The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

INTRO

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. Here are today's main news stories. The Philippines election showed big gains for parliamentary opponents to President Marcos. Guerrillas in Sri Lanka released an American couple held captive for five days. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee rejected President Reagan's nominee as deputy head of USIA. Presidents Reagan and de la Madrid of Mexico expressed big differences on Central America as they met in Washington. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: The Filipino election is one story we look at in some detail tonight, with a former official of a former Philippine government and an American expert on the present government. Also, the pros and cons on the right of high schoolers to organize religious clubs; the story of the Zumwalts, father and son, involved in different ways in the Agent Orange legacy of the Vietnam War. And Richard Locke reviews John Updike's new story about witches.Philippines Election: Surprise Vote

LEHRER: There are several unoffical counts tonight in the Philippine elections and they do not agree. Opposition forces said their anti-Marcos candidates were leading in well over half the 183 National Assembly seats up for election, while the government's official news agency said the pro-Marcos forces held a slight edge, and President Marcos himself said the opposition would win only 40-plus seats. President Marcos, interestingly enough, made no comment about the results in the Philippines. He spoke instead this morning on the three U.S. television news programs plus the Cable News Network. In all he said the discontent with his regime was centered in the cities and had been fomented by the Western news media.

[voice-over] At the election headquarters in Manila this morning a crowd gathered to complain against local officials, accusing them of tampering with the vote count. One of them was the leader of the opposition, Salvador Laurel. He saw the returns as an outburst of anger against President Marcos.

SALVADOR LAUREL, opposition leader: That means that the people in the city, in Manila, are definitely for a change of administration, for a change of government, for a termination of martial rule and the restoration of freedom and democracy in this country. That's the basic thing.

LEHRER: There is no firm date yet on when there will be a final vote count. "The next few days" is all that is said. Robin?

MacNEIL: To help us analyze these unexpected early results from the Philippines, we turn now to two knowledgeable observers. Raul Manglapus is the Washington director of the Movement for a Free Philippines. A former Philippine senator and foreign minister, Mr. Manglapus was one of those who urged voters to boycott Sunday's election. Also with us is A. James Gregor, a professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley. Professor Gregor has written extensively on the Philippines; he is the author of the forthcoming book Crisis in the Philippines. This winter he met with President and Mrs. Marcos and other Filipino leaders. He joins us tonight from public station KQED, San Francisco.

First of all, Mr. Manglapus, how do you interpret the results so far? Is this a major defeat for President Marcos?

RAUL MANGLAPUS: It's a little early in the day, as it were, to make a final judgment on the results. The initial trends seem to indicate that the momentum generated by the assassination of Senator Aquino is now being reflected in voting in the Philippines. What remains to be seen, of course, is how Marcos will finally adjust to this new reality. The next few days will tell.

MacNEIL: From your sources and contacts, do you have anything to add to what we've reported on the way the trends are going in the votes?

Mr. MANGLAPUS: No. The news that we have been receiving by telephone and otherwise confirms the claims made in the international press, that indeed the opposition candidates have been taking the lead. There may be a difference here and there of percentages, but the trend is indeed what has been reflected in the press.

MacNEIL: Professor Gregor, if the opposition candidates to the National Assembly either took the lead or came close to it, would that be a significant defeat for President Marcos?

JAMES GREGOR: I think that as a matter of fact it would be an important development that was at least in part unanticipated. Although there were surveys conducted by the Development Academy of the Philippines as early as a year ago and after the assassination of Senator Aquino that indicated that there would be considerable erosion of support and that this would certainly reflect itself in any elections that came hard on the assassination itself. It was, I think, unanticipated in terms of scope. That is, I had expected 30 opposition candidates to win in their respective districts. I would not have expected that as many as 40 or perhaps more of the opposition members would enter into the legislature as a consequence of the elections.

MacNEIL: Until now the largest number of opposition deputies has been 12. Am I right about that?

Prof. GREGOR: Yes, it varied somewhat, but 12 to 14, I think at one time.

MacNEIL: President Marcos said in an interview with CBS today that the results so far prove the legitimacy of his regime, and he said, "Now we can truthfully say we presented to the world the image of a free democracy." Is there substance to that claim, or is that bravado?

Prof. GREGOR: There is substance insofar as there has been increased relaxation of controls that had been characteristic of the martial law period. It must be recalled, however, that the New Society Party, the movement that organized around President Marcos as a consequence of the declaration of martial law, does in fact control a nationwide organization, and consequently has great advantages in any electoral contests. But since the assassination of Aquino there has been so much pressure developing in the Philippines, indigenously and extraneously, that the president has allowed considerable development of institutions that we would more readily characterize as democratic. There has been increased criticism in the press, even the press that has been traditionally favorable to the government, and there have been opposition publications increasingly critical of the regime. And, as I indicated, the surveys in metro Manila indicate that the upper classes have been largely disillusioned by the government as a consequence of the calamitous economic circumstances that followed hard on the assassination of Senator Aquino.

MacNEIL: Mr. Manglapus, what's your comment on Marcos' claim that the vote proves the legitimacy of his regime and permits him to show the world that he has instituted democratic proceedings?

Mr. MANGLAPUS: I agree with the observation of the professor that the apparent relaxation reflected, for instance, in more freedom of the press in the Philippines, is not a unilateral act on the part of Marcos. It was forced upon him by the pressure generated after the assassination of Mr. Aquino. I think what ought to be looked into, however, is the reality behind this superficial relaxation, and that is that Marcos does retain -- whatever happens in these elections -- does retain the fundamental powers that are given to him by his own tailor-made constitution. And that includes, of course, the power to dissolve this Assembly, the power to resume arresting, detaining without charges. And, in fact, he is beyond the reach of this Assembly because the notion that this Assembly might impeach him if a majority of the opposition should gain ascendancy has to be viewed in the light of the fact that the constitution itself requires a two-thirds vote. And, of course, let me repeat, before that can happen, Mr. Marcos can exercise his right to dissolve the Assembly.

MacNEIL: What is your comment, Professor Gregor, on the speculation that there might be an impeachment proceeding?

Prof. GREGOR: I doubt very much whether there would be anything like an impeachment proceedings. As a matter of fact, as I see the elections, the result of the elections, I am singularly optimistic -- which is not in my character, I might add -- the United States, I think, in viewing the elections in the Philippines, can anticipate that there will be substantive changes if anything like the opposition representation does in fact manifest itself. True, President Marcos retains a great deal of power that largely derives from amendments to the current constitution. However, with an articulate opposition in the legislature and with collateral pressures from both the business community and the United States, I might add, I would anticipate that there would be gradual change and restoration of democratic and representative rights in the Philippines. For the United States I think that would be a development devoutly to be wished, since our interests there are substantial both in terms of equity investment and in terms of our basing rights in the Philippines. The developments, I think, are progressing very nicely in accordance with what I would take to be the best interests of the Philippine people, and satisfactory for the preservation of what I would take to be legitimate American interests in the area.

MacNEIL: Do you agree with that, Mr. Manglapus?

Mr. MANGLAPUS: I'm not as sanguine as the professor. At this point, I think that we still have a few days to wait to see exactly how, as I said, Mr. Marcos will adjust to this new reality. I think we ought to remember that Mr. Laurel himself, who campaigned for the opposition in these elections, himself resigned in disgust from this same National Assembly, saying that it was just a rubber stamp and powerless body. And no amount articulateness, it seems to me, will change that condition.

MacNEIL: Mr. Manglapus, you were one of those who urged a boycott of these elections. Obviously many of your fellow citizens did not boycott the election but voted, and voting was compulsory in the Philippines. Do you who now urged it feel embarrassed by the result?

Mr. MANGLAPUS: No, I think, first of all, until we know exactly the figures, the statistics, on just how many of the voters -- registered voters voted, what percentage -- we shall not be able to make an assessment of how effective the call for a boycott might have been. Secondly, I think that the boycott call was still a valid call. I think that all the effort that was put into these elections might have been better -- been more effective if it had been put into a boycott instead of a costly and expensive exercise which in the end would still be subject to modification by Mr. Marcos' own extensive constitutional powers.

MacNEIL: Well, thank you gentlemen both, Mr. Gregor in San Francisco, Mr. Manglapus in Washington, for joining us. Jim?

LEHRER: Stanley and Mary Allen of Columbus, Ohio, are free and safe tonight. They're the recently married couple kidnapped five days ago by Marxist terrorists in the Indian Ocean island nation of Sri Lanka. The couple was released unharmed today at a Roman Catholic bishop's house in the town of Jeffna. Kidnapper demands for $20 million in gold and the release of 20 prisoners from Sri Lankan jails were rejected.

In Washington Central America held the attention of two presidents -- Reagan of the United States, de la Madrid of Mexico. The two met for more than an hour at the White House, and afterward official but anonymous briefers told reporters the two pretty much disagreed, or pretty much agreed to disagree over Central America.

[voice-over] President de la Madrid was given a full military ceremony and salute when he arrived earlier on the White House lawn. Central America was also the topic of their remarks there.

Pres. MIGUEL DE LA MADRID [through interpreter]: Peace has been disrupted in Central America, and the risk of a generalized war, the scope and duration of which no one can foresee, is growing. Every country on the continent must do its utmost to restore peace and avoid war by respecting and upholding the sovereign right of its people to decide their own destiny and by rejecting interventionist solutions of any kind. In peacetime we must also support the Central Americans in their social and economic development programs and encourage their efforts to build democracy and respect human rights. To that end let us apply the principles and rules of international law established by the countries of the American continent -- self-determination, non-intervention, equality of states before the law, peaceful solution of conflicts and international cooperation for development.

Pres. RONALD REAGAN: Mr. President, I understand your deep concerns about the turmoil plaguing that region. We do not agree on everything concerning this situation, yet the level of respect in our relationship remains high, and that is the way it should be between neighbors who trust each other. Where we do disagree is not on goals or principles; instead, it is on the means by which to achieve our goals. The magnitude of our agreement, on the other hand, is substantial and should not be underestimated. For the United States, the conflagration in Central America appears too close to ignore. Like a fire in one's neighborhood, this threat should be of concern to every nation in the hemisphere. We can and should work together to save lives and prevent further destruction.

LEHRER: Another president from the region, newly elected Jose Napoleon Duarte of El Salvador, will be visiting Mr. Reagan next week. Duarte is due to leave this weekend for Washington, it was announced today. His opponent in the May 5th runoff election officially challenged the result today. Roberto D'Aubuisson has said the Duarte win was a fraud and was engineered by the CIA. Robin?

MacNEIL: In American presidential politics the Democrats fight another round today with primaries in Oregon and Nebraska. Senator Gary Hart was favored by polls in both states. Walter Mondale did not campaign in Oregon at all, and made only one short visit to Nebraska. A total of 67 convention delegates are at stake today. Political commentators say Hart needs not only the delegates he may win today but the momentum more victories would give him to stay in pursuit of Mondale. The Reverend Jesse Jackson was also contesting today's primaries. Walter Mondale was in San Francisco campaigning for the big California primary on June 5th.In a speech to the World Affairs Council, Mondale said that President Reagan's policy in Central America suffers from tunnel vision. He called for immediate negotiations aimed at the withdrawal of all outside military forces from the area.Jim?

LEHRER: Those who like economic data had some pleasant figures to dwell on today. Industrial production by mines, factories and utilities was up 1.4% in April. Auto sales in early May were up 25.5% from last year, the car makers' best May since 1979. But while GM, Ford and Chrysler sales were up, American Motors, Honda and Volkswagen registered 3% declines. Also, the Labor Department said unemployment was lower in all 50 states this March than it was in March, 1983. And some good news for Mobil Oil's shareholders. The word in Washington today is that the Federal Trade Commission will permit Mobil's takeover of the Superior Oil Company.The FTC had until midnight tonight to object to the $5.7-billion deal. Robin.

MacNEIL: Still to come in tonight's NewsHour, Judy Woodruff reports on a stormy session in the House of Representatives as members questioned each other's patriotism. Also, two congressmen debate whether high school students should organize religious clubs on campus. Charlayne Hunter-Gault profiles a Vietnam veteran who believes he got cancer from Agent Orange that, ironically, his father ordered sprayed. And Richard Locke reviews John Updike's latest novel, The Witches of Eastwick.

[Video postcard -- Belle Plaine, Kansas]

MacNEIL: The Senate Foreign Relations Committee today took the unusual step of rejecting President Reagan's nominee as deputy director of the United States Information Agency. The nominee is Leslie Lenkowsky, who has been serving as acting deputy director. The committee chairman, Senator Charles Percy, said he concluded that Lenkowsky had been an active participant in blacklisting liberals to keep them out of the USIA's speakers program overseas. Among the people on the blacklist were Senator Gary Hart and Walter Cronkite. In testimony before the committee, Lenkowsky had denied a part in the blacklisting, but several USIA employees contradicted him. Republican Senator Charles Mathias of Maryland said, "The only thing that emerges clearly from the hearing record is that the USIA is, and has been, the object of an intense politicization process during this administration." Mathias said, "Lenkowsky was not responsible for it, but he is part of it and he has arrived on the scene at a time when all evidence suggests that we must put a stop to it." The committee voted 11 to six against the nomination, the first time it has rejected a Reagan appointment outright.When asked for a comment today, Lenkowsky's office told us he continues to stand by his earlier statements to the committee regarding the blacklist. Jim?

LEHRER: Just after two o'clock this afternoon the Associated Press moved one of its periodic news advisories to editors: "The House continues to debate matters unrelated to either defense spending or religious meetings in schools. Consequently, lead prospects for p.m. schools and p.m. defense spending are unclear." Judy Woodruff will now tell us what unrelated matters made it so unclear. Judy? House Reprimand

JUDY WOODRUFF: What happened today, Jim, was that a feud that has been simmering for weeks between Democrats and a group of conservative Republicans finally reached the boiling point. It all started a few weeks ago when the GOP's Newt Gingrich, a Congressman from Georgia, publicly lambasted some Democratic House members for writing a letter to the head of the Marxist government in Nicaragua. On May 3rd, after the official business of the day was over, Gingrich took the House floor and not only continued his attack against his colleagues, but also challenged them to answer the charges. There was no response. What the TV cameras that were broadcasting from the House that evening did not show, however, was that the chamber was empty. Democrats immediately complained to House Speaker Thomas O'Neill, who retaliated last week by ordering TV cameras to pan the House floor so that when Republican members were speaking it was plain they were talking to an empty chamber.

[voice-over] Well, today Congressman Gingrich took the floor during daytime hours for a change to restate his original accusation, that the Democrats had no right to interfere in either the House's television policy or the nation's foreign policy.

Rep. NEWT GINGRICH, (R) Georgia: Is it truly appropriate for members of this body to write a foreign dictator in a period when the United States is in conflict with that government, and to send that letter saying what that letter said? I happen to think that if you read the Logan Act -- and I would suggest to you that there are not many members who went back and read the debate in 1799; I have -- there is no question but that the Founding Fathers felt strongly that members of the legislative branch should not be involved. That's a structural question --

Rep. JIM WRIGHT, (D) Texas: Well, now the gentleman -- will the gentleman yield --

Rep. GINGRICH: Let me finish and I'll yield in just a second.

Rep. WRIGHT: Is the gentleman implying that members of the Congress -- is the gentleman implying that it's broken a law --

Rep. GINGRICH: I do not yield yet, Mr. --

Rep. WRIGHT: Is that what the gentleman is trying to say?

Rep. GINGRICH: I reclaim my time. When you look at statements of gentlemen in this body -- statements about South Vietnam, about Laos, about Cambodia, about Angola, about Afghanistan, about Ethiopia, about Grenada, about Nicaragua, and now about El Salvador, and you see a consistent -- what some of us would regard as inaccurate judgment. Not, I say to you, and I say this as strongly as I can, not a question of their patriotism, not a question of their good intentions, not a question of their decency, but a question of their --

Rep. JOE MOAKLEY, (D) Massachusetts, Acting Speaker: If the gentleman would yield --

Rep. GINGRICH: I will not yield yet. A question of their judgment, a question of the historical record, a question of what they said and what happened in reality. Now, I think those are very serious charges.Not, as the Speaker would characterize them, of charging anyone of being un-American. It is perfectly American to be wrong.It is perfectly American to have bad judgment. It is perfectly legitimate for people to believe in a philosophy which doesn't work. Is it wrong for those of us who have grown up as historians, who believe in looking at history to raise questions of history? Is it wrong for us to go back and do the research and lay it out? I am always delighted to yield to our distinguished Tip.

THOMAS O'NEILL, (D) Massachusetts, Speaker of the House: My personal opinion is this.You deliberately stood in that well before an empty House and challenged these people, and you challenged their Americanism. And it's the lowest thing that I've ever seen in my 32 years in Congress.

Rep. GINGRICH: Mr. Speaker, if I may reclaim my time, let me say, first of all, Mr. Speaker --

Rep. TRENT LOTT, (R) Mississippi: I move that we take the Speaker's words down.

Rep. WRIGHT: The clerk will record the words taken down.

WOODRUFF: After the clerk reread O'Neill's words, Democratic Congressman Joe Moakley, who was acting as speaker, asked by Republican Trent Lott for a ruling on the propriety of O'Neill's comment.

Rep. LOTT: If the chair would rule, then I would like to make a request.

Rep. MOAKLEY: The chair feels that that type of characterization should not be used in debate.

Rep. LOTT: After the chair's ruling, Mr. Speaker, I ask you now to consent at this point that the Speaker be allowed to continue in order.

Rep. MOAKLEY: Without objection.

Rep. WILLIAM THOMAS, (R) California: Would the gentleman from Mississippi indicate to me the intent and purpose of that unanimous request?

Rep. LOTT: The Speaker's words have been taken down, the chair has ruled that they were not in proper order of conduct on this floor, and based on that I now ask that the Speaker be allowed to continue in order so that we can continue this debate and so that the Speaker can more properly state his position.

Speaker O'NEILL: I was expressing my opinion. As a matter of fact, I was expressing my opinion very mildly, because I think much worse than what I said.

Rep. MOAKLEY: Will the gentleman yield? Would the gentleman yield?

Rep. LOTT: I yield.

Rep. VIN WEBER, (R) Minnesota: I thank my colleague for yielding, and as long as the Speaker's on the floor I would like to ask the Speaker to respond to a question. We're spending a lot of time here discussing very emotionally charged words. I have a strong bias in favor of the position of the gentleman from Georgia, but I would ask the Speaker --

Speaker O'NEILL: On the floor -- would the gentleman yield?

Rep. WEBER: -- if I can conclude my question. The point is -- the point is the Speaker has accused --

Speaker O'NEILL: I don't mind anybody expressing their opinion if there are members on the floor -- [yelling]

Rep. MOAKLEY: Would the gentlemen be seated? Will the gentleman from Georgia yield?

Speaker O'NEILL: The gentleman, Mr. Weber, we should indentify him, and the gentleman Mr. Walker, if they would express their opinions to the members of the floor it would be fine. [yelling]

Rep. WEBER: Point of parliamentary inquiry? Do the rules of this body apply to the Speaker of the House? That's a serious parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Speaker.

Rep. MOAKLEY: Does the gentleman from Georgia yield, for parliamentary?

Rep. GINGRICH: I yield for parliamentary inquiry.

Rep. WEBER: My parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Speaker, is, do the rules of the House apply to the Speaker of the House?

Rep. MOAKLEY: The rules of the House apply to all members of the House.

Rep. WEBER: Including the Speaker of the House.

Rep. MOAKLEY: All members of the House.

Rep. WEBER: I thank the gentleman for answering my parliamentary inquiry. Will the gentleman yield?

Rep. GINGRICH: I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota.

Rep. WEBER: I thank the gentleman for yielding. My question of the Speaker is since the Speaker has on several occasions accused the gentleman from Georgia, as well as others of us implicitly, of impugning the patriotism of members on this side of the aisle and accusing them of un-American activity, I think we minimally have a right to know the specific statements to which the Speaker is referring.

Rep. LOTT: Would the gentleman yield on that point for an answer?

Rep. WEBER: Would the Speaker be willing to tell us specifically which statements he was referring to when he accused the gentleman from Georgia of calling members on his side of the aisle un-American?

Rep. LOTT: Would the gentleman yield on that point for an answer?

Rep. WEBER: I have the time and I will yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Speaker O'NEILL: I would yield to Mr. Obey --

Rep. GINGRICH: You don't have the right to yield, Mr. Speaker. You don't have the right to yield, Mr. Speaker. I yield to you.

Speaker O'NEILL: You don't want to hear from one of the gentleman --

Rep. GINGRICH: I want to hear from you. You made the statement, Mr. Speaker --

Rep. WEBER: I consider it a very high form of criticism when I am accused of impugning the patriotism of another member. That criticism did not come from the gentleman from Wisconsin or from the gentleman from Texas. It came from the Speaker of the House, and I would like the Speaker, not the gentleman from Texas, not the gentleman from Wisconsin, but the Speaker to tell us exactly what he was referring to, and I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Rep. GINGRICH: The Speaker made the allegation earlier that I read my paper into the record when the House was empty, and implied that it's because I was afraid to be criticized. Now, I think we're proving today that we're willing to rise in the House when there are a number of members in the House, that we're willing to talk with some of the most eloquent and intelligent members of the Democratic Party and that we're not trying to hide anything. I just want to make that point.

Speaker O'NEILL: You were there for one and one purpose alone, in my opinion, and that was to imply that members of this side were un-American in their activities. You stopped, you waited, your motions. Will you respond? You knew that there was nobody here. You knew that there was nobody here.

WOODRUFF: That reprimand of the Speaker, which happened to be by a fellow Democrat who was acting as Speaker so Mr. O'Neill could take the House floor, was highly unusual. In fact, it was the first such official rebuke of the chief officer of the House anyone could remember. And another note: normally when a member is reprimanded, he is not permitted to speak for the rest of the day, but as you saw, House Republican leader Trent Lott asked that O'Neill be permitted to keep talking because Lott said the Republicans had made their point by winning the reprimand. Pretty lively, Jim.

LEHRER: Yes, then and only then did the House take up its regular schedule. It never did get to the defense budget and to an item called the MX missiles, but late this afternoon it did take up the other item, the so-called equal access bill, the one giving high school students the right to organize religious clubs, just like they can a band or a drama club. A two-thirds vote was needed, and early this evening it failed, falling 11 votes short.The debate was heated and crossed party lines, and here's a short sample of that. "Son of School Prayer"

Rep. HAMILTON FISH, Jr., (R) New York: This bill comes before us today with three counts against it. It is bad on procedural grounds; it is bad on policy grounds. Most importantly, it is a back-door attempt to amend the Constitution without the benefit of appropriate process.

Rep. CHARLES E. SCHUMER, (D) New York: Mr. Speaker, if this bill passes we will add a fourth 'R' to the curriculum of our schools -- reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic and religion. Mr. Speaker, some of the proponents of this bill have brought up very legitimate objections to what's happening in our schools. Students should be allowed to bring a Bible to school. They should be allowed to discuss religion in their school. Unfortunately the Bonker bill goes much further. It would allow three students in many school districts to get together and invite devil worship, Sun Myung Moon, or any other cult into their school and it couldn't be stopped.

Rep. WILLIAM GOODLING, (R) Pennsylvania: Tell me how this legislation can possibly allow anybody to come in from the outside and do anything with young minds in the school. They are not invited inside. They are not allowed to come inside. The school makes that determination.

Rep. BILL NELSON, (D) Florida: I would think back to out Founding Fathers when they set forth a course that provided for separation of church and state. But they did not intend the separation of the state and of God.

LEHRER: The bill had been labeled "Son of School Prayer" because it came into real being following defeat of the school prayer amendment in the Senate earlier this year. Its sponsor in the House is Congressman Don Bonker, Democrat of Washington state. Among those opposing it is Congressman Gary Ackerman, Democrat of New York. Congressman Ackerman, what's wrong with letting children form religious clubs in their schools?

Rep. GARY ACKERMAN: There's a lot wrong with this particular piece of legislation. First of all, there's a difference between having a club such as a chess club, such as having a band, such as having a baseball team and the actual teaching and preaching of religion in our public schools. What this bill would do is it would have used public money, a public school building, public electricity, public lights, public school teachers' supervision of the actual practice of religion. Not just silent prayer, not just school prayer, but the actual practice of religion in the schools.

LEHRER: Is that what your bill would have done, Congressman Bonker?

Rep. DON BONKER: Of course not. I think what we're attempting to do is remove what is, in effect, discrimination against students who want to gather for religious purposes, whether it be a Bible study or prayer or just sharing their personal faith. We're talking about non-sponsored school activity during non-instructional periods, student initiated, on a voluntary basis. If you allow a Young Republicans Club to form, if you allow a young group who are associated with the local Kiwanis Club to form, why should you deny students equal access for religious purposes?

LEHRER: What's wrong with that?

Rep. ACKERMAN: There's a separation of church and state which our Founding Fathers were wise enough to put into our Constitution. We have freedom of religion in this country, and people are allowed, thank God, to pray in their own churches, in their homes, in their synagogues and anywhere else for that matter.

LEHRER: But not in the school.

Rep. ACKERMAN: But not in the schools because we would be providing public facilities for the encouragement and the establishment of religion. What would happen under this bill is you could have a group or students request school property and school time to have a club. The school could formulate a rule and say you need 50 students to have a club. What happens if you only have three Jewish students or six Catholic students? Basically what you would be doing is only permitting those who belong to the majority religion in any particular school district or area to form a club. You'd be de facto establishing a religion in that particular institution.

LEHRER: Is he right about that?

Rep. BONKER: Of course not.

LEHRER: Well, somebody would have to make these decisions.

Rep. BONKER: Well, first of all, we're trying to maintain govemment neutrality. I don't think government should, through its subdivisions, promote or establish religion, nor should it prescribe prayer, school prayer, and that's why I opposed the constitutional amendment on school prayer, and so do many of the sponsors of this bill. And what we're trying to do is find that balance in the establishment clause between disallowing a government sanction of religious activity and also the freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion -- which is also guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

LEHRER: Well, let's take a specific example that Congressman Ackerman has used, or let's make up one. Let's say that you've got a school and there are three students who are Jewish. and they come to the principal and say, "We want to get together every day," or whenever -- once a week or whatever. However, a week before, or when this thing was passed into law, assuming it had been passed into law, that principal decided you had to have five or more to do that. Is that the kind of thing that you --

Rep. ACKERMAN: That's exactly --

LEHRER: Now, would --

Rep. BONKER: The legislation, Jim, does not establish a numerical standard. In other words, that's up to the school districts to determine.

LEHRER: That's his point.

Rep. BONKER: Okay, but let me carry it a step farther. We intend for a judicial remedy provision to go into the bill which would be the enforcement mechanism, which would in effect say that if you discriminate against a group, regardless of size -- small group, large group or whatever -- because of their size, than that would be contrary to the intent of the bill. And I imagine the court would favor, you know, the position in the bill. I would maintain that, if anything, this legislation protects religious minorities because the current policy now in most school districts is to allow this kind of activity, and they can prohibit smaller groups to meet. Under this bill they couldn't.

LEHRER: Congressman Ackerman?

Rep. ACKERMAN: That's very easy to say now. I offered that amendment in committee. The committee vote was 33 to three. I offered an amendment that said you could not discriminate on a group regardless of its size. And we were told by the sponsors of the bill that that would defeat the entire intent of the bill. They said, "How could you afford to provide space to any group or two or three students that requested it?" And my response to that was, "If you have freedom of religion, you can't discriminate because you're cheap." Government should not be getting into the business of providing churches and turning our schools into churches for those people who want to worship. We have places for that, and we allow it.

LEHRER: Okay, having resolved that one, let's go to the other issue as to who defines what is a religion, Congressman Bonker? I noticed in some of the debate that I saw this afternoon on C-Span that one of the major points was, who decides whether or not religion A is in fact a religion? And you could study or worship demonology or whatever. How do you handle that?

Rep. BONKER: The bill doesn't attempt to define religion. I think that's a very risky thing --

LEHRER: Who would?Who would do it?

Rep. BONKER: Well, ultimately the court would. If there is a particular group that's parading around as a religion, and if it proves to be disruptive, then it's contrary to the intent of the bill which says that any unlawful disruption would not be allowed. But ultimately the school authorities would have the discretion on whether or not activities can meet on campus. But if it's going to get into a difficult or discretionary area and somebody wants to bring suit against the school district, then the court would have to make that determination.

Rep. ACKERMAN: Jim, you put your finger on the problem right there. We have no definition of religion in this country, anywhere in the Constitution, anywhere in the law, anywhere in this bill. We don't know what a religion is other than it's somebody's belief, and people here are free to believe in anything they want to. Under this particular bill any group of students can say they have a religion. They have a religion and they want to have the whatever-you-want-to-call-it chess club, and if they are denied access to the school, that entire school district -- every school in it -- would lose all -- every single dollar's worth -- of its federal funding under this particular bill.If you deny an athletic club, if you deny the chess club, if you deny the pinochle club -- access as a club -- nothing happens to you. If you deny the political science club, the debating club, nothing happens to you. But if you deny one particular group of students masquerading as a religion, actually a religion -- I don't know what a religion is. If you deny them, your entire school district will have no federal funds.

LEHRER: Is that right, Congressman?

Rep. BONKER: Well, I have to disagree, respectfully, again. The fact is that many of these other groups are not the source of discrimination, but religion is, and it is because of that 1962 ruling which applied to school prayer but did not address this particular issue. So many school districts err on the side of caution by disallowing students from gathering for religious purposes, simply because they fear the ACLU is going to take them to court. That doesn't apply to chess clubs and to debating clubs and to some of the other examples mentioned by Congressman Ackerman.

LEHRER: Congressman Bonker, is this dead now as a result of this vote? You had a majority vote, but it required a two-thirds and you lost by 11 votes. What happens now? Anything?

Rep. BONKER: Well, we had an overwhelming majority, and we came very close. But I think it's unlikely that we're going to bring this issue back to the floor this year.

LEHRER: Any action in the Senate, or is it --

Rep. BONKER: Well, there is a Senate bill and there is a lot of support for it, but I think it's no use for them to go through this painful exercise if there is not House action contemplated.

LEHRER: Congressman Ackerman, let me ask you, just as a matter of procedure. Your side won, but it actually lost. In other words, an overwhelming majority of the House really did want the Bonker bill enacted into law, but it was because of a -- now, how did that two-thirds thing come about anyhow?

Rep. BONKER: Well, I might mention that we have --

LEHRER: I'm going to get back and let you answer that question in a minute.

Rep. BONKER: We have a procedure in the House which, if a bill comes to the Speaker and it's non-controversial, he can place it under suspension and that means limited debate and no amendments. We pay a heavy price for it, and that price is that it requires a two-thirds vote today.

LEHRER: And when you agreed to that you thought you had two-thirds vote in the pocket, right?

Rep. BONKER: Well, on Congressman Ackerman's committee, which is the most liberal committee in the House, it came out with a 30 to three vote. So we were pretty confident then.

LEHRER: Congressman Ackerman?

Rep. ACKERMAN: The problem with the bill was that the supporters of it wanted the whole hog, and rather than allow the bill to be amended on the floor of the Congress, they decided to go through the procedure that they did which would not allow for a full debate, which would not allow for an amendment that would have made the bill, certainly, not acceptable to everybody but certainly more tolerable to a lot of members, and in doing that, in trying to get the whole piece of cake, they just went down the tubes under the procedures that they opted to go for.

LEHRER: And from your side of it, you'll take the victory any way you can get it, right?

Rep. ACKERMAN: A win is a win.

LEHRER: All right. Gentlemen, thank you both very much. Robin?

MacNEIL: Late today Senator Howard Baker, the Republican majority leader, announced that a compromise has been reached with moderate Republicans on a three-year program to reduce the federal deficit. Baker said the package would cut the deficit by $144 billion. The overall reduction in defense spending would remain the same as President Reagan and Republican leaders already have agreed upon. However, about $2 billion would be removed from the synthetic fuels program, and the same amount would be added to funds to be spent on domestic spending.

The Supreme Court ruled today on another question of access -- access by politicians for campaign signs on public property. The court ruled six to three in a Los Angeles case that a city wanting to improve its appearance can remove political signs from its property without violating the right of freedom of speech.The majority ruling said that the visual assault constituted by an accumulation of signs constitute "a significant substantive evil within the city's power to prohibit."

[Video postcard -- Little River, Tennessee] The Zumwalts: Legacy of the War

MacNEIL: Last week, the federal district court in Brooklyn made history by announcing an out-of-court settlement of $180 million for Vietnam veterans who believe they were harmed by Agent Orange. Seven chemical companies which made the herbicide agreed to pay that sum into a fund for veterans. A formal hearing to test whether that settlement is fair is still six to eight weeks away, but lawyers are already ironing out details of how the thousands of claimants may be served by the fund. Charlayne Hunter-Gault has more. Charlayne?

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: The Agent Orange suit may be settled, but that is not the case for countless numbers of veterans exposed to the chemical during the Vietnam War.During the course of the trial preparations, we talked with a number of exposed veterans who recounted stories of the continuing turmoil and pain they and their families have suffered since they returned home. Most all of the veterans are suffering in similar ways. But we did run across one who is suffering in a different way. He is Elmo Zumwalt, III, eldest son of retired Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Jr., chief of naval operations during the war in the early '70s. For both father and son their particular Vietnam experience has come to be one that they each regret. But the son is not bitter.

ELMO ZUMWALT, III [with client]: I'm getting ready to have to file this disclosure statement and plan and a Chapter 11. I need to get some advice from you.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: Zumwalt has not let his regrets about Vietnam prevent him from building a good life since he returned home. Today he has a successful law practice in Fayetteville, North Carolina, is married and the father of two young children. But last year the 37-year-old Zumwalt learned he had lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph glands that often lingers for years but almost always is fatal. It wasn't too long before he made a connection between cancer and his exposure to Agent Orange during his one-year tour of duty in Vietnam.

Mr. ZUMWALT: I can't say that the very instant that I was told I immediately connected it with Agent Orange. I certainly did not do that, but it wasn't long after that I started thinking about it and started researching it and reading it and talking to physicians and talking to other veterans about it.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: But already, before the cancer diagnosis, Zumwalt and his wife had begun to suspect that Agent Orange might have taken a toll with their eight-year-old son. He was born with learning disabilities.

KATHY ZUMWALT: When we realized that Russell was developmentally delayed, I had at the same time been reading articles about people who had been in Vietnam who had been exposed to Agent Orange, and they were finding in their children various defects. They did not specifically say what the gamut ran as far as these defects were concerned, but at that time I remember asking Elmo had he ever been exposed to Agent Orange because there seemed to be some sort of linkage.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: Zumwalt was hopeful that the Agent Orange class action suit would prove that linkage, but the suit was settled before it came to trial, so the connection remains legally and scientifically unproven. Zumwalt was asked to be a plaintiff in the suit but declined, saying he wanted to spend what time is left preparing a strong financial future for his family.

For Kathy Zumwalt the money he is working so hard to save can't buy the future she had hoped for with her husband.

Mrs. ZUMWALT: You know, you have a life that you think in terms of, you know, being 75, 80 years old, and then suddenly, when you are told of a terminal illness, those dreams are gone.

Mr. ZUMWALT: Kathy, you know, is against the Vietnam War and was against me going into Vietnam. And she's going to be a very, very bitter person if it turns out that Agent Orange was from the Vietnam experience.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: Zumwalt shares with many veterans the belief that Agent Orange is responsible for his health problems. But still his story has an irony that most other Agent Orange cases do not have: his own father's involvement. Admiral Zumwalt was one of the more controversial men to ever run the Navy, forcing the Navy to liberalize many of its strict regulations during his tenure as chief of naval operations from 1970 to 1974. In 1962 he wrote a report urging the United States not to get involved militarily in Vietnam, but by 1968 he was commander of the naval forces there and committed to winning the war. A year later his son Elmo volunteered for riverboat duty there.

Admiral ELMO ZUMWALT, Jr.: I had the power to pervent his coming to Vietnam and was asked whether or not I would permit him to do so. I couldn't have been the father my son wanted me to be had I not let him go there.

Mr. ZUMWALT [voice-over]: Running riverboats was a very dangerous situation. There was a tremendous amount of responsibility in running an operation like that in a combat environment, and, you know, it was a test and it was a test that I wanted to take. The helicopter pilots used to be required to ride the boat so they could get a feel for what we went through so they could react as quickly as possible when we called them in. And I'll never forget a helicopter pilot saying, "You know, we're the hunters up there in the air, but it's obvious that you all are the hunted down here," And that is a precarious place to be.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: To protect his sailors, Admiral Zumwalt ordered stepping up the three-year-old campaign of Agent Orange spraying, especially in the Ca-Mau Peninsula area, an area where his son was patrolling.

Adm. ZUMWALT: You must remember that we were watching the defoliation take place at a time when, in my case, for example, my sailors were taking casualties at the rate of 6% per month. So that on the average my sailors and officers had about three-quarters -- about a 75% probability of being a casualty during their year there. Anything that could be done to reduce the fearsome casualties that we were taking was an intelligent thing to do.

Mr. ZUMWALT: The areas around us were heavily defoliated, so defoliated that they looked like burned-out areas, many of them. You know, almost every day that you were in riverboat patrol you were being subjected to the Agent Orange factor.

Adm. ZUMWALT: It is the case that the particular area in Vietnam in which my son's boat operated a great deal of the time was an area that was sprayed upon my recommendation. In that sense it's particularly ironic that, in a sense, if the causal relationship can be established, I have become an instrument of my son's own tragedy.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: The Admiral is convinced that he made the right decision, that spraying Agent Orange may have saved his son's life in Vietnam as well as the lives of thousands of others. But what concerns him most is the futility of the sacrifice he sees his son and other veterans making.

Adm. ZUMWALT: My son's illness has caused me to recall even more vividly the tragedies that flowed from the tragic war in Vietnam. If one knew then what we know now -- Namely, that the United States would make a decision here to lose that war -- I would far have preferred that we never had gotten involved in the war.

Mr. ZUMWALT: As far as being bitter about it, I intellectually made those decisions. I am the one that decided to volunteer to go onto the riverboats. I'm the one that volunteered to run those risks, and you know, I was a creator of my own destiny. And I have a hard time understanding about being bitter, because if I am going to be bitter, I'm going to have to be bitter with myself that I made those decisions, and I can't say that I necessarily regret making those decisions.

HUNTER-GAULT: Zumwalt says he has not yet decided whether to file a claim for his share of the settlement in the Agent Orange lawsuit. Today he and his father are in California where the younger Zumwalt is starting a new, highly experimental form of cancer therapy. Robin? Book Review: The Witches of Eastwick

MacNEIL: Finally tonight we have a book review. The author is one of America's best known and highly regarded writers, John Updike. He has a new novel called The Witches of Eastwick. Our reviewer is Richard Locke.

What is The Witches of Eastwick about?

RICHARD LOCKE, reviewer: It's about three real witches who live in a small Rhode Island seaside town in the late 1960s, about 1969. And their witchery is both real and yet it's immersed in a very realistic sense of their friendship. Three women, recently divorced, in their 30s, and one is a sculptress, one is a cellist, one is the small-town newspaper's reporter, a writer.

MacNEIL: In what way are they real -- is their witchery real? Mr. LOCKE: Well, the witchery comes very subtly into the language of the book, which is people hiss or cackle or laugh. But it's also very realistic within the actual telling of the story. Quite early in the book one of the witches who is a kind of an earth mother conjures up a thunderstorm which is very realistically described with all of Updike's most gorgeous and supple language.At another point someone flies, someone turns a wooden kitchen spoon into a snake. And as the novel develops these supernatural elements begin to intrude more and more or are conjured up, really more and more. And they become gradually darker, to the point where actual malevolence begins to take over.

MacNEIL: Is this a horror novel?

Mr. LOCKE: It's not because of the sense of the community of the women. Their witchery, as it were, is a metaphor for John Updike to discuss women's friendships in the late '60s as women were coming into their liberated own. At the same time he makes use of a kind of Hawthornian tale of the supernatural in order to remind us of that balance of nature and society which always fascinates him so much. He's always interested in the tensions between the natural world and, very much, the domestic world of his characters. He's into the friendship of these three recently divorced women living in their small town, which is very elaborately described. Comes a man who, little by little, we recognize as the Devil himself, or at least a minor devil of a particular kind of rambunctious New York millionaire who has an alchemical lab, fooling around with chemicals down in his basement of a vast mansion that he's bought out on an island. But these are not the emphases. It's not so much the rattle and the roll of a whole elaborate supernatural plot as much as the feelings between the women and between this very seductive devil of a man whom they tend to visit, who interrupts the whole skein of adulteries and fornications that is very much the center of the sentimental side of the book. Out of this disruption of this devilish creature the whole stability of the town and of nature itself is disrupted. And this is always done in very much of the style of a rather realistic New Yorker short story. That's some of the charm of the book.

MacNEIL: What kind of feelings does it leave you with?

Mr. LOCKE: A sense that Updike as a writer is able to conjure up a sense of the real natural order of both social and the external natural world. One has a sense that this little town with its crooked streets and its superette and its laundry and small-town newspaper, and also very much of the life of women, the domestic life, a life of people who are coming out of an earlier definition of themselves as women and who, in their friendship for one another, find a new kind of strength. The three women, of course, are witches, but they're also the three Graces. One is a sculptress, one is a cellist, as we said; one is a writer. He's able to weave in this realistic and, as it were, a mythological element with great dexterity, and yields a great sense of affection for these people. At the end, of course, after a series of disasters, including terrible witches' spells and actually a very violent murder and suicide, which is very unusual for Updike to do quite from the point of view of the victim, what emerges is a sense of nature absorbing all, as the nature around the society reasserts its power and the black magic is turned back into white magic.

MacNEIL: Updike is now in his early 50s?

Mr. LOCKE: Yes.

MacNEIL: He's written a tremendous amount. How great is he?

Mr. LOCKE: I think that he's one of the very finest novelists that we have in America today. I mean, I feel that at the age of 52 he's written 28 books in 26 years. This is his 11th novel. He is a proficient and remarkable literary critic as well as a novelist and short-stort writer, and I believe that with, let's say, Saul Bellow, Thomas Pinchon and Norman Mailer, he represents the very best of what we've been able to see in American literature since the Second World War. He's very much a disciple, in a way, of Nabokov, whose dexterity and play with language he very much imitates and evokes. But at the same time he's one of our most all-American writers, and of course he's the great example of the domestic realist of our time -- a sense of what life today is lived like in our families, in our towns; life as it's not conjured up into some vast political or elaborately intellectual battle. Not a European novel, in that sense, but very much of an American novel. And it's that great sort of realistic tradition -- I mentioned Hawthorne before -- in which ideas spring out of the imagination of society and nature in a kind of tense and yet eventually reconcilable balance. He's quite remarkable. I think he's one of our very best writers.

MacNEIL: Thank you.

Once again the book we've been discussing is The Witches of Eastwick, written by John Updike and published by Knopf. Jim?

LEHRER: The major stories of the day again. There's a dispute about the extent of it, but opponents of President Marcos have done unexpectedly well in the Philippine legislative elections.

The kindnapped couple from Columbus, Ohio, was finally safe in Sri Lanka.

A Senate committee rejected the nomination of a USIA official on grounds he helped politicize the agency. He's the first Reagan nominee rejected outright by a Republican-controlled Senate committee.

The House said no to a bill that would have permitted religious clubs on public school property.

President Reagan and President de la Madrid of Mexico exchanged pleasantries and disagreements over Central America.

And those of you who were with us Friday might have wondered how Sister Marion Irvine did in Saturday's Olympic trials in Seattle. 131st place is where she finished, but that's 131 out of 250 who ran the 26-mile marathon course, and that's not bad for a 54-year-old Catholic school principal who didn't even take up running until six years ago. It's not bad for anyone else, for that matter.