The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

INTRO

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. U.S.-Syrian action escalated further today when the battleship New Jersey joined other U.S. warships in shelling Syrian positions In Lebanon. We'll be covering that and President Reagan's latest words on what would cause him to pull U.S. forces out. And we'll have an extended interview with General Bernard Rogers, the commander with responsibility for U.S. forces in Lebanon, as well as those on the NATO front in Europe. Jim Lehrer is off tonight; Judy Woodruff is in Washington. Judy?

JUDY WOODRUFF: Also tonight, Robin, we examine one facet of the debate over the death penalty. Why was one man's life spared today and another's not? We'll hear the President defend a top aide who raised a storm over soup kitchens; report on an unusual effort by the Catholic Church to come to grips with the nation's economic problems. And we will celebrate one American special contribution to the world of music.

MacNEIL: The battleship New Jersey today fired its 16-inch guns at Syrian positions in Lebanon, the first time the New Jersey has fired in combat since the Vietnam war. The New Jersey and two other U.S. warships opened fire after Syrian gunners, for the second day, fired at patroling U.S. F-14 Tomcats with missiles and anti-aircraft guns. Beirut radio said the naval guns pounded five towns in a mountainous area north of the Beirut-Damascus highway controlled by Syrian troops. Damascus radio said that despite the intensity of the attack, only one Syrian was wounded. Here's report on today's action from Brian Stewart of the CBC.

BRIAN STEWART, CBC. [voice-over]: Until now the U.S. has held back from using the giant 16-inch guns of the New Jersey out of fear of causing civilian casualties. Today they overcame that reluctance. The New Jersey joined in this much smaller barrage from the five-inch guns of the cruiser Ticonderoga, pounding Syrian artillery and rocket sites just east of Beirut. The latest U.S. fleet action was further retaliation for Syrian fire on U.S. reconnaissance planes and is a major escalation of firepower.

MacNEIL: In Washington President Reagan held a brief news conference in which he justified the naval gunfire and spoke of two circumstances in which American forces would be pulled out -- success and failure.

Pres. RONALD REAGAN: We're not there to shoot first or to enter into combat, but I'm never going to send our mem any place where they wouldn't be allowed to defend themselves. We want no conflict with Syria; certainly we're not there to enter into a war. And we continue to try and communicate and negotiate with them to let them know that if they'll stop shooting at us there won't be any problems between us. The original goal was the withdrawal of the foreign forces and then the reinstitution of the government of Lebanon and helping them, as we have, to train and raise a force in which they can assume control over their own territory. The multinational force, they felt, was absolutely necessary and they still feel that way, to be able to do some maintaining of order as they would then have to move out toward their borders once the foreign forces have gone. Now, this is still the goal, still the thing that we're trying to do. In Geneva there was progress made where even those who are opposing each other within the country, the opposing factions recognized the Gemayel government and agreed upon the government. Now, the thing of the multinational force -- what I'm trying to say is there are two ways in which they could be withdrawn. One of them would be if we achieve our goal. The second one, of course, would be if there was such a collapse of order that it was absolutely certain that there was no solution to the problem, there would be no reason for them to stay there.

MacNEIL: Pentagon officials said the U.S. Navy commander in Lebanon, Rear Admiral Jerry Tuttle, had a free hand to order retaliatory strikes so long as hostile Syrian fire came only from inside Lebanon. Pentagon officials said the Navy was not authorized to retaliate if attacks on U.S. aircraft came from inside Syria, where Soviet troops man some air defense missiles sites.

In Kuwait, authorities imposed a news blackout on the bombing of the U.S. Embassy and other sites on Monday. The official explanation was to counter widespread rumors. The Kuwait government denied two reports concerning the U.S. Embassy truck bombing in which at least six people died. They denied that an Iraqi citizen had been involved or that the truck had a second driver. In Washington, Vice President George Bush told CBS that the bombings were the work of Iranian-backed radicals. Iraq today announced that its forces had attacked five Iranian cities with surface-to-surface missiles in retaliation for the Kuwait bombing and other Iranian operations.

Judy? Bernard Rogers Interview

WOODRUFF: In Moscow, the Soviet defense minister today condemned the deployment of new American missiles in Europe as extremely dangerous to the cause of peace. Dimitri Ustinov told a group of Soviet veterans there was much popular support in their country for responding to NATO's deployment of new missiles with new nuclear missiles on Soviet soil and in Eastern Europe and with a refusal to negotiate with the United States on reductions in European arms while the new missiles are in place. Meanwhile, in Vienna, diplomatic sources say that the East-West talks on reducing conventional forces in Europe will be broken off tomorrow with no date set for resuming them. The Soviet representative, Valerian Mikhailov, was reported to have told the other 18 nations at the conference that his country was not prepared to set a date for the next meeting. Last month, the two Geneva conferences on arms, the medium-range missile talks and the long-range missile talks, were both halted following the deployment of new American medium-range missiles in Europe. So, as of tomorrow, all East-West discussions on weapons and troops will be in a state of suspension. mFor some insight into both the situation regarding the East-West talks and the Middle East, we turn now to the military point man in the Western alliance. He is General Bernard Rogers, and for the past 4 1/2 years he has worn two hats -- supreme commander of all allied forces in Europe and the military leader of 316,000 U.S. troops stationed in Europe, including those 1,600 Marines who are on the ground in Lebanon. General Rogers, first, let's talk about the Middle East. The President said today that the United States doesn't want to get involved in a war with Srria. But with all the shooting that is going on, isn't that really what's going on already?

BERNARD ROGERS: No, I wouldn't put it in quite those terms, Judy. The Syrians have been alerted to the fact that if they fire on our reconnaissance planes, we will retaliate. And we did that on the 4th of December with an air strike. This time we have organized the naval gunfire so that they are laid on targets in the area in which our reconnaissance aircraft fly. They're laid on air defense targets. And we immediately take them, those targets, under fire, if they fire on our reconnaissance planes, and that's what's been happening in the last two days, and today was the first time where the targets were of such a nature that it was appropriate to use the New Jersey.

WOODRUFF: Well, now, why did we decide to use the New Jersey? We've said up until now it wasn't appropriate. What was different about today?

Gen. ROGERS: Well, it is not as accurate a weapon system as some people would have us believe, in the first place, and that was when we made the air strike. We wanted to take out specific targets with very little collateral damage, and there was the possibility of collateral damage and in addition to the fact that the air defense weapons systems in that particular area were mobile. So we had to eyeball them by our pilots. Now today these are fixed air defense installations in the area, and as soon as we take fire and we get the report back from the pilots of the reconnaissance mission, we fire with either the five-inch gun, if that's appropriate, or with the New Jersey. Yesterday, for example, the New Jersey was laid on targets on the southern end of a north-south reconnaissance, and the five-inch guns were laid on the northern end. Well, where we took the fire was on the northern end, so we retaliated specifically into that area, and we used the five-inch guns there.

WOODRUFF: But what about what you just said, which is that the New Jersey guns are far less accurate than the other guns we've been using?

Gen. ROGERS: What I'm saying is that they're less accurate than some would have us believe; for example, I heard tonight on the radio that someone was saying that you could -- that they could throw a Volkswagen 25 miles and hit a tennis court. Well, they're not that

WOODRUFF: Well, isn't there more caution then in involving --

Gen. ROGERS: Well, there is caution, and we fire them only at targets where we do not anticipate collateral damage. That --

WOODRUFF: You mean civilian casualties?

Gen. ROGERS: Civilian casualties, yes.

WOODRUFF: Well, what about, General, this policy of instant retaliation? Why did that come about? I mean, that's as of yesterday, really.

Gen. ROGERS: Well, we requested that, Judy, in the command some days ago as a change to our rules for engagement so that we wouldn't have to wait 12 or 24 hours to retaliate, and we got that authority to do so, so that they immediately know that if they fire from us they can expect incoming fire from us.

WOODRUFF: What about pre-emptive strikes? Is that a possibility too?

Gen. ROGERS: No, I don't think so. What our rules of engagement permit us to do is to fire in self-defense, and that means after having been fired on.

WOODRUFF: Let me ask you this. You testified, going back a little while, just after the Marine barracks in Beirut was bombed, that you were responsible for the security arrangements there. In hindsight now do you think there's any way that we could have prevented that from happening?

Gen. ROGERS: Let me just be a little more accurate as to what I said, and that is that as the theater commander I am responsible for everything that happens or fails to happen in the theater, just as anybody else within the chain of command is responsible for his area of cognizance. And in retrospect, there is no question about the inadequacy of the security arrangements because we lost 239 lives as a consequence of that truck breaking through the security arrangements that had been designed. However, in speaking to those who were there at the time and who had a hand in designing the security arrangements, they felt that they were adequate under the conditions. In hindsight, yes, there are things we could have done which would have prevented that truck from getting to the building.

WOODRUFF: Well, was it political decisions that kept those conditions from being met, or was it oversight?

Gen. ROGERS: It was not political conditions; it was the responsibility of the commander on the ground to protect his forces. You know, that's built into any area of responsibility of a commander. But it was also in the rules of engagement in terms of reference that he had to protect his forces. He believed -- I shouldn't be speaking for him, but I know that he believed that he had taken the prudent actions that a professional should take when he weighed both the mission -- which was presence, to be seen -- and also the intelligence information that he had and the attack that had occurred against the embassy in April of this year, and so he believed that he had taken those actions which were essential. In fact, they turned out not to be.

WOODRUFF: Well, General, just to broaden out again, how does having our Marines in Lebanon right now increase the stability there, particularly now since we're firing on the Syrians?

Gen. ROGERS: The mission is presence, and presence for the purpose of lending encouragement to the departure of the Israelis and the Syrians, and you must separate that mission, in my opinion, from the retaliation that we take to protect our forces --

WOODRUFF: But are you saying --

Gen. ROGERS: You see -- excuse me. There's an important point here. We're only overflying Lebanon with our aircraft -- Lebanon, which is a sovereign nation. And Lebanon desires that we overfly with our reconnaissance aircraft to provide information to the Lebanese armed forces as well as to the other contingents within the multinational force as well as to our own. So we're not violating anything as far as the sovereign nation is concerned over which we're flying. Now, the Syrians are there as a foreign force in a sovereign country, and they have established their air defenses there and fired our reconnaissance aircraft which were authorized to fly.

WOODRUFF: And you expect everyone to believe that we're a neutral force?

Gen. ROGERS: Oh, I didn't say that I expect everyone to believe we're a neutral force. You know, the United States, no matter where it is located, can never be considered a neutral force, I don't believe, and the attacks that are conducted upon our Marines are attacks upon the United States, not upon the Marines or upon any other of the forces we have ashore.

WOODRUFF: All right, thank you. Robin?

Gen. ROGERS: Yes.

MacNEIL: General Rogers, is it a good mission, from a military point of view?

Gen. ROGERS: You know, that's a moot question, Robin, because the Commander-in-Chief has decided that that is a mission that we'll have for our forces, and so it's incumbent upon those of us in the chain of command to insure that that mission is carried out to the best of our ability.

MacNEIL: Well, sure, I know that, but I mean, is it a mission the military is happy about?

Gen. ROGERS: Well, it's an unusual mission and different from what we would usually have, and I would say to you that if we were to choose a mission -- had our choice of missions -- we probably would not put this one very high on our list of those we'd like to have.

MacNEIL: Just one other question in Lebanon. Are the Marines going to be moved? There was talk of it last week. Are they going to be moved or not?

Gen. ROGERS: Well, we consider all the time, Robin, additional options for carrying out the mission of presence. As to where we would carry it out and how we might carry it out, and those options are being considered once again. Whether or not they'll be moved, I don't know. I must say to you that we're putting in tremendous effort, time and resources into the area in which our Marines are currently located to insure their survivability while they perform this presence mission.

MacNEIL: Turning to your major responsibility as the supreme commander in Europe, from your military perspective, has the NATO alliance won an important battle by the going ahead with the deployment of the missiles in Europe?

Gen. ROGERS: This is a major achievement in my mind, Robin, that since 1979 for four years the alliance has continued to march down that road towards putting the weapons systems on our soil in Western Europe, providing we didn't get a breakthrough in the negotiations. And having failed in the negotiation track, we now are pursuing the decision that was made to put them on our soil. A major achievement, it lends itself to being perceived as a unified, cohesive posture within the alliance.

MacNEIL: Does that achievement outweigh the breakdown of the two sets of talks in Geneva, particularly the medium-range or intermediate range talks?

Gen. ROGERS: Yes, if we had failed to maintain our resolve to put the weapons systems on our soil, the impact and effect upon NATO would have been much more disastrous in my opinion than the breakdown of the talks. And it's the fact that we have put them on our soil and thereby gives the Soviet Union some concern that she no longer has the monopoly to have weapons on her soil which can strike us in Western Europe and we cannot retaliate. And now we can. Which gives her incentive to come back to the negotiating table -- and there are other reasons, too -- if she has that concern about those weapons systems.

MacNEIL: What's your hunch about what it will take to bring the Soviets back?

Gen. ROGERS: It'll take hanging tough in the West, continuing with our resolve. I think it'll be the strength of our convictions that will bring it back. It bothers me to hear on both sides of the Atlantic conversation about, "Well, what concessions are we in the West going to make to bring them back?" That's nonsense, in my opinion. We've made -- we're the only ones that made concessions in the talks. They continued to insist upon having a monopoly throughout all the proposals that they presented.

MacNEIL: You would advocate no new negotiating positions being offered by the U.S.?

Gen. ROGERS: That would be my position. I don't have a voice, however, in the positionsthat are taken in the negotiations.

MacNEIL: You heard Judy quote the Soviet defense minister, Ustinov, saying that the arrival of the U.S. missiles had increased the danger or war, or words to that effect, in Europe. What is your view? Has it lowered the threshold? Has it turned the screws a little tighter so that there is a greater danger of war now in Western Europe than there was?

Gen. ROGERS: Not in my opinion. The purpose of putting the weapons on her soil is to deter the use of those that the Soviets already have deployed. And what this does is to prove to the Soviets that despite their misinformation program, their propaganda program, their stick-and-carrot treatment, which they still are pursuing, to include the latest remarks of Ustinov, we're proving to them that they cannot exercise a veto over the weapons systems that we put on our soil to deter the use of those she already has deployed and thereby, she cannot have a voice in the security arrangements we make in Western Europe.

MacNEIL: Those newly arrived missiles, as they arrive and are deployed, they come under your command, I would gather.

Gen. ROGERS: They will come under my -- they are under my command in my U.S. role once they arrive, and then in my NATO role they'll come under -- they are committed to me at a certain stage of alert should we go through a period of tension.

MacNEIL: What discretion do you, as the supreme commander, have in their use?

Gen. ROGERS: All that I have is the same responsibility and authority with respect to any nuclear weapons system that we have in Western Europe, and that is, at an appropriate time, under guidance provided me by my political authorities, I can request the use of nuclear weapons if it appears that we're going to lose the cohesiveness of our defense if we're in a conventional confrontation. But that request must go to the political authorities, to every nation, and eventually to the nuclear powers, and the political authorities of the alliance are the ones who would recommend to the president and to the prime minister whether or not they believe those weapons systems -- weapons should be released if I request it.

MacNEIL: What is your anxiety about the military situation in Europe now? You talked about a conventional confrontation or action. What is your -- as the supreme commander, what are you anxious about?

Gen. ROGERS: Well, first, let me say that I am not concerned about an attack out of the blue from the East. The Soviets don't want war. What does concern me, and what I believe to be the major menace in Western Europe, is that the Soviets will in time achieve its objective, which is to dictate to Western Europe, economically coerce us, blackmail us, politically intimidate us because of its massive military power -- without ever having to fire a shot. And that to me is the major menace we face, and I base that on two trends that I see: one is every year we get stronger in Allied Command Europe because our commitments are met, but the gap between our force capabilities and those of the Warsaw Pact continues to widen every year. And you have the trend of the counterproductive, unreasonable attitudes and beliefs of some of our people -- pacifism, neutralism, unilateral disarmament -- which play into the hands of the Soviets. And she sees these trends just like the rest of us. She's patient; she's prudent; she's cautious; and with time she believes that she'll be able to achieve the objective that I described. I believe that one of the first steps we have to do, now that we're well on theway to showing the resolve to deploy the INF missiles, we must now show our resolve to overcome the deficiencies in our conventional forces, and being viewed as having resolve in these two instances provides, I believe, an enhancement to our deterrence and gives us incentives to negotiate from a position of strength, gives us strength to negotiate from at the negotiating table once start again, and gives the incentive to the Soviets to negotiate seriously. She has not had those incentives on the INF talks in the past; she now has it.

MacNEIL: General Rogers, thank you very much for joining us this evening.

Gen. ROGERS: Thank you.

MacNEIL: Judy?

WOODRUFF: A panel of aviation experts says that the crew of that Korean airliner shot down by the Soviets last September wasn't as alert or as attentive as they should have been. The investigators on the staff of the International Civil Aviation Organization, or ICAO, issued a report concluding that the pilot of the Korean passenger plane apparently never knew he was off course, that the Soviets tried to intercept him, or even that his Boeing 747 was finally hit by an air-to-air missile. The inquiry also concluded that a simple finger error -- punching the numbers 1-3-9 into a computer rather than 1-4-9 may have sent the plane so far off course. The report was based on transcripts of the Korean crew's conversations with air traffic controllers on the ground and on the use of a flight training simulator. The ICAO's governing council delayed adopting the report. Instead, it appealed to the Soviet Union to start cooperating with the inquiry. The Soviets have issued a separate report repeating their earlier charge that the plane was on a spy mission. Robin?

MacNEIL: Argentina's new civilian president, Raul Alfonsin, has moved quickly to bring his military predecessors to justice for political repression. Last night on television, Alfonsin formally accused the military dictators he replaced of murder and torture. He issued decrees calling for the prosecution of nine generals and admirals who formed the three military juntas which ruled Argentina from 1976 until last year. Alfonsin, who was inaugurated on Saturday, decreed that seven terrorist leaders now in exile should also be tried. Argentina was ravaged during the '70s first by radical and left-wing terrorists, then by brutal repression by the armed forces. Human rights organizations blame the military for the abduction, torture and murder of between 6,000 and 15,000 people. In September, before handing over power, the military decreed an amnesty for itself to insure immunity, but Alfonsin said Congress would be asked to repeal the amnesty and to pass legislation discouraging military coups. He said last night the establishment of a state of law demands that those who have sown terror, pain and death throughout Argentine society be judged. Judy?

WOODRUFF: Last night on this program the number-two man at the Treasury Department said the U.S. had no plans to intervene in international currency markets to keep the dollar from climbing any higher in value. But that's just what U.S. officials did today. They, along with West German, British and French central banks, sold dollars to keep the foreign currencies from falling any lower. Despite their actions, the dollar reached new record highs against the pound and the lire for the third day in a row.

We'll be back in a moment.

[Video postcard -- New York, New York]

WOODRUFF: The President today came to the defense of one of his closest aides who has been criticized for some remarks he made on hunger. Last week White House Counselor Edwin Meese told reporters he had never seen any proof that there are hungry children in American, and said that some people who go to soup kitchens go three because the food is free and that's easier than paying for it. Mr. Reagan today accused reporters of distorting Meese's comments and taking them out of context. The President declared that while some people who patronize soup kitchens are undeserving, just as there are welfare cheats, he said, the vast majority are legitimately needy.

Pres. REAGAN: The policy and my own feeling in this administration is that if there is one person in this country hungry that is one too many, and we're going to do what we can to alleviate that situation. We get anecdotes that some of you have reported on, individual cases or something, of people that are hungry. What we want to find out is why? Is it a lack of, or a fault in our distribution system at the government level, or is it that there are people out there who don't know what's available to them or how to find their way to a government program? We know that there are people who are not deserving of welfare who have been getting welfare, and one of our jobs has been -- and not too well understood -- to weed out -- because every time someone who has the means and yet is subsisting on the help of their fellow citizens is doing that, they are reducing our ability to care for the truly needy.

WOODRUFF: The head of the presidential task force on hunger in American said today that the only recommendation he is sure the group will make is that better information on the subject is needed. J. Clayburn Laforce, a dean at the University of California, said the task force members all recognize that there are serious problems out there. But he said they have found an alarming lack of data on the subject. Their report is due next month. Meanwhile, the head of the Washington-based Food Research and Action Center called the task force a farce and a publicity gimmick on the part of the White House. Nancy Amadei said it contains too many conservative and wealthy people to be effective.

And two bits of news that signal the presidential campaign season is getting close. Aides to President Reagan all but confirmed today that he will announce his candidacy for a second term on January 29th in a speech on television. All Mr. Reagan himself would say was that he would announce his decision on that day. And Democratic frontrunner Walter Mondale won another endorsement today, that of the United Mineworkers Union. In a speech to a mineworkers convention, Mondale promised to support the working men and women. His chief opponent, John Glenn, has leveled another attack at Mondale, accusing him of making pledges to reduce the federal deficit that, Glenn said, sound vaguely familiar to the unfilfilled promises candidate Reagan made in 1980.

Robin? Bishops' Economics Letter

MacNEIL: Last May, America's Catholic bishops made news when they sent a pastoral leter to all U.S. Catholics. The subject was nuclear arms and, despite its cautious language, the letter was critical of U.S. nuclear strategy and was attacked by the Reagan administration. Now the bishops are working on another pastoral letter that may be even more controversial. The subject is Catholic social teaching and the American economy. Conservatives are already sounding the alarm that the makeup of the committee drafting the letter is too liberal. For the next year the bishops will hold a series of hearings around the country. The first of them, in South Bend, Indiana, ended this afternoon.

[voice-over] Notre Dama University. It's better known for athletic battles than for academic debates, but debate began here this week when Archibishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee and four other bishops arrived to hear testimony from business, labor, academic and religious leaders. The subjects under discussion included economic planning, unemployment, foreign trade and government social spending. One debate featured liberal and conservative economists who argued over the role of government in the economy.

GAR ALPEROVITZ, Center for Economic Alternatives: Planning is with us. It will not go away. The correct question to ask is, are we in fact maximizing the potential of this gigantic economy?

MARINA WHITMAN, business economist: I rather like our decentralized, somewhat chaotic political system. I think it has many virtues.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Several of the speakers called for greater economic cooperation between labor and management, but others were skeptical.

ROBERT HARBRANT, trade union leader: We could talk about the creation of a $500-billion business called union busting, which is a crime and a sin that exists in this society.

JOHN CARON, businessman: We in our company right now have -- are under union negotiations, and we have a very practical problem. They have commented that, "We will not accept industry wages." You could say -- well, we might resist organization, we resist this because of it's matter of existence.

Msgr. GEORGE HIGGINS: The union-busting business is a $500-million business, a very systematic campaign to deny workers the right to organize. To talk then about a consensus building among workers and management, when that right is being denied, it seems to me is silly.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: For the next year, the bishops will hear from individuals who harshly criticize the basic tenets of the American economic system and those who defend it.

JOE HOLLAND, Center of Concern: It is an enormous crime. People lock themselves in their houses, in their apartments; it's dangerous to be on the street at night. The stores are big chains, national chains; people don't know each other. A lot of fear. It's sort of that the social fabric, from a cultural viewpoint is eroding, I think. And I think capitalism has promoted that, not intentionally, but I believe it has, nonetheless.

MICHAEL NOVAK, American Enterprise Institute: In the whole history of Catholicism, since the year 33 A.D., I don't believe the Catholic Church has ever experienced a political economy which produces more justice, more liberty and more equality for more people than the political economy of the United States, and I think it would be a scandal if the American bishops don't say that to Rome and to the rest of the Catholic world.

Bishop PETER ROSAZZA, Hartford, Conn.: I don't know how many millionaires have been created since President Reagan took office, you know, so on. It's to look at those and see, you know, what has to be changed so that in fairness there will be a greater distribution of wealth in the society.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Some observers believe that the final letter, expected to be released in 1985, will closely parallel the economic positions of the 1984 Democratic Party platform, but the bishops insist that their mission is moral rather than political.

Archibishop REMBERT WEAKLAND, Milwaukee, Wis.: Our hope is really to bring to this debate of economic policy some kind of moral dimension in the debate, and I think we'll be happy if we can only bring to the debate that kind of concern.

MacNEIL: The bishops, as we said, will be working on their letter throughout next year, and we'll be following their progress.

Judy? Discriminatory Death?

WOODRUFF: In the past 24 hours, two convicted killers scheduled to die today met two different fates. One was electrocuted, the other was not. In the Louisiana case of Robert Wayne Williams, accused of killing an elderly supermarket guard during a robbery, Supreme Court Justice Byron White denied a plea for postponement, clearing the way for his execution. The plea had been based on the claim that Williams' original lawyer had not allowed him to testify in his behalf. White's decision came an hour after the Supreme Court did postpone the execution of another man, Alpha Otis Stephens. Charlayne Hunter-Gault has more on that story.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Lawyers for Alpha Otis Stephens argued that their client was discriminated against because the death penalty in Georgia is more likely to be imposed if the victim is white. Stephens, who was black, was sentenced to die for the murder of a white contractor who arrived at his son's home and found Stephens burglarizing it. The contractor was forced to walk to a field and was shot at point-blank range. In their plea before the Supreme Court, lawyers for Stephens also argued that he was denied a fair trial because blacks and women were excluded from the all-white, all-male jury. The Supreme Court stayed the execution until a federal appeals court has had a chance to rule on a similar case. For a closer look at the discrimination issue in death penalty cases, we have two lawyers who take opposing views; one who believes that blacks are discriminated against in such cases is Alvin Bronstein, director of the National Prison Project for the American Civil Liberties Union. Mr. Bronstein, how significant an issue is the death penalty in these cases?

ALVIN BRONSTEIN: How significant an issue is the death penalty or is discrimination?

HUNTER-GAULT: Discrimination, I'm sorry, in the death penalty, yes.

Mr. BRONSTEIN: Well, it's very significant both statistically and morally. Every study that we have done or that has been done in this country shows that the race of the victim is relevant and the race of the offender is relevant. If the offender is black, he is twice as likely to get the death penalty for a similar offense as a white person.If the victim is white and the offender is black, then the odds on getting the death penalty go even more astronomical.

HUNTER-GAULT: What kind of evidence, what kind of studies are those you're referring to?

Mr. BRONSTEIN: Well, you compare similar cases in a similar area and look at the race of the defendants and the race of the victims, and in every single study the race of the victim and the defendant is a relevant factor. It shows that minorities receive the death penalty more disproportionately. The other kind of more equally insidious discrimination that goes on is one of class.There are no rich people, there are no prominent people, there are no people who have achieved notoriety, even in their offense, on death row. The people who are on death row are all poor. Even the whites there are poor, and that has to do with the kind of trial they get, the kind of lawyers they can get. They don't get the same kind of counsel as the prominent and the rich do or the notorious -- the Charles Mansons -- do, and that kind of discrimination also pervades the system.

HUNTER-GAULT: Do your studies also show what happens if a black kills a black or if a white kills a black? Are the sentences different?

Mr. BRONSTEIN: Yeah. They are very unlikely to get the death penalty. You have the example just last week in southern Alabama where the two white men committed an atrocious crime against a black. They decided to lynch a black; they slit his throat, they hung him. They didn't get the death penalty. Mr. Williams gets the death penalty for killing a white guard during the course of a burglary. That's a tragic event, but not nearly as outrageous as the other one.

HUNTER-GAULT: In the 38 states where the death penalty does exist, do you find differences from one state to the other in terms of how it's applied -- the death penalty is applied?

Mr. BRONSTEIN: Oh, yeah. Obviously there are some states that have a better system of jury selection; they are more proportionate; they don't exclude as many minority groups and women from their juries. But the system is still disciminatory in every single state.

HUNTER-GAULT: In the Stephens case the case was also argued -- the argument was also made that Stephens was discriminated against because it was an all-white, all-male jury. Do you find that also pretty pervasive in the cases where a black has been sentenced to the death penalty?

Mr. BRONSTEIN: Generally so. It's not as pervasive as it was in the '60s when I was doing civil rights work in the South, when there were never any blacks on the juries. That's improved somewhat, but it's still a problem throughout the country.

HUNTER-GAULT: And the chances are more likely in that event? Are you saying that the black person on trial would get the death penalty?

Mr. BRONSTEIN: I think so. Our Constitution says we're entitled to a jury of our peers, and certainly an all-white jury are not necessarily the peers of a black defendant.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right. I'll come back in a minute. We're going to go now to a lawyer who disagrees with that position. He is Michael Wellington, deputy attorney general for California. Mr. Wellington has also been involved in arguing death penalty cases before the Supreme Court. He joins us from a studio in San Diego. Mr. Wellington, you don't agree that blacks are given the death penalty more than whites, is that right?

MICHAEL WELLINGTON: Well, my position is that there's no evidence to show that. Mr. Bronstein has spoken about numerous studies, all the studies he's seen, and I think the remarks that he's made are pretty misleading. I'm aware of one recent study from Stanford University that jumps to the conclusion that people who kill blacks -- excuse me, people who kill whites are more likely to be condemned. But this kind of analysis, the kinds of things that Mr. Bronstein is talking about and that defense attorneys talk about, really only single out one or two aspects of the death penalty issues, in this case, mere numbers, to jump to the conclusion that there is discrimination. Every death penalty case is a very unique situation. All the facts that are presented to the jury are unique to each individual case. That's why we have juries empaneled to make those decisions.

HUNTER-GAULT: So you simply don't buy the argument that blacks are more likely to receive the death penalty if their victims are white?

Mr. MELLINGTON: I am not ready to buy the argument that blacks are more liable to get the death penalty because their victims are white. It's the causal relationship that is the problem. There is one study that suggests that, just numerically, more defendants, whether black or white, who kill white victims wind up being condemned. But then what's happening is the defense attorneys are taking that fact and leaping to the conclusion that demonstrates that there is bias, there is discrimination going on in the jury determination, and that's not shown at all.

HUNTER-GAULT: But there are more blacks on death row, is that not right?

Mr. WELLINGTON: I believe that's so, yes. Frankly, I'm not entirely sure what the numbers are on that, but again, what's missing there is a causal relationship, that because more blacks are on death row that means that juries are discriminating. You've got to understand in context that America has got the most complicated, time consuming, detailed system for setting out a death penalty trial, with the attorneys being able to spend sometimes months on end carefully hand-selecting the juries to avoid the kind of discriminatory concerns Mr. Bronstein is talking about. And once you get to the trial you've got an incredible number of procedures designed to focus the jury's attention on just the specific facts that are really relevant to the death penalty decision.

HUNTER-GAULT: What about the argument in the Stephens case about the all-white, all-male jury? Do you feel that that's something that's widespread and that that has a discriminatory effect?

Mr. WELLINGTON. I don't think that's discriminatory. the system whereby juries are picked draws from the community, draws from the entire community, and then there's a procedure whereby the two attorneys and the judge go through the entire jury pool to select the 12 that are going to be on the panel. The fact that the 12 who wound up on this particular panel happened to be white, that doesn't mean the system's bad. That's just the way it worked out. Juries routinely include large numbers of blacks and minorities.

HUNTER-GAULT: Thank you. Mr. Bronstein, what about Mr. Wellington's claim a few moments ago that your evidence is just misleading? There's nothing to support your claim.

Mr. BRONSTEIN: Well, there's two things. Michael refers to mere numbers not proving anything. I thought that's what statistical studies were based on -- mere numbers. If the numbers show you a particular result, then they obviously mean something. Secondly, his claim that lawyers have months to prepare these cases and to present them to the jury belies the fact that in the cases of the poor and the black who fill death row, they don't get the kind of counsel that can spend those months. They either get an overworked public defender, an assigned or appointed lawyer; they don't get the kind of lawyers that the prominent, that the wealthy get, who don't get the death penalty. And they don't have that time. Most of the cases we look at have what we call ineffective assistance of counsel. The lawyer is appointed. He perhaps vists the client once or twice, doesn't make any investigation and goes through the motions of a trial. That's the kind of person that's on death row in this country.

HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Wellington, that's not discrimination?

Mr. WELLINGTON: Mr. Bronstein says that poor defendants don't get good representation. I have spent the last five years prosecuting People v. Harris, now Pulley v. Harris. I have been the only attorney the state of California has had to handle that case, whereas Mr. Harris has had a private attorney; he's had two appointed state public defenders. When he got to the United States Supreme Court the court appointed Anthony Amsterdam, who is one of the best-known and most revered constitutional defense lawyers in this nation.

HUNTER-GAULT: And are you saying that that is -- you're giving us a specific, but are you saying that that is generally the case?

Mr. BRONSTEIN: No, but that's a --

HUNTER-GAULT: Excuse me, I'm asking Mr. Wellington to clarify.

Mr. WELLINGTON: It is generally the case that at least in California -- I can speak most fully for California -- that death penalty cases and death penalty defendants get the lion's share, an undue share, of the defense resources, among the finest attorneys. When cases are argued -- death penalty cases are argued before the Supreme Court -- California or the United States Supreme Court -- great pains are taken to give them the very best representation.

HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Bronstein, you just don't buy that?

Mr. BRONSTEIN: No, I'm talking about the trial. The trial is the crucial fact. That's where the person gets the death penalty. And that's where they get the overworked, underqualified public defender or appointed lawyer. After the trial, after they have the death penalty, then in many cases people like Mr. Pulley get the Professor Amsterdams, they get myself, they get somebody else, but they already have the death penalty imposed upon them, and we have an enormous burden to overcome the finding made by the jury because the appellate courts buy those findings.

HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Bronstein, do you see way, if you buy your part of the argument, that you can assure that discrimination is not a factor in these cases?

Mr. BRONSTEIN: Not in our present society. I think our society is filled with such bias and with such institutional racism, institutional class bias that it can't happen.

HUNTER-GAULT: So are you saying that all of these people now on death row who may be having this problem to deal with are just going to die?

Mr. BRONSTEIN: Well, I think a large number of them unfortunately are going to die, and I think that's one of the great tragedies in our society, that we're killing people that we ought not to be killing.

HUNTER-GAULT: Very briefly, Mr. Wellington, do you see any way of insuring that discrimination not be a factor?

Mr. WELLINGTON: Look, we're a society of people, and every part of this society, whether it be the juries or the general bureaucratic system, is composed of human beings. You're not going to get a perfect systerm. If we had a perfect system, we wouldn't need a criminal justice system, we wouldn't need a death penalty.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right, I'm sorry. We don't have a perfect system, and we're out of time. Thank you both. Judy?

WOODRUFF: There was another development today in the Washington state case involving equal pay for thousands of women state employees. A federal judge ordered the state to pay what may amount to nearly a billion dollars in back pay and salary increases over the next 18 months. The case is a landmark ruling in the area of sex discrimination in that it goes beyond the concept of equal pay for equal work to say that even different jobs of comparable worth, like secretary and truck driver, should receive equal pay. The governor of Washington state, John Spellman, talked about what such a big award would mean when he appeared on our show last month.

Gov. JOHN SPELLMAN, (R) Washington [November 14, 1983]: The state would have to raise taxes or lay off other employees, which of course is nonsense. That's why, obviously, this case, if it were to be decided to that manner, would go well beyond the district court in Tacoma. It would go to the appellatecourts.

WOODRUFF: An aide to Governor Spellman said today in the wake of the judge's ruling that "the billion-dollar bomb has dropped." The governor is now deciding what to do next, and the union which litigated the case on behalf of the women, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, today predicted that employers all over will have to stop underpaying female-dominated jobs.

And now for a final look at today's top stories:

U.S. warships, including the battleship New Jersey, shelled Syrian-held positions in Lebanon again today. Again the shelling followed an attack on a U.S. reconnaissance plane. In Washington, President Reagan said the U.S. is not looking for war with Syria, but will defend its peacekeeping forces in Lebanon.

Two men were scheduled to be executed today.One did; the other received a last-minute stay as the capital punishment debate continued.

And on the political front, President Reagan has set a date. He'll go on television late in January to announce whether or not he's in the race for a second term. Democrat Walter Mondale won the endorsement of the mineworkers union and became the subject of new criticism from his chief rival for the nomination, John Glenn.

[Video postcard -- Garfield County, Utah] Elliott Carter at 75

MacNEIL: Finally tonight, a report on an American regarded in musical circles around the world as one of the greatest contemporary composers. He is Elliott Carter. He celebrated his 75th birthday last weekend. There'll be a celebration at the Library of Congress tonight. And over the next few months Carter's music will be heard in concerts all over the country. His music is not easy or very accessible to those of us who are not at home in modern music, so we asked Elliott Carter to tell us something about himself and his music. We went to a rehearsal of one of his latest works -- a setting of six poems by Robert Lowell called In Sleep, In Thunder.

ELLIOTT CARTER: People are always asking me how they can understand my music better, and it's really rather hard for me to know what they're talking about. Contemporary music is really very much easier to understand than older music because it's much more vivid and straightforward and it may be more complicated but, you know, it may be more dissonant and more peculiar and wayward, but people seem to have been accustomed to serious or classical music by hearing older music and hence it's rather hard for them to imagine that we should have music that doesn't take place under crystal chandeliers and candlelight. It seems to me people need to hear this music a little more than they do.

[music performed] I decided that I wanted to become a composer when I heard "The Rite of Spring" for the first time of Stravinsky, and I must say it made an indelible impression, has remained an indelible impression, and to my great delight and happiness, I got to know Stravinsky quite well and dedicated my piano concerto to him at the very end of his life.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: During his own rich, creative life Elliott Carter has been honored with innumerable prizes, awards, grants and honorary degrees -- 10 of them, at latest count. He's a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, once in 1960 and again in '73. And he even, in 1979, had a day named for him.

Carter was born in New York City to a decidedly non-musical family. Very soon he decided he liked only modern music. His earliest mentor was the American composer Charles Ives, who wrote a letter of recommendation for him to Harvard. After graduation, Carter went to Paris to study with the famed teacher of composition, Nadia Boulanger. In 1950 his first string quartet demonstrated Carter's stature.

Mr. CARTER: Mostly I compose in my head, but I do like to hear sound sometimes and play little things over on the piano, but they really aren't any real help. Mostly I just sit down and write a lot of notes and some notes lead to other notes and finally there's a piece. I'm never surprised when I hear my notes played except when they're played badly. It takes a good deal of rehearsal for them to really understand the character and feeling of the music, and that's a surprise to me because it's so obvious to me what it ought to be like. The pieces are sufficiently brilliant and demand enough virtuousity so that they're so concerned with playing right notes that they tend to do it rather stiffly and rather boringly. I try to overcome that, and sometimes I do and then sometimes at the performance I get so nervous I go right back and play it like a machine.

[rehearsal] And still I'd like to have you two, when you come in there at 21 to start softer and make it a little more -- let's write espressivo in there.

There was actually a brief time in my -- in the middle-'40s when I wrote what might be considered accessible, easily understood music, right during the war and shortly afterward, and then I stopped that, and around 1945 and 1946 I began to write the kind of music I do write now.Right at this moment it seems to me that what I write is considered conservative and classical although it was at one time considered very advanced and probably would be to people who have not heard much contemporary music. [vocal excerpt]

My general impression about all of this is that the audiences we have here anyhow are not interested in hearing any music of the 20th century, whether it's advanced or conservative, unless it's presented to them as a novelty and they are entertained by its novelty. It really doesn't matter whether it's people -- somebody shrieking and doing perfectly crazy things, or whether it sounds like Brahms, provided it's called a novelty.

MacNEIL: Elliott Carter at 75.

Before we go tonight we thought you would want to know about Jim Lehrer. Yesterday morning, Jim had what his doctors call a very mild heart attack. He is now resting comfortably in a Washington hospital and is on his way to recovery. We expect him to be back, fully recovered, after some weeks of rest and convalescence. Until then, Judy Woodruff, Charlayne Hunter-Gault and I will be holding the fort.

Good night, Judy.

WOODRUFF: Good night, Robin, and Jim, if you're watching. That's our NewsHour for tonight. I'm Judy Woodruff. Thank you and good night.