The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

Intro

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. Leading the news this Valentine's Day, the government issued a national warning and nine states banned the sale of Tylenol. Catholic bishops criticized the conduct of the Philippine election as the Parliament moved toward confirming President Marcos the winner. And the shuttle investigating commission said the cause of the Challenger tragedy is still an open question. We'll have the details in our news summary coming up. Charlayne Hunter-Gault is in New York tonight. Charlayne?

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: After a summary of the day's news, we'll begin our focus by getting the latest on the Tylenol investigation. The head of the FDA will tell us where the case stands and what's being done to protect the public. Then onto the shuttle tragedy and questions about whether NASA sacrificed safety to meet its flight schedule. Kwame Holman reports on the latest threat to Detroit's big three automakers, and it's not Japan. And we'll close with a last look at a master of science fiction tales, the late Frank Herbert. News Summary

LEHRER: The Tylenol story widened considerably today. The finding of a second bottle of cyanide-laced capsules caused nine states to ban the sale of the pain medicine and the Food and Drug Administration to issue a national warning about its use. Johnson & Johnson, the manufacturer, announced a $100,000 reward for information. Company chairman James Burke spoke at a news conference in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

JAMES E. BURKE, chairman, Johnson & Johnson: Ladies and gentlemen, what's happened in Westchester and just over three years ago in Chicago is an act of terrorism, pure and simple. Capsule container medications are not the only consumable products that are at risk. The safety of all manner of food products is threatened as well. All of us in society must work, and work together, to help solve this intolerable problem.

LEHRER [voice-over]: The second bottle of poisoned capsules came from a Woolworth's store two blocks away from the A&P where the first one came from. That is the one that contained the capsules that killed 23-year-old Diane Elsroth last weekend. Both stores are in the New York City suburb of Bronxville. Police in the area uncovered a $2 million extortion letter today, but concluded it was bogus and unrelated to the poisonings. Johnson & Johnson worked hard to recover from the original Tylenol incident in Chicago three and a half years ago when seven people died. Today its stock on Wall Street continued the price slide that began earlier in the week when the news of the Tylenol poisoning first broke. It closed at $48 a share, down $5.50 per share from its price before the first poisoned capsules were found last Saturday. Charlayne?

HUNTER-GAULT: In the Philippines, President Marcos holds a commanding lead over Corazon Aquino in the official canvass of the vote. The count, by a bipartisan committee of the National Assembly, shows Marcos ahead by more than a 1,450,000 votes, with only a million and a half left to count. The committee has adjourned until tomorrow and the winner will not be declared before then. However, the country's Roman Catholic bishops denounced the election as riddled with fraud and called for a struggle for justice. We have a report from Brian Baron of the BBC.

BRIAN BARON, BBC [voice-over]: The bishops threw down the gauntlet to President Marcos. They put the weight of the Roman Catholic Church not only behind Mrs. Aquino, but behind a nationwide campaign to topple Mr. Marcos because of the rigged election.

Cardinal NESTOR CARINO: Harassment, terrorism and murder -- these made naked fear the decisive factor in people not participating in the polls, or making their final choice. These and many other irregularities point to a criminal use of power to thwart the sovereign will of the people.

BARON [voice-over]: Then the bishops' joint statement, the strongest they've ever issued here, set out their course of action.

Cardinal CARINO: If such a government does not of itself freely correct the evil it has inflicted on the people, then it is our serious moral obligation as a people to make it do so. The way indicated to us now is the way of nonviolent struggle for justice.

HUNTER-GAULT: The bishops said their statement was not intended to declare Mrs. Aquino the winner.

LEHRER: There is still no explanation for those puffs of black smoke. The presidential commission investigating the cause of the space shuttle Challenger tragedy looked for answers at Cape Canaveral today but found none. Pictures released yesterday showed the smoke where it should not have been before the spacecraft left the launchpad. Commission chairman William Rogers said late this afternoon, "There are no answers yet to that or any of the other central questions on what happened."

HUNTER-GAULT: The U.S. embassy in Moscow said the chemical spy dust used to track Americans in the Soviet Union is harmless and does not cause cancer. Last summer the United States protested against the use of the dust on the ground that it might be a health hazard. Today Ambassador Arthur Hartman said that even if it isn't, the use of any such chemicals against Americans is unacceptable.

LEHRER: Another big bank has been hit with a big fine for not reporting big cash transactions to the federal government. The Treasury Department today announced a $1.9 million fine against Texas Commerce Bancshares, a Houston bank holding company. The government said the bank had committed 7,000 violations of the law, which requires reporting all cash transactions of $10,000 or more.

Also on the bank front today, criminal charges were filed against four more members of the once rich and powerful Butcher family of Knoxville, Tennessee. C.H. Butcher, Jr., his wife, father and son were charged with conspiracy to conceal cash, luxury cars and other assets from a federal bankruptcy court. C.H. Butcher, Jr., like his brother Jake Butcher, was in the banking business. Jake Butcher, a two-time candidate for governor, an organizer of the 1982 World's Fair, is already in prison serving a 20-year sentence for bank and mail fraud.

HUNTER-GAULT: Looking at the economy, wholesale prices went down last month and the stock market hit another new record today. Wholesale prices fell 0.7 the steepest decline in three years. The Labor Department said much of that was due to lower prices for gasoline and heating oil. Lower prices were one factor in sending the stock market up. The Dow Jones average of industrial stocks closed at 1664.45, up 19.38 for the day and 51.03 for the week. Today's close was the fifth new record for the Dow in the last six trading sessions.

LEHRER: And that completes our summary of the news on this Valentine's Day. Coming up, the head of the FDA talks about the new Tylenol scare, we look at how NASA handles waivers to safety concerns, at the new foreign car competitor from Korea, and at the legacy of science fiction writer Frank Herbert. NASA: Safety First?

LEHRER: The search for answers in the space shuttle tragedy involves O-rings and seals, the weather and puffs of black smoke, among many, many other things. An additional overriding question is the one of NASA's attitude toward safety. That is what we look at now beginning with this report by correspondent Elizabeth Brackett.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT [voice-over]: From the first news conference, NASA officials have consistently denied that the pressure of the heavy flight schedule compromised flight safety.

JESSE MOORE, NASA [January 28]: There was absolutely no pressure to get this particular launch off. We have always maintained that flight safety is our top priority consideration in the program, and we look at the status and readiness of the systems based on that.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: But internal NASA documents obtained by the NewsHour show that top NASA officials were concerned that the safety of upcoming shuttle flights was being compromised by the pressure of the heavy schedule. The documents refer to a practice known as "fly as is." In a meeting at this General Dynamics plant in San Diego last November, Bob Blount, the chairman of the payload safety panel at the Johnson Space Center, told the associate administrator for NASA, Jesse Moore, that the fly-as-is practice could cause problems on two shuttle Centaur missions that were scheduled for this May. Those two missions were to use a Centaur upper-stage rocket to boost a spacecraft from the orbiting shuttle. The spacecraft would then explore the planet Jupiter and the sun. But in his safety status report on the shuttle Centaur launch, Blount told the meeting, "Recent actions to fly as is on planetaries and fix for future missions indicates schedule pressure is forcing solutions which might otherwise be rejected."

In a telephone interview, Blount, 12-year veteran of NASA, said he remains concerned that the pressure of the schedule kept the level of risk on the Centaur missions too high. Administrator Moore summarized Blount's concerns with the "fly-as-is" practice in this letter. Moore concluded, "The shuttle Centaur team should be made aware and sensitive to the potential for increased safety risk due to the individual acceptance of the fly-as-is hardware decisions as well as the overall increased risk in general."

Minutes of the November meeting record Moore's concern with the pressures of the schedule. "Mr. Moore reiterated the fact that the board should be sensitive to issues and identify necessary and appropriate actions, but to be mindful that the "wagon is loaded," and each decision recommendation should be based upon an absolute necessity required for flight safety." Blount's safety report shows that NASA had approved a record number of safety deviations or waivers on the payloads of the shuttle's Centaur flights. The mission's payloads were to be the Centaur rocket, which is fueled by highly explosive liquid hydrogen and oxygen, and the interplanetary spacecraft, which runs off a nuclear power plant. The safety waivers allowed NASA to reduce the number of backup safety systems on the flight. With the growing list of safety waivers on the complex mission, Blount felt that the fly-as-is, fix-for-the-future practice could take the mission beyond an acceptable level of risk.

[on camera] Jesse Moore would not comment on the concern that the pressure of the schedule led to a fly-as-is, fix-it-later practice. NASA maintains that safety is their primary concern. But in internal documents released by NASA this week, a similar fly-as-is pattern emerged before the ill-fated Challenger was launched. Three years ago, NASA safety analysts documented problems with the seals on the solid rocket boosters on the shuttle flights. The analysts said that failure of the O-rings to seal the joints on the booster rockets would lead to catastrophe for the mission, the vehicle and the crew. But safety waivers were granted, which permitted the shuttle missions to fly without a backup safety system to seal the rocket's joints.

[voice-over] The documents show that dozens of solutions were proposed to fix the seal problem on future flights. The proposals include changing the putty in the seal, increasing the size of the O-rings and adding a steel bolt to hold the O-rings in place. But none of the solutions were implemented and the shuttle missions continued to fly as is.

LEHRER: We pursue this safety issue now with Richard Cook, who until today was a NASA budget analyst. He is leaving NASA to join the Treasury Department. He is also the author of the much-publicized memo warning space officials that rocket booster seals could cause a catastrophic accident. He testified this week before the presidential commission investigating the Challenger disaster.

Mr. Cook, is safety not the number one priority of NASA?

RICHARD COOK: Well, it is one of the highest priorities, and in some circumstances it's certainly the highest priority. When you get the hardware to the launchpad at Kennedy, or later on when they start launching from Vandenberg, there's no question that everything --

LEHRER: That's in California, a different base in California.

Mr. COOK: Right. There's no question that everything possible is done to assure that a safe launch is made. The concerns that were being raised last summer had to do not with what happened when a launch was being prepared, but what was being done to build the hardware that was to be taken to the Cape to actually launch the mission. And my area of focus at that time, one of them, was the solid rocket boosters. And the safety issue there was not so much the procedures down at the Cape when it was getting ready to go, but this question of what was being done on the engineering of the field joints and the O-rings to assure that we had safe launches at that time.

LEHRER: And what was the concern that overrode the safety concern? Was it the schedule, the launch must go on, the schedule must be adhered to? Was that the number one concern?

Mr. COOK: Well, there were different judgments that were made over that period of time. The waiver that was given to the O-ring system was signed in 1983, and what the waiver did was to allow the shuttle to fly with a primary backup system in the field joints, so that everything depended at that time on the first O-ring in the joint holding against the pressure of firing.

LEHRER: And in simple terms, if the first ring didn't hold, there was no backup system to it, is that correct?

Mr. COOK: That's right. That was what was discovered because of a phenomenon known as joint rotation. And NASA's procedures require, because of the loss of redundancy on the field joint, for a level-one waiver to be granted, and level one meant headquarters in Washington, for the booster to go.

LEHRER: The concern there was also the amount of money it would have cost to have put that primary system back into operation?

Mr. COOK: Well, that was something that, from my perspective, as the solid rocket booster budget analyst, was kind of the background to the issue as we went along. Because what was discovered was, after the waiver was granted and we were flying on a primary safety system, that primary safety system was beginning to show signs of damage. And this is the erosion in the O-ring that has become so well-publicized lately. At that point a decision had to be made, and actually it was a decision that was a series of decisions over a certain period of time; when and how would the repair be made that everyone was aware sooner or later had to be made. You couldn't just continue indefinitely to fly a single redundancy system when that single redundancy system is showing signs of giving way.

LEHRER: Sure. And the decision was made to go ahead and fly as is, and correct that somewhere else down the road, is that right?

Mr. COOK: Yes. The decision was that really there were two parts of it that I became involved with, and of course I'm only speaking from the information I have as a budget analyst. There were two chief problems in the redundancy issue. One was the putty in the field joint that was supposed to keep hot gases from reaching the O-rings. The second was the joint rotation that caused the backup O-ring to slip out of its groove, so that if the first failed you would not have a redundant feature. So NASA was in the process of first of all trying to develop a new putty and secondly develop a capture feature, it was called, that would keep that second O-ring in place.

LEHRER: Okay. As you know, you've been criticized since you spoke out on this. You say you were a budget analyst; a lot of people said you're not an engineer, you don't know what you're talking about. How do you respond to those kind of things?

Mr. COOK: Well, I tried to go into that before the national commission the other day, and I think my first response was simply that I was reporting. And I wasn't putting quotation marks around the words in my memo, but I was asked to, and I was in fact reporting the concerns of the engineers who were working on the problem.

LEHRER: Now, they had told you and you had merely passed them on.

Mr. COOK: Exactly. Exactly.

LEHRER: I see.

Mr. COOK: But secondly -- and this was something that I only learned really after the national commission meeting, when they passed out that big thick set of documents -- in August of that year, Morton-Thiokol, which had been doing the engineering for this --

LEHRER: That's the company, right.

Mr. COOK: -- were saying, in terms very similar to my memo, virtually the same thing, that the redundancy was lacking and we were facing a situation where we could have a very serious problem, including a possible burn-through.

LEHRER: Thank you. Charlayne?

HUNTER-GAULT: NASA officials strongly deny that they've compromised on the shuttle program's safety, and there is some support for that position outside the agency. Here to tell us about that is Jerry Grey, publisher of Aerospace America and a longtime NASA watcher. He's also applied to become the first journalist in space.

Mr. Grey, what's your response to Mr. Cook's overall charge that the pressure of schedule really forced NASA to compromise its safety concerns?

JERRY GREY: Well, I'm not sure that's what was being said. NASA certainly makes compromises. NASA makes design compromises due to budget, due to schedule constraints and so on. This is the normal way of doing business, not just in NASA but everywhere.

HUNTER-GAULT: But design compromises the engineers are saying would affect the safety of the mission?

Mr. GREY: No, this is where I think the difference is. I don't know if NASA would compromise on safety. That is -- actually I have to disagree a little with Mr. Cook. That is the primary motivation for all of the design work that is done and all of the operations work, is safety. I think the memo that was in the tape you saw a few minutes ago from Mr. Moore indicated that even though each of the waivers were permitted, safety was an overall consideration on this mission, and a special care had to be taken to make sure that safety was not compromised. But we do make compromises all the time. A waiver, for example, is granted after someone has looked at the request for that waiver and evaluated it very carefully. An engineer, or a series of engineers in this case, certainly, looked at it, decided that although the system was operating with what is called a single failure mode, there was some degree of backup. The second O-ring doesn't always come out of its slot. But more important, it was decided based upon testing and experience that that failure mode was not crucial and could be operated on a compromise basis. It was not a safety problem, and I think this was the decision that was made. Now we have to go back and look at the judgment of the people who made the decision and decide whether that was a good one or not.

HUNTER-GAULT: Because it was a safety problem.

Mr. GREY: Well, it turned out -- we're not sure yet. It turned out that it's a very likely cause of the failure. But again, you know, anything can turn out to be a safety problem with the benefit of hindsight. When you look at thousands and thousands of systems, on any given system it's impossible to have a backup for every nut and every bolt on anything, not just the space shuttle but on an airplane or an automobile.

HUNTER-GAULT: But Mr. Cook was just saying that even the Thiokol engineers were saying that it wasn't a good idea to be flying that system without the backup.

Mr. GREY: Well, again --

HUNTER-GAULT: And this wasn't hindsight, this was before.

Mr. GREY: Well, no, no, that's true. But what we're looking at is, here is a situation, the fact that the second O-ring, which was the design backup, was not operating properly was an indication that the system did need to be redesigned. It was evaluated. The redesign was considered to be something that needed to be done, but a careful safety review said it is not a safety problem at this time. Remember, thousands, well, certainly hundreds and possibly thousands of that type of seal have flown on segmented solid propellant rockets before. There's a very long test history on those. Someone looking at that test history and saying, "Well, we don't have a second backup, but is a second backup really necessary or is it just something extra that we put in to be ultra-safe?" And the decision was that the backup O-ring, although it was designed to be put in because it was fairly easy to do, is not really required at this point. The test data, the results, the analysis of the accident -- again, I'm putting words into the mouths of the people who did the analysis -- would say all the evidence indicates that the primary seal is satisfactory. Now, many systems on the shuttle fly without redundancy. They're considered -- the wings, for example. There isn't a second wing on the shuttle. If the wing fails, you buy the farm.

HUNTER-GAULT: Well, how common are these waivers?

Mr. GREY: Well, let's take a look at the thing you just looked at, the Centaur program that's going up, a number of waivers were granted. NASA writes a specification and writes into that specification all the possible eventualities that might happen, everything they can think of, and they write the spec and make sure that they've covered it. Well, after design and after testing and after evaluation, very often some of those requirements turn out to be really superfluous. For example, one of the waivers on the Centaur was that you didn't need double failure redundancy on a particular valve because the electronics and the pressurizing system that worked that valve already had double redundancy failure. So it was an extra specification that could be removed with no safety hazard at all.

HUNTER-GAULT: I see. Okay, so to the basic point that a lot of solutions that otherwise might have been accepted but were rejected because of deadline pressures, you just don't accept that at all?

Mr. GREY: No, no. Absolutely. Everything we do is under budget and time constraints. Not just at NASA. When you walk into the supermarket and buy hot dogs instead of steak, you're doing it because you're under a budget constraint.

HUNTER-GAULT: But your basic position is that you don't feel because of those constraints that NASA is compromising safety?

Mr. GREY: I don't believe so.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right. Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Mr. Cook, is it your position that no safety waivers should ever be granted?

Mr. COOK: No, sir. But I'd like to speak for just a minute about the waivers on the O-rings. I looked today for the first time in detail at the Thiokol report that came out on August 19th, and this was the one that NASA had requested to come up with alternatives for solving the O-ring problem. And the language that was used in that report was in some ways similar to the language I was using last summer. It was stated that it was a critical need to have redundancy on those field joints. It was stated that it was essential that as soon as possible the redundancy problem be taken care of. And the plan that NASA had into effect was to repair that feature by January of 1987, so that essentially we would have been flying for over a year in the face of a situation which Thiokol themselves were using critical language to describe.

LEHRER: Jerry Grey, what do you think of that?

Mr. GREY: I think we would really need to talk to the NASA engineers who made the judgment that the primary O-ring was safe enough to fly. If the system itself could be considered, based upon previous tests, to be operational until a new fix was able to be put in place, then I think that judgment is the one that needs to be criticized. If it turned out to be correct, for example, that type of judgment is made all thetime. You know that there's a system that isn't ideal. You keep using it because you believe, based upon all your judgment, that it is safe, until such time as you find out that the new system can be installed, and then obviously you put the new system in.

LEHRER: Do you believe, Mr. Cook, that -- clearly somebody made the judgment to go ahead with these launches and not wait 'til 1987 to where this thing could be fixed, that that was some kind of dereliction of duty, some kind of political decision? I mean, based on what you heard when you were at NASA, the folks who were making that decision, what caused that decision to be made?

Mr. COOK: Well, let me just say one thing about the engineering question. There is significant disagreement among engineers -- and I include in this something I was told today by the Orlando newspaper in relation to Thiokol engineers -- among engineers and among managers about this issue of whether the shuttle should have continued to fly or not before --

LEHRER: Fixing this.

Mr. COOK: -- before the O-ring problem was fixed. So that issue, a fly or no-fly question, has been debated in NASA going back to last summer. So that gives you an idea of the seriousness with which the question has been addressed.

LEHRER: Exactly. But my question is, what do you believe motivated the people who finally made the decision to go ahead and fly? Was it not safety? Did they overlook safety? Were they motivated by schedule? Were they motivated by budget? Or were they just bad, bad people?

Mr. COOK: I think, and this is just my own gut feeling, from just being around the program during this period of time, I think that people who knew about it -- and there were, I don't know, 100, 200 people in the NASA system who were thoroughly familiar with the O-ring issue and perhaps as many or more at Morton-Thiokol -- knew there was a danger. Nobody was sure exactly why the O-rings were eroding. There was a hypothesis that it was the putty, that holes were forming in the putty. There were other hypotheses. There was some eroding early in 1985 that was worse than eroding that was observed later in 1985. In fact, the engineers told me at one point, in a later 1985 flight, with some surprise, that we saw no eroding at all in a particular flight. So there was a great deal of uncertainty about the cause, about the seriousness, although everybody knew that if the field joint gave way, you were going to lose a shuttle mission if that happened. But nobody was quite sure exactly why. We were working on it. Thiokol had been commissioned to do this major study. And at the same time was the whole NASA budget and program plan that was going up to 24 flights a year, tremendous pressure to meet that flight rate, to keep our commercial options open.

LEHRER: So you think that's what finally caused them to go ahead?

Mr. COOK: I think that that was a very powerful factor in the scale that had to be weighed.

LEHRER: Okay. Jerry Grey, quickly, does that add up to you that same way?

Mr. GREY: No, I just can't accept that. NASA has, for example, delayed launches for what I consider to be relatively trivial reasons. They've delayed launches for -- not -- inoperating factors that I believe were not terribly important, but they felt because of safety that consideration overlaid anything on a scheduled basis. Also, the erosion of O-rings -- again, I think Mr. Cook is not an engineer -- erosion of O-rings doesn't mean that they're going to fail. O-rings erode all the time. I tested rockets for many years at Princeton, where our O-rings eroded, but thepurpose of an O-ring is that it continues to be pressured so that it does fill up the seal. A number of things that NASA would look at, I would suggest, and you might think, well, it's obvious that it's a failure cause, may not necessarily be. Again, the people who made the judgment are the ones I think that you need to talk to.

LEHRER: All right, gentlemen, thank you both very much. Tracking a Killer

HUNTER-GAULT: We focus now on that ever-widening Tylenol story. As we reported earlier, a second tainted bottle found in the same New York suburb as the first has prompted at least nine states and the District of Columbia to ban the sale of Tylenol. They are Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Florida, Indiana, Rhode Island, California and Wisconsin. Other states are expected to follow suit. The specific focus of concern today was the packaging. The second tainted bottle was reportedly found on the shelf with its three seals intact. To get to the capsules, one first has to open the sealed box, then tear off a plastic safety wrapper outside the lid, and after removing the cap, break through a metal safety seal that makes the bottle airtight. The three seals were the result of the last Tylenol scare three and a half years ago after seven people died in the Chicago area after taking cyanide-laced Tylenol. At a news conference today at Johnson & Johnson headquarters in New Brunswick, New Jersey, company chairman James Burke admitted being baffled.

JAMES E. BURKE, chairman, Johnson & Johnson: We don't know how to improve the tamper-resistant package that we created. We worked on that as anything we've ever done in this company, and instead of putting one barrier we put three. And for reasons we don't understand it has apparently been tampered with. I say "apparently" because we still don't know and we don't understand. The FDA and the FBI and Johnson & Johnson are on the phone with each other literally minute by minute through this crisis as we were before, and we will continue to be. And I say minute by minute -- I mean all night. We don't have an answer any more than they do. And if we did, we'd tell you.

1st REPORTER: Was the same factory seal, the shrink top, still on that bottle or was it another type of shrink --

Mr. BURKE: On the second bottle? Have we got full data on the second bottle yet?

MAN: The indications are that it was the original factory seal at all three points.

2nd REPORTER: Is there any other way to get into the bottle and reseal it so it can't be seen?

Mr. BURKE: You can theorize some, and we're trying to theorize some, and we're also thinking of using outside laboratories to extend our scientific knowledge to see how this is done. If this was done, it's been done by somebody who is very, very bright, and who has technologies that we haven't yet been able to --

3rd REPORTER: In other words, you're saying it's possible -- is it possible to get into the bottle without going through the top?

Mr. BURKE: Oh, yes. Sure, it's -- but we have examined all sides and the bottom of the bottle. This is a plastic bottle. And I'd like not -- if I could, I'd rather not begin to get into too much detail for fear of encouraging other people who might be willing or anxious to tamper. I'm just saying to you that we don't have any answer, any more than the FDA does or the FBI does, as to why that second bottle looks like it was apparently sealed at the factory and that seal was unbroken. You've got to understand that we've also examined the first bottle. While it was not intact when we examined, we examined itto see if it had been tampered with. The FBI examined it and we examined it. And in both cases, with both bottles, it is our opinion at this point that they have not been tampered with. We believe they must have been, but we can't find any evidence that they have been.

HUNTER-GAULT: Johnson & Johnson also offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible for poisoning the capsules, and they said they would give refunds or Tylenol tablets or caplets to any consumer who wanted to return their capsules. Meanwhile, the federal Food and Drug Administration today joined Johnson & Johnson in warning the public not to take any Tylenol capsules. For more on that as well as other aspects of the case, we turn now to the head of the FDA, Dr. Frank Young.

Dr. Young, first of all, has there been any further FDA action since that warning?

Dr. FRANK YOUNG: No, we really put our major emphasis now on warning all consumers throughout the country not to take any Tylenol capsule regardless of strength or lot number. We also are advising individuals to take Tylenol capsules out of their medicine cabinets, particularly so that children do not get any access to them.

HUNTER-GAULT: Are you considering a nationwide recall? I know Johnson & Johnson said today they would be opposed to that. What are you thinking about?

Dr. YOUNG: We're not considering at this time. We still believe that the evidence leads us to focus on the regional area of Yonkers, and at this point the evidence does not lead us to a national recall.

HUNTER-GAULT: How about the evidence that the district attorney in Westchester apparently has just been quoted on the Reuters wire as saying there's evidence that the tampering may have occurred inside the factory before the capsules ever left the factory?

Dr. YOUNG: We're doing a number of things. The first thing that we're focusing on is the region. We were fortunate with the extensive fieldwork done by FDA investigators in the laboratories to come up with a bottle just yesterday a few blocks away from the original store. In addition we have investigators in all of the factories of Johnson & Johnson. Mr. Burke has been incredibly cooperative. We've been very well supported in our work by Johnson & Johnson, and we're looking there. We're also looking at other distribution points to see where we can identify problems that might have led to the tampering.

HUNTER-GAULT: Do you think these two bottles came from the same source?

Dr. YOUNG: No, we do not think so. All of the evidence at this point says that one comes from Puerto Rico and the other from Pennsylvania. That's why we still focus on a local event, because they were produced quite a while apart in different parts, different distributions, and they arrived two blocks away.

HUNTER-GAULT: You heard Mr. Burke say -- he was just plain baffled as to how this could have happened, that somebody in possession of some technology that they're not aware of may be involved in this. What's your comment on that? Are you as baffled as he is?

Dr. YOUNG: It's still very early. We just had the bottle yesterday afternoon, and now we're trying to see, through a wide variety of examinations, microscopic and others, whether or not we can detect if this was the original seal or not. Once we have that worked out, we can go further. There is an important point. That is that these are not tamper-proof, they're tamper-resistant. And the complete safety, by any degree of packaging, is extraordinarily hard to guarantee.

HUNTER-GAULT: In other words there's no tamper-proof packaging?

Dr. YOUNG: I think it's best to say it that way. Highly tamper-resistant -- we feel that this is one of the better ones, if not the best one put out, and I know J&J worked very hard on it.

HUNTER-GAULT: Should people be concerned about other kinds of capsules? I won't name any particular products, but just capsules at the moment.

Dr. YOUNG: I think in general the medical supply of OTC drugs in the United States is one of the safest in the world.

HUNTER-GAULT: OTC -- over the counter, right?

Dr. YOUNG: Over the counter. Sorry. And we have to consider the fact of the safety record. By and large we've been very fortunate, and we have seen a safe industry and regretfully Johnson & Johnson was victimized in some way following a very tragic event a couple of years ago.

HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Burke said at the press conference today that if this could happen to Tylenol it could happen to almost any product, including food. What's your comment on that?

Dr. YOUNG: In any free society it's an open society, and we have one of the greater safeguards by the vigilance of consumers. It's important for me to stress also that in any time that a person opens a bottle of whatever the compound is, should examine the pills before just taking them, or the capsules before just taking them. In this particular case the cyanide had a yellowish-brown hue. And when we looked, our investigators looked through the white portion of the capsule, it was possible to spot the color, and also the alignment was not correct on the labeling of the particular capsule. Those are clues to problems.

HUNTER-GAULT: Do you agree with Mr. Burke that this is terrorism?

Dr. YOUNG: I don't know whether it's called terrorism or invasion of a particular bottle and putting something in it, and in that sense a form of homicide. But it certainly is a criminal activity.

HUNTER-GAULT: Do you think -- the investigators in Westchester were saying they thought this case might take a long time. What's your guess?

Dr. YOUNG: It's too early to say. But we do know at FDA we're preparing for quite a number of weeks of investigation. We also have -- so that people can help us, we've made available all of the lines in our district offices throughout the country on a 24-hour basis. People can look up in the phone book, call FDA, and if one finds a bottle of Tylenol with discolored tablets, please get in touch with us right away so that we can look further into this possibility.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right. Well, thank you very much, Dr. Young, for being with us.

Dr. YOUNG: Thank you. Made in Korea

LEHRER: The Koreans are coming, the Koreans are coming. So said a recent Business Week cover and story detailing the flood of Korean products into the United States. Their latest becomes available tomorrow; it's called the Excel, and it's a car, an inexpensive subcompact that analysts are predicting will soon lead the field in low-price cars sold in America. Correspondent Kwame Holman has more on the story.

KWAME HOLMAN [voice-over]: These are some of the most successful businesspeople in America. But it wasn't until last month in New Orleans that many of them saw for the first time a new product they've already invested millions in. They are car dealers, merchants of everything from Chevrolets to Isuzu. For months they've vied for the privilege of investing up-front money to sell cars made by the Korean company, Hyundai. These 170 successful suitors of Hyundai were chosen from thousands who wanted to sell the cars. The average net worth of these operators is $10 million. Gene Osborn sells cars in Denver.

[interviewing] These are not your fledgling entrepreneurs here?

GENE OSBORN, auto dealer: No. Well, like I say, most of them have several dealerships, and both domestic and imports. And Hyundai requires you have a separate dealership facility for their product, primarily to take care of the customers for service and parts.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: What makes experienced dealers invest an average of $2 million to build facilities for a car that's never been sold in this country? Auto industry analyst Maryann Keller.

MARYANN KELLER, industry analyst: The dealers feel -- and I've spoken to many of them -- feel that this is a ground floor opportunity. Many car dealers today look back and see what they might have done in 1965 when they had the opportunity to get a Japanese franchise and they turned it down. And they're all saying to themselves, "I'm not going to let this happen to me twice in my lifetime. Whatever they want, I'll give them."

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Dealers say what they're getting in return is a car they don't think they'll have any trouble selling.

DEALER: We will announce the price, as you see, at $4995 in our Excel model.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Hyundai officials say the 100,000 cars they expect to sell here this year are targeted at the ultra-low-price market that's been abandoned by both Japanese and U.S. car makers.

Ms. KELLER: When the Japanese import restrictions were imposed by us, the Japanese quite naturally upgraded their products and left this void in the market. They had previously sold basic transportation. They vacated the market and suddenly it presented an opportunity to manufacturers who could step in and fill that gap. The Koreans are probably going to be the biggest players. And then there's a potential by 1990 of there being upwards of a half a million Korean cars sold in this country.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: The lofty sales projections also are based on past experience. Two years ago Hyundai began rolling cars into Canada. They quickly became Canada's number one imports, selling at five times the expected rate. In Canada, Hyundai also showed that it knows how to defend itself against protectionist trade policies. First, the company used some Canadian-made parts in its cars. Then last November it took the ultimate step: breaking ground on a 100,000-car Canadian assembly plant.

Ms. KELLER: It has completely stymied and blunted any criticism of it, because it has announced at the outset that it is going to be a participant in the countries in which it produces -- in which it sells automobiles. And so its behavior is rather unpredictable and very un-Japanese. I mean, the Japanese resisted and resisted coming in for local production. Here is Hyundai simply, before they even get going in North America, saying we're going to build cars there.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: This is the man who has steered Hyundai Motors to its current success. S.Y. Chung is hedging against protectionist policies in his American operation just as he did in Canada.

S.Y. CHUNG, president, Hyundai: We have also signed multimillion-dollar contracts with American corporations to supply parts for the Excel bound for the United States. Well, I surely believe in two-way trade. If we want to sell cars here in the United States, I think we must buy something from the United States. That's why we are buying Goodyear tires and the glass in and the Champion plug.

HOLMAN: Well, you're aware of the protectionist mood that some people in Congress are in right now.

Mr. CHUNG: Everybody has the right to survive, so everyone can say anything, right, to survive. So we want to survive too.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: But autoworkers in the United States are worried about their survival too, and the United Auto Workers union says the low wages of Korean workers that make possible low-priced cars are a threat to American jobs. Chung says that comparison is unfair because in Korea all prices and wages are lower than in the United States.

Mr. CHUNG: Somebody said the UAW want to have no car from Korea, right, until the wages come to U.S. standard. Then is Japanese car, Japanese wages the same as UAW, then? Well, in Korea, this shirt cost $3. In Japan same shirt costs $15. In United States that same shirt costs $24. Does it make sense?

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Hyundai has a great deal riding on its foray into the U.S., from its $20 million parts facility and headquarters outside Los Angeles to an expanded assembly plant back in Korea.

MAN: Toyota has gone up to 100 million in the past, so has Nissan. General Motors is even more. But they're working with%%%

HOLMAN [voice-over]: But industry analysts point to the shrewd style Hyundai showed in luring 30 top U.S. managers away from Toyota as another indicator that Hyundai will do well. They also point out that Hyundai is the first large proven manufacturer to put down roots in a U.S. market that may be saturated with ultra-low-priced cars within two years. Two of Hyundai's Korean competitors will be part of that wave, but as joint ventures with American giants Ford and G.M. After resisting years of wooing by Ford, Hyundai is going it alone.

Ms. KELLER: If the company has the capacity to sell or expect to sell several car lines, then going it alone and being able to determine your own destiny is clearly preferable, and that's where Hyundai is.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Hyundai is not alone among South Korean companies seeking their destiny. The nation's rapid industrialization since the end of the Korean War has created a storehouse of exportable consumer goods. If Hyundai succeeds in the U.S., it could open the door further for those products and make "Made in Korea" as marketable as "Made in Japan."

LEHRER: Yesterday, Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca said among other things that he would meet the Korean challenge with sharply reduced prices on his company's Dodge Omnis and Plymouth Horizons. Frank Herbert: Science Storyteller

HUNTER-GAULT: Finally tonight, Frank Herbert, who died this week at the age of 65. He was the newspaper reporter who took up writing science fiction novels. He wrote two dozen of them, including Dune, which sold more than 12 million copies. We talked with him last June, just before the opening of the movie based on Dune. We close our week with a reprise of that conversation.

FRANK HERBERT: Well, my Arab friends wonder why it's called science fiction. Dune they say is religious commentary. The thing that has often been aimed at it is that it's philosophical fiction rather than science fiction. My own view of it is that okay, we call it science fiction. I have friends for -- I've had friends for years who write science fiction and who object to your saying "sci fi" or "SF," and I joke with them; when somebody says "sci fi," I say, "Oh, we say "sciffy.' " But I don't care what they call it, you see. I don't care, as long as they can find it on the bookshelf, under that little label on the shelf that says science fiction.

[clip from the film "Dune"]

Mr. HERBERT: In creating the characters for DuneI went to the messiah story that's so strong in our mythology. But I wasn't going to do the Jesus story. I went to the Arthurian legend, and I was trying to create a mythology that would give people a different view of how we give over our lives to leaders, not just to messiahs but to people who pose as our leaders, or who make themselves our leaders, or who entice us into following them. The religious commentary statement in Dune is the one we've discussed earlier, that messiahs should come with a label on the forehead "may be dangerous to your health."

I think people are responding to leadership overtures out of a very deep-seated instinctual process that goes back to our tribal roots, when we were tribesmen and possibly evolved into the wise old men that led the tribe, if we lived long enough. And I think that this is something we -- that just comes with the genes. We're born with it. And it's a very dangerous thing in this day and age, because technology has given us the tools of self-destruction. And if you put those tools in the hands of sick leaders, then we're really in trouble.

When people come to me and say -- and insist that I'm a cult leader and that I'm forming a cult, if they carry it on too long I nally turn on them and I say, "All right, we're going to start a cult, and we're going to Guyana next week and we're going to start Herberttown, and you can have the Kool-Aid concession." I mean, Jim Jones is a marvelous example of how nasty a sick leader can become and how that sickness can infect the people who follow. The problem with leadership is that leaders are human beings, and when they make mistakes their mistakes are amplified by the numbers who follow without question. And that's why I say think for yourself, ask questions.

[clip from the film "Dune"]

Mr. HERBERT: What does my fan mail tell me about Dune? That people read it many times, over and over again, and seem to get more out of it each successive reading, which was what I intended. That people are thinking for themselves. I have a fan letter I got here from a 16-year-old who thanks me for teaching him that if he was going to make a life for himself he had to do that -- and he underlined it the second time -- he says, "I make my life." Well, that's very rewarding to a writer, to see that the message got through.

HUNTER-GAULT: And now cartoonist Ranon Lurie looks at the flac over Lee Iacocca's firing from the Statue of Liberty commission.

[Ranon Lurie cartoon -- GOP elephant tries to pull down statue of Liberty Lee Iacocca labeled "presidential candidate?"]

LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Valentine's Day Friday. More states banned the sale of Tylenol and a federal warning about its use went out following the discovery of a second contaminated bottle of capsules in a New York suburb. Authorities said the source of the poison was apparently the same as that found in the capsules taken by the 23-year-old woman who died last weekend. The vote count in the Philippine elections showed President Marcos the leader, but Catholic bishops said the election process was tarnished by widespread fraud. And the space shuttle investigating commission said it has no answers yet about what caused the Challenger explosion.

Happy Valentine, Charlayne.

HUNTER-GAULT: Thank you, Jim. That's our NewsHour for tonight. Happy Valentine's Day weekend to all of you. I'm Charlayne Hunter-Gault. Good night.