The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

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You Good evening. I'm Jim Lara on the NewsHour tonight two stories concerning abortion the house vote to override a presidential veto and the coming of our U-486 to the United States Another report on the Kerry Weld Senate race in Massachusetts a TWA crash update by Newsdays Adam Horvath and a David Gurgen dialogue about the urban poor It all follows our summary of the news this Thursday major funding for the news hour with Jim Lara has been provided by the Archer Daniels Midland company ADM supermarket to the world

And by New York life yet another example of New York life's wise investment philosophy And by the corporation for public broadcasting and by the annual financial support from viewers like you The house voted today to override President Clinton's veto of the so-called partial birth abortions bill the vote was 285 to 137 Republicans and Democrats reacted to the vote. I think this overwhelming Statement by the House of Representatives indicates that the president has truly staked out an extreme position on this issue Again today we saw Democratic leaders in the House of voting to ban this horrible procedure while the President himself has chosen to defend partial birth abortion I think the Republican leadership and the anti-choice members understand that the majority of the American public does not want to go back to the back alleys does not want to take away the right to choose so that rather than have a vote which would deny women the right to choose

They want to chip away and chip away and deal with specific procedures The issue now moves to the Senate where the ban passed in December without a veto proof majority We'll add more on this story right after the news summary On the Iraq story today a second American aircraft carrier arrived in the Persian Gulf the USS Enterprise is carrying 75 warplanes And 8,000 personnel had joined the USS Carl Vinson In Washington CIA director John Deutsch appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee he said Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein made significant political gains in the north And continued to pose a threat in the region First we should anticipate that Saddam will continue to challenge the coalition In contrast to the past he has been clever at taking advantage of an opportunity in northern Iraq created by differences among the Kurds And changed Turkish attitudes

Second there will be no stability in the region Or improved circumstances for the Iraqi people until Saddam Hussein and his regime is replaced Third for all of these reasons Iraq will continue to be and has been at the top of our intelligence priorities for both our collection and analytic effort George said weapons and trade sanctions on Iraq hurt the Iraqi people but had not diminished Saddam's grip on power in Iraq The space shuttle Atlanta stocked with the Russian space station near today bring in a replacement for astronauts Shannon Lucid She has been in space for the last six months longer than any other American She scheduled a return to Earth next Thursday In the presidential campaign today President Clinton said he was thrilled to see the pictures of Shannon Lucid And used that event to talk about his second term plans for space exploration First we're going to continue to expand our knowledge of the universe In December we're going to launch a long planned robotic mission to the surface of Mars

This will help us to determine whether and how and when we should send human missions there The second thing we're going to do which is very important to the high-tech industries of the Pacific Northwest is to tear down the barriers that block the development of our space industry Boeing recently announced an innovative proposal to work with Russia, Ukraine and Norway to launch satellites at sea We're going to continue to move forward We want to have free and fair trade among economies in space and we can do that The Clintons and the Gores are spending two days on a Pacific Northwest bus trip Making campaign stops along the way from Seattle to Portland, Oregon Bob Dole was also in the west today he promoted his new anti-drug slogan Just don't do it before a crowd in Las Vegas And he joked about a spill he took last night off a platform in Chico, California He suffered a minor scratch on his left eye

Don't be afraid of standing close to the stage. I'm not going to dive off today I was trying to do that due Democratic dance to Macarena. I don't want to happen I also have in my hand a copy of letter from Nancy Reagan endorsing our program just don't do it Which I received this morning And Nancy indicates that she thinks it'd be a great successor to the just say no message It works so well when she was first lady I know a lot of the elitists and a lot of the media liberal media said didn't work But it did work drug use went down when Nancy Reagan said just say no because kids listened Their parents listened their grandparents listened and it worked After that rally, Dole went to Denver for a meeting with newspaper editors And that's it for the news summary tonight Now it's on to two stories involving abortion The Kerry Weld race in Massachusetts, a TWA crash update, and a Gurgen dialogue

First tonight the two abortion stories Kwame Holman has number one from Capitol Hill Let's put a stop to this horrendous procedure Let's stop partial birth abortion in America So a portion debates in Congress always draw a passionate response and today was no exception The chair will remind all persons in the gallery that they are guests of the house and that any manifestation of approval or disapproval of proceedings is a violation of the house of the rules Today's debate over so-called partial birth abortions was especially emotional with opponents using graphic details and describing the procedure How can anyone in this chamber or in the White House defend sticking a pair of scissors into a partially born child's head So as the puncture the child's skull and then a suction catheter is inserted to suck out the child's brains

How can anybody defend that? You see the charts that are drawn over there, they're drawn and they eat at your heart And they eat at my heart because they show a perfect beautiful child A perfect beautiful child like Tucker, but let me tell you the child that came before Tucker that would have prevented Tucker from being born Had there not been this procedure didn't look like Tucker and didn't look like those pretty little drawings Supporters of keeping the procedure legal call it necessary A decision of last resort made to save the mother's life or ability to have children when the fetus has no chance of surviving Like when the fetus has no brain or the fetus is missing organs Or the spine has grown outside of the body a height of hypocrisy for us to say that women don't know anything These babies are desperately wanted if they weren't wanted if the woman didn't want it She would have had the abortion early when there would have been no question about it

If you have waited this long if you have cared that child in your womb You may believe me that child is wanted Among the opponents of the late term abortion procedure today to licensed physicians I remember reading the original American medical news article back in 1993 when it came across my desk when I was still practicing medicine describing this procedure and The people on the other side keep talking about these particular cases where you may be on an emotional basis Be able to justify doing such a gruesome procedure, but those doctors Haskell and McManus admitted that in 85% of the cases These were in perfectly normal healthy Babies partially delivering the baby arms and lakes moving Putting a scissor in the back of the head and then sucking the brains out in a perfectly normal healthy baby 85% of cases I have the experience, there is no one else in this body that has handled all these complications This procedure never needs to be done again in this United States

Both houses of Congress passed a ban on so-called partial birth abortions earlier this year But the president vetoed it Today's debate and vote in the House were an attempt to override that veto Needing two-thirds of the membership to do so I recommend Democrat leaders get hard and bonnier for their vote to ban partial birth abortions And just as these two leaders stood up to their president, I hope all will follow their consciences And vote to override the president's veto But supporters of the president's veto questioned the timing of the override attempt President vetoed this bill quite some time ago It's been sitting over there in the judiciary committee waiting Well, what's it been waiting for? And when does it come out? Right before the election so that somebody can inject the politics of the moment Into a serious public policy discussion When the vote was taken more than two-thirds of the members, including a number of Democrats, voted to override the president's veto

And make the ban on partial birth abortions law Next week the Senate will take its turn and right now the votes to override the president's veto in that body Don't appear to be there Now abortion story 2 and 2 Charlene Hunter Galt Yesterday the Food and Drug Administration tentatively approved the so-called abortion pill Are you 486? The latest development in what has been a highly charged debate Are you 486? Was first developed in France by the Roussell-Uclaud Company in 1980 It was widely hailed by women's groups and abortion rights advocates as revolutionary Everything's going to be in charge Abortions they said would be easier, safer, and more private Since they could take place at home or in a doctor's office instead of a hospital or clinic The treatment is done in two stages

First, three tablets are taken orally These pills temporarily block the hormone progesterone in the uterus, which is essential to maintaining the pregnancy Two days later, another pill-formed drug is administered, which forcefully expels the embryo Abortions activists see are you 486, known in this country as miffer-pristone, as a promising drug with multiple uses They say it is a highly effective morning after pill They also say it helps induce labor in women who are dangerously overdue and has potential use in treating some diseases and breast cancer But opponents reviled the process as a mini-birth They point to its problems, for example, incomplete expulsions, which occur in 4% or fewer cases and require surgery They also have pointed to reports of heavy bleeding and cramping and possible cardiovascular and respiratory complications

The pill has been widely available for use in Europe since 1988 In the United States, anti-abortion activists threatened to boycott all products of the French manufacturer and the company, as a result, declined to apply for testing and marketing in the U.S. Eventually, the company gave its American rights to the drug to the population council, a New York-based nonprofit health research organization The council says it has lined up a manufacturer for the American market, but has not disclosed the company's identity That company will have to satisfy the FDA on its labeling and manufacturing practices before receiving a final go-ahead Now to two physicians on our U-486, Dr. Donna Harrison is an obstetrician gynecologist and private practice in Michigan He testified against approval of our U-486, and Dr. Beverly Winikoff oversees the reproductive health program for the population council

Dr. Winikoff, starting with you, what does the FDA's decision on our U-486 mean? What it means, Charlene, is that this drug is one step closer to availability for American women That means that the FDA has found the drug's clinical data to show it to be safe and effective And that further information on manufacturing and labeling is going to be inserted in the file before the drug is finally approved And the impact of this decision? The impact is that it's another step in the process of putting it on the market Dr. Winikoff, Dr. Harrison, what do you think of the decision and the impact? Well, I'm very concerned that American women are being misled about the safety of this drug As you mentioned in your prelude, women have been told that this is a private way to abort that it is a safer way than surgical abortion This is not true. You alluded to the hemorrhage rate, the incidence of heavy bleeding

There's also a high incidence of infection. There's a high incidence of incomplete abortion Which may require emergency surgery. I'm very concerned that the women of this country are going to find after approval in five or ten years That we've opened a Pandora's box as far as complications and damage to women. Dr. Winikoff, how do you respond to that? Pandora's box? No, not at all. I don't understand the allegation. We have one very safe and effective method of abortion now It's surgical and this is another very safe and effective method of abortion But what about the concerns that Dr. Harrison just raised? How would you reassure her? Sure, I think the issue is that first of all, there are some things that are Paintingly not the case. There is not a high incidence of infection. Most of the side effects of this drug are involved as a process of it working. Over to this drug causes what is in effect a spontaneous miscarriage, but it turns on a biological process that results in that miscarriage.

All of the side effects we see from this drug are the same as those who have spontaneous miscarriages. So women of course bleed and of course cramp because that is the effect of the drug and that's the intended effect. Unfortunately, we have to put up with that process in order to end up with a complete abortion. But by and large none of these effects are health threatening and the ones that are a problem for women can be handled quite easily in our current medical system and are. Dr. Harrison, does that reassure you? No, it doesn't and I would refer Dr. Winikoff back to the World Health Organization study which showed that 30% of women within complete abortions had pelvic infections afterward. So I do think that there is a serious concern about infection basically because the way the drug works, progesterone, blocking the progesterone, also can have an effect on the immune system and that's a very big concern. Excuse me, do you dispute her statement that these are the same kinds of after effects that you would get from surgical abortions?

Yes, I do dispute that statement because surgical abortion or DNC, especially at the age that the RE46 is effective, has very few complications. Now, are you 46? And it's effective only in the early stages, right? Are you 46? It's only effective up to three weeks after you missed your period. That's not very far. Actually, Charlene? Yes. Actually, that's not a completely true in England. This drug is used to 63 days after a missed period, after the last menstrual period. And it can be used further on. It's just that the trial so far have shown effectiveness to 49 days. Some of the issues that are being brought up are misconstrued and out of context. Of course, many women with spontaneous abortions or so-called spontaneous abortions have infections if those abortions were induced by putting something into the uterus. But infections in fact are quite rare in natural spontaneous abortions.

And in the experience in Europe, infection has not been a problem with this drug. Dr. Harrison, if all of these questions that you've just raised could be somehow put to rest, would you still be opposed to this procedure? Well, I think I'm talking right now about the short-term effects. I still would be very concerned about the long-term effects of RE46. The way it works is it works, as you said, by working with a steroid called progesterone. But there are other progesterone-sensitive tissues in the body like the breast, like the endocrine system, like the brain. We have no idea what the effect of RE46 is going to be on those progesterone-sensitive tissues. What about that, Dr. Harrison, because Dr. Winnicoff, Dr. Harrison said we don't know, say, ten years down the line. Do you have any evidence? There's no evidence that there's going to be any problem. This is a drug that stays in the body only a very short time within a week or ten days. It's virtually undetectable in the body. The drug is not meant to be used on a chronic basis. There's no reason to believe that it would have a long-term effect.

It's been used in Europe for almost a decade, and we have no evidence of any long-term effects. Very conservatively, once drugs have been on the market for about five years, one begins to see some of the untoward effects. In fact, we haven't seen any from European use that totals well over a quarter of a million women by now. Is that reassuring to you, Dr. Harrison? The question I would have for Dr. Winnicoff is what studies are looking at these questions. There aren't any studies that exist, so it's very easy to say. We have no data that says there are long-term effects, as long as you don't look for any long-term effects. But does the decade of use in Europe give you any pause for your concern? Not if you don't look for long-term effects. I would contradict Dr. Winnicoff in that there is no concern about accumulation in the body. We do know of a case of one woman who had a repeat abortion with RU-486 that experienced stream fatigue. She said she felt like she was dying. She said that she would never undergo another abortion, another repeat abortion, with this particular method.

So there is a question of what are the effects of a repeat abortion? Knowing that 42% of abortions in this country are repeat. I think it's a question that needs to be answered before this is unleashed on the one American women. Dr. Winnicoff, just what does happen next? I mean, the next step for the FDA is additional labeling and manufacturing information before the final FDA approval. How big of a deal is that? Are these concerns that Dr. Harrison is raising now going to be taken into consideration in the next step? Well, the manufacturing and labeling information should be straightforward to supply to the FDA, and we will do that. It should not be a problem. The concerns Dr. Harrison raises. Some of them are way out of the bounds of any regulatory decision on any drug. If we had to wait for 10 or 20 years of information about every new drug, we would have no drug approvals. Of course, as with all responsible scientific institutions, we will be looking at what happens over the long term.

But again, as with any new technology, it takes a long time and a lot of looking to find things that are rare. Dr. Harrison, how do you think doctors in general are going to react to this? Let's say for the sake of argument, this next phase of the approval goes through. I would hope that most doctors would be cautious about rushing in and performing our U-46 abortions, especially without evidence to document how far along the pregnancy is. Because despite what Dr. Winikoff had implied, even the researchers say the drug should not be used beyond 49 days gestation or three weeks after the last menstrual period. You need an ultrasound to accurately diagnose that, and you also need to be able to handle the hemorrhage and the infection that's going to occur. And I think most prudent physicians should be very cautious about using this drug, unless they're prepared to deal with the side effects. Dr. Winikoff, how do you think doctors in general are going to react?

I think doctors will welcome this. Of course, I would agree, and I think everyone would caution every physician to have prudence with patients. But I think doctors will be quite capable of handling this technology, and they will be cautious, and women will welcome it. All right, well, thank you both for joining us. You're welcome. Still to come on the news hour tonight. The Kerry Weld Race, a TWA crash update, and a Gurgen dialogue. Now, a second look, a return visit in our continuing coverage of the U.S. Senate Race in Massachusetts between incumbent Democrat John Kerry and his Republican challenger, Governor William Weld. Margaret Warner has this update. Most U.S. Senate races are just gathering steam, but Monday night in Worcester, Massachusetts, John Kerry and Bill Weld met for what was the fifth debate of their campaign. Political circumstances have changed since their first debate in April.

President Clinton still holds a commanding 20-point lead over Bob Dole in this traditionally Democratic state. But the past summer, left Democrat John Kerry fighting to remain competitive in his race. Kerry's challenger, Governor Weld, dominated the political agenda and home state news coverage for most of the summer. Sometimes, the events were a bit offbeat, like the day a t-shirt-clad Weld signed a popular environmental bill outside. This law not only is going to make the rivers safer for humans, it's great news for the fish, too, equally important. Then, to demonstrate his commitment to clean water, the governor dove into the still not quite clean Charles River. It was just one of many times over the summer that the governor commanded center stage by signing a popular bill. And much of the legislation he approved, which had been passed by the Democratic state legislature, served to highlight Weld's core campaign issues of crime, welfare, and taxes. In Washington, Kerry found it hard to compete.

He and his colleagues were laboring over legislation that did little to help carry highlight his core campaign issues of job creation, education, and the environment. Democrats did manage to push through a couple of popular, Kerry supported measures, a minimum wage increase, and health insurance reform. But most of the credit for those bills went to Massachusetts senior senator Ted Kennedy. Kerry admitted some frustration over this when he and Weld debated in August. For a United States senator, there's a great difference from a governor. The governor is here every day. The governor gets to jump in the river when he signs a bill. The governor gets to do things. We're down in Washington fighting a different kind of battle, and we don't have the same kind of visibility. The big national political events of the summer were the two major party conventions, beginning with the Republicans in San Diego. In this arena, too, Weld seemed to score more political points. When Republican convention organizers denied Weld the right to give an abortion rights speech, he refused to speak there at all.

Instead, he addressed audiences outside the convention hall, like this early morning pro-choice rally in nearby La Jolla. Believe me, when I tell you, I'm grateful for this opportunity to speak. Along with others, I've spent the last several weeks tussling with the powers that be, so that the pro-choice point of view, ironically, the point of view shared by the majority of all Republicans, can be heard in San Diego. The convention coverage back home helped the governor bolster his image of independence, and undercut Kerry's strategy of trying to tie well to Newt Gingrich and the hard right of the Republican party. At the Democrats' convention in Chicago two weeks later, Kerry was given a brief evening speaking slot to address one of his core issues, education. I'm John Kerry, and I come from Massachusetts.

But his speech wasn't broadcast live by any of the major television networks. And he was overshadowed once again by the prominent role given Senator Kennedy. Kennedy's liberal call to arms was carried by the networks. We will do better with President William Jefferson Clinton leading us into the next American century. The summer also saw Weld move ahead of Kerry in fundraising. Then early last month, the two men agreed to limit how much they would spend on the campaign and how much of that money could come from personal funds. The agreement won them national acclaim. But Kerry's aides were baffled by his decision to forego the chance of tapping the $760 million fortune of his wealthy new wife, Eris Theresa Hines. Weld also got the jump on Kerry in the advertising wars.

Weld went on television in mid-July with ads that drew sharp distinctions with Kerry on Weld's three core issues, crime, welfare, and taxes. Governor Bill Weld passes a seventh balanced budget with his record tax cuts. Kerry began advertising a month later, but even Kerry's aides admitted his early ads failed to give a clear or compelling rationale and re-electing the two term senators. John Kerry on duty in the United States Senate. Last week, Kerry hired a new media team, and last Friday the campaign began running new commercials, drawing sharp differences with Weld on bread and butter economic issues. Who's on the side of working families?

But in trying to demonize Weld, Kerry's biggest hurdle, his own aides admit, is that the people of Massachusetts simply like their governor. Kerry, by contrast, is struggling with a public personality that voters still find hard to warm to or know. I'm very well aware that when God made me one of the debits he gave me was sort of an over-level of intensity, maybe an over-level of earnestness, or whatever you want to call it. On the other hand, what I do know about myself is that when you have a fight, I'm a good person to be in the foxhole with. And I know that we're in a fight right now. If the fight it is, Kerry's 12-point lead from last spring is gone.

The most recent polls show Weld has drawn dead even with his rival. Not surprisingly then, with just seven weeks to go, Monday night's debate was their most combative ever. The two men went at each other from the start, as each was asked to define his rival. John Kerry in my book is the man who voted for half a trillion dollars in tax increases in Washington, D.C. And I think that's relevant in the context of a Senate election. Senator Kerry is the man who has voted against mandatory sentences for gang activity and for people who sell drugs to children. And he's the man who made a career out of opposing welfare reform for ten years in the Senate for testing against a work requirement, saying that it was troublesome to him. That welfare recipient should have to work 16 hours a week. So he's a man who has set his face against the type of progress we've made in this state in these areas of taxes, crime, and welfare, which I think are very important to the working men and women of Massachusetts. I think I'm qualified to talk about who the real John Kerry is.

Let me say who he is. The John Kerry that wants to go back to the United States Senate is somebody who has unlike my opponent fought for tax fairness. If you add up all my votes in the United States Senate, I have voted for a tax cut for people learning $75,000 or less. I'm fighting for working people. For fairness, I want the average citizen of this country to get the break. I see my time. Quick follow-up, Mr. McQueen, Senator. Who's the real bill well? The real bill well is a person who was down in Washington cheering on and fighting for and lobbying for the passage of the $270 billion cut in Medicare. It is a governor who has vetoed the minimum wage. I mean, look, the minimum wage is at a 40% record low in this country. People are working for $8,500 a year. I think that's unconscionable. At least let them work at the rate of poverty and lift themselves out of poverty, but he said no.

This governor denied it to them. Speaking of tax fairness, it was Senator Kerry who voted to increase the income tax on senior citizens on social security earning as little as $32,000 a year. I know he says he just soaks the rich. Senator, if your name was John Sixpack instead of John Forbes Kerry, and you had to gas up your racing motorcycle and your speedboat and your airplane every weekend as well as your cars, you would have thought twice before you would have proposed raising the gas tax by $0.50 a gallon. We have cut, we have cut taxes here. We have cut taxes 15 times the last six years, an aggregate of $1 billion. At the federal level, that would pay for a $700 billion tax cut. Kerry repeatedly attacked Weld for what the governor had done in Massachusetts.

Bill Weld decided to veto a health care bill for 165,000 kids paid for by cigarette tax. He sided with the tobacco companies and the cigarette tax, I sided with those kids and think they should have had that health care. He vetoed the right of people to have a minimum wage. Those are the issues that divide us in this race. John, if you think people believe that Washington DC is better managed than Massachusetts has been the last six years, you're dreaming. People aren't stupid. People remember it in 1990. The unemployment rate was 10 percent. Now it's 4.5 percent. We've got a quarter of a million jobs that we've created. Governor Weld, the governor of your darn right, people aren't stupid and they can read the figures. And the figures show that Washington's budget during the years you've been governor has grown at only 13 percent, while your budget has grown at 26 percent. You've gone.

You've gone. You've gone. You've taken your budget governor from 12 billion up to 17 billion. Now what have we done in the last few years? We've created 10 million jobs, governor, nationally. Lowest interest rates, lowest unemployment, lowest level of inflation. We're doing the job, governor. The stock market reflects it and the president's popularity reflects it. And when people realize the difference between you and me on these issues, mine will too. All right, vote. Well tried to turn the tables on Kerry, attacking the senator for his votes on the federal budget. Governor, what do you have a question about Medicare, Senator? You have voted to cut Medicare by $56 billion and then again last year by $156 billion, which is a steeper cut than I have ever supported. You have also voted to increase the tax on seniors on social security. You've even proposed that the retire that Congress consider carefully raising the retirement age for social security.

Why do all those assaults on our senior citizens make sense? Governor, as I listened to you, it's really extraordinary. You talk out of both sides of your mouth more than the Budweiser frogs. It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life. I'm surprised, I'm surprised you want to talk about Medicare outside of a confessional. Be truthful with you. You went down to Washington, lobbying Newt Gingrich, and pushing for a $270 billion cut in Medicare. It's documented. You lobbied for it, you were part of the team, Newt Gingrich was cheering for you, and you tried to do that. I stood on the floor of the United States Senate and voted against that. And the only reason I voted for $156 billion was it was the only alternative to your $270 billion. That's the only reason. Senator Kerry and Governor Weld have at least four more debates scheduled in this campaign.

They next meet this coming Sunday in a debate sponsored by MTV. Now an update on the crash of TWA Flight 800. The plane crashed into the waters off of Long Island, July 17, killing all 230 people on board. Investigators have yet to determine what caused the plane to go down. We get an update on the investigation now from Adam Horvath of Newsday, who's been covering the story from the beginning. Adam Horvath, welcome again. Thank you. Is there one working theory now on what happened? No, there are. I'm sorry to tell you the same three that there have been since the beginning, and that is a bomb, a missile, or a mechanical failure. And while the pendulum has swung, I guess between these three points during the time that investigators have been working for two months on this crash. It has not rested in any one of these three places.

Well, let's go through them again one more time. And where the bomb theory, where does that rest at this moment? Well, the difficulty with the bomb theory is that there have been explosive residues found that would be consistent with various explosive devices, including bombs. But they've been found in different parts of the plane, and they are different explosive themselves. Nothing's been found together, blasted into the plane's wreckage in a way that would clearly indicate this is a bomb. And for some time, investigators have been saying, some of them have, that without this evidence, with so much of the plane recovered, it really cast doubt on the question of whether you'll be able to conclude that it was a bomb that down the plane. Now, residue does not mean paraphernalia, right? In other words, they have not found any kind of sign of an explosive device. Am I right about that? That's right. They've found residues of chemicals that are used in explosives. They haven't found what's most important to them, which is the distinctive pitting the signs in the metal of the plane or the bending of metal that only occurs in a high energy explosion. Now, meanwhile, does the investigation about the possibility of a bomb go on?

In other words, beyond the scientific investigation, looking for in-terrorism organizations, looking at possible suicides, murder, all of that, is that going on anyhow? Yes, it has been going on. It's been proceeding all the while, and also has not turned up anything, or at least anything that investigators have told us about, or that we've been able to learn from sources. And so that, again, is something that casts doubt on the bomb, but doesn't say it didn't happen. Sure. Now, the terrorism thing, that has not been eliminated, right? I mean, a foreign terrorist organization that's still on the table? No, nothing has been eliminated. I think it's confusing to people because at various times one piece of evidence or one theory grabs someone's attention, even among the groups of investigators who come from different agencies, and sort of have different takes themselves on how to interpret evidence and what's the most important thing to look at. And so different things kind of come up, bubble up to the surface at different times from the investigation, and it looks like the investigation has taken a turn or a twist. Some of the history of it is we reported a news day about a month ago that investigators who were frustrated with the lack of signs of a bomb were concentrating more on the possibility that mechanical failures, such as in the center fuel tank, brought down the plane.

A day later, it turned out that there were some explosive residues that a lot of investigators hadn't known about, and the New York Times even wrote then that that seemed to make the idea of mechanical failure a fantasy. Well, then today, based on other things, and investigators kind of turning in other directions, the New York Times, the Washington Post writing that, again, mechanical failure seems like it could be more likely than had been written about before. And what's the evidence on mechanical failure? Well, the evidence mostly centers around the central fuel tank where an explosion did occur, and it's the one thing they know that. It's the one thing that investigators seem to all agree on, and they'll say affirmatively, there wasn't an explosion there. What they don't know is what caused it. It could have been something that's part of the plane on electrical sparks, some kind of malfunction that's set off the vapors in that tank. Something like that doesn't really have any precedent, there's been an explosion in the plane on the ground that came from wiring, there's been an explosion in the plane in the air that may have come from lightning, in any case was in a wing tank.

There's nothing that exactly leads to that. So, if that in fact happened, this will be the first time it's ever happened. Is that what you're saying, Adam? Similar things have happened, but pretty much anything, and I think I said this when I was on the show before, that pretty much anything that happened whether it's a missile or mechanical failure, probably the first exactly of its kind to take down a US aircraft. Now, the missile thing, is that still? Is that legitimately alive in a real way? You know, almost what takes away from the credibility of the missile theory is how many people who don't have information seem to subscribe to it, and add to kind of the rumors about it. But at basis, they do have eyewitnesses that say they're so suddenly consistent with a missile, they do have radar data that's not conclusive, but could be interpreted in that direction. They firmly said that it was not a friendly fire missile, something from a US military vessel, which a lot of people have talked about that possibility. Just filed by accident. I mean, it was on some other mission, and it just happened to hit that plane.

Well, right. I mean, of course, that would be a catastrophe and the kind of thing that you wouldn't really expect there to be able to be a cover-up that would last this long with all these different agencies involved, and all the kinds of leaks that have come out of the investigation about different aspects. Yeah, there's been increasing talk between the lines, and some of it, even publicly, that they might not ever find out what caused this plane to go down. Is that possible? And you're based on everything that you know? I think they've been worried about it for some time, and there are cases that have not been solved, both in US soil and around the world. This could be one of them when you start with a plane going down over deep water. You start from a bad situation in terms of trying to find a cause. And there has been a lot of talk among investigators that that may be the case, or it could be years. Some chance discovery, a long time from now, having nothing to do with what they're trying to do at the moment, could be the only thing that would eventually give them the clue they need. But wouldn't just thinking it through that, wouldn't that kind of eliminate murder, suicide, even a terrorism thing? I mean, those kinds of things eventually you would think would show up, would they not?

I'm sorry, I didn't quite know the same. Well, I was saying that if it was murder, suicide, in other words, a man made intentional act, wouldn't there be that eventually come to the fore? In other words, only it would have a reason that reason would eventually come out. Well, yeah, I mean, that's kind of one of the things they're hoping for, and something that hasn't shown up so far, even though they've spread the net around the world, and as they say, the wires are quiet on this issue. What about quickly the tension among the investigative agencies? You said there are three of them working on it. Is that tension real? Is it getting any better? How bad is it? Well, it's, I think it's something that can't be discounted when you talk about their ability to come together on what the cause of the crash is. The agencies involve the National Transportation Safety Board, Federal Aviation Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Alcohol, it's back on firearms and FBI. You know, all have sort of different expertise, different experience, and different outlooks on the crash, and very often, the investigators from those different agencies look at evidence very different ways.

And it's hard to see how that wouldn't cause them a problem in trying to get to the conclusion. All right. Adam Horavat, thank you again for being with us. Thank you. Finally tonight, a Gurgen dialogue, David Gurgen, editor of Large of U.S. News and World Report, engages William Julius Wilson, Professor of Social Policy at Harvard University, author of When Work Disappears, The World of the New Urban Poor. Bill in your new book, you paint, they disturb being even desperate picture of life in America's inner cities. Let's begin by describing what you see there in the inner cities. You know, I begin the book, David, by saying that for the first time in the 20th century, a majority of adults in many inner city neighborhoods are not working in a typical week. And this is a new situation. The inner city has always been poor, but the difference is, is that you have neighborhoods now where people are poor and not working.

In previous years, you had poor people, but they were employed. For example, if you take the historic core of the Black Belt in Chicago, the neighborhoods of Douglas, Grand Boulevard in Washington Park, three very famous neighborhoods in Chicago. In 1950, a majority of the adults in those neighborhoods were working, almost 70% of all males, 14 and over held a job in a typical week in those neighborhoods. By 1990, only one in four adults in Grand Boulevard was working, one in three in Washington Park, 40% in Douglas, and only 37% of all males, 16 and over held a job. So that is an incredible difference. You're not talking about neighborhoods that are not organized around the world. Significantly different from previous years. And the effect these inner cities have been collapsing over the last 20 years. Yes, you see, joblessness triggers other problems, problems of social organization. You can associate joblessness with crime, with drug addiction, with family breakups, and people in these neighborhoods who have been in them for a long time will tell you how the neighborhoods have changed.

And as I started focusing on the problem of joblessness, is I listened to the comments of some of the older residents who said, you know, they used to sleep on fire escapes at nights and they would walk streets at nights and not worry about being mugged and so on. And it was quite clear that many of them are aware that the changes are associated with the fact that a lot of people don't have jobs and this triggers a lot of other problems. So that's very important to your argument that it's the loss of the jobs that drive the social breakdown, the social disintegration in families, the crime, the drugs, the AIDS, the homelessness. And I think that's a simple thing that that runs throughout the book. And my previous work, I talked about joblessness, but I didn't focus on it the way I do in this book. And let's talk about why so much joblessness. After all, since 1980 in this country, we've created some 27 million new jobs, you know, explosions and jobs in surrounding areas that outstrips are competitors in Europe and Japan. Why are those jobs not coming to the industry? Why are they disappearing in the inner city?

Well, you know, it's true. We've created millions of jobs in the last several years. We've outstripped Europe and job growth. But unfortunately, people in the inner city don't have access to a lot of its job growth. What has happened is that blacks in the inner city neighborhoods have lost employment because of the decline of the mass production system, the sharp decrease in manufacturing jobs that have left a lot of central city neighborhoods have gone to the suburbs or to other places in the country even overseas. It's a loss of industrial jobs. It's severely affected blacks. And so what this has done is it pushed blacks into the low paying service sector jobs where they've had to compete with women and the growth of immigrants in these sectors of the economy. And although there has been some job growth in the service sector in the central city areas, you have blacks competing with groups that didn't have to compete with before and they're not fearing as well, especially black mills. To go to your point, there were two sentences in your book that just jumped out at me.

You said the manufacturing losses in some northern cities have been staggering. In the 20-year period from 1967 to 1987, Philadelphia lost 64% of its manufacturing jobs. Chicago lost 60% in New York City, 58% Detroit, 51%. Right. So you have these loss of jobs. You also have a decline in demand for low skilled workers. And you have greater emphasis placed on need for training and education for the higher paying or better jobs. All of these things have adversely affected the job prospects for inner city blacks. And on top of that, you've had trained and educated blacks or middle-class working-class blacks moving out of these neighborhoods and significant numbers. So you've had a problem of depopulation, but it has adversely affected the groups behind because they tend to be poorer and also lacking jobs. So you have had a greater concentration of joblessness as a result of these demographic changes.

And your earlier book on the truly good advantage, you made the point that that departure of middle-class blacks has also left many of the lower income blacks and poor blacks without role models. Yes, I think it's very, very important for children. You've seen children are now in these inner city neighborhoods growing up in an environment in which they don't see people going to and from work, growing up in a non-work environment. And this is entirely different from kids who grow up in an environment where people are working. Yeah, the heart of your strategy to address the problems of the inner cities and would be to set up job programs. Tell us what you would like to see. So you have to find out about jobs through the informal job network system through friends, relatives, kin, and so on. Now to replace that, when you don't have people working, the job network system breaks down. So to replace a job, the lack of a job network system, I would call for the creation of job information centers that would disseminate information about jobs that are available in a greater metropolitan area. Also, coordinate activities with carpools and vanpools to get people to where the jobs are. There are many more job opportunities out in the suburbs than there are in the central cities.

I would also create job readiness placement centers. A lot of people have been out of work for such long periods of time, but to just not job ready, you see. And you've got to make sure that people understand the norms of the workplace, they'll show up for work on time. This is a particular problem for people who have been out of work for long periods of time. These are certain inexpensive things that can be done that would help to improve the situation, but you've got to do much more than that, David. That's why I've called for public sector employment of last resort, because our study clearly reveals that in the private sector, employers do not want to hire inner city workers, particularly when they can turn to immigrants for jobs, for physicians, or they can turn to a growing number of women. They just don't want to pay attention or hire inner city workers, especially black males. So if employers in a private sector are unable to hire these workers, and if they're not responding to fiscal and monetary policies or bringing people back into the labor market for any number of reasons, then it seems to me we have to consider public sector employment of last resort.

WPA type jobs, maybe not the same kinds of jobs that they did during the Roosevelt administration, but useful jobs like cleaning the streets twice a day, instead of once a day, picking up twice a week instead of once a week. Opening up libraries on Saturdays and the evenings. These libraries are closed in cities like Chicago and Saturdays and the evenings because of financial fiscal problems. Cleaning graffiti off of walls. Opening up parks and playgrounds that are closed now because a lack of adult supervision, filling potholes. These are useful jobs that could be done that would improve the quality of life. In a conversation this summer, you said something which were like in light, me and Wade, that was very graphic, talking about job readiness of young people in the inner cities and the way they're raised in the way they're raised by their parents, so that they're not how they're taught to look at strangers. You see, here's the thing, in the inner city neighborhood it's very, very important for survival to do certain things.

You don't look at strangers, you don't make eye to eye contact with strangers, that's a very dangerous thing to do. People don't realize that, but that same child takes a job and some store where he or she comes in contact with middle class people black and white, and the failure to make eye contact presents a problem. Or they develop a tough demeanor in the inner city neighborhood for soft protection, you see. And if they carry that over into middle class society when they have jobs, they turn people off, you see. And employers see this, and the employers talk about the need to develop soft skills, certain kinds of personality traits that you relate to your consumer in a very, very positive way. And a lot of these kids are at a disadvantage if they're looking for these kinds of traits, you see. And I think that the job rating that centers would help the orient kids and get them trained to develop the soft skills that people are looking for. We're nearly out of time, but I'd like to ask you about an argument your critics make, and that is, yes, they agree that the joblessness level is intolerable.

But they think the lack of job has come from the breakdown of the social disintegration, the breakdown of the family, that there's so much crime. And it's so people, in effect, have lost their desire to work that they're not seeking it. And you're just providing a palliative that would be much better off doing it through the private sector, leaving it to the private sector. But did you've got to address the cultural issue first? Well, you know, David, I would just cite a recent study conducted by my colleague at Harvard, Catherine Newman. She found that there were 14 applicants for every person hired in the fast food businesses in Harlem. Places like McDonald's, 14 applicants for every person hired. You know, what we find is that folks want jobs. They want jobs say you have many more applicants looking for work than there are jobs available. And I think that's the best way to answer that.

That the criticism. I wish we could go on, but thank you very much. Thank you, David. Again, the major stories of this Thursday. The house voted to override President Clinton's veto, the so-called partial birth abortions bill. It now goes to the Senate. CIA director John Deutsch told the Senate committee, a Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, continued to pose a security threat in the Middle East. And the space shuttle Atlanta is joined up with the Russian space station Mir to retrieve American astronaut Shannon Lucid. A future program note before we go tonight, as part of our election coverage, we will have an extended interview with President Clinton on Monday night. Senator Dole is also agreed to an interview and we are working on the date. Meanwhile, we'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening with Shields and Gigo. Among other things, I'm Jim Lara. Thank you and good night. Major funding for the new zower with Jim Lara has been provided by the Archer Daniels Midland Company, 8 a.m. Supermarket to the world.

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