The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight the Iraqi ambassador gives the other side in the inspectors confrontation; we get two perspectives on the networks and NFL football; Spencer Michels reports on the effort to make computers go faster; David Gergen has a talk about writers and God; and essayist Jim Fisher introduces an artist who loves rivers. It all follows our summary of the news this Wednesday. NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: The United Nations Security Council voted unanimously today to condemn Iraq's behavior. The 15-member Council declared Iraq's failure to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors unacceptable. One team, led by American Scott Ritter was blocked from its mission for a second straight day. In Washington, President Clinton said he was encouraged by the U.N. action. In New York, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Bill Richardson said the U.S. would attempt to end the crisis peacefully but military action remained an option.

BILL RICHARDSON: Patience is wearing thin but we should not abandon diplomacy. And the U.N. Security Council, once again, has sent a very strong diplomatic peace message to Iraq to comply fully with the international community. And it's got to be up to Iraq to abide or not to abide and then face the consequences.

JIM LEHRER: In Baghdad, Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz repeated Iraq's problem with the inspection teams, saying they contain too many Americans and Britons. He said the Iraqi people were being hurt badly by economic sanctions imposed after the Gulf War.

TARIQ AZIZ, Deputy Prime Minister Iraq: In this matter people are dying. Every day, when the sanctions continue, people of Iraq are dying. Individuals are dying. Children are vulnerable. Individuals are dying. The Iraqi people and the Iraqi leadership cannot tolerate that forever. It's a matter of life and death for the people of Iraq. It's not a political game.

JIM LEHRER: The U.N. has said those sanctions will not be lifted until it's satisfied Iraq has destroyed all weapons of mass destruction. We'll talk to Iraq's ambassador to the U.N. right after this News Summary. In Jerusalem today the Israeli cabinet voted to keep large parts of the West Bank under permanent control. Arab leaders said that violates the agreement permitting the creation of a Palestinian state in most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. President Clinton is to meet separately with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Arafat at the White House next week. On the Asian financial crisis today Defense Secretary Cohen met with Indonesia's President Suharto. He said the United States was committed to helping them and their neighbors. In Washington, U.S. Treasury officials proposed a meeting of world finance ministers to discuss bailout measures for the region. At the capitol, House Democratic Whip David Bonior said rescue packages should require economic and political reforms.

REP. DAVID BONIOR, Minority Whip: So what I'm saying is that before we move forward with replenishments to the IMF that these issues that I have raised--labor rights, economic rights, wages, working standards--the IMF ought to have a standard which countries strive to meet, just as they have a standard or they're going to try to implement standards where bankers have to meet in order to get their own financial houses in order.

JIM LEHRER: The House Banking Committee announced today it would send a delegation to the region tomorrow to assess the situation. In U.S. economic news today retail sales rose 4.2 percent last year, the lowest increase since 1991, the Commerce Department reported, said sales represent about 1/3 of the economy's output. First Lady Hillary Clinton was questioned for 10 minutes at the White House today by Whitewater Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. It was about the discovery sometime ago of confidential FBI background files being stored at the White House. They contained raw information on some past Republican administration officials. Mrs. Clinton has said she knew nothing about the matter. Also in Washington the hearing in the Microsoft antitrust case concluded today. Microsoft is accused of violating a court order to separate its Internet browser form its Windows operating system. The Justice Department asked that the company be held in contempt of court. Microsoft argued removing the browser would render Windows useless. Closing arguments are set for next Wednesday. People who start drinking alcohol at an early age are more likely to become alcoholics. That's the finding of a study released today by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse & Alcoholism. It said those who begin drinking before age 15 were four times more likely to develop alcoholism than those who did so after they were 21. Researcher Bridget Grant said the study focused on 13 to 21 year olds.

BRIDGET GRANT, Alcohol Study Director: What we found was the likelihood of alcohol dependence was reduced by 14 percent for each year that drinking was delayed. And we also found that the likelihood of lifetime alcohol abuse was reduced by 8 percent for each year that drinking was delayed. And these are whopping statistics and very strong association.

JIM LEHRER: University of Texas researchers said today they've discovered a cellular fountain of youth. It's an enzyme that slowed the aging of cells in laboratory tests. A study will be published Friday in the Journal Science. The scientists said their finding would not allow people to live forever, but it might keep them healthier longer. The said their work could help fight blindness, wrinkles, cardiovascular disease, and other conditions of aging. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the Iraqi response, football and the networks, speedy computers, a David Gergen dialogue, and a Jim Fisher essay. NEWSMAKER

JIM LEHRER: Iraq and the U.N. weapons inspectors. Last night we spoke to the head of the inspection commission, Richard Butler. Tonight we get the other side from Iraq's Ambassador to the United Nations, Nizar Hamdoon. Mr. Ambassador, welcome.

NIZAR HAMDOON, U.N. Ambassador, Iraq: Thank you.

JIM LEHRER: The U.N. Security Council resolution passed today unanimously says Iraq's behavior is unacceptable. What's your reaction to that, sir?

NIZAR HAMDOON: First of all, this is not a resolution, Jim. This is a presidential statement, which does not usually take a vote but takes kind of a consensus between the 15 members. So it doesn't necessarily reflect exactly the way most of the--what some of the Council members think about the situation. There are a good number of council members who have agreed with us that the nature of the teams of UNSCOM will have to be diversified, will have to be more of a multinational character. And this is the point that we are stressing at this time. We are not saying that Iraq should dictate the composition of the team, but in the same time we cannot accept this unprecedented composition of this particular team, which has never happened before, to see a team that is heavily dominated by the Americans and the Brits.

JIM LEHRER: What's the problem with that?

NIZAR HAMDOON: Well, given the--policy of the United States, of the United Kingdom, Iraq thinks that such teams are only going to create more suspicions, going to create tensions, and problems.

JIM LEHRER: Is it your position that no American technician could be professional and fair to Iraq?

NIZAR HAMDOON: No. What we are saying, obviously, I mean, we have accepted the Americans before-- heads of teams, members of teams--but when the team is heavily dominated the way this team was, then probably the activities of that team will not be balanced. It could be influenced by some--we don't know exactly the backgrounds of those Americans. Some of them do represent their government, or they were nominated by their governments. And we all know about the plans the U.S. Government has for Iraq to overthrow the regime and do this and that. For that reason we cannot accept.

JIM LEHRER: You have--your government yesterday charged that Scott Ritter, who is the head of this team, as a spy. Do you believe that?

NIZAR HAMDOON: I don't think that the issue right now is the issue of spying. The issue here is to have a balanced composition. Ritter, himself, headed some of the teams in the past. And he was allowed into many of the sites. We don't see a problem in dealing with an individual if the overall composition of the team is balanced.

JIM LEHRER: So you no longer believe Scott Ritter is a spy?

NIZAR HAMDOON: He is not an issue right now.

JIM LEHRER: I see. Now, what Richard Butler said on our program last night was that there are 44 inspectors involved in this team. Only 11 of them are--there are 17 nationalities represented--only 11 of them are Americans.

NIZAR HAMDOON: That's not true. The team that was sent to Iraq consisted of 16 people. Only four were added in Baghdad from the people who were already in Baghdad--one Jordanian translator, one American expert, and two French. One of them was an IAEA expert. So they did not significantly change the nature of the team of those Americans and the British which were fourteen against two or three other nationalities.

JIM LEHRER: Now, Mr. Butler said just the opposite on this program. He said that your charge that you just repeated, which had been said by your government yesterday, is just not true.

NIZAR HAMDOON: We have provided in details all these facts to the Security Council in a letter. But what could we do if nobody is ready to take what we are saying as the truth? We have asked the council if they want somebody who could check; they could send a couple of people just to verify, to see where the truth lies.

JIM LEHRER: Are you concerned, Mr. Ambassador, that the more you all continue to object on the composition of these teams, the more it may appear to the outside world that you have something really to hide?

NIZAR HAMDOON: Well, I don't think so. I think the majority of the international public opinion now really believe that this whole thing has dragged on for a long time, and that some solution will have to be found. We have done all what we could do to prove the destruction of the workers that we have destroyed. The missile fire was a good example of a couple of accusations of all sorts, and eventually by the technical work that was done, the commission now is convinced that the whole Iraq missile program is over.

JIM LEHRER: Can you state categorically, sir, that the Iraqi government no longer possesses any weapons of mass destruction?

NIZAR HAMDOON: Yes, I could have stated that categorically. We don't have any such stuff anymore.

JIM LEHRER: Then what difference does it make who the inspectors are to go in there and confirm that if you have nothing to hide? Why not just let 'em go in there, Americans or whoever, and come out and say, okay, it's fine, it's over, and let's get on with it?

NIZAR HAMDOON: Well, this is a vacuum, Jim. It's not happening the first time, or for the first year. The Iraqis are getting frustrated because of the continuation of the sanctions, and we are on the seventh year of this process, and it doesn't look that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. This is what has led us to these reactions. It's not that they are just starting to do this job, you see.

JIM LEHRER: In other words, you don't think that an American inspector or a British inspector would have the credibility--I mean, if an American inspector went in there and said, hey, the Iraqis are telling the truth, there are no weapons of mass destruction, you don't think they would have credibility, more credibility say than somebody else?

NIZAR HAMDOON: No. I don't think it's the question of the persons per se. There are lots of respectable American experts. I mean, we obviously know that. But given the policy of the United States and given this special relationship between the U.S. being the biggest power of the Security Council and the special commission--some people who could have been recruited that will serve the purpose of the United States Government and therefore do whatever what could harm the Iraqi cause.

JIM LEHRER: And so you believe that the United States as a matter of policy does not want these sanctions lifted and would--in other words--manipulate the inspection process to keep that from happening?

NIZAR HAMDOON: Oh, yes, Jim. If we look into many statements of Madam Albright and many others during the last couple of years, they sometimes say it clearly, that they are not going to lift the sanctions even if the special commission is to certify the removal and render harmless of all Iraqi programs. They have said that.

JIM LEHRER: What would you say to those who say, hey, well, now, look here now, there was a war in 1991; the United States provided 80 percent of the personnel and the equipment for that war, and their side won, the coalition won, why wouldn't the United States have the right to have a major role in determining whether or not Iraq still had weapons of mass destruction?

NIZAR HAMDOON: Well, that's another issue, Jim. The war is something, and the United Nations Security Council resolutions are something else. Iraq here is abiding by the United Nations Security Council, and most resolutions will have to be implemented accurately, professionally, without any political interpretation.

JIM LEHRER: But it certainly relates to the war because there wouldn't be sanctions if there hadn't been the war in '91. So I mean, the two are definitely related, are they not?

NIZAR HAMDOON: They are related in sequence and in the outcome of the war, but, again, we have to look to it and to most of the international community, look to the resolutions as a product of the Security Council, and that the United Nations should be sincere in implementing them in a fair and in a just way.

JIM LEHRER: What is your reaction to Amb. Richardson's remark today, which we had in the News Summary a moment ago--I'm sure you heard it--that military--the military option cannot be ruled out if this continues to escalate?

NIZAR HAMDOON: Well, the American officials have never ruled out the military option. They have resorted to that a few years ago many times. But at this point, I think, Jim, it will be difficult for them. It won't be easy for the United States to do that, given the reluctance of most of the international powers and of the regional powers, including some close friends to the United States. The reluctance for them to see any bombing is not something that the United States could live with easily, you see.

JIM LEHRER: In other words, you are--your government is banking on the fact that the U.S. would not go it alone on this, is that correct?

NIZAR HAMDOON: No. What I'm saying, that won't be as easy as it was a couple of years ago, so I don't think we have to expect anything immediately.

JIM LEHRER: All right. So what should we expect immediately? Today, the team--headed by Scott Ritter-- was turned back again. Mr. Butler says it's unlikely they're going to try again tomorrow. He's coming to see Tariq Aziz and others in Baghdad. How is this thing going to get resolved, Mr. Ambassador? You've been in the middle of it there at the U.N..

NIZAR HAMDOON: Well, we're trying our best to figure out ways of getting along with Mr. Butler on the question of the composition of the teams, on the question of the evaluation, meetings, technical evaluation meetings, which are going to take place in Baghdad in February, things of that nature to try to finish up the job, you see.

JIM LEHRER: Do you think Mr. Butler is going about this in a fair and straight way from an Iraqi point of view?

NIZAR HAMDOON: Up till now, no. I mean, the feeling in Baghdad, that is not being just to us.

JIM LEHRER: You think he might change? Do you want him to change? Do you want him gone? I mean, is that a problem? Is he a problem?

NIZAR HAMDOON: I don't think the problem is a person. The problem is in the system and in the type of pressure that the United States is putting on Mr. Butler and maybe on others.

JIM LEHRER: But he's an Australian.

NIZAR HAMDOON: I know.

JIM LEHRER: But you think he answers to the U.S. Government?

NIZAR HAMDOON: I'm not suggesting anything. I don't like to evaluate any person at this point. My job is not to do that, but to address the policy.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Mr. Ambassador, thank you very much for being with us.

NIZAR HAMDOON: Thank you. FOCUS - THE BROADCAST GAME

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: the business of television, faster computer chips, a David Gergen dialogue, and a Jim Fisher essay. Phil Ponce has the television story.

PHIL PONCE: The bidding war for who can broadcast National Football League games ended last night with one big winner: the NFL, itself. Broadcasters agreed to pay the League 17 billion dollars over the next eight years for the right to air the games on their respective outlets. Disney's ABC network kept what it calls its crown jewel by agreeing to pay $4.4 billion for the rights to broadcast Monday Night Football for the next eight years.

BOB IGER, President, ABC, Inc.: With the stroke of a pen, we've managed to greatly protect the value of one of this company's most important assets, the ABC Television Network, and its distribution system, with all of its affiliates and its own TV stations.

PHIL PONCE: ABC will air what traditionally has been one of television's highest rated shows one hour earlier at 8 PM Eastern Standard Time. Disney's cable network, ESPN, also won the rights to broadcast Sunday night games for eight years. And yesterday, Westinghouse-owned CBS announced it was back in the NFL family. CBS outbid NBC for the rights to air the American Football Conference or AFC games for the next eight years, paying an unprecedented $500 million per year.

SHAWN McMANUS, President, CBS Sports: First and foremost, we are not going to lose money on this deal. The value that the NFL brings to CBS in terms of incremental value to the television stations in terms of savings on this deal. The value that the NFL brings to CBS, in terms of incremental value to the television stations, in terms of savings on promotional time we would have to have bought if we didn't have the NFL, in the extra value it brings to our affiliates, I mean, the promotional value and all the other things this brings to the network, we are not going to lose money on this deal.

PHIL PONCE: The Fox Network, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, stayed in the game by keeping the rights to broadcast National Football Conference or NFC games. It was Fox who outbid and bumped CBS out of the club the last time around. Here's how the bidding has escalated. For the term beginning in 1987, the networks paid the NFL a total of $1.4 billion; for the term beginning in 1990, $3.6 billion; the one starting in 1994, almost $4.4 billion; and for the one starting this year, ESPN will pay $4.8 billion, ABC $4.4 billion, Fox $4.4 billion, CBS $4 billion, for a grand total of at least $17.6 billion. This year one network was left on the bench, NBC. After 33 years of broadcasting the NFL, NBC, owned by General Electric, decided the price was too high for programming that has dropped in ratings over the last few years. NBC estimated that paying $500 million a year would cause it to lose $150 million per year. The network bidding frenzy makes the NFL the largest sports broadcasting contract, beating out the NBA, Major League Baseball, and the annual college basketball tournament.

PHIL PONCE: For more, we're joined by Elizabeth Lesly Stevens, who covers media and entertainment at Business Week, and Robert Wussler. He's a past president of CBS and a former president of CBS Sports. He was also the chief operating officer for the Turner Broadcasting System in the 80's. And welcome both. Mr. Wussler, a billion dollars here, a billion dollars there. Pretty soon you're talking about real money. Why is it that the networks want to spend that much?

ROBERT WUSSLER, Former President, CBS: Well, Phil, it's all relative. What to one person may be a pig's ear is to another a sow's purse. Let's put it this way. Let's try to make things simple. I picked up a piece of wire copy a few minutes ago, and NBC announced this afternoon that they have renewed the dramatic series "ER" for $13 million an episode, 22 episodes a year, for three years. That's the better part of a billion dollars, $858 million. They have been paying something like, I think, $2 million a year per episode for the last three and a half years. So all--these things are all kind of relative. For example, let's say that ER had not been renewed by NBC, had gone to Fox. Well, the ratings, because Fox has fewer television stations and on more UHF stations and things of that nature, the ratings would have dramatically suffered, had it gone to Fox, but it would still be the highest rated program that Fox had. So all these things are kind of relative. Remember, there are 100 million homes in America that have a television set. Most of them have more than one. Those television sets are on seven hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. So there's vast sums of money that are available. In a world where we're rapidly approaching 100, 200, 500 channels, you need the big play game, and the NFL certainly is an answer to that.

PHIL PONCE: Ms. Lesly Stevens, is the NFL an answer to a network's dreams, as far as making money?

ELIZABETH LESLY STEVENS, Business Week: It's not quite that way. The networks have been losing a great deal of their viewership to cable and other, you know, things you can do with your time. So they need any programming that guarantees them a big audience, even though the NFL, as you said in your clip, has been posting lower ratings year over year for quite a few years. So they're paying a great deal more and receiving less for it, but, you know, as they're losing viewers, you know, precipitously, they really need to do whatever they can to keep the viewers they can get. Also, football gives them young males, which, you know, those are very hard for us to bring to networks generally, so this is really the only thing they can do to bring those viewers to the network, and tell them what else is on.

PHIL PONCE: Why are young males so hard to attract as viewers?

ELIZABETH LESLY STEVENS: They just are. I mean, ironically, the other big magnet for them, especially on NBC, had been Seinfeld, so for NBC to be losing both football and Seinfeld leaves them with, you know, a hole to fill. And they need to find something that will bring those young male viewers to the network at all. Otherwise, you can lose them easily to cable like ESPN, or, you know, other programming.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Wussler.

ROBERT WUSSLER: One reason why NBC quickly re-upped with ER today.

PHIL PONCE: Taking three hits in a short period of time would have created a bad buzz in the industry.

ROBERT WUSSLER: That would have been a very difficult thing for the NBC people to have withstood.

PHIL PONCE: One of the CBS people said in our introductory piece that CBS is not going to lose money on this deal. Is that so, do you think that's how it's going to work?

ROBERT WUSSLER: Well, it's hard to project what the next five to seven years, what the economy is going to be like. We've had, you know, several good years, both here in the country and in a television economy. But there have been hiccups in the last ten or twenty years. CBS bought baseball at a very expensive price in 1989, and had a write-off over a billion dollars. I don't think we're going to see anything like that, but the chances of CBS making money on this package over the course of the next five to eight years is on the slim side.

PHIL PONCE: Ms. Lesly Stevens, what did it do for the Fox Network to have gotten the NFL contract a few years ago?

ELIZABETH LESLY STEVENS: Well, it really made the Fox Network, you know. Before it had been the fourth network, a challenger, and really an after thought in a lot of people's minds. And it transformed its fortunes, really at the expense of CBS. But what Fox did was, you know, come in with a bid so far and above what CBS was willing to pay in 1993, and at the time CBS's owner, Larry Tisch, had been very vocal that sports programming rights, even back then, were so out of line that it was--it put profits under such pressure that it wasn't worth pursuing. So he made a financial decision--CBS did--not to go forward. And Murdoch made a strategic decision to build the, you know, value of the Fox asset and get the football rights. That, you know, led to a whole slew of grief for CBS. Murdoch was able to snare away a great number of very important CBS affiliates, local stations throughout the country, got them to switch over to Fox, and CBS has yet to really recover and Fox, you know, has--though it does not make money on his football contract--even, you know, the previous football contract--you know, strategically, it allowed it to build itself into a much different sort of network, and, you know, a real leading network at this point.

PHIL PONCE: Ms. Lesly Stevens, in that case, why did NBC decide to let the NFL go this time? Doesn't it run the risk of having the same kinds of problems that CBS encountered?

ELIZABETH LESLY STEVENS: It runs a risk that, you know, it really needs to have football, but NBC's in a slightly different position. Of all the networks at this point it had the most other things going for it, programming wise, it has a great deal of other sports assets, coming up. It has Olympic rights through, I think, 2008; NBA. They have other sports programming to get those male viewers, you know, that they so badly need. They have them in the backs. They weren't as desperate as, you know, I think CBS was perceived to be this time around, and CBS had to get back in the game because it had lost so much the last time around when it lost football. And, in effect, CBS in getting, you know, the football contract away from NBC, is declaring to the ad community and, you know, others that it's still very much in the game and willing, and that's gauged in television nowadays by your ability to lose money.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Wussler, what does it do to a network to have the NFL and what kind of--what kind of a- -cast does it create for the network?

ROBERT WUSSLER: There's a great halo effect. For example, 60 Minutes was a top five program for fifteen or twenty years. With the loss of football it began to drop out of the top five. I think it finished 11th or something like that a year ago. It will be now back in the top five because with afternoon double header games starting at 4 o'clock, it will bring a tremendous audience flow into the 7 o'clock time period. Also, your ability to promote either new or existing comedies or motion pictures you're running either that night or early in the week, you can't buy that kind of audience flow, so it's--

PHIL PONCE: So during a football game a network will promote its other programs, and that's a big deal?

ROBERT WUSSLER: That's a big deal. And, remember, all these football games are going to be a little longer now because they were all given more inventory. They were all given another 90 seconds of commercial inventory during the three-hour game, so those games are probably going to start approaching three hours and ten minutes or three hours and fifteen minutes starting next September.

PHIL PONCE: And speaking of time, we're out of time. Mr. Wussler, Ms. Lesly Stevens, thank you very much. FOCUS - SPEED SELLS

JIM LEHRER: Now, the search for faster computer chips. Spencer Michels reports.

SPENCER MICHELS: Buried inside some of these computers are powerful devices--chips that can make them do amazing things. Power is what makes generation of images like this possible, or the combining of images on this screen, or the 3-D effect in this medical program on the human body. These increasingly sophisticated uses of the computer depend upon the speed of the chip, a field pioneered by Gordon Moore, a founder of the giant semiconductor maker Intel. Today, at 68, he's still involved in the business of making ever more powerful chips and ever smaller components on those chips for electricity to flow through.

GORDON MOORE, Founder, Intel Group: A line like this distributes power to all the transistors.

SPENCER MICHELS: At the dawn of the computer age, back in 1968, Moore made a wild prediction that the number of transistors or switches on a chip, the brains of a computer, would double every eighteen months or two years, making the chip faster and more powerful and cheaper.

GORDON MOORE: It was amazingly correct. We followed that line really quite precisely over that decade. And that was the origin of Moore's law. And it's been extended now. Moore's law kind of applies to anything that grows geometrically in the industry, and I'm happy to take credit for all of it.

SPENCER MICHELS: The increased power of the chip, as predicted in Moore's law, has sparked continual expansion of the computer industry. What Moore's law means is that technology is constantly changing; that new chips inspire new computers; and they, in turn, invite new software, a cycle of innovation that is driving an expanding economy and a hectic industry. Sometimes the software is so hurriedly developed it comes on the market with bugs or flaws. And always the changing technology has those who designed for it, toiling night and day, while trying to anticipate the future. For example, Steve Dauterman oversees video game production at LucasArts in Northern California.

STEVE DAUTERMAN, LucasArts Entertainment: It's scary because you can't predict what is going to happen next, so, you know, you're doing a little bit of fortune telling every time you're figuring it out. Well, we're going to release a game two years from now. What's it going to be like two years from now?

SPENCER MICHELS: It's all based on the notion that everyone needs more computer speed and power. That's a message high-tech promoters send out regularly.

ANNOUNCER: Your PC's performance may be up against a barrier you don't even see, a performance barrier that seems invisible. Graphics Blaster Extreme can deliver much higher frame rates than standard 2-D and 3-D accelerators.

SPENCER MICHELS: Whether it's a graphics blaster or a 3-D accelerator or a Pentium 2 chip, the promise of more computer speed is alluring.

MAN: A 486 machine is a good, okay machine, but it's not going to be fast enough to run all of the programs my kids want.

SPENCER MICHELS: Speed for a computer is the rate at which the chip can process the instructions that go into it, and that, according to Intel microprocessor expert Steve Smith, translates into more realistic images on your screen.

STEVE SMITH, President, Intel: What you see on your screen can go faster. A current example would be running a video clip on your PC. And if you're running it on a slower PC, you might see the frame get updated five or ten or fifteen times a second.

SPENCER MICHELS: Sort of jerky?

STEVE SMITH: And it looks jerky. And if you're running it on the latest generation processor, such as one of these Pentium 2 processors, what you can see is a full frame, smooth motion, and it's--it gives you an image that's as good as you're used to seeing on television.

SPENCER MICHELS: The speed is made possible by all those tiny on-off switches, or transistors, on the chip or microprocessor.

STEVE SMITH: The first microprocessors that were just over 25 years ago had 2,300 transistors. And the latest processors have about 7 million transistors. And in the next 10 years we're going to approach 100 million transistors on a chip that will be running in a PC that you can have in your home or office.

SPENCER MICHELS: Speed is essential for the designers and the players of video games. This game, Dark Forces, was designed at LucasArts four years ago for the then hot 486 chip made by Intel. It sold a million and a half copies, 35 to 50 dollars each.

STEVE DAUTERMAN: You've got the gun here. When you can switch weapons, break a show, you know, going to another weapon there--this was really the first generated chips that we could create these immersive 3- D worlds.

SPENCER MICHELS: But game designers and their customers are never satisfied. They want more realism on the screen. And to get it, they need faster chips. A just-released Jedi Knight plays on faster, newer computers. The main character is much more versatile.

STEVE DAUTERMAN: You can look anywhere, compared to sort of just your straight up and down before. Now, if it goes up to the edge here, you can look down and see characters actually walking around. You've got a sense of depth. We can actually go to an external shot of the character. This is the first time we're able to do this, actually go outside of it.

SPENCER MICHELS: What about the person whose parents bought a computer five or six years ago, can they run a game like this?

STEVE DAUTERMAN: It's getting harder and harder to run games like this, and, you know, what we've found is the computer game market, the people that play these games primarily really like to, you know, push the edge.

SPENCER MICHELS: But the edge is really being pushed by companies after a profit, according to Jon Forrest, a computer systems manager at the University of California at Berkeley.

JON FORREST, University of California, Berkeley: If companies aren't growing by selling new stuff, then the stockholders get upset. So there has to be this movement toward faster and faster things. I think, though, if you talk to the public, what they want is higher quality, not faster.

SPENCER MICHELS: At Adobe Systems in San Jose they play the speed game as well, and there's no question that's what sells. They design and build Photo Shop software used by millions of graphic artists to retouch photographs and combine images that appear in magazines, catalogues, and other ads. Mark Hamburg is principal scientist and architect of the program.

MARK HAMBURG, Adobe Systems: Photo Shop is incredibly widely used. It touches virtually every image that you see.

SPENCER MICHELS: Here, he shows the difference between an older, slower version of the program, where it takes several seconds to change the color and the background of this photo, and a newer version designed for faster chips.

MARK HAMBURG: This allows us to change the way Photo Shop behaves so that all you have to do is every time you pause we redraw the screen. So there's no clicking the preview button and waiting, deciding whether you liked it or not.

SPENCER MICHELS: That's important for customers like catalogue designers who work on hundreds of photos quickly. But is it of value to the society?

MARK HAMBURG: It's open to a lot of opportunities for people to do artwork that they probably wouldn't have been able to do previously, or it would have been incredibly tedious using actual paints.

SPENCER MICHELS: How much faster do you want it to go?

MARK HAMBURG: Well, so far, we haven't seen anything that's made us go, well, okay, this is fast enough, you can just stop here.

SPENCER MICHELS: For the average computer user speed may not be so important. Most use word processing programs and search the Internet, functions that don't need blinding chip speed, according to Jon Forrest at Berkeley.

JON FORREST: The folk myth is that speed is important. Twenty years ago when I started in this business, it was important, and I spent a lot of time waiting for computers. But I noticed over time I was spending less and less time waiting for computers. The myth that a computer needed to be faster and faster was starting to be less and less true.

SPENCER MICHELS: Forrest says for high-end uses like graphics and games speed counts but for others--

JON FORREST: There comes a time when things really can't go any faster because the computer, itself, is not the bottleneck.

SPENCER MICHELS: What is?

JON FORREST: Well, quite often it's people's brains or people's fingers, or it's some other aspect of a computer system, like a network, because most of what you notice as delay on the Internet is not due to the speed of the chip; it's due to the speed of the network or congestion, where an infinitely fast computer wouldn't help.

SPENCER MICHELS: But just down the hall computer graduate students, hungry for speed, dispute Forrest's assertions, saying even word processing programs are now designed for powerful computers.

STEVEN GRIBBLE, University of California, Berkeley: You need the power because you end up using the tools created by these software inventors to take advantage of faster chips to do less work.

SPENCER MICHELS: Even to write the novel?

STEVEN GRIBBLE: Even to write the novel because you're writing the novel on tools like Microsoft Word, which require this extra speed and extra processing power.

SPENCER MICHELS: The semiconductor and computer industries are banking on the increased demand for speed to create increased demand for their products. They forecast 17 percent growth in chip sales in 1998. Recently, IBM announced a technical breakthrough that will allow it to begin using copper, a better electrical conductor than aluminum, in manufacturing faster running chips. In Scotland, scientists are trying to improve the electrical connections between processors to increase speed. And Intel is bringing out a faster chip called the Merced processor for companies that need higher-end applications like special effects for movies. Even for those who don't actually need it, Intel is betting that speed will sell.

STEVE SMITH: The human being loses attention if you make the human wait for more than 1/2 second. So I know when I'm doing my work and I go click on an attachment like a word file or some sort of attachment, I'd like to see that information immediately.

SPENCER MICHELS: What computer users and engineers would like to know is whether there is a real limit on how fast chips can go. Gordon Moore has thought about that.

GORDON MOORE: Of course, we can't exceed the speed of light. That's fairly fundamental, and that is not likely, however, to be that much of a limitation. We get indirect limits, like as we make things smaller, the resistance of the little wires goes up. And we end up working against ourselves. The interconnections start being what limits the speed of the whole circuit. We're right about at that point now, but these are all things we can work on. The fundamental limits are the velocity of light and the atomic nature of matter.

SPENCER MICHELS: How does the giver of Moore's law look on the value of faster and faster chip speed?

GORDON MOORE: You can ask: Is there a need for electronics? And mankind got along for hundreds of thousands of years without electronics, but modern society certainly depends on them. And to get the maximum advantage and to get the maximum participation in modern society, I think there's a real need for continuing to improve the performance, make faster and faster and cheaper and cheaper computers, for example.

SPENCER MICHELS: The computer industry has taken that philosophy to heart and to the bank. DIALOGUE

JIM LEHRER: A Gergen dialogue. David Gergen, editor-at-large of U.S. News & World Report, engages Alfred Kazin, literary critic, author of "God and the American Writer."

DAVID GERGEN: Alfred Kazin, you began writing for the "New Republic," reviewing books over 60 years ago at the age of 19. Within a decade you became one of America's foremost men of letters with the publication of your book on native grounds. Thank you very much for joining us. And tell us, please, sir, why you wrote this book now about God and the American writer.

ALFRED KAZIN, Author, "God and the American Writer:" Well, I've always been interested in religion. I've always been interested in what writers think of religion. There's a very special connection between religion and literature. All the great books of the Bible in many ways are literature and owe their fantastic survival to the fact they're so beautifully written. And it was that sense of religion with literature being connected from the very first that got me. And then in the course of time, over the years which I've been writing, I came to realize that especially in the 19th century religion became an extraordinarily important, vibrant thing to the greater writers we had, starting with Emerson, who thought he didn't need anything and was his own church and was really, as someone said about Spinosa, God-intoxicated; and going on to people like Melville, who couldn't make up his mind, was tortured by religion, but was a real believer without a church; and Emily Dickinson, for whom the idea of God was something to toss around seriously, and who belonged, of course, to that great New England culture. She came at the end of it, but she absorbed all of it by the time she had started to write. And, of course, I make a great point in my book of the effect of religion upon the great anti-slavery and pro-slavery arguments of the 19th century. There's no question that abolition, for example, and also pro-slavery arguments were all directed by religious faith in one way or another.

DAVID GERGEN: You said, I think, that many of the writers were also swimming in religion of the 19thcentury.

ALFRED KAZIN: Yes, they were.

DAVID GERGEN: This was a very religious country at that time.

ALFRED KAZIN: Well, publicly, it's still a religious country, though I have my doubts about how religious the religious culture is. I think it's been politicized very much. But there's no question that in the 19th century there was a tremendous fight going on in people's souls about whether they could still hold on because science was already telling people another story from the one told in the Bible. It happened in Europe, too, you know. Tolstoy, the greatest novel from the 19th century in many ways, at the end of his life stopped writing. He felt it was irreligious. He felt his own aim was to be a saint, and sainthood was something really important. In America, I think, Henry Thoreau tried to be a saint. He began by, of course, not being married, which is always very helpful in this respect, but he was--he did try to be a saint. And Tolstoy at the end of his life did try and when someone asked him, the great writer, Maxim Gorky, why he was so interested in the subject, because he was on his own--he had been expelled by the Holy Richard Synod as a heretic--and he said, "God is the name of my desire." And that beautiful statement, you might say, was the motto of a lot of American writers who whether they made--whether they found God through their desire or not, did have that wish in their hearts, no question about it.

DAVID GERGEN: You distinguish America from other countries in Western Europe by saying we did not have these religious--we did not have this religious heritage that many writers did in Western Europe. And it seemed almost as if many of the writers in the 19th century were wrestling with God, just as Jacob wrestled with the angel; and that they almost appeared to be rivals, that they were not--they didn't accept God necessarily as an authority and as something they looked up to, but, rather, they were trying to sort of come to grips, or almost saw God in themselves, as Emerson did.

ALFRED KAZIN: Well, that's exactly right. Jacob didn't realize when he wrestled with the angel that the angel was really God. And a lot of the people in my book were interested in religion not so much personally. That's true, for example, of Hawthorne, with whom I begin my book, and with Faulkner, the greatest Southern writer of all at the end. Both these gentlemen--true New England and true South--were not personal believers. But they wrote about their cast of characters, the world they knew from birth on was deeply, completely religious, the Puritan background on the one hand, and, of course, the South, itself.

DAVID GERGEN: But there seemed to be a distinction between the 19th and the 20th century and William James in some ways represented that transition from looking inward for religion, for God, for some spiritual sensibility, for enlargement, as James called it, to now being, looking inward for psychological purposes.

ALFRED KAZIN: That's exactly right. Williams James is a fascinating creature because he's the first American thinker, you might say, who believes in religion for psychological reasons and not for reasons which are evidence of his own heart. You remember that his father came out of the Presbyterian, rigorous Presbyterian belief out in Northern Ireland, and you know what Irish Protestants are like these days. And what he discovered, which is amazing, it's really a modern discovery and one which allies him with Freud in many ways--which is that the truly religious person is in the best sense of the word a psychopath, someone who's driven to extremes. James recognized this quality in himself and his great book, "The Varieties of Religious Experience," he was really getting at this feeling which he described perfectly as the feeling there's something wrong with us as we stand. And for me the only solution, the only reformation could be going back to religion. At the same time--this is the fascinating thing--he couldn't in all honesty say he believed in the individual personal God whom his fathers had believed in. In other words, it was a form of consolation, and it also, as he put it, "necessary prayer," whether you believed it or not.

DAVID GERGEN: I'm afraid we're running out of time, but let me ask you, God seems to recede in the writings of 20th century American writers that you write about. Do you see any evidence of--in our most recent writers--say a lot of the black women writers of today--the Toni Morrisons--any evidence that God and religion are becoming more important again? The country is--

ALFRED KAZIN: No. I don't. I don't. Toni Morrison very movingly reminds people, and I quote this in the book, that the only thing that a slave had was a feeling that there was a God who would eventually pardon him and console him and free him. And love was the big element there because if God didn't love the slave, surely no one else did in many ways. That's the point she made. But, generally speaking, the thing that strikes me most is that in the 20th century there's none of that anguish about religion which you find in the 19th century. In my book I quote such talented writers as John Updike and John Ashbury and others, Thomas Pynchon, one of my favorite writers, who all regard the thing rather sort of--sardonically. They're saying, you know, it's amusing to think about it and the rest of it. In the 19th century no one asked, "Was God responsible for the terrible things that happened?". God was going to be the deliverer. In the 20th century, people can't help saying, certain people can't help saying, "After all the terrible wars and the Holocaust and everything else, how can one possibly believe in God?". Well, there's only one answer to that. I know, as a Jew, that the worst things get for Jews and the tougher they get, the more they cling to their belief. Ironically enough, instead of losing faith in God, they cling all the more to their ancestral idea of God because that's where they are; that's what's left of them in a world of opposition and prejudice.

DAVID GERGEN: Alfred Kazin, still going strong after 60 years, and one of America's foremost men of letters. Thank you very much.

ALFRED KAZIN: Thank you. ESSAY - WATERY MUSE

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, essayist Jim Fisher of the "Kansas City Star" considers an artist inspired by rivers.

JIM FISHER: The pictures of that art auction at Christie's in New York recently were familiar. Bidders, lookers-on, and of course the glitteratti. The draw was the work of some of the most famous names in modern art: Pablo Picasso, Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, and Robert Rauschenberg. Sales topped 206 million bucks. That's fine, if you've got it, love modern art, or are more interested in the name than what's on the canvas, or can talk a museum or corporation board into ponying up the cash. But here in the Midwest, where old Tom Benton railed that his art would look better in saloons and bordellos than any old museum, $206 million is very serious money. But then Christie's isn't the old courthouse here in St. Louis, and the artists weren't Gary Lucy. If Lucy's name is unfamiliar, think 19th century historical realism. Steamboats and sidewheelers, the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, and the Western fur trade. A subset of Western art collectors consider Lucy the best thing since sliced bread and are willing to pop $49,000 a painting, not exactly the millions at Christie's, but then not exactly chump change. Lucy has a two-year backlog of commissions. His early works have quadrupled in price. What Lucy paints are marvels of light and color: the eternal dusk and dawn on the big rivers; placid waters beneath the rising moon; boats with names like "Desmet," "Omaha," and "Far West." Flat boatmen in trailers, all part of a brief golden age when men who were masters of the river were masters of a new world. And there's more: the Civil War, St. Louis's revolutionary Eads Bridge; the white cliffs along the Missouri and Montana; Manuel Lisa on the Upper Missouri; Lewis and Clark's corps of discovery, cordelling their boat against the Missouri's current; realism; links to Bingham, Benton, Bierstadt, Miller, and Russell. Rather than the slashing brush strokes, the splatters of pain, the monochromatic canvases, Lucy seeks the exquisite detail, the period clothing, the exact dimensions of a certain boat, even the correct style of beard. The art is created 50 miles up river in a studio converted from an old bank building overlooking the Missouri. The structure is also his research center, sales gallery, a frame shop, and home for his web site. Lucy knows marketing. He's 47. His father was a truck driver. He wasn't a child prodigy.

GARY LUCY, Artist: You know, whenever you're a kiddo, you don't want to let the other kids know that you're interested in art 'cause you could kind of get hurt a little bit being interested in art when everybody else is interested in football.

JIM FISHER: Lucy struck out on his own, living hand to mouth for a time, eventually doing duck stamps, then wildlife studies, always making a living. But in the early 80's, it seemed, every artist was into wildlife. Lucy switched to what he really loved all along: the human figure, history, and water. Since then, the rivers have been a muse to Lucy, albeit one forever changed by man and his works, yet, ones where the subtleties of life are surely kindred now to when the sidewheelers riled the waters, where the color still materializes magically, with the morning light, and the water still flows to the sea, which for Lucy seems to be enough to imagine what once was, to put oil to canvas, and to create. I'm Jim Fisher. RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Wednesday, the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to deplore Iraq's refusal to allow some arms inspections. Retail sales in this country rose 4.2 percent last year, the lowest increase since '91, and First Lady Hillary Clinton was questioned under oath about secret FBI files of Republicans collected by White House aides four years ago. She denied any knowledge. We'll see you on-line and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.