The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, more on the Microsoft breakup decision: Assistant Attorney General Joel Klein is here for a NewsMaker interview, and Margaret Warner runs a discussion about innovation in the computer industry. Then, Tom Bearden tells the story of a play about life in an airplane cockpit, and Gwen Ifill has a conversation about medical second opinions. It all follows our summary of the news this Thursday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, more on the Microsoft breakup decision: Assistant Attorney General Joel Klein is here for a NewsMaker interview, and Margaret Warner runs a discussion about innovation in the computer industry. Then, Tom Bearden tells the story of a play about life in an airplane cockpit, and Gwen Ifill has a conversation about medical second opinions. It all follows our summary of the news this Thursday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Microsoft today asked a federal judge to stay his order breaking up the company. It said nothing should happen while it appeals. Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson yesterday ordered Microsoft split in two because of antitrust violations. Assistant Attorney General Joel Klein said the Justice Department remains open to a settlement that would prevent a breakup. Company officials said they expect to win on appeal. We'll have more on the story, including an interview with Klein, right after this News Summary. The Environmental Protection Agency banned one of the most common pesticides today. It's sold under the names Dursban and Lorsban, and is used in flea collars, bug sprays, and lawn and garden chemicals. EPA Administrator Carol Browner said it could cause neurological damage in children.

CAROL BROWNER, EPA Administrator: We did this because children are not just small adults. Their bodies are still developing, and they are more susceptible to risk from toxic chemicals. They play on the floor, they play in yards where pesticides have been applied. They eat proportionately more food with respect to body weight than adults. When our health and safety standards protect children, the entire public is protected.

JIM LEHRER: A subsidiary of Dow Chemical Company, and five other producers agreed to stop making the pesticide except for limited use in agriculture. Dow maintained it was safe if used properly, but said it doesn't make business sense to pursue the issue. The three largest U.S. automakers will extend health care benefits to partners of gay employees. General Motors, Ford, and Daimler-Chrysler made that announcement today. It affects about 465,000 employees, and the companies said it would help attract new workers. Gay rights activists said it's the first time leadersin an industry have joined to offer same-sex benefits. A U.S. Army general came under fire today for allegedly tolerating harassment of gays. 30 House members wrote to Defense Secretary Cohen about Major General Robert Clark, the commander at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Last year, a soldier there murdered a fellow soldier he thought was gay. It prompted an investigation of the command climate. But the lawmakers complained Clark is now moving to a Washington job. A Pentagon spokesman said this:

ADM. CRAIG QUIGLEY, Pentagon Spokesman: You don't assign officers in whom you have no confidence to positions of responsibility like deputy director for operations on the joint staff. After having said that, the review of the army inspector general is still a work in progress. So I wouldn't like to presuppose Secretary Cohen's judgment in responding to the letter. But I would just make that observation.

JIM LEHRER: The House members said General Clark should not begin his new job while the investigation continues at Fort Campbell. It's due to be finished by July 1. President Clinton paid his respects to the late Japanese Prime Minister Obuchi today. He joined other world leaders and thousands of mourners at a memorial service in Tokyo. He did not speak at the service, but later, he praised Obuchi for trying to pull Japan out of its economic slump. The European Commission has fined Archer Daniels Midland $45 million for alleged price-fixing in the early 1990's. The Commission said Wednesday that ADM and four other companies rigged prices for an animal feed additive. In 1996, the U.S. Justice Department fined ADM $100 million in a similar case. "Chicago Tribune" cartoonist Jeff MacNelly died today of cancer. He had been hospitalized in Baltimore. He won the Pulitzer Prize three times for editorial cartoons, first with the "Richmond News Leader," and later with the "Tribune." In 1977, he also created the daily comic strip "Shoe." He was 52 years old. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to Klein of Justice, Microsoft and innovation, a cockpit play, and a conversation about second opinions.

NEWSMAKER

JIM LEHRER: The Microsoft breakup ruling, day two. Joel Klein, the assistant attorney general who heads the Justice Department's antitrust division, is here now for a Newsmaker interview.

Mr. Klein, welcome.

JOEL KLEIN: Thank you, nice to be with you.

JIM LEHRER: Any second thoughts 24 hours after the judge's decision that he did the right thing?

JOEL KLEIN: No, I think he did the right thing. I think history will show that he did the right thing, I'm confident about it. It's a strong remedy but one that's proportional to the circumstances, and I think it will bring real benefits to consumers.

JIM LEHRER: There is no other option to breakup?

JOEL KLEIN: Well, I think there always a variety of options. We considered a variety of options. I'm convinced that is the appropriate one. Let me say why. The people have talked about conduct remedies, ways to regulate Microsoft's behavior. But that is inevitably going to be very intrusive and very long standing. And the virtue of this remedy is essentially to let market forces work in a way that will stimulate competition and innovation.

JIM LEHRER: Make sure I understand that. If the judge had let or you had let Microsoft stay as it is, as one big company, and then gone in and tried to change their practices, you think that would have been worse than dividing it into two companies?

JOEL KLEIN: I think ultimately that would prove to be more intrusive, more court involvement.You know, in general, and I think this is sensible, there's a movement toward deregulation. We're seeing more a more reliance on market-based forces. And I think this remedy, while to be sure it's a substantial remedy, I don't want to make light of it, it's a big thing, but it is a one-time division that will then enable the companies to grow and move on. If you think about it -- think about the AT&T breakup again. You know how long they tried to regulate AT&T? They had a Federal Communications Commission, the state regulators, and the thing got more and more, the books got bigger and bigger, started to like the tax code. The federal courts can become that kind of regulatory agency and that could be a drag on the sale. Look at the benefits to the market, look at the benefits to consumers. You see companies now, I was just reading a story today in the paper about Hewlett-Packard broke off Aliant -- bigger companies, and they're moving ahead, prospering, so I think this is really the right way to go.

JIM LEHRER: An analyst was quoted in the Washington Post this morning as saying, "it wasn't so much that the Department of Justice won this trial, Microsoft lost it, it's going in for a speeding ticket and coming out with a death sentence." Does he have it right?

JOEL KLEIN: No, I don't think he did. I think the facts are what won this trial. I think it's very rare to see a case where you have this kind of detailed factual record. The large majority of it coming from Microsoft's own files, its own e-mails, lay out before the court, its own witnesses, testifying that we didn't want to compete on the merits because we knew we couldn't win -- so in the end I think people always like the theatrics of a trial. You know, we've gotten into this world now where people like the television hovers over the trial and the courtroom and they play little pieces. But I think what the virtue of this thing is, is the record is that thick, that comprehensive, and the judge's opinion tells a tale, paints a mosaic that I think is enormously powerful.

JIM LEHRER: Was breaking up Microsoft your goal when this whole thing started?

JOEL KLEIN: No, my goal was first to make sure that we prevailed at the trial and to get a measure of what the scope of the violations were, because you have to have a remedy that talks to the violations. You know, there are a lot of people speculate what's the right thing for the industry. Ours is a law enforcement measure. Once we knew what the judge was going to do, the severity of the violations, coupled with Microsoft's continuing refusal to really make any efforts to comply with the anti-trust laws - it's a startling fact, Jim -- in America today, men serious companies, big companies have very sophisticated anti-trust compliance programs. It's routine. Microsoft, despite all the troubles that it's been through, doesn't have such a program.

JIM LEHRER: Do they literally just stiff you all, did you have no relationship at all with Microsoft through this four years or so?

JOEL KLEIN: I wouldn't say they stiffed us, I think their basic attitude was, we'll do what we need to do to protect our monopoly, and then we'll worry about the government and litigation later. I think that is the company's modus operandi.

JIM LEHRER: So the judge was right had he said there was never any acknowledgement on Microsoft's part that they violated the law or reason to be sorry for what they had done?

JOEL KLEIN: I think that's been as clear as could be. And more importantly, they've sort of walked away from the facts and the evidence in this case.

JIM LEHRER: Refresh us on the history here. How did the Justice Department get on with this in the first place? What caused you to think there had been a violation of the anti-trust laws?

JOEL KLEIN: Well, let me say two things. First of all, in the time I've been there, there have been several matters brought to us bye different people throughout the industry, complaining about Microsoft's practices. In most instances, we have declined to pursue that. This particular matter came to us early in my tenure when Netscape was concerned about Microsoft's practices with respect to the browser. We did a --

JIM LEHRER: Netscape was a browser company. Explain what a browser is.

JOEL KLEIN: A browser is a piece of software used to access the worldwide web, and Netscape was then the dominant player in that particular technology. And Microsoft realized that a browser was a real threat to the operating system, this is a Bill Gates recommend random saying that, and they automatically decided they had to win the browser war. That became their, quote, priority number one for the Microsoft company because they needed to protect the operating system. You know, the operating system sells hundreds of millions of copies that make billions of dollars on this thing, and they've got a really strong monopoly position. And they were worried about the browser. So what they went about and did was tie up all the deals with exclusive dealing contracts so Netscape couldn't get distributed. Then they tied their browser to their operating system, so every time you bought an operating system, it came with a Microsoft browser. As a result of that, there was no room for Netscape.

JIM LEHRER: So you looked at that and said, hey, that's a violation of law.

JOEL KLEIN: We talked to numerous industry participant, took lots of depositions and testimony and looked at the Microsoft documents, then put together the case and filed it in court.

JIM LEHRER: Did you go to Microsoft and say look what you're doing, you're violating the law, stop it and we'll leave you alone? Don't stop it and we'll file this case?

JOEL KLEIN: Well, we certainly want to, and we told them what we were going to do, we proposed a settlement to them, which they rejected before we filed the case. We delayed filing the case for several days because we had proposed a settlement, and they stiffed us.

JIM LEHRER: Was it a settlement that involved breaking up the company?

JOEL KLEIN: No, sir.

JIM LEHRER: What could they have had early on?

JOEL KLEIN: I think the specifics of it are not appropriate to comment on. But essentially it was a settlement that would have said, look, compete on the merits, give other people an opportunity to bring their product to market, let the consumer win. Microsoft says it had the best technology, my view is, if it does and they compete on the merit, that's good for consumers, but they didn't want to do that.

JIM LEHRER: You've asked for an expedited appeal, skipped the appeals court, and go right to the Supreme Court. Why?

JOEL KLEIN: I think for two reasons, one, Congress passed a special statute for just this kind of case, because of the importance to the economy, the importance to the company, that the high court, the highest court in our land should get into the case early so that we can get it resolved. Second of all, I think the importance of this case, and the rapidity with which this industry moves generally, leads me to conclude that we would like to see the problem fixed sooner, rather than later.

JIM LEHRER: Not influenced by the fact that this particular appeals court hears cases from the District of Columbia has not looked favor my on a lot of Judge Jackson's decisions in the past? In other words, you're not skipping an unfavorable court?

JOEL KLEIN: Not at all. It's a simple matter of extradition. Thinks an appeals court in which we're very familiar with the government and generally fared well, and obviously if it weren't for the pressures of trying to resolve this, you know, it's always paradox cal, here's Microsoft. They are under a court order to break up. They have all their employees, all their shareholders, a whole industry that's affected by this. This is significant stuff. Why wouldn't they want it expedited? After all the Supreme Court is the highest court in the land. It is likely that the court is going to be called onto resolve this case one way or the other. There are nine Justices there, nobody could question their impartiality or integrity. I'm astonished that Microsoft wouldn't be joining with us.

JIM LEHRER: What about, is your, you're still taking calls from Microsoft that they say, they have a revelation and say, wait a minute, let's not press this any more, let's accept it, would you sit down and talk to them?

JOEL KLEIN: Absolutely. I have always believed, continue to believe the best resolution of litigation of this sort is cooperative resolution through settlement.

JIM LEHRER: Would it have to involve a breakup?

JOEL KLEIN: I would say this, Jim, I don't think it's appropriate for me to negotiate here on television. But I think there are benefits to a breakup, precisely for the reason we discussed earlier today. But if Microsoft is prepared to engage seriously, and here's the key point, if they're not willing to look at this court's 208 pages of findings and realize these are serious anti-competitive practices, if they don't want to engage on that level, if they want to tell me that this is all about nothing and take the position that they've taken Up until now that this is just competition on the merits, then there's no purpose. If they want to address those problems in a real way, absolutely.

JIM LEHRER: What message should American business take from this decision yesterday?

JOEL KLEIN: I think they should take two important messages. Number one, as a general matter, Jim, I don't think that most American businesses need be concerned about anti-trust, and because I think they conduct their practices within the law. On the other hand, I do think the notion that anything goes, even in the new high tech economy, is a notion that is very corrosive and insidious. It will be harmful to our markets, harmful to our consumers and ultimately harmful to our economy. When you use economic power to muscle people, to basically coerce people to stay out of the market, to basically tie up distribution channels, when that occurs, and it doesn't occur very often, but when it occurs, you can count on the United States Department of Justice and I believe the federal courts to put a stop to it.

JIM LEHRER: What do you say to people who say, wait a minute, this is a special situation, technology is growing so fast and so big, it's not just Microsoft, there's Cisco Systems that dominates the hardware business, there's AOL and Time Warner coming together, is the anti-trust division of the Justice Department the avenue to resolve all these things?

JOEL KLEIN: When there's illegal activities, it's happened for 110 years, it's made America's economy the strongest, most competitive economy in the world. The rest of the world is running to catch up to anti-trust enforcement. And there's nothing new about this kind of thing. This high tech field in which you're talking about, the same speed with which it moves also means that innovation can be increasingly deterred. Take the situation now when we have a situation when Microsoft has a monopoly on the desk top, every server talks a desktop computer. If Microsoft favors its servers by allowing it to have contact with its desktop computer and disfavors other servers, they can extend their monopoly in that direction. Hand held devices, they can do the same thing. If they play by the rules and compete on the merits, they're a great company with a powerful position, they should compete fairly, and if they win they win. But you can't have them muscling people, withholding technical information, tying products together, the kind of things that happened here.

JIM LEHRER: Finally, on a personal level, are you proud of what you've done in this case?

JOEL KLEIN: I'm proud of the Justice Department and I'm proud of the judicial system, absolutely. You know, Jim, I've practiced law a long time, people are awfully cynical about institutions in America. And I think the United States Department of Justice and the attorney general's leadership was an extraordinary team, and the antitrust division showed that we know how to try cases, we know how to do Investigations, and the federal court system was able to move quickly, fairly, and thoroughly and appropriately. So as a lawyer and as an officer of the court, I am proud of what's accomplished here.

JIM LEHRER: Are you comfortable with the possibility that for now and forever more you will be known as the guy who broke up Microsoft?

JOEL KLEIN: Well, you know, in personal terms, I think when you get into a job like this, you enforce the law to the best of your ability, and you let commentators like you try to characterize it.

JIM LEHRER: Joe Klein, thank you very much.

JOEL KLEIN: Thank you.

JIM LEHRER: Senior Microsoft officials were unavailable tonight, but we hope to interview one of them in the next few days.

FOCUS - INNOVATION

JIM LEHRER: Margaret Warner continues our Microsoft aftermath focus with a look at the question of innovation.

MARGARET WARNER: Both sides in this antitrust case have claimed to be fighting on behalf of innovation in the fast-changing technology and information field. We look at the issue of where innovation comes from and who does it best with Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future, a Silicon Valley technology think tank; Paul Kedrosky, a former Wall Street analyst who teaches information technology and commerce at the University of British Columbia; Rob Enderle, vice president of Desktop and Mobile Technologies at Giga Information Group, an information technology advisory company; and Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist, artist, and author.

Well, gentlemen, we just heard Joel Klein make his pro-innovation argument. As you know, Microsoft has argued that it in fact has always been a champion of innovation in bringing this to consumers. Paul Kedrosky, would you call Microsoft an innovative company? Has it been an innovator?

PAUL KEDROSKY: I would. And the tricky thing in all of this is trying to tie anybody down and get them to answer the question of what exactly constitutes being an innovative company. And I mean in the broadest possible terms, being innovative simply means doing something new, introducing a new product and new services, something that's new to the world. And I think at that basic level we can all agree that Microsoft has done that and done that many times. Where things get really thorny, though, is in trying to figure out whether or not the things that Microsoft has introduced are new enough for them or constitute some kind of radical change in the world and that's where all the debates start.

MARGARET WARNER: Paul Saffo, is Microsoft innovative enough for you?

PAUL SAFFO: I couldn't disagree more with Paul. Microsoft is very innovative on the business side, and Bill Gates may be one of the business geniuses of this century. But technologically speaking, Microsoft has never been anything more than a fast follower, that all of their major products have become because of ideas of other people outside the company.

MARGARET WARNER: Rob Enderle, how do you see this question? Do you degree with Mr. Saffo that there are two different kinds of innovation here maybe?

ROB ENDERLE: Well, yes, absolutely. I mean, Microsoft has been very good about bringing technologies often developed by others to market. That's really their strength, they make, you know, millions of dollars on doing things that other companies that might appear to be more innovative haven't been able to do. But fundamentally, it's business innovation is what we're talking about, the technology has come from others.

MARGARET WARNER: And Jaron Lanier.

JARON LANIER: They're an embarrassment to the technology field. I mean, everyone who invents technology thinks of them as a disaster in terms of innovation. And in fact, if anything, if they had followed the law, if they were not antitrust violators, they would have gotten nowhere.

MARGARET WARNER: Let's go to the question raised earlier. What constitutes innovation in this field? Mr. Lanier?

JARON LANIER: Well, you know, there's almost a religion around innovation in Silicon Valley, and it's not just inventing a new device. It's really reimagining how relationships work between people, how people think, I mean, it's really quite remarkable, if you think about what's happened with computers. This hasn't been a bunch of inventors saying here's a better mousetrap. It's more like something saying how can I turn the mouse into my venture capitalist. People really radically rethink how to live life, and it's this incredible spirit of optimism that however much we think we understand, however good our lives might be, we can go still further. And that spirit is really what drives the whole enterprise.

MARGARET WARNER: Paul Kedrofsky, would you define Microsoft in that cosmic sense, in terms of putting Microsoft aside, in terms of this field?

PAUL KEDROSKY: I think at a 30,000 foot level it's a fine abstract ideas of what innovation is. But in practice, I think that innovation for businesses constitutes introducing new things that people will actually buy. It's fine to have great gadgets hanging around the labs, but if you are asking, you know, a company that has to satisfy shareholders and analysts and everyone else, to introduce these kinds of starry-eyed things, I think you're dreaming. The reality is that you're going to see incremental innovations, small things. We're not going to see Microsoft introduce a new light bulb, but we are going to see Microsoft introduce on- the-fly spell checking. We can quibble about whether or not that constitutes innovation. And, you know, innovation is very much on that level in the eye of the beholder. But this is the difference between being a commercial company, doing applied research, stuff that has to get sold on the marketplace and bought on the marketplace, and someone else who is doing basic research that maybe some day will be useful for someone.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Paul Saffo, weigh in on this, what is innovation in this field and what does it take for a company to be innovative and continue to be innovative?

PAUL SAFFO: Well, it's a process of taking ideas and convincing a culture to use them. Jaron is absolutely right, and it's a very hard process. We're all fascinated by change, but in fact we hate change. In fact, Bill Gates is just like the rest of us in that regard because he's a man who really does fear change. It is... innovation is the process of swimming against the resistance to change, convincing us all to do things, and it's a very tough business. Keep in mind that in Silicon Valley, vastly more companies fail than succeed.

MARGARET WARNER: And how do you think size affects a company's ability to innovate on an ongoing basis?

PAUL SAFFO: Well, the process of innovation is really an ecology, where there are players of all different sizes. Small companies tend to be the ones who propose a new idea, and the large companies are the ones who dispose of it. The small companies bring in the new things, and then either the small company gets large and moves it outwards, or large companies adopt it and carry it forward. There's a role for companies large and small in this.

MARGARET WARNER: But, Rob Enderle, are large companies better or less well equipped to continue to innovate?

ROB ENDERLE: Well, generally a large company, as it grows, builds up a lot of people that get good at saying no. By saying no, you really never are proven wrong because the product never comes out, never goes to market, it never fails in the market, and so large companies have a great deal of difficulty taking a concept that is just a concept and deriving it into a product. They can see a concept that somebody else has actually created into a product and say hey, that could be successful, and because of that, buy the product, buy the company and make that happen. An example would be the strongest labs doing research in large companies; that's Lucent and I.B.M. However, much of what they develop never makes it out of the labs and actually to market.

MARGARET WARNER: Why is that?

ROB ENDERLE: Well, primarily because the separation between the people doing the thinking and the conceptualizing and the people that are doing the activity that actually creates product and takes to it market, the advertising campaign, puts the money bend it and drives it through, there are two different kinds of people and somebody has got to kind of bridge that gap. And in a small company you get enough emphasis on actually at least bringing the concept to a product concept that it can then be sold to the guys in the large companies that can take them and actually make that into business plan.

MARGARET WARNER: Jaron Lanier, weigh back in on this issue terms of size and maturity of a company.

JARON LANIER: Well, the clich is that the tiny startup company is the one with the new ideas. But I have to say that some of the large companies have really shown that they can also come up with new ideas. And a great recent example is Sun and Java. Now Java is a special computer language that lets programs exist on the Internet that are as powerful as used to exist only on individual computers. Sun created it, brought it out. I think one of the problems with Microsoft is actually that Microsoft essentially stifled its adoption by the world, but nonetheless there's a very dramatic example of a large company playing the innovation game. I think most of the dramatic new ideas come from little companies that then grow big.

MARGARET WARNER: So Mr. Kedrosky, let's go back to Microsoft and the impact of this case, if the breakup happens, how do you think it will affect innovation, either by Microsoft or one of the two Microsoft's and the industry as a whole?

PAUL KEDROSKY: Here's where... I suppose the Microsoft internal party line, I actually don't think it's going to hinder them in terms of being innovative in any practical sense at all. As a matter of fact, I think you'll have two Microsoft's, two ferocious competitors running relatively more scared than they are today. And I'll concede that. I think that you'll have the operating system group very much worried about the effect of Sun and Java and driving to do everything they can to make life easier for people who are trying to build things for the internet, and harder for companies who are trying to compete there, and ferociously competing there, and being as innovative as they can. And the same thing on the applications side, the other proposed side of their business. So I don't necessarily think that this is going to somehow destroy Microsoft's ability to innovate, if you buy the thesis that they were innovative in first place that I sort of argued at the beginning.

MARGARET WARNER: So you don't buy Microsoft's argument that the integration of these two sides of the company is what has made it possible for them to innovate, and actually in a practical way bring those innovations to market?

PAUL KEDROSKY: No. In a financial sense I buy that. I understand one side of the business, well both sides have been highly profitable and let them do all kinds of things in terms of enhancing products and bringing new versions of products to market. But at the same time, I don't think that separating the two groups is going to change that. I think you are just going to have two groups with a slightly different focus who will still be competing as aggressively as they can and trying to win a big market share as they can in a fast changing marketplace. None of the things that are driving them really have changed.

MARGARET WARNER: Rob Enderle, how do you see this?

ROB ENDERLE: Well, if you think about how Microsoft currently operates, on a regular basis they go through what I call catastrophic reorganizations, that's a case where people that are doing one job are switched over and end up doing something completely different. The change is not something that is unique to them. It's certainly not something that is foreign. But looking at the way the market is today, an operating system unit could better focus on the hardware manufacturers, they need to be recaptured that they've been losing to initiatives like Linux, initiatives like Client -- initiatives that they haven't been competitive on. On the other hand, the applications unit needs to move a large scale application service providers, and these are people that have never cared much for Windows, and it's much easier to sell somebody on an application than an application and a brand new platform. So after the breakup, at least it's my thought that Microsoft could be more powerful, could be more aggressive, and actually end up being much stronger going towards the future than they currently are today by being the large conglomerate that create products that often don't work particularly well because they're so complex.

MARGARET WARNER: Jaron Lanier, this sounds like a prey rosy future.

JARON LANIER: Yeah, I can't see any down side to it at al I really think the only person who will suffer from this is Bill Gates and only his ego, not in his pocketbook. I think this is great. There are wonderful people at Microsoft, if their culture changes so they focus a little more on making good products, and especially on quality control, I mean, the real problem with Microsoft has been very low product quality. And every time your computer crashes, that's a dollar they didn't spend on product quality that they should have spent. And I think this could really be a boon for consumers. Every time there is, it's like pruning a garden, when you have one of these monolithic structures built up, every time it's pruned down, you have all kinds of new wonderful growth. I think this is great.

MARGARET WARNER: So Paul Saffo, new wonderful growth, lean and mean?

PAUL SAFFO: I'm completely puzzled by why Microsoft is resisting the breakup. The word it grew up in, the desktop, is disappearing. The gales of creative destruction are blowing in every corner of this industry. Their structure is all wrong for the new world, their innovation is faltering, and here amazingly a group of regulators from Washington are teaching the leading technology company how to do technological innovation. I think it time for Microsoft to listen to the lesson.

MARGARET WARNER: All right, thank you all four gentlemen very much.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, a story about a play, and a conversation about second opinions.

FOCUS - COCKPIT DRAMA

JIM LEHRER: The play is about cockpit emergencies. Tom Bearden has the story.

FLIGHT ATTENDANT: To fasten your seatbelt, insert the metal fitting...

TOM BEARDEN: The flight attendant's demonstration was eerily authentic, right down to the rapid fire monotone, the gestures, the blank look. You could easily imagine reaching for your seat belt.

But this wasn't an airliner. It was a tiny storefront theater on New York's lower East side. For 70 minutes, actors recreated six real life aircraft accidents using the actual words of flight crews trying to deal with impending disaster. The play was called "Charlie Victor Romeo," phonetic spelling for CVR -- the cockpit voice recorder that often provides some of the most important evidence used in a plane crash.

ACTOR: ...Last 40...

TOM BEARDEN: Except for some dramatic sound effects, "Charlie Victor Romeo" offered nothing but the near verbatim words from the transcripts of cockpit voice recordings. No explosions, no theatrical props flying around, no fake blood.

ACTOR: ...Delay... Inaudible ... Go around... Go around... Go around.

ACTOR: Go around... Go around... Go around... Class 15...

TOM BEARDEN: Critics praised the stark portrayal of what happened in these doomed cockpits. They admired the combination of realism and drama, as in this plane that flew too low and clipped the treetops. (Mechanical beeping)

ACTOR: The left rotor's failed.. Runway straight ahead.

ACTOR: Okay, okay. Tell if we're going down. Tell them emergency...

ACTOR: Tower... Hold for emergency... Going down on the runway...

TOM BEARDEN: Or the wrenching change from humor to horror that occurred aboard an American Eagle flight bound for Chicago in 1994.

ACTRESS: Someone's stereo radio. You guys don't have a hard job at all. We're back there slugging it out with all these people.

TOM BEARDEN: One moment the cockpit crew, played by Michael Bruno and Oliver Wyman, joked around with a flight attendant, played by Audrey Crabtree. In response to her requests, they demonstrated some of the automated emergency warnings.

ACTROR: Yeah, you know, it's like Iwas saying before. If there's a rain loud up ahead, they'll tell you. How do you know it's rain? Cause it says. Terrain. Terrain.

ACTRESS: That's what it says, terrain.

ACTOR: Terrain. (Emergency beeper) terrain. (Emergency beeper) terrain.

ACTRESS: Okay. See y'all.

ACTOR: All right.

ACTOR: Flight 184 descending.

ACTOR: Maintain 8,000 feet.

ACTOR: Down to 8,000, Eagle flight 184.

TOM BEARDEN: As they joked, freezing rain was building up a fatal layer of ice on the wings.

ACTOR: Are we out of hold here?

ACTOR: Oh, no. Just going down to 8,000.

ACTOR: All right.

TOM BEARDEN: A few moments later, the crew lost control. (Emergency beeping)

ACTOR: I knew we were going to do that.

ACTOR: All right. I'm trying to keep it at 180.

ACTOR: All right. We got it. (Beeping)

ACTOR: All right, mellow it out. Mellow it out! (Sounds of confusion) oh God!

TOM BEARDEN: There were no survivors. When the show opened, theater critics called it riveting, but it also attracted an unexpected audience: Aviation professionals, pilots and controllers. Gary Gladstone is a longtime private pilot.

GARY GLADSTONE: I thought, "hell, no way in hell are they going to be able to... a bunch of actors, sit down and do what I've heard on tapes before as a pilot, or get the sense of it. But I read some reviews. I came down with a couple of friends one night, and sat here, and my heart started beating at a faster rate when the lights went out, and it was a killer evening, watching pilots and aviators in film, because... although some are very good, most of them miss the subtleties that other pilots sort of recognize. This cast is absolutely drop-dead amazing. And they had the scan going across the instrument panel the way you would in an emergency.

TOM BEARDEN: The show's three directors are part of a five-year-old collaborative theater group called "Collective Unconscious." Neither they nor the cast has flying experience. It was the psychology of the human interaction under pressure that first appealed to them. But in preparing the show, they quickly realized that the material had to be handled carefully.

BOB BERGER, Director: In order to attempt something like this it's got to be done correctly, in a way that isn't going to leave you ashamed after having been accused of sensationalizing or trivializing peoples' deaths for the sake of entertainment. This is all internal. This is peoples' brains. What's happening to humans. There's no explosions. There's... you're focused on these guys inside of a cockpit of the airplane thinking about what they're going through, and understanding what they're going through.

TOM BEARDEN: Did you have any sense that there's a fine line you can't cross?

IRVING GREGORY, Director: Well, yes. But being in theater for a long time, I, myself, kind of see it like Shakespeare, too. A lot of people die in Shakespeare. A lot of people die in Shakespeare. A lot of people die in tragedies of plays for thousands of years... In stories, so, yeah we tried to approach it very, very seriously, understanding the gravity of the subject matter we were dealing with, but at the same time gave it its theatrical weight.

ACTOR: 80 knots. Copilot's airplane. Your aircraft.

TOM BEARDEN: "Charlie Victor Romeo" is not a pure documentary. The directors and cast had to imagine and create tones of voice, facial expressions, rapid fire pacing of dialogue and shifts of mood-- the things that make the difference between words in a transcript, and a theatrical performance.

ACTOR: Roger that...

TOM BEARDEN: Co-director Patrick Daniels thinks the performances helped the audience see through the technical jargon to the underlying story.

ACTOR: They're on override...

PATRICK DANIELS, Director: They may not get the details, the definition of terms, you know, what is... Does "mach speed trim" mean or whatever, but they get a kind of a visceral sense that this has a connection to the airplane and these people are trying to control it in a certain way. They understand it on a kind of a subconscious level.

TOM BEARDEN: The show opened in October. As word spread, its run was extended four times. Cast members found that aviation professionals often stayed after the show to chat and offer technical tips.

SPOKESMAN: Good job. It's a great job.

SPOKESMAN: When the pilot term crashes, we know... Because you guys know it...

TOM BEARDEN: Army Colonel Lawrence Shattuck teaches a course in human error at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He was so impressed that he took his class to see the show.

LT. COLONEL LAWRENCE SHATTUCK, Professor, West Point: When you're trying to teach cadets how to analyze an accident, you try to get them to put themselves into the situation as it's unfolding. And so, you look at an accident and you say, "well they should have done this or they should have done that." The reality is that when they were in that situation they didn't know about that or they didn't have access to that information. So the cadets were able to see the pilots in that situation, and get a sense of what they knew and what they didn't know, and to see them respond to the things that were available to them at the time.

TOM BEARDEN: For some cadets, like La Tonia Kolodoye, the biggest surprise was how fast things happened.

LA TONIA KOLODOYE, Cadet, West Point: And when you're reading through a transcript that takes you about two hours to three hours to read through completely and then you sit through a performance of that accident that takes, maybe, five minutes to show you everything that happened-- and really the most critical elements of the accident happen within about 30 seconds-- you really get a feel for how serious aircraft accidents can be, and how complex flights are.

SPOKESMAN: So when the enemy was coming down...

TOM BEARDEN: The complexity of human error is Colonel Shattuck's professional field. He studies engineering psychology, the science of how humans interact with machines.

ACTOR: One-five, one-five, transponder.

ACTOR: Flaps one-five, take off recent complete time check.

TOM BEARDEN: Much of what Colonel Shattuck saw in the theater mirrored his training in the subtle ways that flight crews can make mistakes, like this Aeroperu Flight in 1996.

ACTOR: B-2 plus ten.

ACTRESS: The altimeters are stuck. Hey, the altimeters are stuck!

ACTOR: Yeah.

ACTRESS: All of them?

ACTOR: Now this is really new...

TOM BEARDEN: Maintenance workers had taped over the instrument sensors of the plane before they washed it, and neglected to remove the tape.

ACTOR: B-2 plus ten. What happened? We're not climbing.

ACTRESS: I am climbing, but the speed...

ACTOR: Hold it. No. Keep the speed.

TOM BEARDEN: When the jetliner took off for Lima, the instruments gave false speed and altitude readings, completely disorienting the crew.

ACTOR: All crew, six-zero-three, tower go on.

ACTRESS: Okay, we declare an emergency. We have no basic instruments, no altimeter, no air speed indicator. We declare an emergency.

ACTOR: Roger, altitude.

TOM BEARDEN: The captain, played by Dan Krumm, and the first officer, played by Julia Berger, began arguing over how to get the instruments back.

ACTOR: Keep trying.

ACTRESS: There's no auto throttle.

ACTOR: Oh, the speed.

TOM BEARDEN: The later investigation showed that was the wrong thing to do because the plane was flying perfectly. Only the instruments were wrong.

LT. COLONEL LAWRENCE SHATTUCK: Because that argument was going back and forth, they actually missed the ability to diagnose the plane properly. They spent so much time arguing about whether to engage the autopilot or not, that they missed the diagnosis. Had they just disengaged the pilot... the autopilot, they could have flown the plane themselves just using their visual senses.

ACTRESS: Speed. We have speed problems. Instruments... Flight director.

ACTOR: It can't be... Hey look, the speed, with the power we have... It can't be.

ACTRESS: It can't be. It's true. It's wrong. 330?

ACTOR: Yes, but they're even, aren't they?

ACTRESS: Well, set yours on alternate air status. The one down there, the lower button. The lower one! That one down there.

GARY GLADSTONE, Pilot: I'm sitting here in my seat screaming, "look at the... Look at the compass." I mean, that will give you your heading. Don't look at the static instruments, and that's what they were doing. And they were arguing with one another, and they were just... They were stunned with disbelief.

ACTOR: We're controlling the turns by power.

TOM BEARDEN: The play ends with the recreation of the final moments of United Flight 232, the 1989 flight where crew skills and quick thinking saved hundreds of lives. On a flight from Denver, the DC- 10's center engine exploded, destroying the hydraulic system and the disabling the flight controls.

ACTOR: Maybe we can only turn right. Can't turn left.

ACTOR: Another 232...

ACTOR: Captain Al Haynes, played by Stuart Rudin, fought to bring the wide-body to a safe landing.

ACTOR: Okay, United 232, we understand you have normal power at one of three engines.

ACTOR: That's affirmative.

ACTOR: I wonder about the outboard aileron. Do you think if we put some flaps out, it would give us outboard?

ACTRESS: God, I hate to do anything.

ACTOR: Uh-oh, we're going to have to do something.

TOM BEARDEN: Haynes worked with his crew and a flight instructor, who happened to be a passenger and came into the cockpit to help.

ACTOR: Oh, thanks for coming up, captain. My name's Al Haynes.

ACTOR: Hi, I'm Aldon Fitch.

ACTOR: How do you do, Denny?

ACTOR: I'll tell you what, al. We'll have a beer when all this is done.

ACTOR: Well, I don't drink. I'll sure as hell have one. A little right turn. Little right turns...

ACTOR: They made up new flying techniques as they went, and never lost their composure or their sense of humor.

ACTOR: And we didn't do this thing on my last simulator check.

ACTOR: No. No. Oh, I poured coffee all over. Oh, it's just coffee. We'll get this thing on the ground. Don't worry about it.

ACTOR: Incredibly, they did make it to the airport at Sioux City, Iowa. Flight 232 made it to the runway, then cart wheeled just as it touched down. 111 people were killed. 185 survived, including the entire crew. "Charlie Victor Romeo" recently ended its run, but the performances were preserved on videotape, by the air force which plans to quite for training purposes. The directors who began by wanting to put on a good show, say they are gratified to see they have created something more.

BOB BERGER: To be told by the Air Force, army and pilots who have come and seen the show that they've learned something and that what we're doing is going to be of use to them, that's just the most rewarding thing I've ever had happen to me. It's just mind-blowingly rewarding. (Applause)

TOM BEARDEN: In August, "Charlie Victor Romeo" will return for a limited run in a larger New York theater. And there are plans for a national tour. And recently the play won two New York drama desk awards for best sound and for unique theatrical experience.

CONVERSATION - SECOND THOUGHTS

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, another of our conversations about new books, and to Gwen Ifill.

GWEN IFILL: One of the most difficult dilemmas patients face is knowing when to follow the first advice their doctor gives, and when to push harder, ask more. In his new book, "Second Opinion: Stories of Intuition and Choice in the Changing World of Medicine," Dr. Jerome Groopman shares true stories from his own personal experiences as a patient and as a physician. A Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, he is also chief of experimental medicine at Beth Israel- Deaconess Medical Center, and a staff writer in medicine and biology for the "New Yorker" Magazine.

Dr. Groopman, welcome very much.

DR. JEROME GROOPMAN, Author, "Second Opinion:" Pleasure to be here.

GWEN IFILL: You talk about intuition and choice, which for me sound like two of the scariest words you can use in talking about medicine.

DR. JEROME GROOPMAN: But they're very important. No one knows your body as well as you do. And it's important for a patient, when he or she is sick, to try to probe and sense what's going on and to offer that to the doctor. It helps the doctor make diagnosis and chart the best therapy.

GWEN IFILL: You talk in your book... you tell a series of stories in your book, which we'll go into in a moment, but all of them boil down to this idea of the unknowable, which for some reason I think a lot of us throw ourselves in doctors' hands and assume that the doctors will be able to just give us a flat answer, but that's so often not the case, is it?

DR. JEROME GROOPMAN: It's not. None of us, as a physician, is perfect. I have my limits, areas of ignorance, times that I make misjudgments. I need the patient to be active and to be speaking to me, to form a real partnership, to do the best I can.

GWEN IFILL: But that's more than misjudgments. It's also a doctor who happens to be tired or who is arrogant or who isn't really listening. You tell a story about the case involving your young son, your son when he was young, and when you took him to an emergency room.

DR. JEROME GROOPMAN: He was nine months old. We were first visiting my wife's parents in Connecticut. We saw an older pediatrician, who dismissed my wife's intuition that our baby was really quite ill. He said it was just a GI Bug. By the time...

GWEN IFILL: Gastrointestinal.

DR. JEROME GROOPMAN: Gastrointestinal virus, basically. He had some diarrhea and didn't look himself. By the time we got to Boston, it was clear he was very, very sick. He was ashen, his legs were flexing to his chest. We rushed him to the emergency room. And there the correct diagnosis was made: He had an intestinal obstruction. But we were met by a very green, inexperienced resident who said that there was no need for urgent surgery and everything could wait till the morning.

GWEN IFILL: But what happened in the end then?

DR. JEROME GROOPMAN: What happened is we had to stop being passive, cowed parents and take action and challenge his judgment. And by good fortune, there was one person we knew at this hospital. We called him in the middle of the night. He brought in a senior surgeon, who rushed our baby to the emergency room and saved his life.

GWEN IFILL: Here's the point: You're a physician, your wife is a physician, and this still almost happened to you. You tell another story in the book of another woman who was diagnosed as having asthma by the doctor, her HMO and then she came... her daughter brought her to see you for a second opinion, and you discovered that wasn't the problem at all.

DR. JEROME GROOPMAN: What this means is that when you sense that you're not being listened to, that you're not being taken seriously, or you don't fully trust the decision that's being made, because the person seems to be dismissing you or seems very inexperienced, you have the right as a patient and a family to demand a second opinion and to see a more senior person.

GWEN IFILL: This woman in this case, who was later diagnosed as having leukemia, she wasn't English- speaking, wasn't her first language; she didn't live in the same community was you; you weren't covered under her HMO. There was a good chance she would've never sought a second opinion with those circumstances. And most people probably feel they're constrained by those kinds of limitations.

DR. JEROME GROOPMAN: Many people are. It's one of the most difficult and upsetting aspects of medical care delivery-- people who are culturally disadvantaged, financially disadvantaged. But even now, within the HMO or managed care networks, you can demand to a patient advocate to get a second opinion. And the HMO's are very much on the retreat now. They're not doing well financially, and if you press hard enough, you can get greater freedom of choice and you can go outside the network.

GWEN IFILL: We hear a lot about medical horror stories and read frequent reports about medical errors. Is this something which is a big widespread problem? Reading your book would make you think so. Or is this something where perhaps we're just overreacting, in the broad sense?

DR. JEROME GROOPMAN: I think it's important. I think there are two types. One are system errors: Poor handwriting, so that the correct dose of a drug is not given, things like that. And those can be fixed more easily. What my book focuses on really has to do with judgment and how to come to the best diagnosis and the best treatment. And that requires a patient and his family being more aggressive and more proactive than all of us usually are.

GWEN IFILL: Did you worry in writing this book and committing these stories to print, that people were going to be even more scared and less likely even to seek medical opinions, or less trusting of your profession?

DR. JEROME GROOPMAN: Well, I think that people may be worried about these issues, and the best way to overcome worry is to gain knowledge. And that knowledge gives all of us power. A woman contacted me shortly after the book came out and had read the exact story you referred to about the HMO. And her son, 11 years old, had fever and cough, and twice she was brushed off. And she marched back to the HMO, demanded that he be seen. He had pneumonia, and he was immediately admitted to the hospital. And I thought, "that's the kind of courage that I hope people can get from this."

GWEN IFILL: So in general, how does a person know when to ask for a second or a third or a fourth opinion?

DR. JEROME GROOPMAN: Well, I think anyone who has a life-threatening illness should get a second opinion. Anyone where the diagnosis is not clear; where the treatment is either very risky or toxic; or where the treatment is experimental, there is no established therapy-- in every case you should get a second opinion.

GWEN IFILL: I had a friend say to me recently, "well, the doctor should know best. The doctor was the one who is trained and knows so much more than I do." It's so easy to be intimidated in those situations.

DR. JEROME GROOPMAN: Well, we were intimated. My wife and I, both of us, intimated, even though we were doctors, because we were trying so hard to be cooperative. But we made what could've been a fatal error. I think it's critical for all of us to know that doctors are human, they have they're limits, they're fallible. I certainly have made mistakes and I confess, I even write about them in the book.

GWEN IFILL: So you're saying it pays to be stubborn in these cases.

DR. JEROME GROOPMAN: It pays to be persistent; it pays to speak up; but most importantly, to develop a partnership with the doctor.

GWEN IFILL: What's interesting about this book is you manage to meld medical detail with pretty good storytelling if I might pay you that compliment. Where did you learn to do this? Most doctors have trouble expressing themselves verbally, let alone on paper.

DR. JEROME GROOPMAN: I just more or less taught myself. The original writing I did was pretty bad. And a few friends, "oh, it's wonderful, it's wonderful." And my wife said, "it's awful." And she said just write simple, declarative sentences and don't use a lot of jargon. And that's pretty much what I've tried to do.

GWEN IFILL: But how do you... I guess I wonder how you do that, because to make any kind of medical explanation understandable to the layperson is more than a notion.

DR. JEROME GROOPMAN: What I try to do in my mind is to speak with my prose the way I would want to explain to a patient and his family what is happening to them, or what's happened in other cases. And it's so critical to make it clear and to make it accessible. And I think that in a way, this writing has made me a better doctor.

GWEN IFILL: In what way?

DR. JEROME GROOPMAN: I think it's taught me, first, greater humility, because I've revisited times when I made serious errors. It's also taught me how to communicate better, and communication is the key in terms of medical care.

GWEN IFILL: How does a doctor, a physician this time, guard against making those mistakes, assuming that laypeople read your book and come away with one set of advice about how to respond to this and how to be more aggressive. What can doctors take away as a way of guarding against these kinds of mistakes?

DR. JEROME GROOPMAN: Well, I think all of us as physicians should acknowledge our fallibility, our limits. We should learn to listen better, because good listening is the beginning of good thinking, careful thinking. And I also think we should come off our pedestal a bit and see our patients as partners with us, and look to their intuition so we can do the best job we can for them.

GWEN IFILL: I found it interesting in your book, you tell the story of one man who had a chance to get an experimental drug and didn't get it, and thought this was his death sentence. Ultimately the experimental drug would've been his death sentence. How quickly is medicine moving in ways like this that you can't even know which direction you should be heading in?

DR. JEROME GROOPMAN: It's moving very, very quickly. And in that particular case, it's what's called the Pygmalion Syndrome. You have to be careful, because all researchers, including myself, fall in love with their own work. And you need some distance from that, so that if you're looking-- like that man was, at an experimental therapy-- you should get an independent assessment of the treatment from a researcher who's not directly involved in the project.

GWEN IFILL: Do you find yourself now with your writer hat on, your doctor hat on, your patient care hat on, your researcher hat on, finding ways to always take what you learn every day and put it on paper? Are people afraid around you to make any mistakes for fear you might start scribbling it down?

DR. JEROME GROOPMAN: Well, I carry index cards in my pocket, and I write thoughts during the day, but I never write about anyone if he or she doesn't want to be written about. And some patients have said, "I don't want to be a chapter in your book." And I say, "you're not." So I respect that. But I think there's an incredible world in medicine. It's both exciting and a time of great hope in terms of research. But as you say, it's not a perfect world. And the more knowledge that's shared with patients and their families, the better the outcome.

GWEN IFILL: Dr. Jerome Groopman, the book is "Second Opinions." Thank you very much.

DR. JEROME GROOPMAN: Thank you.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Thursday. Microsoft asked a federal judge to stay his order breaking up the company. On the NewsHour tonight, Assistant Attorney General Klein said trying to force Microsoft to change its ways would have been more intrusive than splitting it in two. And the Senate rejected a patients' rights bill backed by the White House 51 to 48. It would have given people a broad rights to sue HMO's. We'll see you online and again here Tomorrow evening with Shields and Gigot, among others. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.