The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. Leading the news this Tuesday, another series of mail bombs was discovered at the Jacksonville, Florida headquarters of the NAACP. Hundreds perhaps thousands were reported in anti-government protests in Romania. At least three died and fifty-four were injured in a train-truck collision near Stockton, California. We'll have details in our News Summary in a moment. Judy Woodruff is in Washington tonight. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: After the News Summary we focus first on the mysterious bombings in the South. We have excerpts from today's news conferences by officials in Savannah and Washington, then get an insider's view from Justice Department Correspondent Nina Totenberg. Next the violence in Romania. We talk with two exiles about the situation there, political scientist Vladimir Tismaneanu and author Norman Manea. Then a report on saving farming jobs in the strawberry fields and finally we look at a citizen's effort to monitor a nuclear reactor.NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: The FBI issued a nationwide warning today to judges, lawyers and others involved with civil rights cases. They were told to be wary of suspicious packages received through the mail. The warning came after a string of mail bombs that have killed two people in the last four days. This afternoon, authorities in Jacksonville, Florida, confirmed that a package sent to the NAACP offices there contained a bomb. Police said that the explosive device was similar to two other bombs that killed an Alabama judge on Saturday and a Georgia civil rights lawyer yesterday. FBI Director William Sessions today linked those three bombs and one found yesterday in an Atlanta courthouse. At a press conference in Washington, Sessions said the bombings may be racially motivated.

WILLIAM SESSIONS: When there are federal judges involved who have heard these cases which involve racial matters and when the NAACP headquarters receives a package that is a suspicious package, and when you have an alderman who is killed, you have to have that in the back of your mind. I think it makes good sense that in this kind of climate without any hysteria and without any reason for not opening any package that if there's a suspect package that you in fact call the person who supposedly mailed it to you, or if you're still suspicious about, that you call a postal inspector or call the FBI or call the local police and do not open it.

MR. MacNeil: We'll have more on this story following the News Summary. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: There were reports of gun fire today in the streets of Romania. Unconfirmed reports said that as many as 2000 people have been killed by government forces since demonstrations against the hardline Communist regime began on Saturday. Meanwhile world leaders, including those in the Soviet Union, condemned the harsh crackdown. At the White House, Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said the U.S. considered the use of force totally unjustified. He said the U.S. was talking with its allies with other countries about some sort of coordinated response. Romania has sealed its borders, barring journalists and nearly all foreigners. We'll have more on this story later in the program.

MR. MacNeil: East Germany today announced it would create a new opening in the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate before Christmas. The ornamental gate has been a symbol of the division of the city and the two Germanies. The announcement came as West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl made his first official visit to East Germany, where he was greeted with calls for reunification. Kohl met in Dresden with East German Premier Hans Mudrow. We have a report by Ian Glover James of Independent Television News.

MR. JAMES: There were high expectations for this meeting and the Dresden crowds shouting, "Germany, one fatherland", filled an air of anticipation. Helmut Kohl's greeting carried the promise for Hans Mudrow's government of economic aid and more, but at a price and at first Mudrow seemed to keep his distance. All day West German flags outnumbered East German as the Dresden crowds mobbed Kohl shouting for German unity. And the talks produced quick results. Both men had got on well. Kohl spoke of German self- determination and one a symbolic concession, the reopening of the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate. Before the ruins of Dresden's World War II destruction, Kohl paused to lay a wreath and ponder Germany's future. In a speech which paid respect to East German and wider European feelings, Kohl said, "My aim remains, if history allows it, the unity of our nation." He picked those words carefully but no one in this vast crowd misjudged the moment. They were cheering the prospect of a united Germany.

MS. WOODRUFF: The Soviet Union today repeated a warning that German reunification could threaten the political stability of Europe. Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze issued that warning during an unprecedented visit to NATO's military headquarters. It was the first time a Soviet official had visited the building in Brussels. After talking with NATO officials, Shevardnadze said cooperation between the NATO and Warsaw Pacts should continue. Back in Moscow, the Soviet government survived its first no confidence vote in parliament over its economic reform plan. The plan puts more emphasis on producing consumer goods and food as opposed to industrial goods, but it retains most of the features of a centrally planned economy. That has been criticized by some members of parliament who believe the country should have more of a free market system.

MR. MacNeil: In Czechoslovakia today the Communist premier endorsed opposition leader Vaclav Havel for president. We have a report narrated by Louise Bates of Worldwide Television News.

MS. BATES: The Communist premier made the dramatic announcement during a speech outlining the coalition government's plans for the following year. Marion Chalper said his main goals were free market reforms and democratic elections. But the first priority he said should be to install Vaclav Havel as caretaker president to ensure stability until elections next June or July. It's a major victory for Havel's supporters who are still celebrating the death of the Communist system they brought about in one month. The brutal police action against demonstrators on November 17th which sparked the mass movement is now cheerfully parroted by Czechoslovaks and there's no indication that their optimism about the future is ill founded. A special party congress later this month is expected to continue the reforms in the run-up to elections.

MS. WOODRUFF: A Pentagon spokesman said today that relations between the United States and Panama appear to be deteriorated. Panama accused the U.S. of arrogance following two shooting incidents which resulted in the death of a U.S. Marine and the wounding of a Panamanian policeman. The policeman told reporters today that he did nothing to provoke a U.S. army lieutenant who shot him yesterday. The U.S. soldier told authorities that the Panamanian appeared to be reaching for his gun. The Pentagon said today that the incident was under investigation since the American was not authorized to carry a gun.

MR. MacNeil: The government reported that inflation increased moderately last month. The Commerce Department said consumer prices rose .4 percent in November as higher food and energy costs offset a drop in gasoline prices. The November figure brought the annual inflation rate to 4.6 percent. The government also reported that housing construction starts declined 4.7 percent last month after a sharp increase in October. High interest rates, the savings & loan crisis, and high apartment vacancy rates were suggested as reasons for the building's slump.

MS. WOODRUFF: An Amtrak train crashed into a truck today near Stockton, California, killing at least three people, and injuring 54 passengers, 17 of them critically. The crash happened in dense fog. It caused the train to derail and the engine and to explode. The train's engineer and fireman were killed as was the driver of the truck. That's it for our summary of the day's news. Just ahead, the bombings and bomb threats in the South, Romania's crackdown, a Catholic inner-city church falls on hard times, and a partnership that changed modern art. FOCUS - DEADLY MESSAGE

MS. WOODRUFF: First tonight the bombings and bomb threats that have rocked the nations court system and claimed two lives. The incidents have focused in the United States 11th Circuit Appeals Court which handles cases for Georgia, Alabama and Florida. A fourth bomb was discovered today inside a package delivered to the headquarters of the NAACP in Jacksonville, Florida. According to FBI reports the bomb was similar to one found yesterday in a Federal Court Building in Atlanta. Both of those bombs had been sent in the mail and were safely removed. A similar bomb exploded yesterday in Savannah, Georgia, killing lawyer Robert Roberston in his office. Robinson had argued civil rights cases and represented the NAACP. On Saturday, a federal appeals court judge was killed at his home in Birmingham, Alabama when he opened a package with a similar bomb inside. Judge Robert Vance was killed instantly, his wife was seriously injured. Officials from the FBI and the post office investigated unit spoke of the similarities between the incidents from Savannah this afternoon.

WILLIAM HINSHAW, FBI: We are continuing to look for the common link between Judge Vance, Robert Robertson and the NAACP and while the investigation encompasses anything it is focused at this point on those common links. We believe the three packages were essentially the same type of package and device that is based on our investigation and the package based on what we recovered in Atlanta measured 12 inches long, 9 inches wide and was 4 and 1/2 inches thick. It was wrapped in brown paper and it has a read parcel post mailing label in the upper left hand corner. It bore stamps rather than metered postage stamp and it also has string tied around it to form a cross. Christmas season is the season when the postal services experiences the heaviest volume of parcels. And my advice is particularly addressed to any one who is associated with the NAACP and any one that has been associated with any 11th Circuit decisions or actions with in the past year. Those individuals should beware of any parcels that they receive. Even though they may recognize the sender as Bill said they should contact that sender and verify from them the mailings of the parcels.

MS. WOODRUFF: The FBI is leading the investigation in to the bombings. FBI Director William Sessions also held a press conference this afternoon in Washington.

WILLIAM SESSIONS: I think that people who are involved in the legal decisions both as lawyers and as members of the courts are always at risk because many of these circumstances are the result of very closely held convictions of people and sometimes anger is very close to the skin.

MS. WOODRUFF: To give us the latest on the story we talk to Nina Totenberg, Legal Affair Correspondent for National Public Radio. Nina what does the FBI think is going on.

NINA TOTENBERG, National Public Radio: Well what the Attorney general says that law enforcement officers are now concentrating is now a racial motive to these crimes. And today the Attorney General called various civil rights leaders from Jesse Jackson to Joseph Lowery and others to try to assure them that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies were on the case and to alert them to be really watchful but that is clearly the avenue that they're working on now.

MS. WOODRUFF: Are there suspects, suspicions, is there are theory that is at work here?

MS. TOTENBERG: I don't think there are suspects yet. Now obviously in an investigation like this there is a point at which law enforcement does begin to have theories and individuals that its focusing on. But my clear impression from working the phones all day that this is the beginning of a long and arduous process. First there is the gathering of physical evidence. They need to put together much of the evidence from the bombs that exploded. They need to compare and contrast the bombs that have been found. The one that was found in Jacksonville has, after all, just been disarmed with in hours of our conversation. They need to examine all the materials. Many of the materials for these bombs can't just be bought at any store and once they can isolate them they can try to trace them. There are very limited places that you can get hold of this material.

MS. WOODRUFF: Can they tell where the packages were mailed from?

MS. TOTENBERG: Apparently the post marks are not the same on the package. And that is one of the reasons that they are beginning to theorize that this involves more than one person. Whoever is involved in this obviously knows the considerable amount about the individuals that are targets. For example, the bomb sent to Judge Vance had a return address that was Judge Lewis Morgan who was another judge in that Circuit. Who was a friend of his and who lives in a small town in Georgia. And you would have to know that. You would have to be familiar at least with the court system on a fairly intimate level to know that.

MS. WOODRUFF: Do we know enough about the people to whom the bombs have been sent, or the offices in the case of the NAACP, to know that there's something that connects them together?

MS. TOTENBERG: There's no case that we know of now, but that's one of the things that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are doing. They are going through the case loads of the Judges and of the individuals and trying to match what might be the common denominator and I hate to be the unfriendly bearer of news, but if you wanted to postulate somebody really evil and devious you might just throw in to the equation somebody he just happened to pick out of the phone book, just to mystify everybody, just to make life difficult.

MS. WOODRUFF: There is some history, is there not, of Federal judges being targeted in the past. Is that right?

MS. TOTENBERG: There are two sets of things here. There are judges who have been killed. Judge Vance was the third judge. He is believed to be the third judge in this century anyway who was killed. The first was in 1979 and that was Judge John Wood in San Antonio who was killed by a snipper and a group of San Antonio lawyers, and this is interesting posted a $100.000 reward and within about 14 seconds some prisoner came forward with information that lead to the capture of the killer who happened to be the person who was on trial in front of Judge Wood and it was very interesting who took over that trial. The man who took over that trial is now the FBI Director William Sessions. The other person who was killed was a much more I hate to say it but everyday kind of a thing. It was a Federal Judge in New York who was killed by the father of a women who brought a sex discrimination case.

MS. WOODRUFF: But is has been several years since there have been this sort of a, what might be racially motivated conspiracy? We don't know what it is.

MS. TOTENBERG: In the 60s I knew Federal Judges in the South who didn't go anywhere with out opening the hood of their car in the morning and checking to make sure there was a bomb underneaght. But this kind of thing, this sort of fear is something new to a whole generation of lawyers and something that another generation of lawyers felt they would never see again.

MS. WOODRUFF: Are the people that you're talking with relatively optimistic that they have got between the packages and what is left of the bombs that exploded and bombs that were de-fused, do they feel that they have enough evidence to come up with something?

MS. TOTENBERG: I think they feel they'll get them eventually. The difficulty is this is a long and pains taking process and there have been four bombs four days.

MS. WOODRUFF: So the level of concern, fear must be --

MS. TOTENBERG: Very very serious now as I said we are very advanced in what laboratory technology can do but it is going to take time.

MS. WOODRUFF: And the alert has gone out to other federal judges in this circuit?

MS. TOTENBERG: And civil rights lawyers. I mean there are hundreds, thousands of civil rights lawyers in the South. I talked to several of them today who say they have gotten notices from the post office that they had packages waiting for them and they're not going to pick them.

MS. WOODRUFF: As well as NAACP offices and the whole other.

MS. TOTENBERG: Right.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, Nina Totenberg we will be watching this one. Thanks for joining us. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Still to come on the Newshour, brutal repression in Romania, jobs in the strawberry fields and environmentalists monitor a nuclear reactor. FOCUS - HARDLINE HOLDOUT

MR. MacNeil: Next tonight we consider the violent suppression of dissent in the East European nation of Romania. Along with Albania, Romania is the only European Communist nation to resist the tide of reform. We'll talk to two Romanians about their country in a moment, but first some recent background. Romania and its all powerful leader, Nicolae Ceausescu have been playing odd man out in the Communist world since the 1960s. Romania was the one Warsaw Pact nation that refused to join the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. As a maverick, it was actively courted by American administrations, but Romania's overtures to the West in the 1960s and early '70s were always accompanied by strong repression at home and increased idolatry of Ceausescu and his family. But as reform movements took hold in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Romania under Ceausescu became more orthodox. The Ceausescu government, for instance, paid all its foreign debt, but at the cost of heatless winters and a sinking standard of living for Romania's 23 million people. The latest troubles reportedly have ethnic roots similar to the ethnic and nationalist rivalries that brought angry protests from neighboring Hungary against Romania last year. Romania was threatening to raze many villages in the disputed region of Transylvania. Two million people of Hungarian origin live there, but Transylvania has been ruled by Romania since the end of World War II. The Town of Timisoaro where the current troubles began is part of Transylvania. Lately as other nations experimented with pluralism and free market economies, Ceausescu has been vowing to stay the Communist course. At a party congress last month, he made a five hour speech saying that Romania must practice scientific socialism. Until this week, there were no reported public protests for economic or political reform in a country with one of the most pervasive secret police forces in the world. Until this week, Ceausescu was able to project scenes of adulation for himself and the family members he reportedly wants to turn into a dynasty to succeed him. We hear two perspectives now on Romania's dictatorship. Vladimir Tismaneanu is a Romanian born lecturer in Eastern European affairs at the University of Pennsylvania and a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, Mr. Tismaneanu defected from Romania in 1981, and he joins us tonight from Toronto. Norman Manea is a Romanian novelist published in 7 languages. He escaped from Romania in 1986 and is currently a fellow at the International Academy for Scholarship & the Arts, a center for dissident artists and scholars at Bard College in New York State. In Toronto, Mr. Tismaneanu, do you have anything you can add to the latest news we've been trying to peace together from world news agencies about what's actually going on in Romania?

VLADIMIR TISMANEANU, Exiled Political Scientist: Just a little. It's the extraordinary immensity of the brutality of the persecution and repression in Timisoaro. We've got information from especially Yugoslav press agencies about pregnant women being beaten up and killed, about kids being smashed, having their skulls smashed on the sidewalks. So these kinds of atrocities seem to me to have exceeded, surpassed whatever we have heard from other Communist countries, even in comparison to the Tiananmen Square, the Chinese crackdown.

MR. MacNeil: We should make clear to our viewers that the information is having to leak through because no Western newsmen are allowed into Romania, and if any are there, at the moment they're not being able to get reports out, so this is coming from travelers, from doctors in hospitals phoning relatives in Hungary and Austria. There was one report, and I wonder whether you had any confirmation for it, that a helicopter was used to fire on crowds. Do you have any substantiation of that?

MR. TISMANEANU: No. The substantiation is usually what we have gotten from students, foreign students who were in Timisoaro the moment of the massacre and what we've heard from foreign correspondents. After all, there are some foreign correspondents in Bucharest and in Romania at this moment, for example there's a correspondent of Pravda, the Soviet Communist newspaper, and there are correspondents of other let's say brotherly parties of Eastern Europe, and apparently even Pravda mentioned, and the Tass correspondent, the Soviet mews agency, mentioned the nervousness and the anxiety that is visible on Bucharest streets. There is another piece of information if you don't mind. Apparently it's based on my conversation with the BBC, which seems to be at this moment very hyperactive, if you want, there was a strike of the students at the agronomical institute apparently was occupied by the police, so it's the beginning I think of kind of student unrest in Bucharest.

MR. MacNeil: What does it say to you, Mr. Manea, that all this is happening while Ceausescu is away visiting Iran?

NORMAN MANEA, Exiled Writer: It is I think a kind of arrogance from him. At the same time he still believes that he is charge, that he is in power. He has, it's true, he has very strong secret parties. In the country, in the last decade, it was developed, a deep system of corruption and appointments, and I have to say that he still maybe believes that the Western country will stay away so the declaration today of the White House I think it was really very important.

MR. MacNeil: I'll come back to that in a moment, what the outside countries can do.

MR. MANEA: Maybe the significance is also that he tried to find other allies and it's significant what kind of allies he tried to find. He has already Cuba and China and North Korea and maybe now Iran, so you have a picture now.

MR. MacNeil: How do you read the fact that this happens while Mr. Ceausescu is out of the country, Mr. Tismaneanu?

MR. TISMANEANU, Exiled Political Scientist: First of all, I think that I am not sure that Mr. Ceausescu is perfectly aware of what is happening in Romania. After all the country is now run by a clan or camarila, a group of let's say close relatives of the president. And I read most of Mr. Ceausescu's latest moves as a public indication of total ignorance, a complete loss of touch with Romanian realities. I wonder whether Mr. Ceausescu at this moment is shown the public statement of condemnation and indignation coming from other governments. I think that the man lives really in a surreal world.

MR. MacNeil: Is he in himself the kind of man who would suppress dissent or order dissent suppressed the way by shooting on a large crowd?

MR. TISMANEANU: There is absolutely no doubt that Mr. Ceausescu represents something like a mystique, a combination of primitive mysticism and Stalinism, so from the point of view of his very rudimentary, very primitive as I said form of Stalinism, I think that he would have absolutely no hesitation or reluctance or pangs of conscience to order this shooting. He actually approved, by the way, approved and probably congratulated Deng Xiaoping for the very constructive, with quotation marks of course, way he dealt with the Chinese students. He was unhappy and he publicly said that he was unhappy with the way the East German comrades didn't manage to smash the opposition in their country.

MR. MacNeil: Is this in your view in keeping with Mr. Ceausescu's character?

MR. MANEA, Exiled Writer: Yes, I totally agree. Of course it's also ironical, I may quote Lenin, Lenin says that for a change, for revolt or even for evolution, it's necessary for a pre-condition five minutes, at least five minutes of freedom, and Ceausescu now is very aware about this. He knows what happened in East Germany, in Czechoslovakia, in Poland, and Bulgaria, so he knows what he, and he will not allow these five minutes.

MR. MacNeil: Does he, you were mentioning his strong police force and his system of corrupt informers and so on, does he have the power to snuff out this flame now and keep it snuffed out?

MR. MANEA: Maybe he has. It's a problem. It's a problem. If this kind of revolt will start in other cities and if the secret police will take a decision maybe to take another movement then it will be a change, but it's really a problem. We cannot really know very well so far from here the situation there.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Tismaneanu, Romania is not isolated as China is. I mean, it cannot wall itself off in quite the same way. Is this regime capable of clamping down and keeping the repression in place?

MR. TISMANEANU: I'll try to put away any kind of wishful thinking, I'll try to answer very soberly. I think that Romania is part of a systemic alliance. Romania is unlike Albania, that you mentioned at the beginning, Romania is part of two major alliances or international organizations. One is the Warsaw Pact and the other one is the Council of Mutual Economic Aid, both of them headed by the Soviet Union. I think and I read very carefully Mr. Shevardnadze's statement in Brussels today, and I think the signal coming from Moscow right now is unequivocal. I think that Ceausescu has lost any political capital or credibility he may still have had in the Soviet Union, and I find him the odd man out and moving very fast beyond the pale.

MR. MacNeil: So you are saying the writing is on the wall for him, that he cannot indefinitely --

MR. TISMANEANU: Yes, you're right.

MR. MacNeil: What do you say to that, the signals the Russians are sending indicate that --

MR. MANEA: I would hope. I would hope that it is so. I am not sure. I am not sure. I would hope it's so. It's also problem of the border there, because as you probably know, the Muldavian republic is, in fact, Romanian.

MR. MacNeil: Let's look at the map and see the Muldavian republic's relationship to the Soviet Union and Romania.

MR. MANEA: Yes. They are in the Eastern borders, the Muldavian republic.

MR. MacNeil: I think we also have a map of Romania that shows Muldavia.

MR. MANEA: The Soviets already recognized that it was a secret agreement between Hitler and Stalin about Basarabia, it was the former name, and about the Baltic states. It means that maybe you have to do something in this week.

MR. MacNeil: May I interrupt you for a moment. There has already been some nationalist unrest in Muldavia against the Soviet Union.

MR. MANEA: Yes, but they were against the Soviet Union. They didn't claim a unification with Romania, but if Romania will become more democratic, a more prosperous country as we hope, then it's I think inevitably that the Muldavian republic will want to unify with Romania, and it will be another problem.

MR. MacNeil: Another problem for Gorbachev.

MR. MANEA: Sure.

MR. MacNeil: Now would that mean that Gorbachev might not like to press quite as strongly on Bucharest as he did on Berlin?

MR. MANEA: I think that he don't like to press in one hand and in another, maybe it's not useless and it is useful to have a bad example.

MR. MacNeil: What does that mean?

MR. MANEA: It means that now you have all these countries in a good way in a development with a hope for democracy. You have also a bad example and you need it, you need it, you need to show to look to Romania and to show the other people how looks so a kind of state, this old fashioned Stalinist dictatorship, but with a mixture of old right wing nationalistic slogans and with along with other method of intimidation and manipulation, as it is in Latin America, in Africa, in Asia, it's not more really in the -- not more European country unfortunately --

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Tismaneanu, what do you think Mr. Gorbachev's interests will be in this situation?

MR. TISMANEANU: First of all, I think that indeed for Gorbachev for some time keeping the embarrassing and unpleasant dictatorship personified by Mr. Ceausescu of course it was convenient to deter Muldavian separatists. I agree with Mr. Manea on this issue. At the same time I think at this moment with the massacre of Timisoaro with Ceausescu becoming publicly and forever known as the butcher of Timisoaro, I think that for Gorbachev's image, for the post Malta state of entente, international entente and international friendship, I think that keeping this kind of character in power in an allied country, it's really counter productive, and I think that he is going to use the Soviet leverage which is enormous in Romania, economically primarily, but also diplomatic and invisible if you want through the security police, which is after all can be infiltrated by Soviet agents, I think he is going to use and to send encouraging signals to those who would want to oust Mr. Ceausescu, to kick him out, in order to act as soon as possible.

MR. MacNeil: Do you think -- obviously in the case of China, U.S. protests about the Tiananmen Square massacre didn't make any difference to the Chinese leaders and their policy, do you think the White House protesting today, the French foreign minister, others, in this case will make a difference?

MR. TISMANEANU: I think that for Ceausescu, whatever we think, Ceausescu pays a lot of attention to what the world public opinion says about him. This is a man who still lives in his legend or in his mythology, and especially the signal coming from the United States, I would agree with Mr. Manea, it's very very significant. Mr. Ceausescu's long tried to ingratiate himself with the State Department and with the American let's say presidency. He has long tried even recently to convince our diplomats and so on that he is after all a reliable guy and we can do business with him. So this type of very strong and tough statement is the signal that make one Mr. Ceausescu questions his own image or prestige in the United States, [b] force some people in Mr. Ceausescu's entourage to question Mr. Ceausescu's international role and his becoming a liability for Romania's future.

MR. MacNeil: Well, gentlemen, thank you, Mr. Tismaneanu in Toronto for joining us and Mr. Manea, thank you both. Judy. FOCUS - TROUBLED FIELDS

MS. WOODRUFF: Next tonight we look at the troubled strawberry fields of the Pacific Northwest, a 38 million dollar a year industry. With this year's harvest complete, many farmers in Washington State say that next spring they may switch to another crop. They contend that reforms like the recently passed minimum age law that were designed to help workers are ruining their business. Lee Hochberg of public station KCTS-Seattle has a report.

MR. HOCHBERG: For 10 years, Don Kruse's 120 tons of strawberries have ripened to perfection in Washington State's Gadget Valley North of Seattle. But Kruse warns that these pastoral harvest scenes soon will vanish because the Northwest strawberry industry is heading for extinction.

DON KRUSE, Strawberry Farmer: I would say over the past several years I know of one major strawberry grower that has gone out of business every year. So it is possible that people would get out of it altogether.

MR. HOCHBERG: Don Kruse says farmers are getting out of strawberries because a maze of labor and immigration laws have turned the labor intensive business into a profitless one. Five years ago Kruse made a $20,000 profit on his 30 acres of strawberries. He paid his 80 workers according to how many berries they picked, but Washington State's new minimum wage law passed last year now requires farmers to pay workers $4.25 an hour no matter how much they pick. In addition to paying his pickers more money, Kruse has had to hire a full-time bookkeeper to keep track of all of his workers' hours.

MR. KRUSE: With the rising labor costs, it could be the thing that sort of squeezes that margin of profit down to nothing and makes people get out of it.

MR. HOCHBERG: Northwest farmers claim they can't absorb the higher costs because they don't make much money off their berries. Their fruit has a short shelf life and is usually sold at a low price to processors for jams or jellies. Political leaders hear the farmers' complaints, but they say farmers shouldn't expect to be propped up by under paid workers. Washington State Sen. Fleming says the farmers should stop blaming higher wages for their plight and figure out ways to make their business more competitive.

GEORGE FLEMING, Washington State Senator: We as a country need to step back and look at what we're doing wrong and try to correct that and not necessarily point at the lowly paid worker as to that's the reason why we're not making a profit.

MR. HOCHBERG: Fleming sponsored the state's new minimum age legislation. He says farmers have long argued that they'll go out of business if forced to pay their workers more money.

GEORGE FLEMING: Let's put it this way. I think they used those same kind of arguments when we had slavery.

MR. KRUSE: What if we have this sort of high minimum wage job that no longer exists because the economic viability isn't there anymore, have the people really benefited from it?

MR. HOCHBERG: Minimum wage rules aren't the only laws making it tough for Northwest strawberry farmers these days. Farmers say new federal immigration laws are forcing hundreds of migrant families back to Mexico, leaving farmers without enough hands to pick their crops. 57 year old David and his son, Jose, recently got their temporary residency cards. They qualified under the 1986 Immigration Reform Act by proving they worked in the United States between 1985 and '86. But the government denied temporary residency to David's wife, Maria, and seven of their children, because they couldn't produce proper documentation. David says it takes his entire family picking berries all summer to earn the $5,000 his family will live on for the rest of the year. If Maria and her children are deported, he'll be forced to go back to Mexico with them.

"DAVID", Migrant Worker: [Speaking through Translator] We are already used to living here in America. If we go back to Mexico, we are going to have a very hard life. We will cry.

MR. HOCHBERG: Maria and their children aren't isolated cases. Government statistics show that only half of the 28,000 migrants who applied for temporary residency in Washington State were approved. Farmers like Mike Youngquist who raises strawberries and raspberries say it's become a nightmare to find the 500 workers he needs.

MIKE YOUNGQUIST, Strawberry Farmer: The last person to be considered is the worker and that person working for them, and those other people make the rules and they make the regulations, and they're not very smart a lot of times. They're well meaning, but a lot of times what they come up with is counterproductive to both parties.

RICHARD SMITH, Immigration and Naturalization Service: No law is perfect and it is written by people who are imperfect, but certainly there's been efforts to try to identify those needs that need to be met both on a national basis as well as an individual basis.

MR. HOCHBERG: Richard Smith of the Immigration and Naturalization Service says 1 million suspected illegal aliens pass through detention cells every year before Congress approved the new Immigration Act. He says the new laws protect farmers and all Americans from possible criminals.

RICHARD SMITH: What do I tell a farmer if he says there's too many laws, I say that the laws were enacted to protect him from people victimizing him as well as the people of the United States. The laws were also enacted to protect those that work for him.

MR. YOUNGQUIST: We've had so many laws trying to protect the migrant workers pass in the last 5 years that we've almost put them out of a job because they've made it restrictive enough that people just don't want to hire them.

MR. HOCHBERG: Farmers say the government's aggressive hunt for immigration and minimum wage violators is hurting them in another way. Government inspectors in the fields are clamping down on child labor violatorsfurther driving migrants away. many migrant workers unable to afford day care take their children with them in to the strawberry fields but with the increased possibility of being fined for having children in the fields farmers can't allow that anymore. Kruse says that this year alone he lost 10 percent of his labor force. Today Maria tells him that she and her sons are returning to Mexico.

MR. KRUSE: It's a difficulty for this family because they have kids who are under 12 who can't work and can't come to the field and so essentially the family has to split up and the mother and children are going to have to go home and the father will stay here and work in the fields. A few years ago that wasn't the case. The whole family would stay together and earn their wages as a unit and at this point it is not allowed any more.

MR. HOCHBERG: James Valin administers federal child labor laws. He tells producer Chris Sharp that even if child labor laws hurt the strawberry farmers they are needed to protect kids and keep them in school.

JAMES VALIN, Dept. of Labor: The ultimate is expressing the will of all the parents and citizens and not just those who at one given point time have either an interest in having the kid doing something and out from under foot or picking up a few extra dollars. We are not turning back the clock to an agricultural society as a whole.

MR. HOCHBERG: Fed up with the labor headaches many Northwest farmers are replacing strawberry crops with raspberries. They can be harvested by a machine that takes the place of 80 pickers.

MR. YOUNGQUIST: It's purely economics. Its cheaper to harvest the crops so economics dictates that we go to machines and we reduce our labor force.

MR. HOCHBERG: Farmers say if labor and immigrations laws aren't changed soon strawberry fields will vanish from the Pacific Northwest.

MR. KRUSE: At this point a farmer could sell his assets, sell his land which has some value and his machinery and turn around and invest in mutual funds or something and get a higher than what he is getting farming.

MR. HOCHBERG: Government officials say they know all of that but it may be the cold truth that strawberry farming no longer has a place in the Pacific Northwest.

MR. SMITH: We may not be able to produce berries. Our land may be to valuable to grow berries on it. We may have to import certain types of things and that is the kind of balance that goes on in society. I mean. All of us like to keep things at a status quo if we feel comfortable with what we are familiar with but the world changes constantly.

MR. HOCHBERG: The berry season is over in the Pacific Northwest, Over the next few years farmers will decide whether it is worth their while to produce strawberries and policy makers will decide whether the need to protect workers and children over rides the need to protect the faltering strawberry industry. FOCUS - KEEPING TABS

MR. MacNeil: Finally we have a report on an unusual relationship where nuclear watchdogs are being allowed to patrol their local atomic power plant. Terry Fitzpatrick of public station KERA-Dallas has this story on the Comanche Peak Nuclear Generator near Ft. Worth, Texas.

MR. FITZPATRICK: Deep inside the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant Southwest of Ft. Worth, you'll find Edna Ottney and Mat Farrow. They work for the environmental group known as CASE, the Citizens Association for South Energy. [CASE INSPECTION OF PLANT]

MR. FITZPATRICK: Ottney and Farrow are inspecting the plant. They're here several times a week.

EDNA OTTNEY: This could be a spill from when they serviced the feed water pump but possibly it's a leak. Most of the time I don't see the oil.

MR. FITZPATRICK: Nowhere else in America do environmental watchdogs get to perform independent inspections like this inside a nuclear power plant, but nowhere else in the nuclear industry has there been an environmental fight quite like the fight at Comanche Peak. The problems are similar to those at other nuclear plants, inadequate pipe supports, bad hardware, improper welding, and sloppy procedures. Employees like electrical foreman Joe Macktal began to blow the whistle on construction problems.

JOE MACKTAL, Former Plant Worker: When I first worked there, I started noticing that some of the construction practices were not normal construction practices and that we weren't really following the procedures, the Nuclear Regulatory procedures, that we would find that something wouldn't fit, we would engineer it ourselves, and then we would go get the engineer and he would come out and say yes or no or whatever, but many times we would just go ahead and build it before it was engineered by the engineering department.

MR. FITZPATRICK: Workers say that Texas Utilities tried to cover up the problems. Some employees who spoke up were harassed or fired.

MR. MACKTAL: There was an atmosphere of you'd better keep your mouth quiet, because if you see a problem just go with the flow. They really tried to suppress that information getting back to the NRC.

MR. FITZPATRICK: Some information was getting to the NRC, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It was also getting to Dallas homemaker, Juanita Ellis, who helped found CASE, the Citizens Association for Sound Energy. With time, other Comanche peak opponents dropped out of the fight and put their trust in Ellis. The fight consumed Juanita Ellis and her home. The living room filled up with documents, the dining room furniture was stacked on the porch. The kitchen became a mix of pots and pans and legal briefs.

JUANITA ELLIS: There's too much work that needs to be done and there's not enough hours in the day to do it. It may be a little crazy but I don't think it's fair.

MR. FITZPATRICK: At government hearings, CASE was winning. The utility company was ordered to reinspect the plant and rebuild defective sections. Some observers thought CASE could keep the plant from ever opening, but in 1988 Texas Utilities unveiled a settlement. Juanita Ellis could come inside and inspect the plant for herself.

JUANITA ELLIS, CASE Member: For the first time there were signs that they were ready to admit that yes, there were problems and yes, they were going to go fix them.

MR. FITZPATRICK: Ellis had been trying to prevent the plant from opening but she agreed not to fight Comanche Peak's license application in return for several concessions. CASE inspectors can go into the plant with 48 hours notice for the next few years. CASE attorneys are teaching plant supervisors how to handle future whistleblowers.

ATTORNEY: You've got to make sure that that employee knows that he knows that he is not in trouble for raising the concern, that he did the right thing by coming to you within the chain of command.

MR. FITZPATRICK: CASE got a seat on the Plant Operations Committee for at least five years and gets to attend closed door safety reviews with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Texas Utilities paid $10 million in the settlement, 4 1/2 million went to CASE to cover legal bills, salaries, and expenses. Ellis got $176,000 in back salary and 35,000 for expenses. Three CASE board members received wages and expenses totalling $35,000, but the group won't reveal exactly who got what. $5 1/2 million was divided among 50 whistleblowers.

BETTY BRINK, Plant Opponent: I think it's a bad precedent to set for environmental groups to do that. I think it's a bad precedent to set for whistleblowers to do that. And the reason for that, the reason I feel so strongly about it is that it's because of the appearance of buy out that that gives, No. 1, to the group that takes the money and quits after such a long long struggle.

MR. FITZPATRICK: Betty Brink of Ft. Worth is president of Citizens for Fair Utility Regulation. That's one of the groups that dropped out of the fight and put its faith in Juanita Ellis. Did that turn out to be misplaced trust?

MS. BRINK: It did, it did, I'm sorry -- I feel strongly that they had made such tremendous strides in uncovering safety problems at the plant and making Texas Utilities correct them that I was totally dumbfounded when they pulled out.

MS. ELLIS: We have done nothing to betray anybody's trust. Our goal is as it has always been to try to make this plant as safe as possible before it goes on line.

MR. FITZPATRICK: In the settlement Texas Utilities agreed to finish billions of dollars of repair work and pay $150,000 a year for CASE to hire technical experts who will evaluate the repairs.

MR. SCOTT: NRC is here, CASE is here, so we're quite used to being observed.

MR. FITZPATRICK: Comanche Peak's manager is Austin Scott, a retired Navy admiral who used to command a nuclear submarine. Scott says it's been no problem having environmentalists inside his plant.

AUSTIN SCOTT, Texas Utilities: They're here. They sit in on our meetings, ask questions. We see them from time to time out in the plant. But I haven't noticed anything significantly different.

MS. BRINK: They go into the plants under the supervision and care of Texas Utilities. They're not independent, they're not independent by any means. They're there at Texas Utilities' pleasure if you will, and they see what Texas Utilities wants them to see.

EDNA OTTNEY, CASE Inspector: I think that I'm making a difference. I hope I'm making a difference. I am very much pro safety and pro quality and everything, not just nuclear power.

MR. FITZPATRICK: CASE inspectors admit they can't cover the entire plant so they pick areas where they suspect problems.

MS. OTTNEY: There is a lot of corrosion. We have found a lot of the fire extinguishers have not been tested or serviced. If the power goes off, the emergency lights click on and four of these are not working, we have a generic concern with this and we've found a lot of them so we check them as we go through.

MR. FITZPATRICK: Under the settlement agreement when CASE inspectors find a problem they're supposed to bring it to the company first. It's a controversial point, because some people like whistleblower Joe Macktal don't trust Texas Utilities.

JOE MACKTAL, Former Plant Worker: When you have the interveners inside being paid by the utility, you diminish the possibility of everything being exposed out on the table.

JUANITA ELLIS: We can still go public with anything we think needs to be made public. The fact is that most of the time it's not really news that somebody's doing their job.

MR. FITZPATRICK: What is news is that Texas Utilities says Reactor No. 1 will be operate in late December, nine years past due, $8.3 billion over budget. The reactor, itself, is still covered with plastic, there are still questions about wiring in the plant and safety valves failed a test earlier this year. But Austin Scott says the big problems are being fixed quickly.

MR. SCOTT: All the safety related stuff has been looked at and looked at and looked at and looked at. You just never get to the point, at least I don't, where I say, that's it, that's perfect. We're constantly going to be working. We're going to continue to tinker with this thing throughout its life.

MR. FITZPATRICK: Not everyone is so optimistic. A group of inspectors from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission wrote an anonymous safety memo in October. In it, they say Texas Utilities still has trouble spotting potential problems at Comanche Peak. The inspectors also say that favorable safety reports that were written by their supervisors are incorrect and invalid. Betty Brink says she won't give up the fight. She's asking the courts and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reopen the license hearing, but so far no luck.

BETTY BRINK: I think any of us who are involved in movements, if you will, have to be very careful not to let the movement consume us, because once that happens I think you lose your sense of perspective and I think Juanita lost hers.

MR. FITZPATRICK: Juanita Ellis continues to monitor the flood of paper work from Comanche Peak despite the criticism of her and her group.

MS. ELLIS: I think it's undeserved and it hurt a lot. It still does sometimes when I stop and think about it. Most of the time I don't have time to think about it. I think that we are having an impact, though it's much more subtle. TU for the most part has been responsive to our concerns and to address them and we're able to see that things do get fixed. RECAP

MR. MacNeil: Again the top stories this Tuesday, the fourth in a series of mail bombs was found and disarmed at the NAACP's office in Jacksonville, Florida. FBI director William Sessions said the bombings may be racially motivated. The White House announced tonight it has approved the sale of three communications satellites to China and removed some economic sanctions imposed after China's violent crackdown against pro-democracy protesters in June. In Romania, troops were reported to have killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, in the anti-government demonstrations. And a collision between an Amtrak train and a truck killed at least 3 people and injured 54 in Stockton, California. Good night, Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Good night, Robin. That's our Newshour for tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Judy Woodruff. Thank you and good night.