The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. I'm Robert MacNeil in New York.

MR. LEHRER: And I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington. After our summary of the News this Tuesday, Senators Simpson, Pryor and Kerrey debate the Clinton proposal to stimulate the economy. Lee Hochberg reports on Alaska four years after the big oil spill, and finally we have a report, a special Bianca Jagger perspective, and an Anne Taylor Fleming essay on the rapes in Bosnia. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: White House officials said today President Clinton will ask Congress to end the ban on federally funded abortions. The ban, known as the Hyde Amendment, has been in place for sixteen years. It prohibits the use of Medicaid funds to pay for abortions for poor women, except when a woman's life is in danger. The amendment's original sponsor, Republican Congressman Henry Hyde of Illinois, criticized the decision on Capitol Hillwhile presidential spokesman George Stephanopoulos explained Mr. Clinton's position at a White House briefing.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, White House Communications Director: For 16 years, you've had the federal government flat out prohibiting states from spending the money to pay for abortions whether or not they're medically necessary, whether or not they result from a case of rape, whether or not they result from a case of incest, whether or not they threaten the life of the mother. The President feels that that goes too far. That's what the Hyde Amendment has done for the past 16 years. It simply goes too far.

REP. HENRY HYDE, [R] Illinois: A repeal of the Hyde Amendment will involve the federal government in coercing tax dollars from millions of American citizens whose consciences forbid them from becoming accessories in perhaps a million more abortions than we have a year. We have already 1.6 million abortions, and if Medicaid funding is reinstated, I would predict another million abortions at perhaps $200 million a year.

MR. MacNeil: The President will formally propose the repeal when he submits his budget to Congress next week. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Clinton's economic stimulus package cleared another hurdle today. The Senate rejected a Republican amendment to eliminate what they said were local pork barrel projects. Democrats argued the plan would create local construction jobs. Here's a sample of the debate.

SEN. PHIL GRAMM, [R] Texas: I am mystified as to why we at the federal level should be taking money we're taking away from Social Security recipients and sending it to Los Angeles, California, to build parks and calling that an emergency or calling it a jobs program or stimulus program.

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN, [D] California: I think Martin Luther King Square in South Central LA as an emergency stimulus package is important to the future of this nation, because right now in South Central LA there's a possibility of another monumental situation developing. For 12 years nothing has gone to the cities of America, not one dime practically from the federal government outside of this very program.

MR. LEHRER: We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary.

MR. MacNeil: The cease-fire in Bosnia entered its third day today with only minor violations reported. U.N. officials said they were preparing plans to evacuate more wounded Muslims from Srebrenica in Eastern Bosnia. More than 2,000 refugees were evacuated from the town yesterday and are now being housed in a sports arena in the Muslim stronghold of Tuzla. Robin White of Independent Television News is in Tuzla and filed this report.

MR. WHITE: By morning, dozens of children had had wounds dressed and had been fed. Ramella, who's two and a half, has shrapnel wounds after a shell hit her house in Srebrenica, killing her sister. Her father is still there. Outside the sports center hundreds of people are desperately trying to get information from those inside about relatives still behind Serbian lines. Those brought in yesterday are due to be moved to more permanent accommodation in the next 12 hours. With so many arriving here, the biggest problem in Tuzla is food. There is precious little to be found. Tuzla is now all but cut off from the outside world. Finding the basics to stay alive means queuing at food distribution centers. A ration card brings a quarter of a loaf of bread a day. Other supplies are available at ten times normal prices. For food convoys there is only one way in, over mountain passes that have turned into a frustrating quagmire of snow and mud, often blocked for hours at a time. Four thousand tons of food a month should be reaching these warehouses. Last month, only half of that got through.

MR. MacNeil: Also today, a military court in Sarajevo sentenced two Serb fighters to death for raping and killing Muslim women. The commander of U.N. peacekeepers urged the Bosnian government to turn the men over to an international war crimes tribunal. We'll have more on this story later in the program.

MR. LEHRER: Gunmen killed two policemen in Israel today. The government responded by closing Israel to Palestinians from the occupied West Bank two days after doing the same for those from the Gaza Strip. The police were on patrol in the Northern Israeli town when they were attacked. Thirteen Israelis have died in Arab attacks this month. Twenty-six Palestinians have been killed in clashes with Israeli forces. Sec. of State Christopher today threatened an embargo on Libyan oil. Libya has refused to honor a U.N. demand to surrender two suspects in the Pan Am 103 bombing. The United Nations imposed a ban on international flights to and from Libya, but Christopher told a congressional hearing today it was time to stiffen the sanctions to force Libyan compliance.

MR. MacNeil: That completes our summary of the day's news. Now it's on to the latest twist in the Senate budget debate, Alaska four years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, a personal perspective on rape in Bosnia, and an Anne Taylor Fleming essay. FOCUS - BUDGET MATTERS

MR. LEHRER: We go first tonight to the Senate debate over whether the economy needs a kick, a stimulus, to be truly healthy and recovered again. President Clinton says it does. Some Senators, mostly Republicans, say it does not. We will join our own debate after this set-up report by Kwame Holman.

SPOKESMAN: The yays are 54. The nays are 45.

MR. HOLMAN: Until yesterday, the Democrat majority in both the House and the Senate had held firm against Republican attempts to scrap President Clinton's economic plan. In fact, Republicans hadn't even been able to tinker with it.

SPOKESMAN: The vote on this is 243 aye, 183 nay. The resolution is adopted.

MR. HOLMAN: But last night in the Senate during consideration of the President's $16.3 billion spending program known as the stimulus package a handful of Democrats teamed with Republicans to hand the President an apparent defeat. Among those Democrats was a Senator considered a Clinton supporter, Nebraska's Bob Kerrey.

SEN. ROBERT KERREY, [D] Nebraska: Mr. President, I choose to vote against this stimulus package because, first of all, I believe it's been given a status that it doesn't deserve. Its economic significance is, at best, marginal, and it generates a net 200,000 temporary jobs. At worst, Mr. President, it puts us and interest groups who call upon us in a mood to spend more money. Thus, I choose to vote against this new spending because I have concluded that the risk is not worth the gain. The risk is that by voting for this new spending we lose the edge that we need as representatives to say no.

MR. HOLMAN: Instead, Kerrey and four other Democrats joined Republicans in an attempt to prohibit spending of $100 million on 54 specific programs. The entire list of potential projects was read for each Senator to hear.

SPOKESMAN: One, Foster Park Tennis & Basketball Court resurfacing and color coating in Evanston, Illinois; two, Anthony Oats Park and pool renovation in Evansville, Indiana; three, expansion of shopping center at 165th Street in Hammond, Indiana; four, miscellaneous pool repairs in Birmingham, Alabama.

MR. HOLMAN: Sponsoring the project stripping amendment was Colorado's Hank Brown.

SEN. HANK BROWN, [R] Colorado: Mr. President, I thought it appropriate to offer an amendment that dealt specifically with projects that members could evaluate and make their own judgment as to whether that is worth breaking the budget agreement or whether it is worth overspending the budget and whether truly these kind of projects fit in with the definition of emergencies. I think by having the specifics we give people the opportunity in this chamber to make their own judgments.

MR. HOLMAN: Democrat leaders tried to kill the Republican amendment, but with seven Democrats missing from Capitol Hill last night, they lost. However, Sen. Robert Byrd, the acknowledged expert of parliamentary procedure, maneuvered to force another vote on the matter this morning.

SEN. ROBERT BYRD: For the President, I ask for the yays and nays on the pending motion.

MR. HOLMAN: And with all 100 Senators in place, the President prevailed by four votes. Again, Kerrey and those four Democrats voted against their leadership.

SPOKESPERSON: Yays are 52, nays are 48. The motion to table passes.

MR. HOLMAN: But final passage of the President's stimulus package is far from assured. Judging by this morning's vote, it has enough votes to pass, but 60 votes are needed to cut off debate, and even though Minority Leader Bob Dole didn't threaten a filibuster this morning, he sounded like he was keeping that option open.

SEN. ROBERT DOLE, Minority Leader: There's been a lot of talk in this chamber about gridlock. What we got right now is not gridlock, it's pork lock, pork, p-o-r-k, pork lock. My colleagues on that side like pork. We don't think it's necessary. We don't think it creates any jobs. It adds to the deficit. This isn't gridlock, this is pork lock. And as soon as we understand what America's priorities ought to be and start knocking out some of this in the package, maybe the package can pass. But until that happens, I can tell my colleagues on the other side, you know, better file cloture because I don't think this bill is going anywhere unless we can make substantial changes in it.

MR. LEHRER: With us now from Capitol Hill are Sen. Bob Kerrey, Democrat of Nebraska, the man of the hour last night, Sen. Alan Simpson, Republican of Wyoming, the Senate Minority Whip, and Sen. David Pryor, Democrat of Arkansas, Secretary of the Democratic Conference and a member of the Senate Finance Committee. Sen. Kerrey, is that what this is all about, pork lock?

SEN. KERREY: No, not at all. I mean, I think the Republican leader misdescribed it. The fact of the matter is the President believes strongly that this spending will stimulate the economy. I believe just as strongly that it will not, that it's not worth the risk, that what I need as a representative is the will to be able to say no. I believe we can bring spending down. We'll have the American people's support to package that with tax increases. We'll get this deficit behind us, and the American economy will continue to grow, we'll create jobs, and we'll have the success that we want. The President has recommended and is recommending a stimulus package that he believes it'll stimulate the economy. I disagree with him, but the President's quite willing and has indicated that he's willing to take out all those things that have been identified as pork.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. Sen. Pryor, how do you respond to Sen. Kerrey's point? He made it last night in his speech and he made it again, that what's at issue here for him is saying no.

SEN. PRYOR: Well, I think that what we've got to realize is that the budget resolution that was passed just a few days ago, it assumes that there's going to be a stimulus package along with it, and based upon that assumption, then I think when we move to the stimulus package, we look at the $16 billion of stimulus funding. Four billion of that I believe is unemployment compensation. We have women's, infants' and children funding. We have child immunization. We have 3 billion for highway construction, infrastructure, roads and bridges. We have some very, very fine projects across America, and I think that when you take these two packages together, you're looking at a tremendous decrease over the next five years in our deficits, some $500 billion, and I think that's good enough for me. There may be a few things in this legislation that I might not have chosen to put into it but I think we've got to move. I think the President has a mandate from the people, and I think what basically my colleagues on the Republican side is they're trying to unravel this legislation and people are tired of gridlock. They want to do something and now's the time to do it.

MR. LEHRER: But back to Sen. Kerrey, who of course is a fellow Democrat of Sen. Pryor, do you feel that your Democratic President has a mandate to do what he wants to do to stimulate this, in this stimulus package, Sen. Kerrey?

SEN. KERREY: Well, I think he's got a mandate clearly for change, but the mandate that he created was with his State of the Union Address giving the American people the truth for the first time in 12 years, and suddenly there's a mandate to reduce spending, and there truly is. I mean, it's remarkable, at least in my home state, how people now are saying we accept the challenge for sacrifice and we're willing to actually take less from the federal government, and I think we've got to seize that moment. I'm already being hit on by, by interest groups who oppose various cuts in the President's proposal. And as I said, Jim, my objection to the stimulus package is that I think it takes the edge off my capacity as a single representative to say no to people who want me to actually vote for new spending.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Now, Sen. Simpson, the Republicans, you and your fellow Republicans, come at this slightly differently, do you not, in terms of your opposition to the stimulus package?

SEN. SIMPSON: Well, I think you've got a pretty good stimulus in the United States when you've got about a $312 billion deficit. That means that you spent 312 billion more than you took in. So what is 16 billion more? As I see it, it's this. It is about the ability to say no and I have a fear about that with this new President. And I'm going to try and Dave Pryor knows me and so does Bob Kerrey, the people are ready for something to work, but I tell you, this is not what the election in November was about, not with Ross Perot kicking fanny and George Bush and Clinton going at each other. This was about cutting spending, and in this proposal that we did last week there's 295 billion more in new taxes. A BTU tax is going to affect everybody, new spending, 124 billion. It doesn't get there and I think the people are ready for tough choices. Do something to the COLA, cost of living allowance for people on Social Security who earn over 50,000 bucks. I'm ready to cast that vote.

MR. LEHRER: As a matter of economics, Sen. Simpson, is it your position that the economy does not need this, this $6.3 billion stimulus right now?

SEN. SIMPSON: It doesn't need any kind of stimulus where you don't put it up on the total board. This stuff is off budget. This is just a great big thing called an emergency, and we've already outlined 103 million, which is far removed from emergency. Let's do the unemployment compensation. I'll cast that vote in a moment. Let's look at the summer jobs program. The rest of this stuff is an ancient wish list from mayors, and you can talk about 'em all you want. I was an old city attorney. They'll eat up anything you ship 'em.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. Sen. Pryor, an ancient list from mayors?

SEN. PRYOR: No. We love Alan Simpson. He characterizes some of these things sometimes a little bit in strange ways, and he characterizes this as a wish list. This is how Sen. Brown characterized his amendment last night that this was all this pork, and I guess Sen. Dole referred to that this morning again. Actually, the amendment last night where there were some absent Senators, where the President did take a temporary loss, we regained that today I might add, and I think you covered that, Jim, this list was not even in the package. It was not even in the legislation and Sen. Brown was trying to take something out of this package that was not there. Sen. Mitchell characterized this as a phantom amendment. It was a, it was truly an amendment in fiction. These projects do not even exist in the proposal that we were voting for. This was a wish list for the mayors, and I think people will see through this. I think people want to get on with this. I think they want to pass this package. We have a new President, a new administration. We tried what was old. Let's try something new.

SEN. SIMPSON: If I may just say --

MR. LEHRER: Sen. Simpson, yes, go ahead.

SEN. SIMPSON: I think it's so important there is a wish list and it's called the Ready to Go Project. It's a book about this thick of community development projects of mayors, and this is the money that funds those projects. It's not some phantom of the opera operation.

MR. LEHRER: Sen. Kerrey.

SEN. KERREY: Well, I just think for many reasons we're making a lot out of something that's not altogether important, as I said earlier. I think the stimulus package has been given a much higher stature than it deserves. Far more important is the change that the President is urging upon us in the budget resolution which I think is absolutely needed to get the deficit down and behind us and begin to invest in our own people. We've got to attack the problem of health care here in another five or six weeks. If he can get the deficit down, as he's indicated in that budget, in the budget resolution, I think it'd be a great victory for him personally if he would lose the stimulus package because he'd be even more successful at getting deficit reduction. I believe it would stimulate the economy. I think he can get health care done. He's off to a great start.

SEN. PRYOR: Jim, we saw some figures come out just this afternoon where the consumer confidence index plunged from sixty-eight to sixty-two, and I believe that truly is the fact that we have such a high unemployment rate. We need to increase the number of jobs. We need to give it a kick, and the government can do it, but that was a, that was a decrease in the consumer confidence, and I think to instill confidence in the system we've got to show them that the Congress of the United States, Republicans and Democrats, and Democrats and Independents, all alike, can get together on a package, and that's what we're trying to do here in Washington, D.C., tonight.

MR. LEHRER: Sen. Pryor, you said earlier that you think this thing is going to pass, that the President lost last night but he won again, that he won this morning on a similar vote by four votes. Is that going to hold?

SEN. PRYOR: I think it's going to hold. And I think it's going to hold finally, with all due respect to my colleagues, when finally after a series of amendments I imagine we'll go late into the evening tonight and probably late tomorrow night and Thursday, but I think ultimately after these amendments, after we've developed a pattern as we did on the budget resolution last week when finally they see that this is not going to come unraveled, we hope not. But the people want a package. They want a stimulus plan. They want to combine that with a budget resolution of deficit reduction. We're going to marry these two together and put it in reconciliation, and --

MR. LEHRER: With the House, with a House version.

SEN. PRYOR: Yes, with a House version and then move forward ultimately, ultimately at, to a final conclusion later in the year.

MR. LEHRER: Sen. Simpson, Sen. Dole indicated, well, indicated is a word, you can use any word, that there is a possibility of a Republican filibuster on that. How would you gauge that possibility?

SEN. SIMPSON: Well, here's an opportunity to get back to what the difference between Republicans and Democrats really is. We have some conflict in our parties with regard to issues of abortion, of reproductive rights, you name it, but I'll tell you there's one that the Republican Party deeply does believe in, and that's tax and spend. What in the world is the purpose of just taking 16 billion and plunking it out there and it's all carefully adjusted so that it hits in every state in the union? Wyoming gets 21 million for highways, they fixed the trails near the forest about a mile from my house, I mean it's pretty well done. It's very attractive, but the point is it won't get the job done and that's the question you asked, and it's going to be tax and spend versus - -

SEN. KERREY: Now we do have a disagreement. I mean, the Republicans for the last 12 years have had policies of borrow and spend. I mean, over $4 trillion --

SEN. SIMPSON: The Democrats were running the Congress during the whole 12 years.

SEN. KERREY: Oh, please. Oh, that's terrific. When we had a Republican President it was the Congress's fault. Now that we got a Democratic President, now that we got a Democratic President, it's the Democratic President's fault. I mean, the fact of the matter is --

SEN. SIMPSON: The Republican President never got a vote.

SEN. KERREY: -- the fact of the matter is we had a Republican, we had a Republican President, and we had a Republican Senate in 1980, and what we ended up with in that four years, we started with huge tax cuts. That was supposed to balance the budget. They didn't balance the budget, and this President has inherited a huge amount of debt, and he's addressed it directly. He's come to the American people and gotten permission from honest --

SEN. SIMPSON: With 295 billion in more taxes, how does that solve the problem?

MR. LEHRER: Sen. Simpson, if I may come back to my question, are you going to filibuster this thing or not?

SEN. SIMPSON: We're going to, we're going to be relevant in the process. We didn't come here to have 43 people to get stiffed, and when we get out there and find the parliamentary procedure that prevents any amendment of ours from being meaningful, we intend to scrap. You can bet you on that.

MR. LEHRER: So that's a yes?

SEN. SIMPSON: I don't know what it is, but we'll wait and see what it is but we didn't come here to be stiffed. We're going to be relevant.

MR. LEHRER: Do you think that's what Sen. Byrd is doing, he's stiffing you all right now?

SEN. SIMPSON: Well, he's already stiffed a couple of guys today who went for an amendment, just cut 'em off at the pockets, and we're not going to sit still very long to watch that any more than the Democrats did when they were in the minority.

MR. LEHRER: Sen. Pryor.

SEN. PRYOR: You asked his expertise in parliamentary procedure. Yes, Jim --

MR. LEHRER: I was just wondering if you would defend Sen. Byrd's tactics against the Republican --

SEN. PRYOR: I think the Byrd tactics were very proper. I think he was trying to protect the President, and I think Sen. Byrd knows, as most of us know in the Senate, Democrats, Republicans, and all, if we don't do anything, if we do nothing, if we continue doing nothing, we're going to see a deficit literally destroy this country, and Bill Clinton, our new President, wants to do something about it.

MR. LEHRER: Sen. Kerrey, are you going to stick with this position to the very end? I mean, are you going to continue to vote against the stimulus package, no matter how close it gets?

SEN. KERREY: Yes, I am. And by the way, Jim, I expect the stimulus package is going to pass. I mean, the fact of the matter is the votes are there to do it, and I think notwithstanding Alan's objection to not being able to get in and offer amendments, Republicans are going to vote against this. There are going to be a few Republicans that will vote for it, and it will pass, and we will see this thing as a relatively small issue. In another half a dozen weeks when health care is on the table and when we're into the serious debate about how are we going to make these spending cuts, I mean, understand that my principal objection is not that I disagree that we need some additional jobs, but I just don't believe the risk is worth taking at this point.

MR. LEHRER: Sen. Kerrey, has the President talked to you about this?

SEN. KERREY: No, he's not.

MR. LEHRER: I mean, would it do any good if he did?

SEN. KERREY: No, it wouldn't.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah.

SEN. KERREY: On other things it would but not on this.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. but Sen. Pryor, are you, how many Democrats are there like Sen. Kerrey who are going to vote against the President's plan?

SEN. PRYOR: Well, let me say this. All Democrats are very, very independent. Let me say this, and Sen. Kerrey is a very independent voter in the United States Senate and certainly it is prerogative, his right, to vote this way. But I think on most of the issues, and certainly most of the big issues, I think we're going to find a strong supporter in Sen. Kerrey and in President Clinton's plans. He voted for the budget resolution, I might say, which I thought was a proper vote.

MR. LEHRER: Sen. Simpson, finally, let me ask you this. Taking your opposition into account, let's say that the Senate goes ahead and does exactly what Sen. Pryor says it's going to do, which is to pass this and you all are unable to, either do not filibuster or you're not able to cut, they're not able, you're not able to cut it off and it passes, becomes the law of the land. What harm would it do to the economy?

SEN. SIMPSON: Well, it won't do any good at all because it's new spending. And I thought that that's what people were voting on in the November election. Maybe I missed something. It seemed to me they said, look, stupid, no more spending, no more taxes. You just took a package last week that went up 295 billion in new taxes, 124 billion in new spending, and now this turkey, and the purpose is nothing because when you get to the Finance Committee, they'll be playing with real bullets, and it'll be destructive for this President, real bullets.

MR. LEHRER: Sen. Pryor, Sen. Pryor, what about that point, that this, did the President run to offer a stimulus package? Do you feel that that's what the vote said, that's why he got elected President?

SEN. PRYOR: I think the President knows the economy needs a jumpstart, and this is it. I think Sen. Simpson raising the Finance Committee issue is a very good one because one of the key elements in the Finance Committee package I'd like to see if Sen. Simpson is going to oppose it, is the investment tax credit. The investment tax credit costs $15 billion, and it's going to help a lot of businesses, but it is an expensive drain on the Treasury first, and we're going to see a lot of challenges to see if Sen. Simpson and others are going --

SEN. SIMPSON: How about rice subsidies?

SEN. PRYOR: Well, we don't have many rice subsidies like 16 billion dollars a year for the investment tax credit. And by the way, I support the investment tax credit, and I hope it becomes law, and I've supported it for a long time.

SEN. SIMPSON: But it won't get there, and then we'll do a raise in the minimum wage and we're making the employers pay all the ticket.

SEN. KERREY: The direct answer to the question that you asked Alan a minute ago is it probably won't hurt the economy. The dilemma though is that, that unless we really demonstrate the will, and the President's indicated this, unless we really demonstrate the will and the capacity to reduce spending, and that won't be easy, we're going to have a $34 billion increase just in federal expenditures for health care --

MR. LEHRER: Gentlemen.

SEN. KERREY: -- unless we get that done, the taxes won't fly, we won't get the deficit behind us, and I think that what happened after the election is the President came to the American people with great courage and honesty and he changed the dynamic, probably permanently in this debate.

MR. LEHRER: Gentlemen, I have to show the will and capacity to say good night to all three of you, and thank you very much.

MR. MacNeil: Still ahead on the NewsHour, Alaska four years after the big spill, a personal view of Bosnia, and an Anne Taylor Fleming essay. UPDATE - TOXIC LEGACY

MR. MacNeil: It's been four years since the Exxon Valdez ran aground on Alaska's Blye Reef, causing the nation's worst oil spill. Since then, scientists have been trying to determine how much lasting damage was done to Prince William Sound. Correspondent Lee Hochberg of Oregon Public Broadcasting has this report on what they've learned so far.

MR. HOCHBERG: Moose Pass, Alaska, is more than 75 miles from where the Exxon Valdez ran aground in 1989, but four years later, the spill's impact still resonates there in the cough of Alaskan Crickiet O'Neil. O'Neil is a 52-year-old mother of three. Her neighbors in Moose Pass used to call her "roadrunner" because of her energetic lifestyle. That was before she spent the summer of 1989 cleaning oil off Alaskan beaches. Today nobody would call her that.

CRICKIET O'NEIL, Oil Spill Cleanup Worker: I'm, cough all the time. I throw up. I get dizzy. I forget things constantly. I'll have a coffee pot in my hand and a cup and I wonder, what am I doing. I won't know what I'm doing.

MR. HOCHBERG: Four years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill a wealth of scientific studies chronicles a range of continuing health and ecological problems caused by the spill. More than 5,000 marine mammals and hundreds of thousands of birds have been lost. Fish have been genetically altered. But the latest spin is on human health effects. Across Alaska, among the thousands who tried to scrub clean Alaska's sully beaches, there are stories of mysterious ailments like O'Neil's.

MARTIN FARRELL, Lawyer: There are probably several dozen cases out there, several dozens of people who are feeling effects from exposure to the, to the chemical elements, the toxic elements, and the oil spill, but just have failed to come forward.

MR. HOCHBERG: Anchorage attorney Martin Farrell represents three Alaskans who say Exxon oil caused their respiratory ailment. The oil giant refuses comment but a just-released study suggests workers were exposed to unhealthy levels of oil.

CARL RELLER, Environmental Chemist: There's a NIOSH standard and the average exposure was 12 times over that standard and up to 400 times in excedence of that.

MR. HOCHBERG: Chemist Carl Reller of the non-profit Alaska Health Project acquired Exxon's employee health records. He said Exxon set exposure standards on the assumption that oil on the beaches had weathered and was no more dangerous than household mineral oil. Actually, he says, agitating the beach oil with high pressure hot water turned it into crude oil mist, a much more toxic substance.

CARL RELLER: When you hit it with steam and hot water, it breaks the oil up into a small particle, and then it gets into the air, and then when the workers breathe it, the actual droplet, itself, could impact the lungs and be highly concentrated in a small area.

MR. HOCHBERG: Eleven thousand people worked long shifts cleaning the oil the year after the spill. Exxon's patient treatment records show those workers developed more than 5500 upper respiratory infections and another 500 cases of bronchitis.

CARL RELLER: From their over-exposures, it's not surprising that there are these claims of respiratory system damage.

MR. HOCHBERG: Exxon directs questions to Dr. Gary Friedman of the University of Texas Department of Occupational & Environmental Medicine. He says the thousands of respiratory ailments can be explained another way.

DR. GARY FRIEDMAN, University of Texas: Certainly that is more than we would expect out of 11,000 people, and that would warrant looking into as what the cause was, whether there was some contagious viral process and people working and living in close quarters like you see in a military barracks. That would be a possibility; extremes of temperature of the water, it was probably forty-two, forty-three degrees in that area during and people getting wet.

MR. HOCHBERG: Friedman says he examined hundreds of firefighters who battled oil fires in Kuwait after Operation Desert Storm.

DR. GARY FRIEDMAN: We have not seen these type of respiratory problems after the work in Kuwait, the firefighters in Kuwait. We have not seen it with folks working with crude in this area. Now, certainly there are different types of crude, and under certain circumstances it's conceivable it could give off certain fumes. But I'm not aware in my own personal experience that we've seen these type of respiratory ailments.

MR. HOCHBERG: The Occupational Safety & Health Administration, OSHA, responsible for ensuring the nation's work places are safe, stopped short of blaming beach oil for respiratory damage. But it does say Exxon's exposure standard for beach workers was far too high and probably allowed some unhealthful exposures. Ironically, research suggests the beach cleanup may have been more good public relations than good ecology. Exxon, pummeled by criticism for the spill, dumped more than $2 billion into the beach cleanup, but scientists say storms and wave action did more to restore beaches than the high power hoses did, and the pressure cleaning killed billions of tiny organisms in the process. Most beaches look as clean as they did before the spill. The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, estimates only 3 percent of the oil still lies on the beaches. Another 1 percent of oil continues to be suspended in the water column. Some scientists say that small amount of oil continues to threaten some of the Sound's most colorful creatures like harlequin duck. Scientists presented four years of research at a symposium sponsored by the state and federal government last month in Anchorage. Among the findings, a massive reproductive failure in harlequin ducks in the areas where Prince William Sound was oiled. Half of the population of 2,000 was killed by the spill, itself. The survivors have been left to feed on muscle bed contaminated by crude oil. Perhaps because of their poison diet, the ducks have stopped reproducing.

SAM PATTEN, Wildlife Biologist: It's quite clear. Since 1989, there's essentially been no harlequin duck reproduction in the oil spill area at all. What we believe we've got here is the first documentation of a reproductive failure as a result of an oil spill in a natural setting.

MR. HOCHBERG: Exxon refused to participate in the symposium, opting to hold its study result until a second meeting planned for April. But an Exxon biologist rejects the notion that oil is still harming the ducks.

JERRY NEFF, Exxon Biologist: They're jumping to conclusions about whether or not differences, they see apparent differences, are actually due to the oil or due to natural variability in these wild populations. It's a very hard number of links that you have to establish to say that in 1992 harlequin ducks are being affected by an oil spill that occurred in 1989.

MR. HOCHBERG: As if to illustrate though the limit to how much man can help, the heartwarming efforts to rescue oiled sea otters are now turning out to have hurt as much as they helped. Rescued otters suffered badly from the stress of capture and captivity and have shown poor survival and poor reproduction.

BRENDA BALLACHEY, Research Physiologist: We can't feel good about the outcome of those ends. I think we have to evaluate our efforts to save them versus euthanization, and I know that's very difficult for many people to accept, but the, the clinical records on those animals are, they're pretty rough reading if you go back to them. There was a lot of suffering.

MR. HOCHBERG: Fish and wildlife studies also show a high number of prime aged otters mysteriously dying in the Sound, suggesting some oil related impacts continue. Other findings, the National Marine Fishery Service says 14 killer whales died in Prince William Sound in the two years after the spill at ten times the expected mortality rate. Zoologists had thought whales would avoid oil slicks.

MARILYN DAHLHEIM, Oceanographer: I think it's important that people realize these animals are not going to avoid oil slicks and that that should be taken into consideration when routes are planned for tanker traffic.

CHUCK MEACHAM, Alaska Department of Fish and Game: They were experts who indicated fish would swim away from the spill, and quite frankly, we found just exactly the opposite in almost all instances.

MR. HOCHBERG: The state's Chuck Meacham says while Alaska protected its $2 billion fishing industry by closing fisheries and tainted waters, latest studies show higher egg mortality in salmon and curved spines and jaw abnormalities in herring.

CHUCK MEACHAM: I really anticipated that the damages would be within the year of the spill and maybe to some degree the following year, and what we found again was every fish species we've looked at, it's continued. It's continued. Salmon are affected multiple years. Herring are affected multiple years.

MR. HOCHBERG: And fishermen along Cook Inlet, 100 miles from the spill, may be affected multiple years. The spill disrupted the five-year cycle of sockeye salmon on which the area's economy depends. The spill closed most of the commercial salmon fishery on Cook Inlet. More than a million fish usually caught by commercial fishermen instead swam up the Keen Eye River and spawned. But there weren't enough nutrients up river to support all of the baby fish, and most of them died. Those baby fish normally would be grown by now, returning next summer to fuel the area's 100 million dollar fishery. Instead, these fishermen are anticipating dismal fish stocks, 1/10 of normal.

FISHERMAN: What we're looking at now is almost like an Exxon Spill 2. For us, this is like the spill is happening right now or next year.

OTHER FISHERMAN: This is an ongoing agony and looking at the future it makes it even worse.

MR. HOCHBERG: For Alaskans, fish shortages and troubled animals are gloomy reminders that the nightmare of the Exxon Valdez continues, but the scariest legacy may only now becoming clear, that humans soon could join fish and animals as the long-term victims of the nation's largest ever oil spill. FOCUS - CRIMES OF WAR

MR. MacNeil: We devote the rest of tonight's program to Bosnia from three perspectives, a personal look at the rape crimes, including an interview with one of the Bosnian soldiers convicted today, then an essay on the rapes by Anne Taylor Fleming. We'll start with a report on today's developments from Correspondent Christopher Rose of Independent Television News.

MR. ROSE: Even before the trial had started, 22-year-old Borislav Herak had admitted his guilt. In court he described in gruesome detail the rape of 16 Muslim women and how he murdered 11 of them. The authorities have charged the two men with genocide, claiming they've been agents of a systematic effort to create pure Serb areas by raping and murdering Muslim women, executing Muslim civilians, and looting and burning Muslim properties. Stretko Damjanovic, who's 31, had admitted murder and rape when he was arrested but later withdrew his confession, claiming it had been beaten out of him. He said he would appeal against today's death sentence. The two had been in the Bosnian Serb army which has been besieging Sarajevo. They were arrested when they stumbled on a Muslim checkpoint in the city last November. Today Herak told the judges who sentenced the two men to death by firing squad, "I have deserved this." But their lawyers argued they should have been treated and tried as prisoners of war. A common market report has said that at least 20,000 Muslim women have been raped during the war in Bosnia.

MR. MacNeil: Next, we have the personal perspective of Bianca Jagger, who recently visited Sarajevo to investigate rape and other war crimes aimed specifically at women. Her trip was sponsored by a New York-based human rights group called Equality Now. Among those she talked to in Sarajevo was Borislav Herak, one ofthe two men convicted today of mass murder and rape by the special Bosnian Government Tribunal. Ms. Jagger videotaped much of her trip, which began over land by car from Split through the town of Mostar to Sarajevo. Back in New York, Ms. Jagger spoke with our correspondent Charles Krause.

MR. KRAUSE: Bianca, welcome.

BIANCA JAGGER: Thank you.

MR. KRAUSE: I think a lot of people will be surprised that you went to Sarajevo. Why did you go?

MS. JAGGER: Because I don't want to be part of what was called at one time the Munich mentality which is the mentality of a policeman in collaboration with evil, and I feel as a woman that it was important to me to go there to make a statement about the fact that women are being used as weapons of war in the campaign of systematic rape, in the campaign of ethnic cleansing.

MR. KRAUSE: Tell me about your trip by land from Split into Sarajevo. You were accompanied by officials from the United Nations. Tell me about your trip into the city.

MS. JAGGER: Well, you know, that passes in Mostar. It's a pretty scary one. There are about 22 kilometers, you know, and you really are at the mercy of whoever wants to shell the road, and this all over the place, I mean, that sense that your life is, is being, you know, that it's just God who will decide what will happen to you, and in a way it was good that had my high eight camera because that kept me occupied, you know, and trying to work it, because it was the first time that I used a high eight camera and that took my mind away of the danger sometimes.

SPOKESMAN: [Film Clip] Now this is one of the most dangerous on both sides. This is where one of the major battles took place earlier in the war. They established the front line here. It's an ideal hideout for snipers.

MS. JAGGER: We drove into Sarajevo and you passed by the area of the airport which is constantly being shelled and is closed, you know, and it's not open, and, in fact, we managed to get through there. A minute after we passed, you know, the line of the airport, they closed it. You know, whenever I've been in situations of danger like that, it's not at that particular moment that I feel the fear, is afterward, watching, you know, when I watch the film and I think and I feel the tremble on the voice of the other person that they're frightened to be there, and then I think, oh, my God, but not at those moments. I feel more fear when I see the idea that, that I am going to be kept, you know, prisoner and that I won't be able to leave more than the idea that I will be killed.

MR. KRAUSE: You went to see the president of Bosnia at the presidential palace. Tell me about your meeting with him. Did you have a chance to ask him about the human rights situation, the general situation, specifically the situation having to do with the issue you went to look at, women's, abuse of women in this conflict?

MS. JAGGER: I was able to talk to him about the general situation, and no, I did not talk to him about the issue of women because we were talking about more the issue of humanitarian distribution, but I did talk to the head of the, of the refugee department for the Bosnian government, and she, she made a description of the atrocities that the women in, Muslim women are suffering at the hands of the Serbians.

SPOKESPERSON: [on film segment] [speaking through interpreter] The torture she was exposed to she could not cope with and then she committed suicide. She jumped off the third floor of the hotel. Two to three hundred of the girls were killed. Of the girls who were raped and kept there, the same way. There is an additional problem because many, most of the girls who were kept under the intention of being raped are from traditional Muslim families where the tradition of virtue is preserved very strongly. So many girls who have been released don't want to talk about what's been happening to them for two reasons: No. 1, not to be hurt again themselves, to go through it while talking about it; and No. 2, to keep the embarrassment and shame to themselves as much as possible so the others won't know what has happened to them. The situation has changed, and there is a serious possibility that none of the girls in detention and being raped at the moment will survive, that they will not be allowed ever to leave and tell what has happened, that nobody wants living witnesses to what has been going on. It's likely that they'll all be killed eventually. The way we think at the moment we should proceed is to try to make conditions for them to be released first, and then we can start the campaign against the people who have committed these atrocities.

MS. JAGGER: What became apparent to me and had already become apparent is that the rapes are not something that is taking place by chance. They come from above. It's not a decision that soldiers make, you know, like it's commonly done in wars against women, but that it is a part of the idea of the ethnic cleansing to, to destroy the, the idea of women, to destroy the idea of the dignity, to destroy the idea of family, to make them want to hide, to want to flee, to never come back to this area, because it not only attacks the very core of what families in Muslim families stand for, but, you know, what the dignity is all about.

MR. KRAUSE: There have been reports that the Muslims and the Croats as well as the Serbs have used rape as a tactic. Did you find any evidence of that?

MS. JAGGER: Everyone has mentioned that there are atrocities on the other side, and I've never been to any war where there are not atrocities on the other side. But there is a difference between the scale. There is a difference between a concerted policy to rape women and, in fact, every single report that I have read, it's, you know, very clear in specifying that, but, yes, there are atrocities being committed on the other side, but in no way is a policy, is a strategy carried out against women that is a policy of the government.

MR. KRAUSE: You interviewed Borislav Herak, the war criminal who's now on trial in Sarajevo. Tell me about that interview.

MS. JAGGER: We went to the, to the jail and I interviewed him for about half an hour. And unfortunately, while I was in interviewing him, the people who were leaving were calling and saying that the shelling had increased and that they were going to close the airport and that I had to leave, you know, constantly. I must tell you that it was a very important interview for him.

MS. JAGGER: [interview excerpts] Tell him that I try to understand why the rapes take place. What is the reason behind the rapes and is it true that they would like women to be pregnant?

BORISLAV HERAK: [speaking through interpreter] It's the wish to put the revenge onto one nation. That is something that came from our commanders, to revenge, to have revenge to the women of this nationality that literally have to bear Serbian children.

MS. JAGGER: But why the women? Why not the men?

BORISLAV HERAK: [speaking through interpreter] I don't know. It is through the women to get the revenge this way because the men are simply killed, but we are all ordered to do it. I did it because I was ordered to. If any of us had refused to do that, then we would have been either imprisoned or since it's a war, if a command is disobeyed, I would have been killed.

MS. JAGGER: By the end of the interview I was in tears because the way he spoke, it was so completely cold and it was so clear to me that what he had done was not something that he had decided but that it was part, you know, of a bigger plan, and when I asked him, but why women, do you understand, it's a question that I continued to think, why women, why, because it's not only women but little girls as well, and that idea made me cry at the end, you know, when I was interviewing him, and I'm not really the crying type, you know, but that is such a terrifying thought that in the strategy of war, you know, a people will use the destruction of a nation through women.

MR. KRAUSE: Bianca Jagger, thank you very much.

MS. JAGGER: Thank you. ESSAY - EVERY WOMAN

MR. LEHRER: Finally a third perspective on the rapes in Bosnia. It is that of essayist Anne Taylor Fleming.

MS. FLEMING: I think of them often these days, the women of the Baltics. I find myself looking for them in the nightly news broadcasts, the now endless footage of the former Yugoslavia as it splits and divides and splits once more into new old unfamiliar names. Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosova, Macedonia. Night after night we see the pictures of a country that was, pictures reminiscent of Beirut. Men shooting, children dying, people somehow going on with their lives, making due in the bombed out remains of their hatred. But where are the women, the estimated twenty to fifty thousand of them who have been raped in the civil war? Mostly Muslim women, systematically raped by Serbian soldiers as part of the campaign of ethnic cleansing, burdened now not only by grotesque memories but by babies they do not want. Where are they in all this rubble? The guess is that many have been killed. Others are in camps or in hiding. They don't want to talk. They are shamed, we are told, by what has happened to them. Their own men will not want them after this. We do have two things. We have stills, photographs of some of their faces, the faces of young women and girls who have been raped, some of them over and over and over, some of them in front of their mothers or fathers. Looking at them I cannot imagine how they will heal. I am hungry for their faces. I seek them out wherever I can, feeling tethered to their fate, unnerved by it, enraged by it these thousands of miles away in my relatively safe American suburb. Their pain is audible. I don't need sound bites. We have another piece of them. We do have some first person accounts of what they have been through. I read them over and over, forcing myself to read them out loud so I can hear the words. And as I do, I see not just their faces, but faces of women all over the world, young women, girls, a kaleidoscope of my sex, my capable, my luminous sex, at risk in every country, every corner of every country, my country, where a woman is raped every six minutes. I think of all of them as I read the words of one sixteen-year-old Muslim girl in Bosnia.

YOUNG MUSLIM GIRL: [speaking through interpreter] One of the soldiers, a man around 30, ordered me into the house. He told me to undress. I was terribly afraid. I took off my clothes, feeling that I was falling apart. The feeling seemed under my skin. I was dying. My entire being was murdered. I closed my eyes. He did it to me. I cried. I twisted my body convulsively, bled. I had been a virgin.He went out and invited two other soldiers to come in. I cried. The two repeated what the first had done to me. I didn't even know when they left. I stayed there, lying on the floor alone in a pool of blood. My mother found me. I couldn't imagine anything worse. I had been raped, destroyed and terribly hurt. But for my mother, this was the greatest sorrow of our lives. We both cried and screamed. She dressed me."

MS. FLEMING: We have seen it before, of course, mass rape during war. In World War II Germany, Jewish women were raped. Later, when the Soviets marched in from the East, German women, themselves, became the targets. In 1937, it was the rape of Nanking as the occupied Japanese raped Chinese women. The Japanese also turned thousands of captive Korean women into slave whores for their victorious army. In war, women are invaded as if they were nothing more than enemy territory, casualties who seldom make it into the history books afterwards if they survive, if they don't. A policy discussion about intervention into the fragments of Yugoslavia now pervades the newspaper editorial pages and the news shows like this one. I read and I listen and, yes, I too well remember Vietnam, the quagmire. But I ask them all: What shall we do with these faces, these letters? Tell me, what. I'm Anne Taylor Fleming. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Tuesday, a White House spokesman said President Clinton will move next week to lift the 16-year ban on federally funded abortions, and the Senate moved toward a vote on the Clinton economic stimulus package. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim. That's the NewsHour for tonight. And we'll see you tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.