supply of stock of high growth stock is in very short supply so it's being bid up. I don't think anyone expects all these companies to do well. One of the companies that I think most people think of as being a huge Internet success story - Amazon - I personally am not long Amazon - because I think it has very little chance of making any money. But people are paying for scale, these are venture capital words that basically mean betting on some world dominator out sometime in the future who will be able to monitize the eyeballs. Will it happen? I can't even bother to ask. My partners are asking me to make money. I don't want to make a long-term judgment when I sense that the momentum is there and there is so much money to be made. I wish I could be more rigorous, but it's not working like that.

PAUL SOLMAN: So profits have nothing to do with it, I mean, except profits in some possible future of one out of the hundred companies you buy or something?

JAMES CRAMER: I think that people are judging these companies about how well they execute. In some ways cases profits matter but that tends to be the older line New York Stock Exchange companies. Most of the companies that I'm dealing with every day, the earnings are so far out that they are irrelevant. And what people are looking at is great revenue growth, because great revenue growth, they figure the profits are going to come eventually.

PAUL SOLMAN: So, Ms. MacKay, Profits a thing of the past, or are you just and old fuddy-duddy, I mean, by talking about discounting future profits?

ELIZABETH MacKAY: I guess maybe I have one foot in the old economy but...

PAUL SOLMAN: You seem kind of young for that?

ELIZABETH MacKAY: Thank you. I think at some point business, business - and companies are in business to make a profit and I think ultimately you do have to make a profit. As I say, the willingness to look out to venture beyond, to take a risk, does change overtime and obviously at this point with respect to this phenomenon investors are willing to look out a fairly long amount of time.

PAUL SOLMAN: Maybe hundreds of years.

ELIZABETH MacKAY: Perhaps, in some cases.

PAUL SOLMAN: Mr. Cramer, every finance professor I know says market is overvalued. I'm reading the clips in preparing for this and the bubble is about to burst line comes time after time. What do you and people like you know that these so-called experts don't?

JAMES CRAMER: First of all, is it a bubble? Perhaps there is a tremendous amount of money coming in chasing very few goods. Must it necessarily end? Let's look at the worst bubble of our lifetime, which is NIKKEI, the downtown from 1989, ten year decline. It doesn't necessarily -

PAUL SOLMAN: I don't mean to interrupt where everybody was saying just what they are saying now, it's obvious that stocks in the Japan market are overvalued. It's only a matter. So, that is the analogy you are making here, right?

JAMES CRAMER: Yes, exactly. I'm saying that I'm not got going to dismiss that. If the Fed continues to - the Federal Reserve allows easy money, allows lots of buying on credit, we're going to have a NIKKEI- like situation. There will still be much opportunity before that happens though. I mean we speak in terms of innings when we are traders. Are we in the 7th inning, or are we in the 9th inning? I personally feel that there is still much more to come because is there a tightness of supply, not enough companies that people can bet on yet and the opportunities are still there. So I can't put myself in the bear camp.

PAUL SOLMAN: I hate to ask you this question, but is this, are you subscribing to what has been called the greater fool theory, that is that there is a greater fool who is going to buy the stock at these inflated prices?

JAMES CRAMER: I said to two of my investors that I can play the greater fool theory better than anyone else, so to tell you right now a lie that I'm not playing it would be wrong. I'm a trader by nature. I think there is a greater fool theory going on. I think I can identify what is working better than others but what I believe that over the long term all of these companies will make it. I think four or five of these companies will make it; that's all. In the interim I intend to profit from it.

PAUL SOLMAN: Ms. MacKay, does it scare you at all to hear what Mr. Cramer is saying next to you there?

ELIZABETH MacKAY: No. I mean, Jim Cramer does this for a living. It's not the average person watching the show investing in a mutual fund or starting to pick some of their individual stocks, is perhaps in a different circumstance. And the thing is what becomes very difficult is back in 1983 certainly personal computers changed the world. They debuted at that time but that didn't mean that Compaq and Apple Computer didn't decline 70% from 1983 until ' 84. And they were the winners. They didn't seem like winners if you were sitting there with the stocks down 70% so it gets difficult in the early stages of this kind of a phenomenon. So I think there may be more conservative ways perhaps to play the Internet than just buying momentum at this point, again, if that isn't your occupation.

PAUL SOLMAN: Is this largely a hi-tech boom, I mean, the Dow is up 25, NASDAQ 84. Is that dominated by hi-tech stocks or are all stocks doing really well this past year?

ELIZABETH MacKAY: Actually, we've started to see and I still hold out the hope that in fact the market may be starting to broaden out; that once we get past December 31 and once for professional investors this performance period is passed, you might see some profit taking, and that is not a bear market in technology, but you might see some trimming of profits and seeing that money being put into some other area of the markets more cyclical type stocks, other service type stocks that will also benefit from the very positive global economic trends that will continue into 2000.

PAUL SOLMAN: So, but not all stocks have then gone up?

ELIZABETH MacKAY: Right, in fact in 1998, most stocks were down for the year and until recently most stocks in 1999 were done for the -- down for the year.

PAUL SOLMAN: Well on that note we'll leave it. Thanks both very much and Happy New Year.

ELIZABETH MacKAY: Same to you, thank you.

FOCUS - IN THE BUNKER

MARGARET WARNER: When the Y2K computer problem first arose, there was immediate concern that it could have disastrous consequences for the world's nuclear arsenals. Five countries are known to have long-range nuclear weapons...and other nations also are suspected of having them. But the vast majority of the world's long-range nukes belong to Russia, with 7500...and the U.S., with 7300. To ensure that a New Year's computer glitch doesn't trigger an accidental launch, the two governments have set up a joint missile warning center at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs. As the New Year rolls in, Russian and American military officers will be sitting side by side at computer consoles, monitoring missile launch activity around the world.

For more on the potential dangers, and what's been done to avoid them, we turn to Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre and Bruce Blair, a former Air Force nuclear missile launch officer who's written widely about the command and control of

nuclear weapons. He's now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

And, Bruce Blair, sketch out for us first of all, what is the scenario for a computer glitch causing some sort of an accidental launch?

BRUCE BLAIR: Well, it's hard to predict in advance clearly how these sort of scenarios develop in unusual ways, and they're hard to anticipate, but the basic concern is that Y2K may cause Russian leaders to believe that they are under missile attack. The Y2K could, in principle, in theory cause a false alarm in the Russian network of space and ground-based sensors that leads to misleading indications of an attack on Russia, which could lead - might lead -- to a bad call on the part of the top leadership. A situation like this actually occurred in 1995 when a Norwegian rocket, a weather rocket, was fired toward the North Pole and triggered a false alarm in the Russian early warning network that actually led to the notification of President Yeltsin and the activation of the famous nuclear suitcases- and an emergency conference among himself and his advisers that lasted about eight minutes. Now, these scenarios or false alarm - whether triggered by Y2K or any other source - and there are many sources in Russia today, given the deterioration of their early warning and control system - are a matter of concern to us because Russia maintains thousands of nuclear weapons on high alert, as does the United States -- we haven't changed our Cold War practices - and have the strategy to fire them on warnings, i.e., as soon as possible after detecting, using satellites and ground-based radars, detecting an apparent attack on Russia's shores.

MARGARET WARNER: But, just to understand, it does still take a human to make that decision.

BRUCE BLAIR: Yes. There's still humans in the loop, and there's, to my knowledge and to the best of my analysis, there is absolutely no plausible scenario in which Y2K could cause the spontaneous launch of any missiles. There are always humans in the loop on both the Russian and U.S. side.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Secretary Hamre, do you agree with his assessment of at least what the potential risk was?

JOHN HAMRE: Margaret, we've never felt that it was a significant risk, that nuclear command and control system would misinterpret, then all of a sudden conclude that the United States was attacking Russia. We have no intention to attack Russia. We've been very clear about that. We've invited them to come to sit at the early warning centers, and we don't think that it's at all plausible that their command and control system would generate false attack indications. I think the more likely thing we worried about was that they would lose confidence in what their early warning system was telling them. And that's why we created a parallel system for them to sit down side by side with us during this crucial period so that they could be confident in the early warning capabilities - both us and theirs.

MARGARET WARNER: But why did you think they would lose confidence in their own early warning system?

JOHN HAMRE: We've watched over the last several years that they have been a military under stress, and they have not been able to maintain the same level of redundant capability in their command and control, as they have in the past. But I don't want you to conclude that they haven't got the solid command and control system they do. Just two days ago they launched a new early warning satellite. So they're going to be capable of positively controlling their nuclear arsenal.

MARGARET WARNER: Mr. Blair, what's your assessment of how good their early warning system is and how much they've done in the way of work to make sure its Y2K compliant?

BRUCE BLAIR: Could I just say first of all that it was actually Mr. Hamre who sounded the alarm and other Pentagon officials a year and a half ago about the potential for Y2K to cause false alarms in the Russian early warning network. And if he is as confident today as he sounds, then that must reflect perhaps improvements in remediation on the Russian side of their problems. I talked recently to Russians in Moscow and do not believe that the Russians have, in fact, solved all these problems. They say that there are some practical problems in this area that remain. Furthermore, there was a false alarm in 1995. I just mentioned it. It's quite plausible that any source of problem in the Russian network could cause a false alarm and unfortunately, their early warning system is a shambles. There are huge gaps in their radar coverage and declining performance across the board. The fact that they recently launched an early warning satellite merely reflects an effort to scramble to try to fill - plug some of the gaps and get their systems back up. But it is in very sorry condition today.

MARGARET WARNER: Okay. Secretary Hamre, tell us how this center is going to work. What kind of information will really be coming in and how do you expect the Russians there to use it?

JOHN HAMRE: We will be bringing into the center the same early warning information that our normal day-to-day watch stands receive from the early warning satellites and from the radars. They will see, frankly, nothing on the screens because we know that Russia won't be doing anything crazy that night, and we won't be doing anything ourselves. So I think they won't be seeing much of anything, and they'll be watching the monitors. But may I address the one issue that Dr. Blair brought up? The early warning information that comes from satellites or for radars is only one small part of a much broader context of indications and warning that both we and the Russians undertake on a day-to-day basis to understand what may be happening in each other's countries, and they will not see that we are launching or that we're raising the readiness standards of our bomber force or we're putting more submarines to sea or that there's unusual activity at our bases. None of that's going to be present to give them a sense of concern if they were all of a sudden to see a blank screen on a radar set. So there's a much broader context. I think we shouldn't misunderstand. What happened 1985 actually was an evidence of this...

MARGARET WARNER: '95.

JOHN HAMRE: '95. Was an evidence of the strength of the broad system, not just the weakness of the early warning part of that system.

MARGARET WARNER: Dr. Blair?

BRUCE BLAIR: I couldn't describe it as a strength when Russia came so close to the self-imposed deadline for reaching a decision on retaliation in 1995. It's true that there are many inputs into an assessment besides just the technical data from satellites and ground radar, but you must understand that the two sides do continue to maintain a nuclear posture that requires very, very rapid interpretation of this information. I was just out at Cheyenne Mountain in the Missile Warning Center yesterday, for example, and I was told that the duty officer there is expected, if not required, to render a decision about whether North America is under attack within about three minutes after the first report is delivered to him from the sensor. This is a very, very tight timeline. It's pressure-packed. It's full of emotion. The last two false alarms we experienced in the United States led to such poor performance by these crews that they were actually decertified immediately afterwards. So these timelines of decision and execution under the current postures of quick launch on both sides are just inherently dangerous. They are the real problem, in fact. It's not Y2K or any other small or big problem in the early warning network; it's the fact that both sides continue to operate their nuclear forces as though the Cold War didn't end, and remain poised to launch them at a moment's notice on a very short fuse.

MARGARET WARNER: So Secretary Hamre, is it possible that, given this very high alert that both sides are on, that, I mean, if Russian commanders are sitting in Moscow and they're getting a certain kind of information from their own early warning system, and it shows something, you're confident that they'll nonetheless believe the colonels that are sitting out in Colorado who say, "hey, there is nothing"?

JOHN HAMRE: Margaret, I need to say that the scenario that you're describing is one where, if I could use an analogy, if there was a computer problem at the power company, how likely is it that the computer problem there would call your home and say there's a fire in your basement? It's most implausible that that would happen. That's the scenario that Dr. Blair is describing. This is not going to happen. He is really describing a concern that he has had for several years. He's led a cause for several years about the posture of both our forces and Russia, their nuclear forces. It's really unrelated to year 2000. I think the concerns of year 2000 are...

MARGARET WARNER: Which he said as well.

JOHN HAMRE: Yes, and it really is a different issue. It's a very fair public policy issue. We don't agree with them, but it's one that we ought to have a discussion about, but it's not related to year 2000. Year 2000, we're going to get through the night. It'll be just fine.

MARGARET WARNER: All right, gentlemen. We'll have to leave it there, and we'll have that other discussion another time. Thanks, Dr. Blair and Secretary Hamre.

JOHN HAMRE: Thank you.

FOCUS - ENABLING THE DISABLED

MARGARET WARNER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, high-tech help for the disabled, a historical look at 1999, a millennium essay, and a Robert Pinsky poem. Mike James of KCTS-Seattle reports on new opportunities for the disabled.

CHER REITH: Good morning, thank you for calling P.C. Banking, this is Cher, how may I help you.

MIKE JAMES: Cher Reith is a customer service representative at Washington Mutual, a national bank with branches in 38 states. She is blind. But customers calling for help would never know.

CHER REITH: I notice you've got two cards here. Mr. Sells. Which card would you like to be your access card to P.C. Banking, your ATM, your regular debt card or your ATM. Debit card?

MIKE JAMES: Reith sees data on customer accounts in two ways. A special Braille reader mirrors the contents of the computer screen. She reads it with just a quick pass of her fingers across the keys. She also uses a screen narrator, an audio synthesizer that scans and reads out the screen data.

VOICE SYNTHESIZER: C.C. Colon, a special, blank, M.B.S.G. Colon, we now have something brand-new and exciting for us here in P.C. Banking, period.

CHER REITH: I have access to the information that I need in order to do my job effectively. You know, it's the whole idea of knowledge is power, and if you don't know or if you can't access the basic information, you're not going to be able service a customer very well, and you're not going to be able to do your job.

MIKE JAMES: Christina Phillips, another Washington mutual banker, is deaf, but she works full-time, taking calls from deaf customers by using a TTY Teletypewriter.

CHRISTINIA PHILIPS, Washington Mutual Banker: This is my life -- 15 years of my life, because I can't talk on the phone. I can read lips, but I can't hear on the phone. So I use TTY every day, on the phone calls.

MIKE JAMES: Reith and Phillips at Washington Mutual are among the many disabled workers taking advantage of dramatic changes in the workplace. A powerful economy, fierce competition for good workers, and new technology are all combining to give disabled Americans new opportunities. On the job, attitudes are changing. The competition in this economy for good employees forced Washington Mutual to expand its labor pool several years ago to recruit the disabled, people like Cher Reith and Christina Phillips. The bank did so at first with reluctance.

VICKI WINN: I think I was one of those that found it nearly impossible for someone who, say, is blind to do the same job that a banker who's not visually impaired could do.

MIKE JAMES: But Washington Mutual is now an enthusiastic recruiter of disabled workers. Vicki Winn, vice president for customer services, says they're dependable, work hard, and are less likely to leave for some other employment. The turnover rate for all employees is 30%; for disabled workers it's less than 10%. And the average cost of accommodations for a disabled worker is less than $500.

VICKI WINN: And what we've found is the first couple of folks that we hired, we weren't required to make any accommodations in order to bring them on and have them be successful. The first person was a wheelchair user; they were mobility impaired, and other than making sure that we placed them in a location that was easy to get to, there were no expenditures on our part.

MIKE JAMES: In the new high-tech economy at places like Microsoft, what matters is intellect, not physical ability. The company made that clear to Greg Smith five years ago when it decided to bring him in from Stanford for an interview.

GREG SMITH: They would say, "just give us a list of the equipment you need, give us a list of the accommodations that you need from... You know, does somebody need to fly up here with you? And we'll just take care of it."

CHRIS WILLIAMS: The thing that matters to us is getting intellectual capacity, intellectual pieces of value from people's heads onto computer disks, and that special nature of our business, being so intellectual, is very amenable to people with disabilities, where the work is not physical, the work is about the smarts and the brain power that they bring to the problem.

GREG SMITH: I work witha lot of people here, some of whom I never even meet, and those people don't know I'm in a wheelchair. Some of them know, and some of them don't. Even the ones that do know don't care because it doesn't affect, affect the way I perform my duties.

MIKE JAMES: Smith performs because technology gives him new ways to communicate, to get his work into the computer. Here he's using a head mouse, wrapped around his head like earphones. As he shifts position, a black box on the monitor follows every move.

GREG SMITH: So, the box on the top of the screen is watching my head movements. So as I move my head around, the mouse cursor follows. And then to click this white tube, I puff into it. Just like that, and that performs the mouse click.

SPOKESMAN: Why don't you put in two or three sentences of dictation just about what you do here at Microsoft.

MIKE JAMES: Now Smith is learning to use new voice recognition technology that allows him to control a computer and write E-mail or other documents by simply talking.

GREG SMITH: Matt comma, I already talked to Ron about the cash server prototype, period.

MIKE JAMES: This frees Greg Smith from his most difficult task now, picking out documents a key at a time with an eraser extender from his right hand. The change is important because this work is about collaboration and communication, and that means writing. Some breakthroughs begin simply because companies hired disabled workers. When Bill Graham, deaf since his teenage years, took a job with the Encarta C.D.-Rom Encyclopedia, he quickly noticed a huge gap in the program.

BILL GRAHAM: I'd worked on encyclopedias for 18 years, but not multimedia encyclopedias. So coming here was a very new experience for me, and immediately when I got into my job, I saw there was a problem, that there was a lot of audio clips in the encyclopedia, but I couldn't understand them.

MIKE JAMES: If Bill couldn't hear them, neither could anyone else deaf or hard of hearing. That experience was the inspiration behind closed captioning on all the audio contents of the Encarta Encyclopedia, from the chirp of crickets to the words of Dr. Martin Luther King.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING: I have a dream...

CROWD: Yeah!

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING: That my four little children...

MIKE JAMES: Workers like Graham believe all these changes are closing the gap, making the workplace more accessible than ever for the disabled.

CHER REITH: I think what they've seen is that we really are capable, if we're given the tools and the opportunity to show that, yes, we are capable, we do know what's important, we know how to give good service, and that if we're just allowed the opportunity to do so, we can.

SPOKESMAN: Well, what is a reasonable accommodation? It's a removal of a workplace- created barrier.

MIKE JAMES: In employer workshops like this one in Seattle businesses are learning about the Americans With Disabilities Act and finding their way through the new interpretations, definitions, and litigation over disabilities in the workplace.

SPOKESMAN: You got to remove workplace barriers for somebody with a disability who needs it unless it cautions an undue hardship.

MIKE JAMES: But even though there is more clarity now about hiring and firing the disabled, 60% of the disabled Americans who want to work are still unemployed. David Fram of the America Law Institute Project on Disability.

DAVID FRAM: It's hard to say that it's opened a huge number of doors because the unemployment rate for people with disabilities is still very high, but there is also always kinds ofreasons for why that unemployment rate is high. I mean, there are other laws that might still need changing in order to encourage people to go back to work without losing benefits. So, there is reasons why it may not be having a huge impact on opening doors. But what I think it is doing is it's changing attitudes in the workplace. It's showing players that people with disabilities can do jobs a different way.

MIKE JAMES: Severe disability is still a road block for many Americans. Listen to this conversation in the living room of Sharon and Allen King. It happens a letter at a time. Sharon uses her thumb and Allen signals with Morse Code using his left foot. Then their personal synthesizers called "liberators" turn those signals into speech.

SHARON KING: I love talking to people and making them understand what I'm telling them and it was frustrated not being able to communicate to people. The talking quickens Allen's search for a steady job. His hearing is sharp; he's a high school graduate with some community college credits, but since birth, Allen has been severely disabled by cerebral palsy. So far, his search for work keeps hitting a dead end.

ALLEN KING: I am getting little except people saying sorry, no job. I really want to work.

MIKE JAMES: Even at a time of changing attitudes in the work place, Allen King's physical condition is too great a barrier for most employers. They don't see him, he says, -- only the wheel chair.

ALLEN KING: I think why I can't a find, they look at me, see the wheel chair and see me not as a real person.

MIKE JAMES: People who have known Allen King for years, friends like Jill Deatheridge at the United Cerebral Palsy Center, say Allen is really the ultimate test of employers' willingness to truly change the workplace.

JILL DEATHERIDGE: I mean, he is pounding the pavement. He has been for years -- years and years and years and years and years. Now the day when his pounding the pavement pays off and an employer says, you know, you are hired, that is the day that we know, aha, you know, we're getting somewhere.

MIKE JAMES: Allen King uses E-mail, an easier way to communicate, to make his own statement. "I want to feel part of the working world and pay taxes, instead of having to get tax money to live on. I want to be able to buy things and go on trips. I want to feel like I'm a man." In a "New York Times" poll this year nearly 90% of Americans describe themselves as positive about the economy and their lives. Allen King says disabled Americans just want the chance to say that too.

FOCUS - HISTORIAN'S VIEWS

MARGARET WARNER: Next, a review of the year and to Terence Smith.

TERENCE SMITH: As this year winds to a close, we get some perspective on 1999 from NewsHour regulars Presidential Historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Michael Beschloss, analyst and author Haynes Johnson. Joining them tonight is historian Richard Norton Smith, director of the Gerald R. Ford Museum and Library in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Welcome to you all.

Doris, historically, what was significant or important about 1999?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: You know, in trying to think about what the most important events were, you realize there weren't any absolutely completely momentous events, and maybe that was a blessing. President Kennedy once said in the midst of the Cold War, the Cuban missile crisis, the civil rights demonstrations on the street that there was an old Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times," which wasn't a good thing, meaning famines, wars, catastrophes. We didn't have that in this last year, and maybe that was a blessing in a certain sense. I guess I would pick the resilience of the presidency as an institution as one of the more important events. You start the year with the President in humiliation, having been impeached by the House of Representatives, and yet, the institution persevered; it remained strong during Kosovo, strong during the negotiations with the Middle East, peace with Irish peace, strong in terms of its authority that still hasn't been totally undermined, and I think the framers once again deserve credit for having created something that the people could support and that it shows how extraordinary bounce there is in that institution at the end of this year.

TERENCE SMITH: Richard Norton Smith, what jumps out at you?

RICHARD SMITH: I think this is the year with pragmatism and return to American public life. It's almost as if we were all singed a bit by the ugliness surrounding the Lewinsky affair and the impeachment process. And I think politicians have woken up to what most Americans have always believed, which is that the clash of ideas is not to be confused with a Holy War. I also think give Bill Clinton some credit. I think just as his natural activism was in some ways tempered by the Reagan consensus, the view that was suspicious of, if not hostile, to government, I think there's been a mini realignment during the Clinton presidency helped no doubt by the economic boom, so that at the end of Bill Clinton's presidency there's much less reflexive hostility to government and the best evidence of that is not in the Democratic Party but in the Republican Party, just as Margaret Thatcher's great achievement was not revamping the conservatives but creating new labor to come to terms of her market reforms. So if you look at the leading Republican candidates for President, George W. Bush and John McCain, while both thoroughly conservative, neither one of them reflexively looks upon government as the enemy.

TERENCE SMITH: No longer antigovernment in that regard. Haynes Johnson, as you review the year, what strikes you?

HAYNES JOHNSON: I think just following up on what they've just said, the idea that we're ending this year in the glow of the best times the United States has ever experienced economically -- unparalleled, unopposed in the world-- scientifically, medically, technology-- in all kinds of ways, and this sense of the greatest exchange and gathering of wealth in the nation's history. We're in the midst of this boom, and it's still continuing. And I think it affects a lot of the things that both Michael... I mean Doris has said and that Richard had said just a minute ago, that it has a sense here that the ugliness of the past is painted over by the glow of good times.

TERENCE SMITH: Michael, what do you think?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Well, a lot of the economic prosperity that Haynes is talking about has been driven by technological change over the last ten years. One of the biggest technological changes has been the Internet and the world wide web. Here we are in 1999, we're on the 30th anniversary of this year of the Internet, which grew out of an arcane Defense Department project never intended to grow into what we now see, and then ten years ago the world wide web began. All of this happened accidentally. It wasn't like Thomas Edison inventing the light bulb and that going on to affect history for the next century. This was something that was designed to be something else, and suddenly has become this huge mechanism, as we're seeing very much this year, of not only information but also commerce. And it sort of led me to pause and think about the fact there is enormous downside and upside. The upside: You can have libraries in every town, rich or poor, worldwide audiences for all sorts of wonderful ideas, but also worldwide audiences for the first time in human history for hate groups, other groups, without a gatekeeper. And it puts a lot of burden on all of us, I think, and this is what we'll see in the next century to begin to distinguish between what is reliable, what is not; what are good ideas and bad ideas. That tests us as a democracy.

TERENCE SMITH: Doris Goodwin, Andy Kohut has a poll out from the Pew Research Center this week that says the shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado was the story most closely followed by Americans this year. What does that say to you?

ANDREW KOHUT: I think that is probably absolutely true, and the reason why is that symbolically, I think what that shooting represented to many Americans was the fear that in some ways, we've lost childhood for our children, that there was a time some decades ago when children were not miniature adults. They led a rather protected life away from violence, sexuality, away even from divorce, in neighborhoods where there were people of authority, whether it was a parent at home or a neighbor that knew them or even a corner drugstore who knew who they were, who could take care of them, who could watch out if they went over the boundaries. And I think what Columbine symbolized to many people was not simply the fact that certain people shot other people, but that all of our kids are now exposed to that kind of level of violence and adult world that they weren't before. And the trends that have led to it, whether it's two parents working or whether it's the media or whether it's just parts of our modern culture being more fragmented, are deep trends that are not easily going to be overturned. So I think it struck a huge chord, and I would argue socially it was the most important event of the decade in that sense.

TERENCE SMITH: Haynes.

HAYNES JOHNSON: It's the other side of the good times, because beneath all this roar of success is a lot of vulnerabilities in American life. We see it reflected in these things. We still have racism, we still have poverty, we still have haves and have-nots. Our system is, despite... the impeachment didn't leave perhaps the scars, but it certainly left a distaste for the political system. It raises questions about how you deal with these kinds of really long- term problems.

TERENCE SMITH: Richard, do you see these other issues playing into that pragmatism you were talking about before?

RICHARD NORTON SMITH: Yeah, and I would disagree a little bit, certainly not with the importance that most people attach to Columbine, but I think if you look out-- it's dangerous-- 30, 40, 50 years from now and ask, "what in this year foreshadows the debate down the road?", I would suggest the Vermont State Supreme Court ruling that all but legalized same-sex marriage. And what I would suggest is that at the end of a century that has been about belatedly keeping promises that we made to ourselves at the beginning of the republic... Remember, a hundred years ago, people could not elect Senators directly, women couldn't vote, African-Americans had been disenfranchised. This has been a century in which-- too slow for some, too fast for others-- America has in fact kept more of those promises. But more than that, I think we're moving beyond tolerance, which is a kind of grudging acquiescence in what we cannot change, to a genuine acceptanceand even a celebration of the strengths that lie within our diversity. And I think this is a debate that has only begun, but it's one that will probably tend to shape politics, as well as our culture, for years to come.

TERENCE SMITH: Do you see it that way, Michael?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Well, to put it in ideological terms, I think historically we may look back on this period and say that the conservative movement of the last 30 years has run its course. In the late 1960's there was a feeling that big government had become too strong, there were too many taxes, and also we wanted to defeat the Soviets. All those things have now been accomplished. There is a big surplus, and usually in history, there is a cycle. When people get rich and when purposes like that are accomplished, then you move on to deal with issues like health and education and poverty. And the interesting thing is that the issues you see dealt with by both sides in this presidential campaign are much more traditional almost liberal democratic issues. It's hard to see that that would have been the case at almost any other time over the last 30 years.

TERENCE SMITH: Doris, you said there were no, you know, huge or central events, but there was of course a war in Kosovo. What is the lasting meaning of that, do you think?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Well, I think it will depend in part on whether what President Clinton annunciated after that war what seemed to be a Clinton doctrine, that the United States would intervene when there was ethnic cleansing or there was a certain kind of genocide going on; if that were to be the first of a series of such interventions, then it's a hugely important event. However, we have not seen us intervening in Russia, where there's been similar ethnic cleansing and similar seeming large numbers of death. So it may be that it was a more pragmatic doctrine than when it was first announced as a moralistic standard.

TERENCE SMITH: All right. Haynes, it's also a definition of the future role?

HAYNES JOHNSON: Oh, yes, absolutely, and also it defines wars. The idea you can have a technological war in which American planes and tanks and... Now the ground doesn't affect you any more. It's that technological ability to pinpoint weapons, and nobody gets hurt in the air and we have no casualties, but you win, and it breeds a great deal of hostility toward the United States, the great superpower.

TERENCE SMITH: Richard, someone observed recently that the next century might be that of biology, if this was physics and chemistry before us. I wonder what you think of that in terms of genetic research and that sort of thing.

RICHARD NORTON SMITH: I wish it was a century of politics, which has nothing to do with biology, I suppose. I was a little disturbed by "Time" Magazine's selection of Einstein. No one can argue with the choice of Einstein as person of the century, but it what it really tells me is how relatively insignificant the political process has become, and statecraft in general, seems to be to opinion leaders. I find that disturbing.

TERENCE SMITH: Who would have been your person of the century, Michael?

RICHARD NORTON SMITH: I would have chosen Winston Churchill.

TERENCE SMITH: You would have chosen Churchill, and Michael?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I like Franklin Roosevelt and Churchill, but I like the choice of Einstein. I think it was a little bit out of the ordinary and a little bit unexpected, but you know, on this idea of the differences that we're now seeing in science and genetic research and so forth, it really comes back to politics because we as a people are going to have to make some very tough political decisions. Whom do you clone? How long do you extend the lives of people, and which lives are extended? And if we are checked out of politics, then those decisions are going to be made by small groups without consulting the American people, and in American History that has usually proven to be pretty bad.

HAYNES JOHNSON: We're on the verge of this stunning moment here where we're going to have diseases banished, genetically implanted things we can create new forms, but we'll live longer. And the price, as Michael says... How do you pay for living to 150? How do you pay for healthcare? How do you pay for who lives and who doesn't, and who gets the advantages of technology? I think it is a scientific, technological era.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Or think about in 1900, the average age was only 47, and it is now 77-- 30 extra years. And futurists are now predicting we may live to 175 or 200 in the next century. Will you be married for 175 years to the same person? Will you have the same career for that whole period of time, going every day to the same job? It's mind-boggling.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: When you said about being married to the same person, I only wish Hennie Youngman were part of our panel.

HAYNES JOHNSON: We'll clone ourselves here.

TERENCE SMITH: Exactly. All right. That will take us into the new century. Thank you all very much.

ESSAY - STORIES FOR THE MILLENNIUM

MARGARET WARNER: Now, the last in our series of millennium essays. Richard Rodriguez of the Pacific Times News Service has some thoughts about ordinary times.

CROWD: Two, one! Happy New Year!

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ: For many months now the travel industry has tried to stir us in a garish anxiety. Where should we go for New Year's Eve? Should we fly to Jerusalem or to Bali? Should we stand with the mob in Times Square or on the Washington Mall? Or should we engage a private jet to see the dawn over Australia? In truth, if I climbed up this hillside and viewed my city below at midnight's stroke, there would be nothing exactly to see, no way certainly to observe one millennium passing. The frenzied desire to position oneself here at this a moment of history only reminds me that we human beings do not easily live in history. We live more immediately and intimately within the Tuesdays and Thursdays of our lives. After all, that good friend of ours died not at the end of the 20th century, but on a heartbreaking Monday. And our favorite niece graduated from high school on a Saturday in May, and not at the close of the millennium. It was the business of emperors and popes to organize the known world by establishing calendars. It remains the task of parents to note doctors' appointments on the kitchen calendar. It is the business of historians sitting in libraries to decipher from the wars and the bombs, from rising hem lines and the fall of markets, from astonishing inventions that beget inventions, to decipher a narrative line, to speak of an epoch or an age. In recent months, we have heard from the merchandisers and hustlers with their quickie lists, the century's hundred best short stories or hundred most important movies, where "Time" magazine summarized the century with a cover. I incline to the more cautious view that history takes time. I don't think we fully know, for example, even now, 500 years after, what the story of Christopher Columbus fully meant. But this terrible century's great lesson is that one cannot be oblivious of history. For history, unbidden, often prowled the century's wet streets late at night. And sometimes history banged on the door and forced itself in. America sent its young men to fight in history's battles. They fought bravely and well. And though they came very close to seeing the face of history, many soldiers returned famished, they said, not for a hero's parade of tape and confetti, but famished for the mundane: A hot dog or the barefoot pleasure of washing the car on Saturday morning. The great theistic religions of the world tell us that the divine-- eternal, timeless-- has entered history at various moments. Everywhere in the world, every religion in the world sets aside certain days as holy, different from any Tuesday, days when people go to temples or to churches and the sun seems to shine differently and the air is oddly still. In my own Catholic Church, a feast day comes with great ceremony, after weeks of preparing. But then it passes. Finally there is more to learn from taking down the tree after Christmas than from putting it up. For what remains, week after week, is what my ancient church calls ordinary time. We live most of lives in ordinary time, Tuesdays and Thursdays. People ride the bus, a child learns how to ride a bike, a woman waters her roses, two friends laugh at a joke, all within in ordinary time. In the end, it is worth noting that the millennium, if such a thing exists, is coming to a close on a Friday, and that treacherous, astonishing vista we dare call the 21st century will begin on a Saturday morning, when somebody somewhere the snow has to be cleared from the driveway. Most of us will begin the new century, not on that midnight, but several weeks after, when we write a check and catch ourselves writing the wrong year. And then we will know, in an instant, that we are standing in a new era, and nothing has changed. And maybe everything is different, if only there were a hillside high enough to let us view history. I'm Richard Rodriguez.

RECAP

MARGARET WARNER: Again, the major stories of this Thursday: Five people were killed today when a gunman opened fire at a hotel in Tampa, Florida. And federal prosecutors said an Algerian man arrested recently in Washington State and a Canadian woman arrested in Vermont are linked to the same Algerian extremist group.

FINALLY - A TOAST FOR 2000

MARGARET WARNER: Finally tonight, words to celebrate a special New Year, written and recited by NewsHour contributor Robert Pinsky, Poet Laureate of the United States.

ROBERT PINSKY: "A toast for 2000, and here's to memory, that numbers all the years. Here, tipped at the arbitrary border, we, living on the night of cameras, dancing, and champagne, drink to those others who come behind or ahead. We pray that the past and future be forgiving, the not yet born, in their invisible chain, and, nearly as hard for us to know, the dead. Overlook the times we haven't paid them heed as we forgive them for giving less thought to us than we might like. In our abundant time of clutter machine, some of us live in need. Our beloved gadgets are fearsome and mysterious. Great-grandparents, though forgetting is no crime, we strain to remember you, and raise a glass. Great-grandchildren, do the same. The triple zeroes that mark the millennial year are like three spheres or lights or chain links. As the centuries pass, past, present, and future, victims, villains, and heroes, each crosses the calendar border and disappears or lives in memory that numbers all the years."

MARGARET WARNER: We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Margaret Warner. Thank you and good night.