The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

INTRO

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. The news on this Friday is led by a recommendation that the price of a first-class postage stamp go up to 22". Also, new unemployment figures showed no change -- it's still at 7.5%. And in the world of politics, Walter Mondale said all new taxes should be labeled the Reagan tax. Robin?

ROBERT MacNEIL: We cover a wide range of subject matter on the NewsHour tonight. President Reagan's refusal to restrict copper imports has brought predictions of disaster for the U.S. copper industry. We debate that issue. We look at the first week of the fall election campaign through the eyes of America's cartoonists and with the views of two political analysts. We look at the meaning of the rioting in South Africa. We have a documentary report on how a U.S. defense contractor is trying to disarm its critics. And we review Norman Mailer's new book, Tough Guys Don't Dance.

LEHRER: The really bad news is first. The cost of a postage stamp is on its way up from 20 to 22 cents. The U.S. Postal Rate Commission recommended the 2" increase late this afternoon, along with a penny hike for postcards from 13 to 14 cents. The recommendation now goes to the board of governors of the U.S. Postal Service. If it accepts it, the increases could be in effect by next February. The Postal Service had originally asked the independent Rate Commission for a 23" first-class stamp and a 15" postcard. Postmaster General William Bolger says the increases are necessary for his quasi-public organization to keep income matching expenses. Robin?

MacNEIL: The monthly unemployment figures came out today and showed no change from July to August. The unemployment rate remained at 7 1/2%, the figure it reached in July after a rise from 7.1% in June. That means that 8 1/2 million workers are officially considered looking for work. The White House said it was encouraging news that unemployment rates have remained stable, but Democratic Senator William Proxmire of the Joint Economic Committee said 7 1/2% was a very high level to have the economy stalled.

The U.S. dollar again set new records on the foreign exchange markets. In Paris the French franc hit its lowest rate ever, at 9.11 to the dollar, while the British pound also hit a new record low of 1.27 pounds to the dollar. Analysts said the dollar's surge was driven by expectations that U.S. interest rates will remain historically high and that President Reagan will be re-elected.

On Wall Street the Dow Jones Average of 30 industrial stocks closed down 11.48 points, at 1207.38. Jim? Copper: No Protection

LEHRER: Jobs were also at issue today in President Reagan's decision not to restrict the import of foreign copper into the United States. The U.S. International Trade Commission had recommended some restrictions, either quotas or through tariffs, but yesterday Mr. Reagan said no. U.S. Trade Representative William Brock said such actions were not needed or justified, and would put at risk four times more U.S. jobs. But those in the U.S. industry and their backers in Congress strongly disagreed on the jobs-loss issue, calling the action a disaster for them and their workers. Efforts were announced today to mount a congressional override of the decision. One of the most perturbed of the congressional critics is Senator Dennis DeConcini, Democrat of Arizona, a center of copper mining. He is here now along with a strong supporter of the Reagan decision, Alan Wolfe, deputy U.S. trade representative in the Carter administration, who now represents a coalition of copper users. Senator, why is the decision a disaster, and for whom?

Sen. DENNIS DeCONCINI: It's a disaster for this country, not only for the copper group -- producing states like Arizona, where there is a lot of jobs; we have 14,000 copper employees out of work now -- but it's a disaster for this country because it is a strategic metal. It's a part of the strategic stockpile list of strategic metals; we have little or none in the stockpile. This industry is going down the drain. We're going to rely on imported copper. I think that's a mistake. I think it's a mistake not only for the human jobs that are lost here, but a mistake for our national security and defense.

LEHRER: You mean the failure of the President to institute quotas or tariffs means the U.S. copper industry is going down the tubes, is that it?

Sen. DeCONCINI: I predict that the copper industry will not come back from where it is today and will continue to decline without some assistance, and this President turned his back on a basic major industry today, and it's a shame.

LEHRER: Mr. Wolfe, how do you read the impact of the decision?

ALAN WOLFE: Well, I think it was the appropriate way in which the Trade Act of 1974 has to be read. Import restrictions were not in the national economic interest. In fact, they would have been counterproductive. They would have harmed the domestic copper producers, in our view.

LEHRER: How?

Mr. WOLFE: They would have caused the price of copper in the United States to rise. That's the objective -- to cut off imports to some extent, to cause the domestic price to come up. Unfortunately that would have driven up the costs of copper for copper fabricators in this country but not with their foreign competitors. The makers of copper --

LEHRER: A copper fabricator is a?

Mr. WOLFE: Someone who makes wire, cable, transformers, any number of brass -- any number of products that use copper. The copper fabricators sympathize with the copper producers. They are dependent on them; they need them to be strong and healthy. But to restrict copper imports, they felt, and the President's cabinet was unanimous on this point, would have been counterproductive.

LEHRER: Senator?

Sen. DeCONCINI: Well, you know, you get to a real quandary here: how long are we going to subsidize foreign producers of copper? We do it now through the World Bank. We're giving 34% of the contribution that loans money to these countries that produce copper, regardless of what the world glut is or demand. We don't do that. We don't subsidize our industry here. Ronald Reagan and this administration asked Congress for $8.5 billion for the International Monetary Fund to help finance some of these countries that produce copper regardless of what the demand is on the world market. We don't do that. We don't have fair trade. If you don't have fair trade, you've got to take some actions that help and protect your basic industries. And that's the decision the President could have done today. And he didn't. He didn't have the courage and the leadership to put America first. As far as the fabricators are concerned, they would still continue to fabricate. They'd be using American copper, and the fabricators -- they talk about 106,000 jobs. You look at the studies. The only valid study that's out is one that the fabricators put out. And if you look at that carefully you'll see that any speck of copper used anyplace is considered one of the fabricators -- like making light bulbs or headlights for automobiles. And small amounts of copper.So you're not talking about an equal distribution of jobs here. You're talking about a basic industry that is slipping away from this country.

LEHRER: And you say -- Mr. Brock said yesterday, and I quoted it at the top, that four times as many jobs were involved. He was talking about your industry, the industry you represent, the fabricators, right, Mr. Wolfe?

Mr. WOLFE: Yeah. I'd say it's in excess of that.Senator DeConcini of course has a different view.

LEHRER: But how would those people be affected by a decision to put quotas -- I mean, to use your theory that the prices would go up, how would that affect those jobs?

Mr. WOLFE: Well, copper wire, for example, is not a high technology industry. It does not take much to make copper wire. Copper wire is made in not only throughout Europe and Japan, it's made in Turkey and a number of developing countries. If the price of copper were more expensive to Americans competing with imports of copper wire, they'd become less competitive. They lose jobs. There's no doubt about it.

LEHRER: He's right about that, isn't it?

Sen. DeCONCINI: Well, no, I disagree, because, number one, these fabricators are going to continue to be in operation. They're going to be competitive. They have been competitive. We already are at a disadvantage.We spend 15" a pound to satisfy the Environmental and Clean Air Acts, and I'm not suggesting that we should abandon those. And yet Zaire, Chile and Mexico bring in copper without paying that. Why don't we do something to equalize this? I've suggested an environmental tax on imported copper. At least we could say, "Hey, you can't bring in a flood of copper." Do you know copper has increased 112% of the amount since 1979 the amount of imported copper. Now, tell me that's good for the United States and good for our industry and good for workers here. It's not.

LEHRER: Is that good for -- what's your answer to that?

Mr. WOLFE: We would like to see a healthy domestic copper producing industry. What we've said it it cannot be achieved through import restrictions, just drive up the price of copper at home and bring in imports. And what -- American copper producers are not great exporters. They rely upon a customer base in the United States. They need the fabricators. The fabricators need the domestic producers. And a means has to be found for the price of copper to rise globally, not just in the United States, in order not to have an adverse affect on --

Sen. DeCONCINI: You know there were a couple of other things --

Mr. WOLFE: -- on the fabricators.

Sen. DeCONCINI: There were a coupleof other things that President Reagan might have done today if he didn't want to go the step that I had advocated and Senator Domenici in New Mexico had advocated, and that was to direct Mr. Brock and the Commerce Department to start negotiations with international copper producers to see if they could read some level of production on a world basis.

LEHRER: Like the United States has done with the Japanese on cars?

Sen. DeCONCINI: Well, that hasn't worked so well, but that's the principle. But like OPEC has done on the production of oil, so the price stays and there is a steady demand.

Mr. WOLFE: It would be a cutback of production not a cutback of just shipments to the United States. There's a big difference.

Sen. DeCONCINI: Well, would your organization support that? I believe they have said something --

Mr. WOLFE: We would have no problems with a production cutback if the President chooses to head in that direction.

LEHRER: You talked to --

Sen. DeCONCINI: Now, I talked to him today --

LEHRER: -- the President, yeah.

Sen. DeCONCINI: -- and I could realize I wasn't going to get him to reverse his position, but I asked him to seriously consider just that.

LEHRER: What'd he say?

Sen. DeCONCINI: Just a minute, I'll tell you. And I said further, I said, "It'd be nice if you made a public statement to encourage this kind of negotiations with our friends and allies and trading partners, and if you don't do it, I will at least reconsider the possibility of quota imports." He said he'd look at the proposition I gave him, but they don't think that way in this administration.

Mr. WOLFE: If I might just add, what we said is that to threaten import restrictions would be counterproductive because it's harming ourselves. It's harming both the producing segment and the fabricating segment, and therefore, if -- we're a big country. We have a number of means at our control -- at the President's control to deal with other countries. Threatening import restrictions would just be harming ourselves. It might not even harm Chile; it might not even be leverage at all because they could still get a higher price in the United States for what they could still ship and sell as much as the wanted on the world market. The objective of all of the copper producers is to get a cutback in production so that the price of copper rises. But the main problem besides the current levels --

LEHRER: There's just too much copper on the market?

Mr. WOLFE: There's just too much copper and people would rather hold certificates of deposit, with today's interest rates, than they would copper.

LEHRER: All right, gentlemen --

Mr. WOLFE: That has a depressing effect.

Sen. DeCONCINI: The big problem, if I can -- if I can just insert -- how long is this country going to continue to finance the development of copper expansion in these Third World countries? You know, that's pretty hard for a taxpaer, certainly for a copper worker, but for any taxpayer, to say we're going to finance this in Chile, Mexico and Zaire when we're laying off copper workers here because of imported copper. It's about time we put America first, in my opinion.

LEHRER: Senator, thank you. Mr. Wolfe, thank you both very much.

Mr. WOLFE: Thank you.

Sen. DeCONCINI: Thank you.

LEHRER: Robin?

MacNEIL: A decision on whether presidential counselor Edwin Meese becomes the attorney general of the United States will now probably have to wait until next year. Republican Senator Strom Thurmond, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said his committee would not take up the Meese nomination this session. That means that if re-elected, President Reagan would have to resubmit Meese's name to the Senate for confirmation. The nomination has been stalled since a special prosecutor was appointed to investigate Meese's finances. Both The Los Angeles Times and NBC News today reported that that investigation would clear Meese of any criminal wrong-doing. Just before he left for Camp David, President Reagan had this to say.

Pres. RONALD REAGAN: I have not seen the report yet, as no one has. But barring anything unforeseen, and I don't expect anything of that kind, I haven't changed my mind about him.

REPORTER: What do you think about Thurmond not holding hearings this fall?

Pres. REAGAN: I can understand the crowded agenda that they have with regard to the election and the necessity to adjourn for campaigning and so forth, so no, I don't think there's anything unusual about that at all.

MacNEIL: The President added that if re-elected he would resubmit the Meese nomination. Jim?

LEHRER: It was a relatively quiet day on the Presidential campaign front. Walter Mondale was in the South again, this time in Georgia. He met with Bert Lance and other Georgia Democratic leaders in Atlanta and then went on to nearby Decatur for a speech. There he talked of taxes and the need for some to bring down the federal deficit, a deficit he said was caused by Reagan policies, and thus any corrective tax should be called a Reagan tax. At an airport news conference Mondale also attacked the administration's record on Social Security.

WALTER MONDALE, Democratic presidential candidate: Of course, Social Security is not simply a taxation and benefit program. It is a fundamental contract that Americans have made to the senior citizens of this country, that when one spends a lifetime working and earning, once retirement occurs, Social Security is a matter of right. You can plan on it. It's a matter of social security. And that's a big difference. Mr. Reagan promised in 1980 that if elected he would protect that program, and he broke that promise immediately after the election and tried to emasculate the program and cut benefits substantially by nearly $80 billions. It's clear that after this election that's exactly

LEHRER: President Reagan did remain in Washington today, his major appearance being before a meeting of women business executives at the White House. Today, of course, marks the end of the first working week of the Presidential campaign. How does it look after the first five days? Well, Judy Woodruff is here with some other people's answers. Judy? Sizing up the Campaign

JUDY WOODRUFF: Jim, one way to follow the political campaign is through the work of editorial cartoonists who often show with one picture what it might take someone else a few thousand words to say. We've decided to take a look at the end of every week at the campaign through the eyes of the cartoonists. So here now is a sampling of what they had to say about what has happened over the past week or so since the Reagan-Mondale contest got underway in earnest.

MINISTER, pointing to Heaven, [Englehart cartoon. The Hartford Courant]: He would vote for Reagan-Bush.

VOICE OF GOD: No, she wouldn't!

WALTER MONDALE, on debate podium [Bob Taylor cartoon, Dallas Times-Herald]: Do not call me DULL!

Pres. REAGAN, snoring: (Do not call me until 11 a.m.)

Mr. MONDALE [MacNelly cartoon, Chicago Tribune]: Ask yourselves, are you better off now than you were four years ago?

CROWD: Yay! Yes!

Mr. MONDALE: You are? How the hell did that happen?

Mr. MONDALE [Jules Feiffer cartoon, Universal Press Syndicate]: If Reagan had a Ferraro problem, he'd deny that there was a problem. Then he'd make a joke about the problem. Then he'd say the media invented the problem. Then he'd take a vacation to get away from the problem. And then Nancy'd have to remind him that there was a problem! Then the polls would show that 87% of the American people approved of his handling of the problem.

Mr. MONDALE, repairing broken vehicle [Gamble cartoon, Florida Times Union]: Look, Gerry. It's John Anderson. We're saved!

Rev. JESSE JACKSON, coaching Mondale [S. Kelley cartoon, San Diego Union]: Okay, Fritz, let's give at a try. I AM SOMEBODY! Yo, Fritz. You back there, man?

Pres. REAGAN [Oliphant cartoon, Universal Press Syndicate]: All those teachers opposed to school prayer please move forward to the launch area.

DUCK, watching blast-off of teachers: You'll pray for their well-being, of course.

Pres. REAGAN, study list of options [Meddick cartoon, Newspaper Enterprise Association]: Acid rain study: sulfur dioxide? Soviet plot? No. Extraterrestrial cloudseeding? Nope. Leaky orbiting car batteries. Naah. Elvis' clone terrorizing the stratosphere? Hmmm. [phone rings] It may well be sulpher dioxide, but we can't be sure until we've investigated all other possibilities!

ANGEL, reporting [Sanders, Milwaukee Journal]: It's me, Lord, with the election update. Reverend Jackson said he knew you wanted him to be President. Geraldine Ferraro says she knows you don't approve of Reagan's budget cuts. And President Reagan says he knows you want to be involved in public schools and politics. What do you think, Lord?

GOD: I think it's about time we flooded that planet again.

WOODRUFF: Another way to look at the events of this political season is through the eyes of political analysts. Joining us tonight are, first, Democrat Alan Baron, editor of the biweekly political newsletter The Baron Report, and Republican Mark Harroff, a partner of the Washington-based consulting firm of Smith and Harroff which is advising numerous Republican candidates this year. First of all, gentlemen, thank you for being with us. Mr. Baron, as we just saw in those cartoons, there's a lot being said lately about Walter Mondale's problems. Has he done anything in the last week or so, do you think, to narrow the gbap between himself and the President?

ALAN BARON: Well, I think he's hit on a pretty key issue, and that was certainly the religious issue, the separation of church and state question. I think that he hit on it strongly. It's a good issue for him. I think it's a big problem for President Reagan. I think they realize that as soon as the President speaks. The President deals with Jerry Falwall and Jackie Presser of the Teamsters Union and some of his supporters in a way that he likes to speak to them early, get it out of the way and not have people notice. And that's what he did with Falwell and people took notice. And the problem for Mondale is that now Reagan's backing away from it, running way about as strong as you can now to say the only thing he was talking about was people who wanted to take "In God We Trust" off the coins, and I don't -- no one wants to do that.

WOODRUFF: Well, so do you think Mondale really made some headway this week, or do you think -- the speech on religion, which I gather you're saying was effective, do you think that was overcome by some of the other publicity about the early problems he had?

Mr. BARON: Well, certainly the logistical problems --

WOODRUFF: You know, with the poor turnout in New York --

Mr. BARON: I mean, anybody that would schedule a rally or an appearance at a parade at 9 a.m. on Labor Day morning in New York, Speaker O'Neill, I understand, told Mondale, should have been fired. And I would think that that was pretty good advice on O'Neill's part. I mean, I don't know who could get a crowd out at 9 a.m. on Labor Day morning in New York. They got a bigger crowd, I think, in that town in Wisconsin, of how many people?

WOODRUFF: Mr. Harroff, what do you think? Do you think Mondale narrowed the gap any?

MARK HARROFF: No, I don't think he narrowed the gap. I think that if anything the message that came out of this week is that more and more Democrats in the Congress, from Tip O'Neill to some of his former advisers, like Dick Moe, are concerned that the Mondale campaign doesn't have its act together. The religious issue is one that they've addressed; we've had a one-week religious war. But I don't think you'll find any poll that shows it ranks up there in the top five, six issues of concern to the American voters.

WOODRUFF: Well, what are we dealing with? Are we dealing with Mondale's problems, or are we dealing with a Reagan lead that is virtually insurmountable? I mean, is it that Reagan is so good or that Mondale's just not doing what's right?

Mr. HARROFF: I think that you've heard Tip O'Neill talk about taking the gloves off, and you heard him talk about Social Security, and all of a sudden today Mondale's talking about Social Security. And I think that he's probably getting back to the kinds of issues that he needs to talk about. Whether he's right or wrong is another issue, but he hasn't been -- he's not going to win this campaign by talking about fine lines of who's more religious, who's more Christian, as Mrs. Ferraro talked about, or, in this case, you know, what is really separation of church and state. I think the voters are yawning.

WOODRUFF: Alan, do you think that Mondale can put it together, to make up these 15 points?

Mr. BARON: I think it's very tough. If you go back to the last -- they had a political scientists convention here last week and a number of papers. If you go back to all these elections, whenever real income has gone up in the year before the election, the incumbent's been re-elected with one exception, Gerald Ford, and that almost proves the rule because it was a close race. So Mondale has to do everything right. But the other thing, what Reagan's mistake on the religious issue was that, as Dick Wirthlin, President Reagan's pollster, says, Reagan's strength is on the economy, and that's his strength, particularly with this critical baby boom generation of voters under 40. But that group of voters doesn't agree with Ronald Reagan on making America a Christian nation or abortion or saying that in order to be appointed a judge you have to have certain views, religious views in abortion. And so forth. They don't agree on those kinds of questions, and what Wirthlin said is that to win Reagan's got to keep the agenda on the economy. Now, I think what Reagan did --

WOODRUFF: He's trying to do that.

Mr. BARON: -- was get off, and he's trying to come right back now. He doesn't want to hear the word religion anymore, Reagan. You know, he --

WOODRUFF: Well, can Mondale keep that issue alive if Reagan doesn't want it to be alive?

Mr. BARON: It's pretty tough, pretty tough, because Reagan is now saying thewhole issue is "In God We Trust" on the coins, and that's not the issue, and Reagan is going to skate away from it.

Mr. HARROFF: That's not quite what Reagan is saying, but I think that, given the lead and given the strength of the President and the strength of the economy, if they stay on religion the President will win. For Mondale to come forward he has got to do what he did the first week of the campaign, which is to challenge him on the tax and deficit issue, and he's got to talk about those kinds of voting issues as opposed to issues that most people pretty well have their minds made up about.

WOODRUFF: You know, a lot is also being written these days, you know, for what it's worth, about Mondale's style, that he's just not a forceful enough speaker, that whatever -- however effective the message may be, he's just not putting it together the right way and delivering it the right way. Is that enough of a problem to keep him from making up any of the distance between him --

Mr. HARROFF: I think the bigger problem is he doesn't have a message. You will find Democrats in the Congress, you will find Democrats in the states that say we need the theme. I think Ms. Ferraro this week tried to strike one of them, which is war and peace, and George Bush hit the same theme from a different perspective. That's a good debate. But I don't think you're finding a theme from this presidential candidate and haven't since the convention.

WOODRUFF: Do you agree, Alan?

Mr. BARON: I think that's right so you have tremendous, you know, cross-pressures. On the one hand he's talking about --

WOODRUFF: You're not going to defend him, right?

Mr. BARON: No, it's a hard thing. He's talking about cutting the deficits, okay, and cutting government spending, and on the other hand Mondale is facing, say, a problem like education. Now, Reagan's solution to education is to put prayer in the schools, and Laxalt says that if you give the kids a minute to pray every day then we'll eliminate drugs and violence and they'll all become PhDs and so forth and we'll have a great -- that isn't the solution, it's going to cost --

Mr. HARROFF: What will you do, Alan?

Mr. BARON: It's going to cost money. It's going to cost money. But you see Mondale's in this vise. Does he go out and say, "It's going to cost money. We're going to have to pay people more money to be teachers, no matter what tests we give them. We can't hire good teachers at $11,000 a year in Arkansas." And if we pay more money we get into the other problem of the deficit problem. And it's true. The Democrats don't have a clear message.

WOODRUFF: Could any Democrat beat Ronald Reagan this year?

Mr. HARROFF: Certainly. I think if Gary Hart were the nominee you would see a candidate standing out this week probably talking about unemployment not going down this month and would probably talk about some new ideas about reindustrialization. This candidate's talking about fine lines of religious philosophy, not substantive proposals on religion.

WOODRUFF: Just quickly.The role of the vice presidential candidates. Are we hearing as much as you think we're going to hear from Geraldine Ferraro and George Bush? Are they playing a significant role?

Mr. BARON: Well, I think for one thing we've got all this analysis. If there's a debate between the two of them, and there's going to be a debate between the President and Mr. Mondale, and you know, we'll be sitting here after that debate and we may have some very different perceptions.I mean, that's of course Mondale's big hope. You know, I'm not saying the odds are with him, but the same with Bush and Ferraro. What if they ask you a question on foreign policy and Bush doesn't know the answer and she does?

Mr. HARROFF: I think that debate started this week, and I think it was the more substantive part of the week's campaign.

WOODRUFF: And who won it?

Mr. HARROFF: I think that they came out exactly where they want to be positioned, and I think the polls show that George Bush will win if his message penetrates. Ms. Ferraro raises a very good concern about the concern of the threat of a nuclear war in the future of her child John. But Vice President Bush scored big points. Newscasts showed him in his role as a pilot and they also talked about his philosophy of giving away the store to the Soviet Union, a nation that has had more than one leader since President Reagan's been in office.

WOODRUFF: And she can't quite point to her military record, I guess.

Mr. HARROFF: Aside from that there's a fundamental philosophical view, and I think the polls show that the American people agree with Reagan-Bush on that issue.

Mr. BARON: I'm not -- I wouldn't necessarily agree that the polls believe we should keep adding weapons. So far it hasn't worked with the Soviets. They have not negotiated and we've built up defense so far --

Mr. HARROFF: Sixty percent of the American people, according to most polls, favor the MX missile, so I don't know --

Mr. BARON: And more than that favor a nuclear freeze.

WOODRUFF: We'll have to leave it at that, gentlemen. Mark Harroff, Alan Baron, thank you for joining us. Robin?

MacNEIL: California voters will not be able to vote this fall on a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist today refused to overturn a California court ruling that kept the initiative off the ballot.He said review by the Supreme Court was not warranted.

Still to come on our NewsHour tonight, an explanation of the racial rioting this week in South Africa, a documentary on how Honeywell is dealing with critics of its defense contracts, and a review of Norman Mailer's new murder mystery. Tough Guys Don't Dance.

[Video postcard -- Blackstone River, Massachusetts]

LEHRER: Nicaragua today kept the rhetorical heat on about the two Americans killed in a helicopter crash there last weekend. The United Nations Security Council was the forum Nicaragua chose to air its grievances against the U.S. Nicaragua's U.N. ambassador insisted the two dead men were mercenaries officially sanctioned by the CIA and not paramilitary volunteers, as their sponsors and the U.S. government claim. The ambassador also called upon the Security Council to take action, but he did not say what kind of action.

JAVIER CHAMORRO MORA, Nicaraguan Ambassador to the U.N. [through interpreter]: May our enemies and attackers make no mistake about it since they cannot manage with war to impose peace. They shall never conquer us. We shall be able to reconquer peace in the countryside, in the mountains, regardless of the time required and the sacrifices necessary. Therefore, the international community and the Security Council must take concrete measures, preventive measures, to maintain peace.

JOSE SORZANA, deputy U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.: Let me conclude by stating once more that the United States is not trying to overthrow the Sandinista government. Our relations with Nicaragua have deteriorated because instead of keeping their promises about human rights and pluralistic democracies the Sandinistas have developed increasingly close military ties to Cuba and the Soviet Union, tightened their internal repression, supported guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador and terrorism in Honduras and Costa Rica, and have continued an extensive military buildup that threatens the security of their neighbors.

LEHRER: Four Democratic congressmen, some critical of the administration's Central American policy, recently returned from a tour of that area. They said yesterday in a news conference they could find no hard evidence of current American involvement in the counterrevolutionary war against the Sandinistas. Robin? South Africa in Turmoil

MacNEIL: South African authorities today banned all protest meetings in the Johannesburg area this weekend to stop riots which have so far taken 31 lives. The ban was issued under the Internal Security Act by a magistrate who said further meetings could seriously threaten the public peace. There's been violence all week in the black townships near Johannesburg as blacks protested recent rent increases and police broke up their demonstrations.There was more violence today when a crowd threw stones and set fire to a bus in the black township of Soweto. Here's a report from Monica Evans of Visnews.

MONICA EVANS, Visnews [voice-over]: Troops are the clearing up after the days of rioting which left at least 31 people dead and dozens more injured. Though the Pretoria government says blacks in the townships and tribal homelands must exercise their political right through local councils, the blacks are losing patience. In an attempt to defuse tensions, senior government figures -- the minister for law and order, Louis La Grange, and the interior and education ministers -- set out on a tour of the troubled area. But the townships are still simmering, and the heavily guarded convoy turned back soon after reaching Sebokeng since security forces warned them that there was a large crowd warned them that there was a large crowd gathering. Later La Grange claimed the protests have not been simply in resonse to the rent rises, but were prompted by certain organizations and individuals. Black church leaders are setting up their own inquiry into the troubles, since they believe the official death toll is short of the true figure. Bishop Desmond Tutu said he had foreseen the trouble.

Bishop DESMOND TUTU, South Africa Council of Churches: -- on trying to urge the authorities that they shouldn't say we didn't warn them. I mean, we said so only last week that we were sitting on a powder keg, and it would blow up in our faces at any moment.

MacNEIL: To give us some understanding of the significance of these riots and what they portend for the future, we have Michael Clough, co-author of a book called U.S. and South Africa: Realities and Red Herrings. Mr. Clough is assistant professor of national security affairs and African area coordinator at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He joins us tonight from San Francisco at public television station KQED. Professor Clough, you heard the South African authorities just quoted as saying the cause of these riots was not just rent increases, as news reports have suggested, but certain organizations and individuals. What do you see as the cause of these riots?

MICHAEL CLOUGH: Well, I think there are a number of things. First, the rent increases certainly were the precipitant of the conflict, the recent uprisings. But I think you've got to see it in a larger context, in two things. One, a very serious depression which has hit South Africa recently, which has increased black unemployment levels, which has led to a very serious economic situation for blacks in South Africa, and that economic situation, obviously, made increases in rents a very difficult situation for blacks. But, secondly, and far more importantly, I think you've got to see these latest disturbances in light of the growing black frustration at seeing South Africa negotiate regional agreements which seem to lessen pressure on the government from outside for change inside, and, secondly, the adoption of this new constitution, which, in the eyes of blacks, leaves them totally out in the cold.

MacNEIL: I see. You heard Bishiop Tutu say just then they had warned the authorities they were sitting on a powder keg. Are they literally sitting on a powder keg?

Prof. CLOUGH: Well, I don't really think it's -- we have quite such a dire situation, and one thing I'd caution is, we go through cycles with regard to South Africa of, on the one hand, overestimating the likelihood of an imminent revolution, and on the other hand underestimating its likelihood. And I think that there is no question that these recent disturbances prove what most analysts have said all along, that is, that the government reform programs have not eliminated the underlying problem in South Africa, the exclusion of blacks from political power. On the other hand, the evidence so far is that these disturbances haven't spread outside of the areas immediately surrounding Johannesburg, and I would be surprised if they would spread too far. We've got to remember we're dealing in South Africa with a government that has tremendous coercive capabilities and not with what I would say an imminent revolutionary situation.

MacNEIL: The South African government has been making, slowly, concessions. It recently gave some share of power to coloreds, people of mixed race, and some people of Indian extraction.Do you have any expectation that they will gradually make some concessions to the black majority?

Prof. CLOUGH: Well, I think there's no question that they will gradually make concessions to the blacks, but the problem is that the rate at which they're willing to make those concessions is inconsistent, or is not simply fast enough. It's not going to come along fast enough for black expectations. And what we have here is a classic conflict of expectations -- whites fearing that if they move too fast that -- or the Botha government fearing that if it moves too fast it will lose conservative white supporters; on the other hand, the failure of it to move fast enough leading to a gradual polarization, increasing, as I said earlier, frustration and the possibility of outbreaks like we've seen in the last week.

MacNEIL: Do you expect more of them?

Prof. CLOUGH: Oh, I think unquestionably there'll be more. Not -- I'm not saying in the immediate term, but over the next five to 10 years what we're looking at is a situation of probably sporadic violence, some change in the government, government concessions, government attempts to meet black demands, but no apocalypse.

MacNEIL: The United States government, the Reagan administration and the Carter administration before, have been quite forthright in their statements about what they think is wrong with South Africa. Can the United States do anything to further peaceful change in South Africa?

Prof. CLOUGH: I think the lessons of the last two administrations, the Carter administration and the current administration, the Reagan administration, is that, no, there's very limited things that the United States can do to affect the pace of change in South Africa. We can work at the margins to, as the emphasis in the Carter administration, to make the South Africans aware that the West is not going to tolerate the continuation of apartheid, that it is going to continue to push for change. And, as the Reagan administration has done, to try to communicate to the whites to open up channels of communication. I think both of those approaches have a place in policy, but we have to admit that in the final analysis the real determinant of change in South Africa is going to be the internal situation.

MacNEIL: You mean the white community in South Africa is not susceptible to outside pressure? The white conservative community.

Prof. CLOUGH: In the short run I don't think so. I mean, in the short run I think that they simply have too great a coercive capability and they're too confident of their ability to maintain their dominance within the country and within the region. And it's in this light, also, that the recent agreements between the South African government, the Mozambiquan government and attempts to achieve other agreements with neighboring countries are important because there is no question that they have bolstered the South Africans government's belief that in the final analysis it can control the situation. So I think we're left with a sad fact that we have only limited influence over the situation.

MacNEIL: Professor Clough, thank you.

Prof. CLOUGH: Thank you.

MacNEIL: Jim? Forums for Peace

LEHRER: It is most unusual when a corporate maker of arms and an antiwar protestor of arms can agree on anything, but it's happened in Minnesota where the Honeywell company and its major critics, who call themselves the Honeywell Project, have agreed to argue in public. They're doing it in a series of unusual public forums on peace and arms control sponsored by the company. Brenden Henehan of public station KTCA, Minnesota-St. Paul, reports.

SPEAKER: We meet at an extraordinary moment in the nuclear era.

HENEHAN [voice-over]: These Minnesota forums are unusual for several reasons. For one thing, the forums have actively encouraged participation, even confrontation, between groups that have long opposed each other. The second and most interesting reason these events are so unusual is that the original idea and 100% of the financial support comes from a somewhat unexpected source -- the Minneapolis-based Honeywell, Incorporated, a defense contractor which, since the 1960s, has been the focus of antiwar activity in the twin cities. Honeywell got its start as a maker of thermostats, but scenes like these have long reminded people here that the company is now much more than that. Today Honeywell does a billion dollars' worth of business each year for the U.S. Department of Defense, making such items as cluster bombs and weapons guidance systems. And, though the protests against Honeywell died down during the late 1970s, they have gained new strength in recent years.

GUARD: I'm a Honeywell security officer. You're on private property. If you do not leave immediately you'll be arrested for trespassing.

PROTESTER: I understand.

HENEHAN [voice-over]: In October of 1983, antiwar protesters returned in large numbers to Honeywell, and nearly 600 people were arrested for trespassing onto company property. In response, the company erected a temporary fence around their headquarters and took out newspaper ads to explain their stand. Honeywell chairman Edson Spencer wrote a guest column in Newsweek calling for a ban on short-range nuclear weapons. And, late last year, the company took the unusual step of funding this series of public arms control forums.

DON CONLEY, Honeywell, Inc.: The real issue is what can be done to achieve peace and arms reduction and disarmament. And as long as Honeywell is there and is the central figure of the debate, I think it diverts the discussion away from certainly what our intent is, is to have knowledgeable people discuss the real issue of peace and how can we achieve it?

HENEHAN [voice-over]: But while Honeywell decided to keep its participation behind the scenes, Edson Spencer did step forward to introduce one of the sessions and to explain Honeywell's view of corporate responsibility.

EDSON SPENCER, Honeywell, Inc.: I think we can all agree that America needs a strong defense capability. But the extent of that capability and how much it should cost must be decided by us as voters and by our government, not by our corporations. We believe that Honeywell's responsibility as a defense contractor is to do the best job we can to serve the country's defense needs, but not to determine defense policy.

Mr. CONLEY: And certainly I think that anyone would have to say that the demonstrations outside of our building are not going unnoticed. We've been talking about the peace issue for a long time in the company. The decision for us to do something along this line was made in, I think it was later than October, probably toward the end of the year. We first contacted the Humphrey Institute at about that time, started talking with them.

HENEHAN [voice-over]: Honeywell asked the Minneapolis-based Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs to set up the forums, and the institute soon found out how difficult that would be. Their first task was to get the two sides together and talking -- corporate and conservative groups on the one hand, liberal and peace groups on the other. Consultation sessions were held and strong differences, even distrust, between the participants quickly became apparent. The two sides obviously distrusted each other, and they distrusted the forums as well.

SPEAKER: And the question is, are we in a serious effort here? Is this just something that's controlled -- that's just not another getting together and talking and then somebody --

SPEAKER: I don't get that impression. There are a few groups represented here from the peace movement, and these proposals, these questions that are formulated go to the heart of many of these issues irrespective of whether in the so-called peace movement or the periphery of the movemen, or outside of the movement These are basic questions that have to be confronted by everyone.

HENEHAN [voice-over]: The Honeywell-sponsored forums left local peace groups with a real dilemma. Do they participate and risk being co-opted, or do they refuse to participate and appear to be against open discussion? So it wasn't much of a surprise that before the first several events many of the leaders of the Twin Cities' peace movement were outside of the auditorium protesting the discussions inside and questioning Honeywell's motives.

PROTESTOR: Honeywell makes heat-seeking and heat-sensitive devices, some of which are used in missiles. These heat-sensitive devices set off cluster bombs after people pick them up.

MARV DAVIDOV, Honeywell Project: It's totally immoral to possess nuclear weapons or to threaten their use against any other cluster of human beings, any other nation. That's not debateable.Everyone will admit who is honest in the situation that there would be no forums unless Honeywell Project, together with all of its affinity groups, all of its support, hadn't created a situation where there are over 1,000 arrests for a non-violent civil disobedience. So we're happy to see some motion, but this is not dialogue.

HENEHAN [voice-over]: But while some peace leaders did refuse to participate, others decided to attend, despite their misgivings about Honeywell's financial support of the project.

MARK ANDREGG, Ground Zero: All of the peace groups could think of ways to spend $125,000 which in their eyes would have much more meaningful impact than this particular set of forums.But I say again, if it's $125,000 that wasn't there to promote public education before, let's do it. It's so easy to think that the other side is jerks because they don't agree with you and that this whole issue is rife with opinionated people who think they know the right way and think that anybody who disagrees with them is wrong, evil or stupid, and that is a bad attitude to take, whether it's coming from right wing ideologues, which there are plenty of, or whether it's coming from left-wing ideologues in the peace movement.

HENEHAN [voice-over]: So with some peace movement people leafletting outside, others debated the issues inside, and the first couple of sessions turned out to be serious and heated exchanges on issues ranging from Central America to the deployment of the MX missile.

Rep. LES ASPIN, (D) Wisconsin: MX is only part of it. We have an on-going program of a lot of things that are under development. The Soviets are not in this business -- you know, there's no charitable organization, you know, they don't --

SPEAKER: Neither should we be.

Rep. ASPIN: They don't give things away.

SPEAKER: Neither should we be.

Rep. ASPIN: And we shouldn't be either. So that means we've got to have something that you negotiate with.

ADAM YARMOLINSKY, Committee for National Security: But you don't not give away something that doesn't have any value because --

Rep. ASPIN: You don't think it has any value. Let me tell you, if they don't think this thing has value, then why are they spending so much money on SS-18s and SS-19s?

HENEHAN [voice-over]: It was a discussion in which citizens who asked questions often heard conflicting, disturbing answers.

CITIZEN: Are our weapons currently directed toward cities?

ROBERT McNAMARA, former U.S. Secretary of Defesne: The short answer to the Bishop's questin is the nuclear weapons are and have been for a quarter of a century directed at cities and civilians.

SPEAKER: That's really not true.

Mr. McNAMARA: It is not baloney.

HENEHAN [voice-over]: Other times, the discussion left people seemingly at the point of exasperation.

Rep. MARJORIE HOLT, (R) Maryland: You know, I'm really distressed here today. I've heard so many negative things about our country. Doesn't anybody think that we're doing anything right? I think it's the greatest country in the world. Now, we've got a democracy --

HENEHAN [voice-over]: But several times, as the forums progressed, the focus shifted away from discussing national arms policy to attacking Honeywell and other defense contractors. Many people asked the question, just what is the responsibility of defense manufacturers concerning the arms race?

M. BARRY CASPAR, Minnesota Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign: Honeywell's newspaper ads would have you believe that it's a passive participant in the arms race, simply doing its patriotic duty when thedemocratically controlled government asks it to work on weapons. If people want to question weapons policies, don't come to us, they say. In my view, then, if people want to question weapons policies, it is entirely apropriate that they come directly to Honeywell. I'm disappointed that representatives of Honeywell have chosen not to appear in their own public forums so that they might engage in the open give and take.

JEAN REMKE, peace activist: The Honeywell company does many fine things. It also denies its responsibility for the cluster bombs and the other bombs which main and kill people. And there are many of us who feel that if that company got a thermostat back that didn't work, they would say, "Yes, we're responsible for this working." In the same way, then, why aren't they responsible for the end product of the bombs that they build?

HENEHAN [voice-over]: But not all of the comments were critical of Honeywell.

Mr. YARMOLINSKY: I think it's kind of a bum rap for the Honeywell company. I would be awfully unhappy if in the beginning, before World War II, when President Roosevelt was trying to build up the United States as an arsenal of democracy, Company X decided, "That's not a good thing, it might get us into the war. We're not going to go along." I don't think that it is for companies to make those decisions.

BRIDGET HAGERTY, student: I think it's naive to expect Honeywell not to accept defense contracts or not to try and get them when that demand is there to be met and they're meeting a demand. I think if we're talking about the politics of arms control we should be talking about affecting policy.

Mr. CASPAR: I think you don't understand the way the system works if you don't understand that companies like Honeywell or other defense contractors are very much involved in creating new ideas for weapons and selling them to the government. And that's a very important part of the dynamics of the arms race.

HENEHAN [voice-over]: As the discussions continue through the end of this year, both sides, Honeywell and the Honeywell protesters, seem very far apart indeed. But while some of the forums' combatants still aren't talking to each other, at least now most of them do appear to be listening.

Mr. DAVIDOV: We would in some sense compromise our views if we saw something profound and real like dropping cluster bomb contracts, giving reparations to victims in Indochina and Lebanon, not taking contracts for America's first-strike nuclear weapons and beginning seriously to talk about peace conversion with no loss of jobs. And we're going to continue our resistance until our goals are met.

HENEHAN [voice-over]: But despite the sometimes harsh treatment that Honeywell received both inside and outside of the auditorium, the company seems genuinely pleased with this approach to the dilemma over its corporate responsibility.

Mr. CONLEY: I was particularly pleased at the way in which several people sort of picked up and defended the company.I think that that shows that there are wide points of view on this issue and it's not necessarily an issue for Honeywell. I think it's an issue for people. For some people Honeywell is the issue.For us the issue is peace.

LEHRER: That report of Brenden Henehan at KTCA, Minneapolis-St. Paul.Many Minnesota public television stations are planning a statewide exchange on peace and arms control later in the fall. Robin? Book Review: Tough Guys Don't Dance

MacNEIL: Finally tonight we have a book review. The author is the highly acclaimed but still controversial Norman Mailer. This time he's written a murder mystery called Tough Guys Don't Dance.

Our reviewer is John Aldridge.

This Mailer, the latest Mailer is a murder mystery. Tell us about the situation.

JOHN ALDRIDGE: Well, you know, Robin, there is a taboo in reviewing murder mysteries. You're never supposed to talk about the plot or the identity of the murderer. So the only thing I feel that I could do would be to give you the initial situation -- where the novel begins and how the mystery is generated. The story is about a writer named Timothy Madden, who is alone on Provincetown because his wife has just left him. He's in very, very serious shape, very depressed. He goes out one evening to a local bar. He there meets a couple from California. He's attracted to them mainly because the woman looks so much like his departed wife. He goes presumably drinking with them well into the night, but the next day wakes up badly hung over, suffering from alcoholic amnesia and being unable to recall exactly what happened the night before. He has flashes, but they're very, very dim flashes. He then, when he becomes more awake, he recognizes with horror that he's got a tattoo, which he has no recollection of getting. His jacket is covered in blood. The front seat of his sports car is drenched in blood. Now, he's obviously terribly upset over these discoveries. The chief of police calls him at that time and that's further upsetting. The chief of police knows about the blood in the car but shrugs it off and tells Madden instead that he ought to move his stash of marijuana which Madden has buried in nearby woods. Madden is mystified by this, but he goes to do it. When he digs up the marijuana he discovers a plastic bag containing a blond head. He flees in horror without taking the time to determine whether the blond head belonged to the woman in the bar or his wife. That's where the mystery begins.

MacNEIL: Do we ever find out whether he committed a murder or whether he didn't?

Mr. ALDRIDGE: Well, I think it would be okay to say that he didn't.

MacNEIL: And what do you find out through the course of unraveling?

Mr. ALDRIDGE: You find out that Mailer is still wonderfully capable of building a very suspenseful plot. I think this book easily is as suspenseful and complicated as the first murder mystery he wrote, which is An American Dream, in 1965. But he can carry forward a wonderfully suspenseful narrative, and he does something which most mystery writers are not capable of simply because they're not as good as Mailer is, and that is not only to tell the story but in the telling of the story to create fully developed characters who have something important to say to us in addition to carrying the story forward. So that you get marvelous types like the chief of police himself, who is a really fully rounded, fully created character. You get Madden's father, who is a magnificent character and brought to life for us. The various women in the piece. These are creations of a real novelist, not just a mystery story writer.

MacNEIL: And how does this fit into all Mailer's other fiction?

Mr. ALDRIDGE: Well, you know, he's always been obsessed with violence of one kind or another. He's interested in murder and the impulse to murder because he, I think, realizes that this impulse is latent in all of us and it expresses something very basic about our human nature, something which we try to repress, whatever, but it's nevertheless there. Now, in this case he's dealing with Timothy Madden, a character who is at war with his violent impulses. He knows that he would be capable of this murder. And all the way through he tries to determine if perhaps he himself did commit this murder, or these murders, it turns out. So he's telling us something important about the conflict going on between our violent selves and our selves that are striving to be orderly and good, and this comes through, I think very strongly in the book, but it does not in any way infringe upon the sheer delight of the suspenseful murder story he's trying to tell.

MacNEIL: Well, John Aldridge, thank you.

Mr. ALDRIDGE: Thank you.

MacNEIL: Once again the book we've been discussing is Norman Mailer's Tough Guys Don't Dance published by Random House. Jim?

LEHRER: And again, the major stories of this Friday. The cost of a first-class postage stamp is headed for a 2" hike, from 20 to 22 cents early next year. That was the recommendation, at least, from the independent postal rate commission.

And the unemployment rate for August remained at 7.5%, unchanged from July.

Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: Good night, Jim. That's our NewsHour for tonight. We'll be back on Monday.

Have a nice weekend.