The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. Events in the Soviet Union continue to lead the news this Wednesday. The architects of last week's coup were charged with high treason. The Israel legislature dissolved President Gorbachev's cabinet of ministers and Gorbachev dismissed the governing board of the KGB. We'll have the details in our News Summary in a moment. Judy Woodruff's in Washington tonight. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: After the News Summary, on the day the Soviets charged the coup plotters, we have an interview with the military leader who still wants to see Gorbachev ousted. Col. Viktor Alksnis talks with Charles Krause. Then what will happen to the Soviet army and to 27,000 nuclear warheads under Soviet control. Four analysts join us. Finally, an American health crisis, a report on a shortage of emergency rooms.NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: There was more fallout from the failed Soviet coup today. Mikhail Gorbachev gave the job of foreign minister to one of his strongest supporters during the attempted takeover. Boris Pankin, the Soviet ambassador to Czechoslovakia, will replace Alexander Bessmertnykh, who Gorbachev fired for his failure to speak out against the conspirators. Gorbachev also sacked the governing board of the KGB and ordered the transfer of hundreds of thousands of its troops to defense ministry jurisdiction. These were just some of a series of actions he took against the planners and supporters of the coup. Tim Ewart of Independent Television News reports from Moscow.

MR. EWART: Mikhail Gorbachev today hit back at the men who betrayed him. He demanded the dismissal of his entire 70 strong cabinet of ministers, and the Supreme Soviet voted overwhelmingly to carry out his wishes. The ring leaders of last week's coup were charged with high treason and face the death penalty and another old Gorbachev ally, former Supreme Soviet Speaker Anatole Lukianov, is under investigation by coup prosecutors. And at KGB headquarters where a toppled statue of founder Felix Derjinski is now a symbol of the new democracy, the entire governing body was dissolved. But young KGB officers today said they welcome the dismissals. They deserved to be sacked, said one. His colleague added all the rank and file KGB people supported reform. And KGB critics want the organization to undergo even greater change.

VICTOR KALUGIN: No political functions, no troops, no secret laboratories where they manufacture poisons, special weapons, and I think there'll be some other changes.

MR. EWART: Meanwhile, attacks on the Communist Party continue. Three hundred thousand people in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, demanded its assets be seized. And the mayor of Moscow said today the remains of Lenin may be removed from the mausoleum in Red Square, the party's most sacred monument.

MR. MacNeil: Among Gorbachev's moves to consolidate his power today was a warning to Boris Yeltsin's Russian republic not to encroach on his territory. Addressing the Supreme Soviet, he said, "Now that the coup is behind us, everything must be based on the constitution and on cooperation." Boris Yeltsin today said new steps have been taken to protect the Soviet nuclear weapons. Among them is a plan to transfer the Ukraine's nuclear arsenal to Russia. He said he and Gorbachev agreed to the move after the Ukraine declared itself a nuclear free independent republic. But French President Mitterrand said today he was concerned about the security of the Soviet nuclear weapons as republics break away from the central government. We'll have more on this story after the News Summary. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Germany today formally recognized the independence of the Baltic republics. Eighteen other nations have already done the same. Germany's recognition came 52 years after Nazi Germany allowed Josef Stalin to annex Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, to the Soviet Union. British Prime Minister John Major arrived at Kennebunkport, Maine, late today to discuss the Baltics and other issues with President Bush. Major and his family will spend three days at the President's vacation home. Yesterday Britain officially recognized the independence of the Baltics. British aides have told the Associated Press that U.S. recognition could come this Friday. The Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee today proposed transferring $1 billion from the U.S. defense budget and sending it as a humanitarian aid to the Soviet Union. Les Aspin, Democrat of Wisconsin, said that helping to stabilize the Soviet Union helps national security interests in the U.S. Aspin spoke to reporters in Washington.

REP. LES ASPIN, Chairman, Armed Services Committee: During the cold war, a threat was deliberate Soviet attack. Now the bigger threat seems to be chaos in a nation with 30,000 nuclear weapons. If we can reduce that threat by spending less than 1/2 of 1 percent of our defense budget on humanitarian aid, we are defending ourselves and democracy too.

MS. WOODRUFF: President Bush said today that he had not yet decided on specific food aid for the Soviet Union, but he said, "We want to do our part."

MR. MacNeil: Fighting continued in Yugoslavia today despite renewed peace efforts by the European Community. Serbian rebels pressed their territorial dispute with Croatia by launching new attacks on the strategic towns of Osijek and Vukovar in the breakaway republic. We have a report narrated by Louise Bates of Worldwide Television News.

MS. BATES: Just hours after Croatian leaders and federal military chiefs had accepted the need for a cease-fire, the Croatian town of Osijek was shaken by gunfire. Among the casualties, a Croatian camera crew, a cameraman was killed in the attack involving federal reservists. Later when all was clear, EC delegates monitoring the cease-fire toured the area. They readily acknowledge the near impossibility of their role.

HENRI VIVIENS: We are here because we try to help in finding solution. And it is not very clear to us that we should have here impartial monitors to monitor the cease-fire.

MS. BATES: But efforts to end the fighting continue. In Paris, Croatian President Franyo Tudgman backed an EC plan to settle Yugoslavia's crisis through arbitration. Tudgman told the French President Francois Mitterrand that he was in favor of the EC playing a bigger role if it meant avoiding civil war. The first task of that mission will be to define the border between Serbia and Croatia. It's that uncertainty which led to these scenes in Italy, hundreds of Yugoslavs, some without proper documentation, aboard this ferry. But like the Albanian refugees before them, all will be sent home.

MR. MacNeil: Late today the collective Presidency of Yugoslavia issued a new appeal for a cease-fire in Croatia. The eight member body also appointed a commission to conduct talks with the warring sides.

MS. WOODRUFF: Back in this country, a New York City subway train crashed early this morning. At least five people were killed and more than a hundred and seventy injured when the 10 car train jumped the tracks and ran into a steel pillar. The impact split the first car in half and jarred the next four off their rails. Police said they found an empty crack cocaine vial in the driver's compartment, but said they did not know if it had any connection to the accident. The train's operator left the scene and was missing for several hours. When he was located, police took him in for questioning and said he would undergo a drug test.

MR. MacNeil: The government today revised its estimate of the economy's second quarter performance. It said the economy shrank at a 1/10 of a percent annual rate during the April through June period, continuing its downward slide for the third consecutive quarter. The report was a sharp revision from the government's original estimate. It showed the recession ending and the economy resuming its growth at a 4/10 of a percent annual rate.

MS. WOODRUFF: There was a reassuring report about tooth fillings today. A panel at the National Institutes of Health concluded that silver amalgam fillings do release small amounts of mercury but the amounts are so small they pose virtually no threat to a person's health. Silver amalgam has been used to fill teeth for more than 150 years, but recent news reports had linked the fillings to problems ranging from multiple sclerosis to chronic fatigue syndrome. That's it for our News Summary. Just ahead, a Soviet colonel who wants the hardliners back in control in the Kremlin, what will happen to 27,000 Soviet nuclear warheads, and a U.S. medical crisis, a shortage of emergency rooms. NEWS MAKER

MR. MacNeil: Our major focus tonight is the Soviet military pre and post coup, where its loyalties rest and who will end up in control of its nuclear arsenal as the union fragments. We begin our coverage with a return visit to Col. Viktor Alksnis, a professional officer and also leader of the conservative Soeuse Bloc in the Soviet parliament. In an interview with Charles Krause last month, Col. Alksnis called for Gorbachev's ouster as President. Now that Gorbachev has outlived a coup attempt partly led by some of the country's highest ranking officers, Correspondent Krause spoke to Col. Alksnis again.

MR. KRAUSE: Col. Alksnis, thank you for joining us. When we first talked about six weeks ago, you said that a coup was likely or at least it was a possibility. Did you know then that a coup was being planned?

COL. ALKSNIS: [Speaking through Interpreter] The answer is negative. What I was speaking about was not the coup but the introduction of the state of emergency in the country. And I'm convinced that the state of emergency will still be introduced in this country.

MR. KRAUSE: Why do you say that?

COL. ALKSNIS: [Speaking through Interpreter] Simply because the situation in the country is such that it's not possible to resolve the problems, particularly the economic ones, without introduction of the state of emergency.

MR. KRAUSE: You say you didn't have prior knowledge of a coup, but were you surprised by it?

COL. ALKSNIS: [Speaking through Interpreter] Yes, I was surprised. It was unexpected for me. I was expecting something like that to happen much later.

MR. KRAUSE: From what I understand, Soeuse me the first night of the coup and decided not to back it, is that correct?

COL. ALKSNIS: [Speaking through Interpreter] Yes, the answer is positive. I happen to be the proponent of the constitutional methods of politics and the mere fact that the committee did not follow the constitutional legitimate way of action led to their final collapse and again, I am the proponent of the legitimate way of introduction of the state of emergency in the whole territory of the country.

MR. KRAUSE: Is it your sense the coup was hastily planned? Why do you think they couldn't organize themselves to arrest Yeltsin and the others and wrap it up fairly quickly?

COL. ALKSNIS: [Speaking through Interpreter] This is a mystery to me. To my knowledge, the morning of the first day of the coup, Yeltsin accompanied by his close associates were residing not so far away from Moscow in Arkangeskoya, and there was not much problem to put him under arrest and isolate him. I can only doubt what would prevent the plotters from accomplishing this seemingly easy plot. This obvious absence of professionalism just makes me stunned. This whole thing is an enigma to me. I have certain doubts to the extent that this was a plot. I tend to think that it was more of a drama play and the stage director is still to be found.

MR. KRAUSE: Are you suggesting as others have that it was Mikhail Gorbachev himself who orchestrated the coup for his own benefit?

COL. ALKSNIS: [Speaking through Interpreter] Perhaps, maybe. The information that I have read in the Komer Sanz and Independence Gazette about the role of Gorbachev causes very serious reflections and the fact that Yelena Bonner, wife of Andrei Sakharov, stated that she is ready to take an oath claiming that it's Gorbachev who was the director of this play, well, a lot has to be discussed and assessed.

MR. KRAUSE: It's been reported that a number of military units, including the Alpha unit, and including the head of the air force, your own service branch, refused orders to attack the Russian parliament building and to arrest or kill Yeltsin. Do divisions in the armed forces trouble you?

COL. ALKSNIS: [Speaking through Interpreter] Yes. I'm very much anxious of what's happening in the army today because the reality of today is a certain type of split that took place in the army ranks and the moment I've read in Komsoskayev Pravda in the -- in their chronicle of the plot that -- at Kumchuvka area, the flotilla of nuclear powered submarines voted for Yeltsin and the task force made of up surface ships supported the committee -- I just found it hard to imagine what could possibly have happened if those two powerful naval units were to settle scores with the help of nuclear weapons that they both have at their disposal. And I'm very much troubled by what's happening, by the fact that one of the most tragic aftermaths of these events was the split in the army. According to my assessments, the majority of the military reacted positively to the establishment of the committee and to the first steps it took.

MR. KRAUSE: Why have you suggested that those who were involved in the coup be allowed to give their version of events publicly before the Supreme Soviet?

COL. ALKSNIS: [Speaking through Interpreter] I happen to worry over the fact that we have been witnessing the beginning of the chain of suicides happening in this country which leaves enough doubts to wonder what kind of suicides those were. For example, the suicide of Pugo, there is a lot of uncertainties in this affair which give reason to suspicion whether it was actually a suicide. Besides, I do not exclude the possibility that for example this prison cell or whatever place the plotters are kept in, something might happen like the meteorite may all of a sudden fall on this building or the UFOs would land and hijack the plotters. If this happens, I will not envy neither Gorbachev nor Yeltsin. These people would not have anything else to worry about but their lives and they have a lot to say and there can be a big scandal in this country. So it's within the interests of those who are in power now to hide all the answers to the questions which seem to be legitimate at this point. But, again, a thorough investigation is needed. That's why I believe that the only way out is to have those convicts to face the members of the Supreme Soviet, for them to be able to present their own version of what's been happening.

MR. KRAUSE: You've made a very serious charge. You've suggested that the interior minister, Boris Pugo, and the others who officially are said to have committed suicide may, in fact, have been murdered. Do you have any evidence or proof of that?

COL. ALKSNIS: [Speaking through Interpreter] No, I have no evidence and I was not charging anyone. I only said there are certain suspicions which makes me feel doubtful, because, for example, when they say to me that the pistol that Pugo shot himself with, firing into his mouth, was found a few yards away from his dead body, I do not believe that someone can fire himself straight in the mouth and then find enough force to wander over a few steps and put the pistol and then come back, lie down and die. I simply do not believe in that.

MR. KRAUSE: As a result of the coup, have the hardline forces in this country, which you yourself are a part of, been defeated? Or will they attempt to regroup and reassert their power and their influence at some later time?

COL. ALKSNIS: [Speaking through Interpreter] No, I don't believe that there is still room for a revenge. I suppose that we have been defeated, but this is a tactical defeat. I'm a military person and I know that the loss of one battle does not imply the loss of the -- the war.

MR. KRAUSE: On the other hand, hasn't that whole position -- your position -- been totally discredited now?

COL. ALKSNIS: [Speaking through Interpreter] Today we actually are witnesses to the second coup de ta. The first one failed and now we are in the period of the counter coup de ta with different goals, of course, but we can admit that they have been able to successfully go on with their own coup de ta. The aftermath of the second coup is the collapse of the Communist Party, the running down of opposition, and being at the session of the Supreme Soviet, I found another proof to my early assessments that fear is very deeply implanted inside our souls.

MR. KRAUSE: Do you believe Mikhail Gorbachev has any political future in this country?

COL. ALKSNIS: [Speaking through Interpreter] No. The answer is negative. He has lost his future. He has worn himself out. And I believe that if he decided to resign in a dignified way at this point this would have been the best version of his end, because once people start to dig deeper into the political kitchen of what's happening in this country, he may drown.

MR. KRAUSE: And Yeltsin, is he, in fact, the man who's running the Soviet Union at this point?

COL. ALKSNIS: [Speaking through Interpreter] I believe the answer is yes. Today Yeltsin has been able to successfully accomplish his first task, that is to say, to answer the union level and this coup was a gift of fate to Yeltsin. Such an opportunity shows up once in the millennium, and he has been able to make very good use of it. He has answered the union level. Gorbachev is only a symbol President of the country. He is under total control of Yeltsin. He has lost support in this country completely. He is all by himself. This is a tragic figure of the Soviet history.

MR. KRAUSE: Thank you. FOCUS - COUP FALLOUT

MS. WOODRUFF: One question unresolved in last week's coup attempt is what happened to the command and control system over the Soviet nuclear arsenal. There have been published reports that the codes controlling nuclear weapons were taken away from Gorbachev during his house arrest in the Crimea, but officials have since said there was never a danger of a nuclear accident or a misfiring. And a new question has arisen as the country appears to be breaking up into separate republics. The Soviet Union has more than 27,000 nuclear weapons. The land based intercontinental missiles, the backbone of the Soviet nuclear force, are based in Russia, the Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. The bomber bases are in Russia, the Ukraine, and Byelorussia. And short range tactical nuclear weapons are deployed in all the republics. Today both the President of France, Francois Mitterrand, and the Chairman of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, Les Aspin, said in so many words that the new political situation changes the nuclear concern from one of making sure the super powers don't use their weapons to a worry about too many weapons in the wrong hands. Mitterrand was quoted as asking his cabinet, will every republic have at its disposal a little atomic bomb. We get four assessments on that and related questions now from Edward Warner, whois senior defense analyst at the Rand Corporation, Bruce Blair, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, William Green is the author of a book about Gorbachev and his generals and is director of the Soviet and East Europe Study Program at Boston University, he joins us from Boston, and Bruce Van Voorst is senior national security correspondent for Time Magazine. I want to start by asking all of you gentlemen if you would agree with what we just said was pretty much the premise that the President of France and others in high places in the United States are operating on and that is that we really no longer have a super power threat to worry about. Bruce, would you pretty much buy that?

MR. VAN VOORST: Well, I think it's premature to show any great concern for a real break up of the Soviet nuclear force and the 15 republic forces. Nevertheless, I share the concern that Mitterrand expresses and that is that in times of turmoil and uncertainty, we want to know where that finger is that controls even the union authority and it's important in that context to note that, as you point out, Gorbachev lost control for a while of the nuclear codes. To be sure, they have a special arrangement whereby it takes two separate codes to put together to fire -- by the way not to fire but to have authority for firing. So whenever nuclear weapons are concerned, we have to be alert to what the dangers might be.

MS. WOODRUFF: Edward Warner, is there still a nuclear threat, super power threat from the standpoint, the way we thought there was -- may have thought there was a few weeks ago, a few years ago?

MR. WARNER: In terms of actual capabilities, I believe the Soviet nuclear arsenal is back under the centralized control of the central government at this point and it still numbers the 27,000 plus weapons, so in a pure capability sense, the threat is undiminished. As far as the political circumstance under which we might see the use of nuclear weapons, that threat began to decrease dramatically with the end of the cold war in the fall of '89, with the withdrawal of the Soviets of Eastern Europe, with other political changes and now the great weakening of the Soviet government, itself, a chance of confrontation with the West, including a nuclear dimension is very low.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, Bruce Blair, if that's the case, what do we have to be concerned about?

MR. BLAIR: Well, I think we always have to be concerned about the rationality and competence of the top leadership of the Soviet government. That's always been the predominant concern, I believe. All of our concepts of nuclear stability depend on the assumption that nuclear forces are under the command and control of rational competent leaders, and that assumption obviously crumbled for three tense days last week. And I think we should all breathe a sigh of relief that they're back under the control of legitimate authorities of the central government and that, in fact, the command system probably has been strengthened in the wake of this coup by the addition of Boris Yeltsin as another key decision maker with informal command authority over Soviet nuclear weapons.

MS. WOODRUFF: What do you mean the command system has been strengthened? Because formally his name hasn't been added to those who have to sign off on any use of nuclear weapons.

MR. BLAIR: Well, there are three key positions in this high Soviet military command involved in nuclear release. One is the level of the chief and the general staff. The other is the minister of defense and the other is the first deputy minister of defense for general matters. All three of the individuals who have been appointed to those positions defied the coup and threw their support to Yeltsin. And it's very likely that since Yeltsin played a role in their appointment that there is some form of informal command authority that has been established over Soviet nuclear weapons, and I wouldn't be surprised if in the not too distant future Boris Yeltsin becomes tied into the electronic technical apparatus of command and control, and is given his own briefcase with the launch codes.

MS. WOODRUFF: But in general, William Green, I want to bring you into this, you would agree with the others that we have less to be concerned about today than we did weeks ago, months ago, years ago?

MR. GREEN: Yes. Now people have been talking about command authority but there's another matter as well, and that's physical control of the weapons. And we've seen our republics declaring their independence and so far they've all stated their unwillingness to acquire their own nuclear arsenals. But there's always a chance that somebody associated with these new states may want to hold on especially to tactical battlefield weapons.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right. I want to talk about that. Let's go first to this strategic intercontinental missiles and bombers, as we talked about just a moment ago. These are based -- most of them are based, is this not right -- I want to come back to you, Bruce Blair, in the Russian republic?

MR. BLAIR: Approximately 75 percent of strategic nuclear weapons are based in the Russian republic.

MS. WOODRUFF: But --

MR. BLAIR: There are several thousand outside the Russian republic in three other territories, Kazakhstan, the Ukraine, and Byelorussia, there are approximately, roughly speaking, a thousand strategic warheads in Kazakhstan, another thousand in the Ukraine, and probably a very small number in Byelorussia.

MS. WOODRUFF: And today we read in one of the news wires that Ukrainian official was saying we don't want those on our soil. Is that -- should that be reassuring to us? We also have Boris Yeltsin saying we'll be happy to take these back onto Russian territory.

MR. BLAIR: The longstanding policy of the Ukraine and Byelorussia has been to establish nuclear free zones. And I think that they have not changed that position and understand that it certainly would not be in their interest to acquire nuclear weapons in the way that it would antagonize the Soviet Union, and represent a form of nuclear proliferation that would upset the West. And they want to establish relations with the West.

MS. WOODRUFF: Bruce Van Voorst, just from the standpoint of the Bush administration, how concerned is it about this question of several thousand of these strategic weapons being situated outside the Russian republic?

MR. VAN VOORST: Well, Judy, very early on in the coup, the President made it clear that the United States was not terribly concerned. Presumably, the administration thinks that it knows a lot about the command and control structure in the Soviet Union and was confident that there is not a real possibility of a launch, even aware of the fact that perhaps Gorbachev's own black box, or football, or whatever you want to call it, had been taken over by the coup makers. But don't forget that even if they had the capability, that is, that there would still be no particular reason why the coup makers might want to launch an attack against the United States. Don't forget the same deterrence that applied before the coup applies afterwards. They couldn't fire without expecting a return. But --

MS. WOODRUFF: But the question of the republics and looking ahead now, if you've got instead of one central government, you've got ten or eleven or twelve governments --

MR. VAN VOORST: That's the second stage. And of course they're getting to that now. Early on in the coup, of course, the administration, neither the President nor the others in the senior levels, were concerned particularly about the emergence of the republics. That has become clear only in the last couple of days how rapid that acceleration is taking place, but again I think there's -- I agree with Bruce that there's no reason now to suppose that any of these republics, except possibly for Russia, might have an interest in going nuclear.

MR. BLAIR: If I could just interject briefly, I would just add that until those weapons are moved out and those republics back inside the Russian republic, which I think will happen ultimately, I could imagine that the leaders of those breakaway republics, particularly the Ukraine and Byelorussia, would take the same position that Yeltsin has probably taken, which is that they would like to have veto rights over the employment of weapons based on their soil. They're not any more enamored of the idea than Boris Yeltsin is of using their territories as launch pads for missiles controlled from Moscow.

MS. WOODRUFF: Ted Warner.

MR. WARNER: I think we should probably take a second look on the problem with the Ukraine. Of all the breakaway republics and the Ukrainian declaration for full independence coming just over the weekend, this is a new development. A year ago when in their declaration of sovereignty they declared a desire to be nuclear free, they were anticipating they'd be part of a recast Soviet Union, so they would be, in a sense, a free rider for nuclear deterrence provided by the rest of the Soviet Union, and they didn't want anti-nuclear sentiments in the wake of Chernobyl in particular to have nuclear weapons in their territory. Some Ukrainian politicians in Kiev have said if we're going to be fully independent, we will need military forces, and possibly even it would be useful if we had an independent nuclear deterrent. I think this helps explain why a year after the Ukrainian declaration now Mr. Gorbachev and Mr. Yeltsin say we hear you talking, we'd be happy to get the nuclear weapons out of the Ukraine as rapidly as possible. The fact that the Ukrainian ambassador in the UN today repeated the desire for nuclear free shows that there's obviously differing opinions and they may be able to get those nuclear weapons out quickly before more nationalist forces could perhaps marshal arguments to keep them.

MS. WOODRUFF: But I gather that most of you believe that the Ukraine is the only place where you see a potential problem with the other republics.

MR. WARNER: I think the other republics, some of them are even declaring independence basically to bargain for a better union. I think that's the Kazakhstan. The small breakaway republics that have been on this course for a year or so, the Baltic states, Moldavia --

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, they don't have the strategic weapons.

MR. WARNER: They don't have strategic. They had general purpose or tactical weapons but many of those, if not perhaps all of them, were withdrawn over the last year and a half in the wake of an incident where there was a raid against a nuclear weapons storage site near Baku in January of 1990.

MR. VAN VOORST: Could I just add that the proliferation in the republics is seen from Washington as part of a worldwide proliferation issue, that is, that's in the broader context new nations acquiring both missiles and warheads are one of the reasons why there's more of a pressure now for an ABM system, for example, as the Senate has under discussion right now.

MS. WOODRUFF: William Green, in Boston, I want to bring you back into this. You brought up the question of these tactical weapons. I read today there are 8,800 of them spread around apparently all 15 republics. How different a question is that from the control over these strategic weapons we've been discussing?

MR. GREEN: Ah, quite a bit different, and there's something else as well following on what Ted was bringing up, is the issue of naval nuclear weapons and in the connection with the Ukraine, the Soviet Union's largest naval shipyard and one of its largest naval bases at Sevastapol are on Ukrainian territory so that's another issue to be factored in, but as far as the tactical weapons goes, we know that well into the 1970s, in the event of a general conflict, nuclear release was delegated fairly far down the chain of command.

MS. WOODRUFF: What do you mean, how far down?

MR. GREEN: Probably the divisional, that is, the two star general --

MR. BLAIR: That flies in the face of all principles of Soviet command and control. I would strongly doubt the validity of that, of that position. I think that the Soviets have had such an obsession with nuclear command and control for 40 years that they have vested authority at the very highest level of the chain of command and have no plans to delegate, unless the high command has already made the decision to use those weapons, have no plans to delegate discretionary authority to such a low level.

MS. WOODRUFF: Even for the tactical weapons.

MR. GREEN: Well, I said in the event of a --

MS. WOODRUFF: I'm sorry.

MR. GREEN: -- general conflict.

MR. BLAIR: Well, but in that case the decision for their use has already been made, in which case it's not terribly interesting that the lower level commanders would actually then just execute the decision.

MS. WOODRUFF: I just want to get this straight, Mr. Blair, that you're saying that even for these 8800 tactical weapons that there is still a strong -- in your understanding -- a strong system of command and control that would require a central okay before any one of them were used.

MR. BLAIR: They're not quite as well centralized as the strategic nuclear forces, but they come fairly close and furthermore, I think the general staff last year assessed the security of these forces and weapons and moved them out of the areas that they deemed to be vulnerable. Those weapons that --

MS. WOODRUFF: But there are still --

MR. BLAIR: -- that remain are probably in fairly secure areas, although some of them are probably moved out of the rest of the republics into the places like the Ukraine.

MR. WARNER: We might shed light on it by the way that the nuclear weapons are stored, in the tactical case, they're not mated with their delivery systems in a normal day to day feature. They are in many of the strategic systems so that they could react within minutes if needed. So these weapons are stored in specially protected sites by special troops from the ministry of defense that will not release these weapons to the operating forces without authorization from Moscow. Moreover, once the operating forces get them, they have what we call "permissive action devices." You must get an appropriate code to enable you to use the weapon. We think such devices are associated with most Soviet nuclear weapons, including the tactical, so even if the operating force has them, until he gets authorization from Moscow, they can't be enabled for use. Once enabled, then once a war had started and gone nuclear, you might have that devolution.

MS. WOODRUFF: But we're still talking again in a very hypothetical --

MR. VAN VOORST: That's the point. Ted just used the word "think." The fact of the matter is that we aren't at all sure that we know all the details of the Soviet command and control system, particularly with respect to nuclear weapons. One of the things that the -- that our administration has to do now with the new administration in the Soviet Union is to sit down and pursue in much more detail some of the arrangements that we've got so that we understand each other much better

MS. WOODRUFF: We also want to deal here for the few minutes that we have left about this, the whole structure of the Soviet military. William Green, where is the loyalty to the army? We've heard so much in the last week about how the army was split and that's one of the reasons that this coup failed in the first place. Where is the Soviet military at this point? Does it have a single loyalty? Is it loyal to Boris Yeltsin, to Mikhail Gorbachev, to neither one?

MR. GREEN: At this point, it's a question of real divided loyalties, not merely that some officers have strong loyalties to one figure and some to another, but that there's a lot of confusion. Now at the lower levels, there's the additional problem that discipline in many units has been shown to be quite bad and there are problems with hazing and desertion and disobedience to orders to the point that the KGB has actually been kidnapping people out of Western Germany who have deserted from the units, including officers.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, we saw it today. The KGB has been even further decimated. Gorbachev ordered what the -- that the general - -

MR. WARNER: The governing board was abolished.

MS. WOODRUFF: -- the governing board of the KGB would be disbanded and many, many of the troops who belong to the KGB are, in essence, fired from their jobs.

MR. WARNER: The other part of the story today along the nuclear weapons is that the whole structure, size and character of the Soviet armed forces is being called into question by the momentous changes in Soviet politics in the wake of the coup. There was a design for military reform with the numbers of forces down to 3.2 to 3 million, the character of the forces, et cetera. That design was done by the Yazov Moysaif Group, which is now out on its ear. Moreover, the military has suffered mightily in reputation for having supported the coup. The progressive forces egged on by the republics are lucky now to go after the size and character of the military. We have very dramatic changes in the offing for the Soviet military establishment.

MS. WOODRUFF: So there have already been some cuts in the military. We're talking about, what, more cuts, deeper cuts.

MR. WARNER: Deeper cuts.

MR. VAN VOORST: These changes, this turmoil was already present in the Soviet military even before the coup. After all, Gorbachev had cut back unilaterally on his own the size of the force by 1/2 million people. He'd pulled them out of Eastern Europe. He pulled them out of the Warsaw Pact. It was really a burden and very difficult for the new Soviet officer to grasp what was going on, but they did know that the budget was going down, that the size of the army was going to be much smaller, and in fact, some of these really dramatic changes, such as possibly even a volunteer army.

MS. WOODRUFF: William Green, what do we look for? Are we going to look for each republic to have its own army or its own national guard with one central army, or is there going to be -- of course the big question we don't know, that none of us can know at this point, is there going to be enough of a central control to have command over some sort of central or federal army.

MR. GREEN: That's the big question, but you have to look at what's going on in Yugoslavia where you have a federal unified control of a number of republics where the federal army is actually siding with the largest of the republics. And I think that may make people in the other 14 republics think strongly before putting their defense in the hands of an institution that ethnically is predominantly Russian.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, that's an argument Bruce Blair, isn't it, for each republic having its own defense set-up?

MR. BLAIR: Possibly, but if I could just return to the nuclear side of the story for a minute, I think there is a real opportunity now to negotiate very deep reductions in strategic arms as a result of the coup because of the strengthened hand of Boris Yeltsin, who is taking positions very receptive to deep cuts. And his principal advisers, who are liberals, have proposed schemes for reductions of up to 800 percent.

MS. WOODRUFF: But we've just finished negotiating the START, so- called "START Treaty," Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the United States Senate has not even ratified that yet, so how quickly can we move on to the next --

MR. WARNER: There are going to be problems of ratification largely on the question of what is the Soviet Union, who is the party to the agreement, one issue we'll need clarification on. It's not, I believe, that any of the successor elements in the Soviet Union want to repudiate the treaty, but if the Ukraine goes free and it deploys some of these weapons, the whole question if those weapons are returned to a recast Soviet Union, then we can deal with a single unified whole. But until that's cleared up, I assume that the Senate will want to ask some questions about how coherent is our partner in the wake of the signing of the treaty.

MS. WOODRUFF: Who are we signing a treaty with?

MR. VAN VOORST: You mentioned the KGB, by the way. Uncertain as we might be about the ramifications of the fractioning and the fracturing of the Soviet military, the one good thing coming out of this is the fact that the KGB has been purged, it's going to be cut back substantially, and, as you know, it had FBI, CIA responsibility. It's going to end up as just a CIA.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, there are many, many questions that have left to be answered. We want to thank you all, all of you for joining us. Thank you. FOCUS - DIRE EMERGENCY

MR. MacNeil: The severe overcrowding of hospital emergency rooms is next tonight. Two studies in the Journal of the American Medical Association lead to the conclusion that the nation's emergency health care system is in crisis. One of the studies found that substantial numbers of patients left the hospital emergency room before being seen by a doctor. Patients with serious problems walked out after waiting an average of about six hours for help. A separate study of 239 teaching hospitals in the annals of emergency medicine found that the hospitals told ambulance crews to take patients elsewhere in 25 percent of their cases. Even heart attack cases were sent away to other hospitals because of the overload. We have a report from Jeffrey Kaye of public station KCET in Los Angeles. This report was first aired in October 1989.

HEALTH CARE WORKER TALKING TO PATIENT: Okay. We're over at Daniel Freeman. You just sit back and relax.

SCOTT CLOUGH, Paramedic: Any day of the week, we run into a problem with hospital closures on a regular basis. Weekends we're hit much harder.

DR. BRIAN JOHNSTON, Emergency Physician: The system is collapsing. Patients are not getting the care that they need. The county hospital is overwhelmed. The private hospitals are overwhelmed.

DAVID LANGNESS, Southern California Hospital Council: Many times now we've come across what we now call medical gridlock in Los Angeles. We've had hospitals so full in their emergency rooms and trauma centers that ambulances have had to go to the third furthest or the fifth furthest or the tenth furthest hospital.

MELISSA HENDRICKS, Emergency Nurse: In the time that I've been here, I would say over the last two or three years it's gotten just almost unmanageable at times. It's very scary.

MR. KAYE: ERSAT, that's short for emergency room saturation. This is one of many busy hospital emergency rooms that on any given day in Los Angeles may be closed temporarily to ambulances.

LISA MORAN, Paramedic: The closest hospital is closed to saturation. We're going to have to bypass it and go to the next hospital, which is about another five minutes away. It's been happening all day long. We're lucky we're going to the second. Normally we're going to the fourth or fifth close hospital.

DR. BRIAN JOHNSTON, Emergency Physician: People are not getting the care they need and to an increasing degree, they are suffering increased morbidity. And in fact, I feel it's very likely that people are dying today in Los Angeles for lack of this care.

JEFFREY KAYE, KCET: Monday, November 9, 1987, late in the afternoon, dispatchers at LA's 911 control center received this call.

CALLER: Would you get a paramedic to 707 East 87th Place?

DISPATCHER: What's the matter there, sir?

CALLER: The man can't breathe.

MR. KAYE: The man with the breathing difficulty was 60 year old Ultress Hunter, a retired truck driver with emphysema. Paramedic Ron Lingo went with his partner to Hunter's home.

RON LINGO, Paramedic: He was very apologetic for calling us and said he had tried his medication, it wasn't working, and he wanted us to, if we could help him out, and we told him that we could.

MR. KAYE: The paramedics took Hunter from his home, put him in the ambulance and gave him medication. They were dispatched to the closest hospital.

MR. LINGO: Then they came back and told us on the radio that the hospital was closed to everything, saturation. So we asked for the next closest hospital.

MR. KAYE: The four closest hospital emergency rooms were closed. The paramedics took Hunter to one anyway, an overcrowded county hospital, because his condition had deteriorated, but they put him back in the ambulance because the wait was so long. Finally, an hour and ten minutes after the 911 call was made, they brought him to Memorial Hospital of Gardena.

MR. LINGO: When we got to Gardena, the doctor met this very critical patient, was very upset why we had brought him in there, I mean, in this condition.

DR. GRANT: I was just upset that there was a man here that was potentially salvageable and that's what we're supposed to be here for, and he was not saved.

MR. KAYE: Not saved because Ultress Hunter arrived at the hospital too late for help according to Dr. Grant. Hunter had a heart attack and died.

DR. JAMES GRANT, Memorial Hospital of Gardena: And the fact that it took so long for him to get to some place wherewe could intervene in that situation obviously put a strain on his heart and induced him to have a heart attack.

MR. KAYE: At LA County's Medical Alert Center, coordinators monitor the constantly changing status of LA's emergency rooms so they can notify paramedics.

MR. KAYE: And what does that mean?

SPOKESMAN: This means that the emergency room at White Memorial now cannot absorb any more patients; their emergency room is full.

MR. KAYE: Hospitals complain they are overwhelmed by the demand. David Langness who represents the 225 member Hospital Council of Southern California collects war stories from the front lines.

MR. LANGNESS: What kind of an increase have you folks seen since the closure of other surrounding ER's and trauma centers?

DR. EUGENE KELLER, Cedars-Sinai Hospital: Well, I think it's getting worse. I don't think any of the politicians or the people who are in charge of funding understand the depth of the problem. I think it's going to take some major big wigs to die because they can't get the kind of service that we can provide under normal circumstances.

JEFFREY KAYE: These days normal services in emergency rooms are being squeezed by the growing numbers of drug abusers as well as victims of violence. [HEALTH CARE WORKER TALKING TO GUNSHOT VICTIMS]

MR. KAYE: While victims of street violence often overwhelm emergency resources temporarily, paramedics are also having to cope with a more critical problem. In the last five years, 11 Los Angeles hospitals out of 104 shut their emergency room doors permanently. The reason for the crisis is a combination of rising hospital costs and the increased numbers of non-paying patients.

DAVID LANGNESS: 25 percent of the population in Los Angeles County is uninsured and is therefore indigent, can't pay for their health care, 37 million people in America are uninsured, and as a result, we have filled hospitals with patients who are unable to pay.

JEFFREY KAYE: Because patients who can't pay tend to put off seeing doctors, they are heavy users of emergency care. At Daniel Freeman Hospital 1/3 of the patients have no medical insurance and administrators are considering closing down their emergency room permanently.

DR. BAYLISS YARNELL, Daniel Freeman Hospital: The emergency department is the door through which the medically indigent patient and patient who is under insured gets into the private hospital. The hospital loses money with these patients and that cannot continue.

JEFFREY KAYE: Many hospitals, particularly those in low income neighborhoods, are losing money as medical costs skyrocket. But critics complain hospitals may be too quick to abandon the emergency room business. For example, Centinela Hospital Medical Center located in a relatively poor Los Angeles community shut down much of its emergency services in May. At the same time, the hospital was expanding its sophisticated sports medicine clinic for professional athletes and business executives. While they were stepping up operations at the sports clinic, hospital officials claimed they couldn't afford the financial burden of treating uninsured patients in their emergency room. We asked two experts to examine the hospital's records, Shoshanna Sofaer from the University of California, Los Angeles, and Glenn Melnick with the Rand Corporation. They concluded that compared to many other hospitals in poor neighborhoods, Centinela is actually treating an extremely low proportion of poor people.

GLENN MELNICK, Rand Corporation: I think it gets back to the question of do non-profit community hospitals such as Centinela which enjoy the benefits of being a non-profit, that is, they don't pay taxes during those periods where they have higher profits, and they don't pay property taxes, so the local communities are providing benefits to those hospitals. Do they have an obligation to take care of the basic needs of the community they serve?

MR. KAYE: Is Centinela?

MR. MELNICK: And it appears that Centinela falls short in that area.

SHOSHANNA SOFAER, U.C.L.A.: If hospitals are selecting the services they offer on the basis of the profitability of those services rather than on the need to the community, you do have to ask some questions about to what is there a commitment.

MR. KAYE: Those questions remain unanswered. Officials at Centinela Hospital declined our request for an interview. But David Langness at the hospital council offered one explanation.

DAVID LANGNESS: Emergency rooms are expensive to operate. They take enormous amounts of staffing, they take enormous amounts of time, labor, energy, capital, et cetera. I would submit to you that any business that has a quarter of its customers, whether it be a hardware store, a doctor's office, a hospital, will go out of business sooner or later if those people can't pay.

STANDLEY DORN, National Health Law Program: The medical business is different than the hardware business. If you don't get a piece of plywood, you're not going to die. If you don't get emergency room care, you die.

MR. KAYE: While advocates such as Standley Dorn of the National Health Law Program are making demands of hospitals, the health care industry in turn is asking government for help. Hospital officials want more money but California's governor has vetoed many health care spending bills and his health and welfare secretary, Clifford Allenby, isn't holding out much hope for the future.

CLIFFORD ALLENBY, California Health & Welfare Agency: We have to balance our budget and we have to make hard choices. There are never enough dollars to provide for all the things that government probably wants to do, in many cases even government should do.

MR. KAYE: The hospitals most seriously affected by the emergency room crisis are the four run by the county, including LA County, University of Southern California Medical Center. It is jammed with patients transported by ambulances that were turned away from private hospitals and by poor people seeking care.

PATIENT: I'm so tired. If I had a bed, I could sleep right here.

PATIENT: I've been waiting since about 1 o'clock.

MR. KAYE: That's almost four hours.

PATIENT: Umm hmm.

PATIENT: Every time I come it's like eight hours, eight, nine, ten hours.

MR. KAYE: Do you have health insurance?

PATIENT: No, I don't.

MR. KAYE: Do you, sir?

PATIENT: No, I don't.

MR. KAYE: So this is really the only thing you can do when you need a doctor, you have to come to the emergency room?

PATIENT: Yeah, that's all I have. That's the only thing I have.

MR. KAYE: We were forbidden from videotaping in the emergency room of LA County USC Hospital. This tape was shot with a concealed camera. It shows how patients on gurneys are routinely placed in hallways without monitoring equipment. The corridors get so crowded that the fire department has issued citations for blocked exits. Doctors and nurses say the worst sometimes happens.

SANDRA CORREIA, Emergency Nurse: When there's 42 people in the hallway, 50 patients in the hospital, that's really horrible. I mean, I've heard of horror stories where they find patients that have arrested, and the only reason they found outbecause the nurse went over to change a dry IV bag.

MR. KAYE: When you say have arrested, you mean they've had a heart attack.

MS. CORREIA: Cardiac arrest; they're dead.

MR. KAYE: The county run hospitals are taking the brunt of the emergency health care crisis, but because emergency rooms are closing temporarily and permanently throughout Los Angeles, everyone, regardless of income level, is potentially in danger.

DR. JOHNSTON: The paramedics, when you call, they don't know whether you're rich are poor. The paramedics can only respond and they do, and they do the best they can. But everyone is at risk. In fact, the business community in Los Angeles should be very concerned. Because if I were a businessman, I couldn't in conscience ask people to come here for a convention or ask people to conduct business in this town. We don't have basic services. And it's a threat to public health and safety.

MR. KAYE: Everyone interviewed for this story agreed there needs to be a better system of health care financing and more comprehensive health care insurance. While politicians debate those issues, paramedics in Los Angeles and around the country keep looking for open emergency rooms to take their patients.

DISPATCHER: [Talking to Ambulance] At this time we show California closed to ER saturation -- White Memorial, ER saturated, USC, ICU, Trauma and PCCC --

MR. MacNeil: Since that report was filed, four additional Los Angeles have closed their emergency rooms. RECAP

MR. MacNeil: Again the main story this Wednesday, fallout from the Soviet coup. Mikhail Gorbachev ordered a major shake-up of the KGB and had his cabinet sacked. He also named one of his most loyal supporters during the coup to the post of foreign minister, and prosecutors charged the ring leaders of the failed takeover with high treason. Good night, Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Good night, Robin. That's our NewsHour for tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night with a look at how the West should respond economically to the Soviet situation as representatives of the seven leading industrial powers gather in London to discuss further aid. I'm Judy Woodruff. Thank you and good night.