The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

Intro

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. These are the main news headlines today. Moscow offered to top building a radar station the U.S. objects to. French doctors said a common drug produced dramatic results in AIDS patients. Another earthquake hit Mexico City but caused few injuries. Hurricane Juan began to lose force after hitting the Louisiana coast again. Details of these and other stories coming up. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: After our version of the news of the day, a leading AIDS researcher will analyze the news from France of a treatment breakthrough; then the Surgeon General of the United States discusses a public health problem called violence. There's a report from San Francisco on the debate among scientists about Star Wars research. And, finally, a law enforcement expert talks about the art of stealing art.News Summary

MacNEIL: The pre-summit battle for public opinion continued today, with the Soviet Union making new gestures to the United States. U.S. officials said Moscow was offering to stop building a radar station the U.S. considers a violation of the anti-ballistic missile treaty. The Soviets say the station at Krasnoyarsk in Sibera is for tracking satellites. They've offered to halt construction if the U.S. does not modernize radar stations at Thule, Greenland, and Fylingdales, England, both built before the ABM treaty was signed. U.S. officials said, "They have made us an offer we can refuse." State Department spokesman Bernard Kalb said, "The Soviets were violating the treaty and the Western allies were not."

BERNARD KALB, State Department spokesman: The Krasnoyarsk radar is a clear-cut violation of the ABM treaty by the virtue of its inland siting, orientation over more than 4,000 kilometers of Soviet territory, and its capability for ballistic missile detection and tracking. The early warning radars at Thule and Fylingdales, on the other hand, were deployed prior to the signing of the ABM treaty. Their modernization is not prohibited by the treaty. Any formulation that seeks to equate a Soviet activity that is prohibited under the ABM treaty with modernization action by the U.S. that is not prohibited would be inequitable and an unacceptable precedent.

MacNEIL: The other Soviet gesture: they have indicated through diplomatic channels in Geneva that they could accept small-scale tests in the Star Wars program they oppose. U.S. officials said that is considered a positive move. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger was in Brussels urging NATO allies to condemn what the U.S. considers other Soviet violations of existing treaties. Here's a report from Chris Hardy of Visnews.

CHRIS HARDY, Visnews [voice-over]: The defense chiefs were gathered for a meeting of NATO's nuclear planning group, but for U.S. defense secretary Caspar Weinberger it was more than that. For the Geneva summit meeting between President Reagan and Soviet leader Gorbachev only three weeks away, he was anxious to get a united front between the United States and its European allies. Particularly, he wants all the NATO members to condemn the Soviet Union for alleged Soviet cheating on arms control treaties. To back his case, Weinberger told the ministers the Soviet Union had developed a new missile. Moscow has said the missile is just a development of an existing weapon. Initial reaction to Weinberger's claim was reported positive, which is good news for the United States. With major differences reported on arms control among factions in Washington, the U.S. administration would be glad of backing from its European allies.

LEHRER: The wife of Soviet scientist and dissident leader Andrei Sakharov has been told she can go overseas for medical treatment. That was the report today from Soviet journalist Viktor Louis. He told reporters in Moscow Yelena Bonner has been informed she can fly immediately to wherever she wants. Mrs. Bonner, who is 60 years old, suffers from an eye ailment. She and Sakharov live in internal exile in the closed Russian city of Gorky. Sakharov, who won the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize, was sent to Gorky in 1980, Mrs. Bonner in 1984.

In another Soviet matter, the young Russian sailor who twice jumped ship in an apparent attempt to defect will be returning to the Soviet Union. That word from the State Department late this afternoon. The announcement came after U.S. officials asked the sailor why he jumped last week from his ship into the Mississippi River near Belle Chasse, Louisiana. Today U.S. authorities said he was suffering from exhaustion and other medical problems.

MacNEIL: Three French doctors announced today that they had produced dramatic improvements in two AIDS patients with the drug cyclosporin, commonly used to prevent rejection of transplanted organs. Although they said the results were very preliminary, they felt the findings should be made public immediately. At the Laennec Hospital in Paris, the doctors said they had treated only six patients, beginning just a week ago. They explained that the drug cyclosporin temporarily suppresses the immune system in AIDS patients, which enables the white blood cells to develop again. They said it's a treatment, not a cure.

Anthony Mandia, the first recipient of the new Penn State artificial heart, had it replaced with a human heart overnight. Mandia was kept alive on the mechanical heart for 11 days at Hershey Medical Center until the heart of a West Virginia woman was located. His condition today was said to be critical but stable.

LEHRER: Americans were advised today to boycott their credit cards. The advice came from Congressman Frank Annunzio, Democrat of Illinois and chairman of a House consumer subcommittee. He said credit card interest rates average 18.62 nationally, and that was too high. He said consumers should put their plastic in their pockets and leave it there until interest rates come down.

Also in Congress today, the Senate moved a step closer toward radio and television coverage of its floor debates and deliberations. The Senate Rules Committee voted eight to one in favor of testing such coverage. The House has allowed it since 1979.

MacNEIL: Mexico City had another sharp earth tremor today, causing panic and minor injuries, but no deaths or collapsed buildings were reported. The tremor measured 5.7 on the Richter scale and lasted about 30 seconds. Coming only five weeks after the massive quake which killed more than 7,000 people, today's tremor caused people to flee buildings in panic. Those injured were crushed or suffered from shock.

On the Louisiana coast Hurricane Juan came back again today with heavy rain and 85-mile-an-hour gusts of wind. The rain and high tides caused the worst damage and disruption, washing over highways and marooning hundreds of people in their homes. Old-time residents said they'd not seen the water so high in 35 years. In two days the storm has cost at least three lives; 12 other people are missing, and three oil-drilling rigs have collapsed into the Gulf of Mexico. It was the third time this year that the area has been struck by a hurricane, something that has never happened anywhere.

The former chief aide to the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was arrested in West Germany on a U.S. warrant charging her and two associates with attempted murder. Ma Anand Sheela and two other women were arrested yesterday at a guest house in the Black Forest and are being held pending a court hearing. The U.S. Justice Department wants the women extradited to face charges that they attempted to murder the guru's personal physician with poison. Rajneesh himself is under arrest in Charlotte, North Carolina, on charges of violating federal immigration laws.

LEHRER: That concludes our summary of the news of this day. We now move on to a leading American AIDS researcher's view of the AIDS news from France, the surgeon general's view of violence as a public health problem, a San Francisco report on a university argument over Star Wars research, and a law enforcement official's inside word on stealing famous pieces of art. It all begins after our Lurie cartoon of the day, which is about the news concerning Andrei Sakharov's wife.

RANON LURIE CARTOON [Gorbachev appears at summit door holding bouquet of missilesfilabeled arms cuts. No answer. A flower of human rights appears among missiles. Reagan opens the door sniffing the perfume.] AIDS: New Treatment

LEHRER: AIDS. Today for a change there was some good news to report about the dreaded disease. Three French doctors said they have come upon a possible breakthrough treatment. They said they have dramatically slowed the development of AIDS in two out of six patients by using cyclosporin, a drug that helps prevent rejection of transplanted organs. How good is the good news is the first question tonight for Mathilde Krim, an AIDS researcher who heads the AIDS Medical Foundation in New York. Dr. Krim, how good is the news?

MATHILDE KRIM: The news is unfortunately, I think, a little premature. And I also think that this kind of news [was] released in the wrong forum. Cyclosporin is an antibiotic that was not successfully developed as an antibiotic but was found to have profound immunosuppressive capacity. It can paralyze the immune system, really. It is also a rather toxic substance. Its use in patients who are immunosuppressed is paradoxical --

LEHRER: Immunosuppressed is exactly what an AIDS patient is, right? Because the immune system is gone. Okay, yes.

Dr. KRIM: That's right. You would not think of using an immunosuppressive drug in this kind of patient. However, it is not impossible that it does something useful, because the immune system is extremely complex. We don't have a good handle. We don't yet know how to manipulate it well. And a paradoxical finding is not altogether surprising, and there may be something to cyclosporin used in patients with AIDS. It is often believed that there is an auto-immune component to this disease --

LEHRER: A what?

Dr. KRIM: Auto-immune. Immunity misdirected to the person, to the self, rather than directed to foreign antigens and substances.

LEHRER: What do you make of the comment from the French doctors today that apparently what happened, or what they believe happened is that the cyclosporin eliminated the immune system, as you outlined, and allowed it to grow from scratch again? In other words, to build up on its own, to cure itself, in other words.

Dr. KRIM: It's a theory, but again it doesn't mean much. You know, what we know of cyclosporin, for example, is that it interferes with the action of a certain growth factor T-cells need to multiply. So why should there be multiplications of T-cells when cyclosporin inhibits their interaction with the growth factor? There are many mysteries in this story, and I think it was inappropriate to release it to the public before it was analyzed and studied by experts.

LEHRER: Why was it inappropriate?

Dr. KRIM: Because, as you can well imagine, we have hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who consider themselves as at risk of catching the infection. In fact, most -- many of them have it already. At risk of developing AIDS, desperately looking for treatment possibilities. There is nothing we have now that has been demonstrated of being effective. And news like this will result in heightened hopes, patients calling by the thousands their physicians, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and your television station, I am sure, tomorrow.

LEHRER: Yeah. But what about --

Dr. KRIM: And for nothing, probably. It will be another hope, you know, awakened and disappointed.

LEHRER: But the doctors in France said that they felt for ethical reasons compelled to make this public now because the results had been so dramatic in these two patients, particularly one who was on the verge of death, had cyclosporin and is now on the way -- is doing much better.

Dr. KRIM: No, I don't believe one can evaluate the usefulness of a drug upon studying it for eight days in six patients, two of which seemed to do better. You know, this is not solid evidence.

LEHRER: What should they have done, Doctor?

Dr. KRIM: They say they have seen an increased number of certain cells in the blood, which I understand is exciting to the investigator because these patients have a chronic, progressive and usually lethal disease. To see this unusual occurrence of higher numbers of certain cells is exciting. The proper forum we have to discuss such a finding or observation would be with colleagues. For example, on Thursday this week there will be a meeting in Washington of the interagency Committee, an interagency committee formed of top scientists of the National Cancer Institute and the National Institutes for Infectious Diseases and Allergy, who screen drugs that may have promise in the treatment of AIDS. These are the people the French scientists should have called on the telephone and offered to report their results to, so that their results can be analyzed by peers who are competent in evaluating them.

LEHRER: In the meantime, are you, as we speak tonight, if there is an AIDS patient who is on the verge of death, should that patient or that patient's family or that patient's doctor not give that patient cyclosporin if it's available?

Dr. KRIM: Yes. I think he should not. He should wait --

LEHRER: Just let him die?

Dr. KRIM: No. Well, if somebody is on the verge of death tonight and may die tomorrow, I don't think cyclosporin, even if it's a miracle drug, will help him. It may be an interesting drug to develop in the treatment of AIDS or ARC, but this has to be done very carefully, because cyclosporin is also a very toxic drug. In somebody who is already very sick it may be doing more harm than good, despite the fact that you may see certain changes that go in the right directions, that are those we would like to see happen in those patients.

LEHRER: You're up on all of the research, I assume, that's going on, or most of the research that's going on all over the world about AIDS. Did this come completely out of nowhere?

Dr. KRIM: Yes. Completely out of nowhere.

LEHRER: There was no hint at all that cyclosporin could be helpful in any way?

Dr. KRIM: Not to my knowledge I didn't -- to my knowledge it was not investigated in the clinic for the purpose of treating AIDS.

LEHRER: Is there anything in the works that you know of that is anywhere near as dramatic as cyclosporin at least appears to these three doctors to be?

Dr. KRIM: I don't know anything as dramatic, but I know things that have done good to a larger number of patients over a longer period of time -- longer periods of time, and substances that have inhibited the multiplication of the virus associated with AIDS where we have factual information or data supporting that these substances have useful activity.

LEHRER: All right. Well, what then should happen now with the information that these French doctors released today? To get a quick answer -- how can you get a quick answer that would satisfy you and other skeptics?

Dr. KRIM: I'm sure their information -- and, by the way, what we all know, including me, is only what was included in a press release, you know. This is not information that physicians or scientists can use to evaluate a drug. These French physicians have to have their data reviewed by their peers, people who know about the disease, know about cyclosporin, know about immunity. And then I'm sure if there is something to their findings, their study will be repeated not only in France but also in this country, and very soon, within weeks, we will know if there is something to it.

LEHRER: All right. Dr. Krim, thank you very much. Robin?

MacNEIL: Still ahead on the NewsHour, violence in the United States. We talk with the Surgeon General and look at an innovative program for teenagers. Then the debate in the scientific community about Star Wars research, and finally an expert on international art theft talks about the big painting holdup in Paris. Rx For Violence

MacNEIL: Some 23,000 Americans are murdered every year, and millions more fall victim to other forms of violence. Until recently the problem has been left mainly to the police and the courts, but now some are beginning to see violence as a public health problem as well. Judy Woodruff has more.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Violence was the subject of a three-day U.S. Surgeon General's conference in Virginia this week, a gathering which drew experts from around the country. One of those experts was a Boston doctor who is running a pioneering project designed to head off violence, particularly among teenagers. Here is a report on that program, which we first aired last year, by correspondent June Massell.

JUNE MASSELL [voice-over]: What you are about to see is a murder, recorded on a surveillance camera during a holdup in a Los Angeles grocery store. Behind the trigger was a teenager.

TEENAGE MURDERER: Give me all your money in the bag right now.

VICTIMS, after shots are fired: Oh, God!

MASSELL [voice-over]: Young men under 25 are responsible for almost half the murders in the country. Although the victim in this case was an older man, usually the victims of teenagers are also teenagers.

TEENAGER DON: You have friends, people I know of, you know, family, killed, stabbed, beat up, shot. You know, the rape. Definitely not uncommon. Every day. It's like taking a cigarette out your pack, you know. Every time you light up something else is happening. Anywhere you go, really, in a city, you know, where a lot of minorities live, you know, there's always fear for your life. You just can't show it, you know? [talks over police siren] Just go on living your life and trying to [drowned out]

MASSELL [voice-over]: Boston, Massachusetts, April, 1984. While we were talking to Don, who himself had recently been knifed in the chest, another teenager was stabbed a block away in Roxbury, a predominantly black lower-class area of the city.

YOUTH: It's beginning to be like a TV show, you know? Like once a week you be expecting something like this.

MASSELL [voice-over]: This 19-year-old was a friend of the wounded youth and asked not to be identified.

YOUTH: Wherever you go there's something happening -- the skating rink, movies, night club. Wherever. But there's something happening.

MASSELL [voice-over]: Homicide is the number-two cause of death for all teenagers, but for black teenaged males it is the leading cause of death. In large cities like Boston, one out of 20 black males will be killed before reaching the age of 24.

[on camera] In the past teenage homicide was viewed primarily as a law-and-order problem, to be handled by the police and courts. But with so many people in one age group dying, some health experts here in Boston are now viewing teenage homicide, and treating it, as a public health problem.

Dr. DEBORAH STITH, Boston City Hospital: What do we know about homicides? Do people usually know each other?

CLASS: Yes.

Dr. STITH: Yeah. Most of the time they do. Most of the time. Sixty percent of the time the people know each other, and 20 of the time they're family members. What usually causes it?

STUDENT: Fights.

Dr. STITH: An argument. And what about the weapon, usually?

MASSELL [voice-over]: This health education class at a Boston high school is teaching something no other health education class has ever taught, homicide prevention. And the teacher is not your typical high school teacher. Dr. Deborah Stith is a medical doctor with a specialty in internal medicine and a commitment to help underprivileged teenagers deal with the frustration and rage that sometimes lead to violence and murder. The class is mandatory and part of an experimental program sponsored by the Boston City Hospital.

Dr. STITH: If you're a teenager growing up in urban Boston, particularly if you're black, there's a lot to be angry about -- the limited education, the limited job opportunities that are available, the kind of racism that you come across just in moving about, shopping downtown. There's a lot to be angry about. And the course is designed to have kids claim that anger, but then look at creative alternatives when you talk about what to do when you're responding to that.

[to class] And to do that today we're going to act out a fight, okay? We're going to create a situation to act out a fight. We're going to video it.

MASSELL [voice-over]: Because television is something all teenagers can relate to, Dr. Stith feels the use of video can be an effective educational tool.

Dr. STITH: Kids are attracted to video. We like to see ourselves, and seeing yourself on television and getting to play it back is very exciting. But more than that, it allows us to play the behavior back and stop it at particular points and look at body language and look at facial expressions and look at those components that come together to make a fight. And with that we can have them look at their behavior and talk about preventing it.

[to students] See, what's very interesting is when you watch this fight, Scott gets very provocative. But if you don't watch carefully you miss the fact that when Howard walked up there, you know, and said, "That's my girl," that that's provocative behavior. And sometimes we say, "Well, I didn't want a fight. I was just there. I was just trying to defend myself." But at the same time we create a situation where almost nothing else can happen, but people start fighting.

MASSELL [voice-over]: The students are encouraged to explore why the need to fight is often greater than the need to walk away.

STUDENT: Say you're walking down the street with your boys, and one boy comes up and chumps you and then the other one's looking at you like, "Haha, you got chumped. Ha ha, by a little kid!" Then you feel embarrassed. So if you beat the person up you don't feel embarrassed. Then you go walking home, they be like, "Yeah, yeah."

MASSELL [voice-over]: A chump is street talk for a coward, someone who is too afraid to fight. The personal embarrassment caused by not standing up to a fight is frequently intensified by peer pressure.

Dr. STITH: First of all, the crowd was egging the whole thing on by saying, "Ooo, here comes Howard. Here comes Howard," all right. And then Howard came up to him, allright? Always have that option of not confronting the situation or leaving a situation, and again, when you're in a setting where there are friends and other people around, if you're going to confront the situation, you're probably going to wind up in a fight.

MASSELL [voice-over]: Outside the classroom, on the streets of Roxbury, the teenage homicide rate is four times the national average. It is still too soon to know whether Dr. Stith's homicide prevention course will have an impact on behavior and reduce the violence, but a leading authority on black homicide praises the class as an important first step towards that goal.

Dr. ALVIN POUSSAINT, Harvard Medical School: It's better to be a coward for a minute than to be dead for the rest of your life. Put it that way. And I think that if she presents this to youth who frequently see no other alternatives, I think that her program has a great chance to succeed and to influence the community.

Dr. STITH: In a lot of ways it's a new idea from the standpoint of health education and from a standpoint of society taking it on as a banner. It's almost teaching morals, and I think at one level we have to decide as a society that we are going to praise that person who walks away as the intelligent person as opposed to praising a person who stays and demonstrates some very bizarre macho behavior as the hero.

WOODRUFF: Incidentally, that report by June Massell was shown at this week's conference in Virginia. It is only one of many approaches to violence prevention that were described there. Here to tell us more about the scope of the problem and possible solutions is the U.S. Surgeon General, Everett Koop, who sponsored the meeting.

Dr. Koop, first of all, why is the Surgeon General involved in violence? Why not leave it up to the courts, to the police?

EVERETT KOOP: Well, I think that this is a threat more to the health system of this country than it is to the justice system. We not only have 24,000 people who are killed by the hand of another in this country each year, but four million people who are wounded or hurt. And any time you have four million people that are victims of one particular thing, that makes it a public health problem.

WOODRUFF: But is the health care system in this country prepared, is it adequately equipped to deal with violence in all its many forms?

Dr. KOOP: It's better equipped to deal with prevention than the Justice Department is, which is not set up to prevent these things from happening. And in view of the fact that there are so many people networking with each other, health professionals -- doctors, nurses, psychologists, social workers, institutions, educational programs like Dr. Stith's -- these are all working together to calm the rage of people, to give them alternatives to settling anything that comes up by a violent manuever.

WOODRUFF: Is this something new? I mean, is this something the health care system has been paying attention to all along and we just haven't heard much about it?

Dr. KOOP: You haven't heard as much about it as I think you should have heard about it. Many of the things that we do in this country in the Public Health Service are based upon a 10-year plan which started in 1980. And we have objectives for the nation to accomplish in the next 10 years, and the reduction of violence was always one of those. In my tenure as Surgeon General I have tried to escalate my interest and the attention of the country, first by appealing to pediatricians, because violence that starts with children is to me the worst kind of violence. And then I took it to academia. Then we approached the people that are concerned about television and violence and, at a conference here in Washington two years ago, I asked for an end to the conflict between the Public Health Service and the television networks. Let's stop fighting with each other, criticizing each other's researches, but get together and ask, why are our people so attracted to violence? And those dialogues are going on.

WOODRUFF: And do we have an answer?

Dr. KOOP: We don't have an answer to that, but we're doing two things. We're beginning to look at the victim in a different way, and we're beginning to look at the perpetrator that Dr. Stith is working with in a different way, and if we could accomplish those two attitudinal changes, we would do a tremendous amount to overcome the problems of violence.

WOODRUFF: All right, specifically, the perpetrator, or the potential perpetrator of a crime. What can a health care professional, a doctor or a nurse, or a teacher do? We just saw an example of the last one.

Dr. KOOP: You saw what a teacher can do. But if you have the health care system organized so that when there is an intake of a victim, then the system goes into operation and they begin to look at all of the connecting links.

WOODRUFF: But by then the crime has already been committed.

Dr. KOOP: That's right. That's right. So you have not been able to be there for primary prevention, but you can at least be there for secondary prevention and keep that from getting worse and keeping that perpetrator from committing the same crime again. And, you know, we focus particularly on interpersonal violence and that which occurs in families. And the terrible thing about family violence in America is that it is repetitive. And if you can interrupt it one place and keep the person who is the perpetrator from going back and repeating the same thing, you've accomplished a great deal. One third of all of the battered women in this country are battered repeatedly, and half of the men who beat their wives do it three or four times a year.

WOODRUFF: Forgive me for sounding skeptical, but this sounds like a wonderful dream. But actually taking it and practically applying it and having every doctor or many, many doctors in this country, nurses, teachers and all the other professionals actually applying this, it seems to me we're a long way away.

Dr. KOOP: No, we're not. If you look at what you just saw on that clip, you're looking at violence that is a sort of a fake one between two people who know each other. But the kinds of things that produce the real violence in America are things like child abuse, spouse abuse, child sexual abuse and now the new one, elderly abuse. Each of those has a whole different set of circumstances. They each have a different set of remedies. And with the interest of the medical profession and the paramedical people, we are beginning to make inroads; there's no question about it.

WOODRUFF: What's it going to take to do -- what do you need, sitting where you are, to increase the awareness out there?

Dr. KOOP: Money will help a little bit, but that's not the important thing, as Dr. Stith made very clear. That's a very cheap program that she takes care of there. But the fact that we can begin to recognize that a changed attitude, if we don't view the victim as somebody who deserved it. We tend to do that about victims. And if we look at the perpetrator as somebody who can be helped and shouldn't just be punished, I think we have two keys to success.

WOODRUFF: Do you really believe we can get there?

Dr. KOOP: Oh, yes I do. It's going to be a tremendous [unintelligible] problem. When you have four million people who are wounded each year because of assault or attack, you know you have a huge problem. But you can't cure it at once. But if you have people such as we had at this conference teaching others who will teach others, and the network system begins to pick up right in the clinics where it starts, we can do it.

WOODRUFF: And you're talking about all kinds of violence, not just domestic or violence among people who know each other, but random acts of violence?

Dr. KOOP: I'm talking about all acts of violence, but our conference focused primarily on interpersonal violence and especially that in families.

WOODRUFF: And you say this can be done without much more federal money, or money from any government source?

Dr. KOOP: Put it this way. You can't make a father love his child or a man love his wife by a federal grant. You've got to change attitudes.

WOODRUFF: Dr. Koop, we thank you for being with us.

Dr. KOOP: Yes, indeed. Star Wars

LEHRER: Next, another debate over the strategic defense initiative, otherwise known as Star Wars, but this time it's among university scientists who disagree over the propriety of participating in the research. The stakes are high: the Pentagon is spending $100 million this year alone in university research on the project. The rhetoric is also high, as we see in this report from two California universities by Elizabeth Farnsworth of public station KQED-San Francisco.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH, KQED [voice-over]: Ever since University of California scientists led the team that produced the world's first atomic bomb, America's universities have wrestled with the technological and moral issues of the nuclear age. Now university scientists are debating the Strategic Defense Initiative, better known as Star Wars. Many professors find the Star Wars challenge irresistible and they are signing on to do research in high-tech areas like lasers and high-speed computing. But other scientists are signing anti-Star Wars petitions instead, pledging neither to solicit nor accept Star Wars research funds. Physicists at Cornell University in New York started circulating the petitions early last summer. Now thousands of scientistsacross the country have joined up, including nearly half of the physics department faculty at the Berkeley campus of the University of California. Opponents of the Strategic Defense Initiative claim it will never work and that it will jeopardize arms control agreements with the Soviet Union. They also worry about the impact of Star Wars research on other academic pursuits. U.C. Berkeley physicist John Holdren is chairman of the Federation of American Scientists, an influential arms control and science policy organization.

JOHN HOLDREN, University of California at Berkeley : I know of many people who have lost financial support for the kind of non-defense-related projects they were doing who have switched into Star Wars research and other forms of military research because growing military research in general and Star Wars research in particular tends to vacuum money out of other research programs that are more interesting, more important, of greater potential benefit to society. And because the researchers will gravitate to where the money is, you'll have people leaving these other fields.

FARNSWORTH [voice-over]: John Holdren and other critics of the Strategic Defense Initiative fear it will accelerate a trend on university campuses towards more weapons-related research. After the turbulent 1960s, Defense Department research contracts declined at Berkeley, and all classified research on campus ended. The campus is quieter now. There is still no classified research, but Pentagon spending here has gone up 400 over the past five years.

WERNER GOLDSMITH, University of California at Berkeley: Well, the purpose of this experiment is to determine the forces and the deformations and the fracture patterns that you have when a projectile strikes a target.

FARNSWORTH [voice-over]: Mechanical engineering professor Werner Goldsmith runs this project on an $80,000 grant from the Army. He has applied for $1.5 million of Star Wars money to run a similar but much larger experiment using lasers as well as bullets. Across the bay at Stanford, weapons-related research plays an even more important role than at Berkeley.

[on camera] The Defense Department spent $30 million on research here at Stanford last year. About half the research money in applied physics and electrical engineering comes from the Pentagon. The figure is 75 for computer science. And with the Strategic Defense Initiative the amount of weapons-related research here is likely to increase dramatically.

[voice-over] Electrical engineering professor Joseph Goodman has received Stanford's first Star Wars grant, $100,000 for six months of research on optical switching devices -- high-speed computing using lasers.

JOSEPH GOODMAN, Stanford University: I have no trouble taking money from the Defense Department. I think the Defense Department has been the primary supporter of basic research in this country for many years.

FARNSWORTH [voice-over]: But some of Professor Goodman's colleagues at Stanford do have trouble taking Star Wars money, and they have signed a petition opposing the program. This group of Stanford physics professors gathered to explain why they oppose Star Wars research on campus.

GREGORY LOWE, Stanford University: Whether it's classified or not classified is not the issue. It's just as unpleasant, I think, on a campus to have research that's not classified when it has to do with nuclear weapons, with students and free exchange going on as it is if it's classified. It so happens that at Stanford we're not allowed to do classified work, buteven unclassified work, I think, that has to do with these problems, does not belong on university campuses.

MICHAEL PESKIN, Stanford University: The program, even if you accept what the proponents say about the technical capabilities of it, is a long way off. It's something that perhaps we should be working on slowly, but that has no right to be a major component of American science.

FARNSWORTH [voice-over]: The scientists' debate over military funding for research is not a big issue now on campus. In the 1960s students here demonstrated against the military. Now they talk careers with recruiters from the armed forces. Last year a Stanford faculty committee on research debated and defeated a proposal "To prohibit all research whose purpose includes the development of weapons of mass destruction." Professor Gerald Lieberman, who served from 1980 to 1985 as Stanford's dean of graduate studies and research, believes research decisions are best left to individual faculty members.

GERALD LIEBERMAN, former dean, Stanford University: -- that research at Stanford University is initiated by the faculty. The faculty have the right to seek support anywhere they choose, provided that that research is unclassified. I believe it would be poor institutional policy to conclude that Star Wars money is no good because one doesn't like, perhaps, what the Star Wars money is going to ultimately be used for. End use should not be a criteria in a university in deciding whether to accept research money or not.

FARNSWORTH [voice-over]: This beguiling creature known as Moby was built by graduate students in Stanford's artificial intelligence lab. The funding comes from the Defense Department, which is interested in Moby's ability to see.

JOEL BURDICK, Stanford University: The goal is to produce an autonomous intelligent vehicle which can rove about in unstructured environments, in the sense that it can go somewhere it's never seen before and act and adapt to what's going on.

FARNSWORTH: Do you have any trouble with taking money from the Defense Department?

Mr. BURDICK: No, not really at all. So students that are concerned about military funding can work on projects that are not military funded, although you don't necessarily get to do the research you directly want to do. So sometimes if the military is funding what you really want to do, you have to bite the bullet and do that research.

FARNSWORTH [voice-over]: At Stanford and at Berkeley critics of Pentagon-funded research are concerned over the fate of graduate students who do object to working on weapons projects.

Mr. HOLDREN: We are certainly going to lose, I think, some graduate students and undergraduate students from the pursuit of technical careers if they get the impression that the only support for technical careers is figuring out how to build more glorious weapons.

FARNSWORTH [voice-over]: And at least one U.C. graduate student is thinking of cutting short his budding career as a physicist.

PAUL SELVIN, University of California, Berkeley: I would like to do research that is not weapons-related and it's difficult to find, and increasingly difficult to find, given that more and more of the funding is coming -- is associated with the Star Wars, which is fundamentally weapons research.

FARNSWORTH [voice-over]: Paul Selvin says his first graduate research involved work on lasers, a project he thought had only medical application.

Mr. SELVIN: I thought I was developing a biological microscope, and yet, when the professor gave me all the papers to read so I could get up to speed in the field, I found that they were almost all of them were by people at Lawrence Livermore, where they do weapons research, particularly nuclear weapons research. And I found out that in fact a large percentage of my work would have been dedicated towards actually building better nuclear weapons. Not that my work I was doing was intended that way, but people would take the results of my work and then apply it in that particular manner.

FARNSWORTH: How can you feel in physics if you stay this way about close ties between physics and weapons research?

Mr. SELVIN: Well, it's a matter of great concern. I'm not sure, frankly.

FARNSWORTH [voice-over]: In the universities the debate over Star Wars has become a debate over the future direction of science in this country, and even at the labs where weapons are built scientists are having to answer tough questions. Lawrence Livermore Lab physicist George Chapline invented the X-ray laser that may be the Strategic Defense Initiative's most powerful weapon. He calls it his finest creation, but he too is concerned.

GEORGE CHAPLINE, Lawrence Livermore National Lab: Well, I certainly worry about the question of whether strategic defense, using, for example, the nuclear-pumped X-ray laser, would be beneficial or not, and to the extent I understand the arguments about the strategic implications of this, I don't see that it would have any negative influences.

FARNSWORTH [voice-over]: Whether Star Wars has negative influences on arms control and on scientific research generally will be debated for some time. Meanwhile, Congress has already funded the program and testing on space weapons has begun. In the universities the anti-Star Wars petitions are continuing to make the rounds. Whether the scientists' opposition will affect future congressional funding for the program is still uncertain. What is certain is that university science is growing more and more dependent on the national defense budget.

LEHRER: That report from Elizabeth Farnsworth of KQED-San Francisco. Stolen Treasures

MacNEIL: The big crime story in Paris this week is the dramatic daylight raid on the Marmoton Museum. On Sunday morning, 50 visitors and museum guards were held at gunpoint while a gang of thieves got away with nine Impressionist paintings valued at more than $12 million. The museum's curator called it the theft of the century. The most valuable painting stolen was "Impression Sunrise" painted by Claude Monet in 1872, which gave the Impressionist School its name. One art expert called it a key monument in the history of art, and it's considered to be worth at least $3 million. In all, five Monets were stolen, including this one of his wife and her cousin at the beach, and this portrait of a fisherman, typical of Monet's style. Two Renoirs were stolen, one, his own portrait of Monet, who was his life-long friend. Why would thieves take such well-known works? To talk about possible motives and how the police investigate such cases, we turn to Charles Koczka, a special agent with U.S. Customs. For the past 12 years, Mr. Koczka has specialized in art theft and has helped to recover stolen art worth more than $6 million.

I gather you've just been involved in a case, at the other end of which was the man heading the investigation into the painting theft in Paris. Tell us about that.

CHARLES KOCZKA: That's correct. This past Saturday, Saturday evening, precisely, I returned to inspector Jean-Claude Vincent a Louis XV dressing table valued at $45,000 which was stolen from France, and I left him and the stolen work of art on the plane Saturday evening, and lo and behold, within less than 24 hours he was up to his neck in this rather massive theft.

MacNEIL: Now, a Louis XV dressing table, a lot of people mightn't recognize that that was a stolen property because it's not unique. There were some different ones made, presumably. But paintings like this. Could they sell paintings like these anywhere?

Mr. KOCZKA: With the massive international media attention to it, the prospective buyers would be greatly reduced in number.

MacNEIL: Are there prospective buyers?

Mr. KOCZKA: Yes. Yes. In fact, we think back to 1911, Leonardo's Mona Lisa -- when asked, "Why did you steal it?" he said, "Because I fell in love with it." So there are people who, setting aside their morals, the desire to possess, even if they are the only one that can enjoy the aesthetic reaction to that painting, that's enough.

MacNEIL: You mean there are people today who would commission thieves to steal something that they could just put in a private place somewhere and look at all by themselves?

Mr. KOCZKA: Most definitely. It's an addiction, but --

MacNEIL: Are there people like that in this country now, that you know of?

Mr. KOCZKA: I cannot specifically name one at this point without --

MacNEIL: But in your experience in recent years you've come across such people? They exist.

Mr. KOCZKA: There was a billionaire in this country who on the front page of the Times admitted to facilitating between $16 and $17 million toward smuggling works of art, buying works of art that he knew were smuggled.

MacNEIL: Does the nature of this crime, a gang running in, holding up a museum at gunpoint, does that suggest that behind it is a mad collector who just wanted these paintings for himself?

Mr. KOCZKA: Well, it's just a departure from the normal manner in which these items are obtained illegally, namely, during the break-in of the night, gaining entry to a museum, what not. Here where they used guns in daylight in front of visitors, helpless people, it's a departure. But according to the French authorities, it's only the third time it's occurred in approximately the last 22 years.

MacNEIL: It has occurred before?

Mr. KOCZKA: Correct. But the desire to possess is so strong in the mind of collectors and dealers and yet even museums that they will take these greatly unorthodox means to obtain it.

MacNEIL: You said museums. Would a museum commission a theft?

Mr. KOCZKA: Museums have been known to not only possess items of poor provenance, knowing that the legitimate title didn't exactly go along with it.

MacNEIL: But not putting them on display, presumably?

Mr. KOCZKA: Well, if you acquire a work of art which was illegally acquired, smuggled out of and smuggled into this country, and we have to realize that while most of the art thefts occur in Europe, the United States, specifically New York, which is really the art capital because this is where the money is, both the legally acquired and the illegally acquired items, is where it would show up. They're very patient people. They're willing to wait five, 10 years. It will cool off. And people won't remember that particular piece. Right now it's got all the media attention, and it'd be very risky, unless there is some political motivation behind this, which, to date, the absence of any communication with these people indicates to me that probably is not the motivation.

MacNEIL: What kind of political -- what do you mean? That's another possible reason behind this crime, you mean.

Mr. KOCZKA: Well, it's in the realms of possibility, and it's purely theory on my part. If this is a group that aspires to some terrorist mentality and has one of their adherents in, say, in this case, the Bastille, they might very well want to make that trade. Now, it's not that far in the realm --

MacNEIL: To make the paintings the hostage instead of a person?

Mr. KOCZKA: Correct. But the absence of any communication leads one to believe that this was a well-planned -- you figure you have five human beings in five minutes making off with nine paintings. They knew exactly where to go, they knew what to take and what not to take. So it's not random, haphazard. This is very selective and well thought out. So it is definitely organized.

Mr. KOCZKA: You've talked to your friend, Inspector Vincent, today and he said nobody's been in touch yet. There is no contact yet?

Mr. KOCZKA: At this point they have no leads. They've requested that if there is anybody in this country that has a solid lead, please notify the nearest Customs offices.

MacNEIL: U.S. customs.

Mr. KOCZKA: U.S. Customs because this is truly an international crime, even though it occurred in France. The world is so much smaller today, and the cultural patrimony is very limited. So we're all working together in law enforcement, and we really seek out the aid of people who are our eyes and ears and who might assist us in the recovery of these items.

MacNEIL: Let's look at another possible motive. If it isn't political, could they simply steal the paintings for ransom and say these are priceless paintings, what will you give us to have them back?

Mr. KOCZKA: Normally that would be if the items were insured. In this case they were not. Now, it may very well be in the future a communication will be received by the authorities where x-number of dollars or francs is to be given in exchange for the safe return. To date that has not happened, but then again we're only two days into the theft.

MacNEIL: Paintings like these are not insured?

Mr. KOCZKA: No. The costs are prohibitive, insurance-wise.

MacNEIL: Is that common that they're not insured?

Mr. KOCZKA: Yes. It's also common in the area of jewelry, too. Many people will keep the original in a safe place and have a facsimile made. The cost of the insurance after a few years may be equal to the price of the original acquisition.

MacNEIL: Well, would that preclude -- the fact they weren't insured, would that preclude someone from still trying to ransom them for a few hundred thousand dollars or half a million dollars or something?

Mr. KOCZKA: It certainly wouldn't preclude anything.

MacNEIL: But so far no contact like that?

Mr. KOCZKA: None that I'm aware of.

MacNEIL: How much art is stolen around the world today?

Mr. KOCZKA: It's impossible to figure. I can give you a better gauge of how much narcotics is smuggled into this country than I can say what successfully comes in here. But the art that is acquired both from dealers, collectors and also taken from archeological sites -- grave robbery -- this all falls into the same area. And we should also include stamps and collectables which add to their value, and rare books and what not. I have heard figures, can't verify them, that 50,000 pieces a year are stolen, with values as high as $5 billion. That's a number which I cannot handle, the $5 billion, and I wouldn't even want to attempt. But there is a saying that has been going around for over 10 years that it's second only to narcotics, the crime activity of fencing, acquiring, smuggling stolen art.

MacNEIL: I see. Just tocome back to a point you were talking about awhile ago, I'm not sure that I absolutely followed what you were saying. Are you suggesting that a museum in this country might knowingly acquire and hang up a painting that had been stolen?

Mr. KOCZKA: Poor provenance.

MacNEIL: Poor provenance. Meaning they're not too sure, but they could be sure because the international art world has such interconnections? They could be sure if they really tried to find out? Is that what you're saying?

Mr. KOCZKA: Along with the acquisition there should be title passing at the time of the sale. And in many cases the individual who sold it didn't have title. He had possession, but he didn't have title to it.

MacNEIL: So you're suggesting that if somebody suddenly notices Monet's "Impression Sunrise" hanging on a museum wall somewhere they should ask a few questions, is that it?

Mr. KOCZKA: More than a few. Contact the local authorities.

MacNEIL: Mr. Koczka, thank you very much.

Mr. KOCZKA: Thank you very much for inviting me.

MacNEIL: Jim?

LEHRER: Again before we go, a look at the Lurie cartoon of the day. It concerns the news today about Andrei Sakharov's wife being allowed to leave Russia for medical treatment.

[RANON LURIE CARTOON repeat]

LEHRER: And also again the other major news of the day. The State Department said no to a Soviet offer to stop building a radar station which it says breaks an arms control treaty. The Soviets said they'll quit work on their radar station if two NATO facilities are not updated. The U.S. called the deal inequitable. Mexico City was rocked this morning by an aftershock of last month's earthquake. It set off some panic but caused little damage. And three French doctors said they scored a dramatic breakthrough in the treatment of AIDS by using a drug designed to prevent rejection of transplanted organs. But U.S. researchers, including Mathilde Krim on the NewsHour tonight, expressed skepticism about it.

Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: Good night, Jim. That's the NewsHour tonight, and we will be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.