The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Good evening. I'm Elizabeth Farnsworth. Jim Lehrer is on vacation. On the NewsHour tonight new troubles for the Teamsters, Charles Krause talks to the federal overseer who today invalidated Ron Carey's reelection; Mark Shields & Paul Gigot on the week's politics; a promising new drug treatment for strokes; and a David Gergen dialogue with Timothy Ferris, author of the "Whole Shebang: A State of the Universe's Report." It all follows our summary of the news this Friday.NEWS SUMMARY

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: A federal official today ordered a new election for the presidency of the Teamsters Union. The ruling by a court-appointed election overseer invalidates the narrow reelection victory last December of Teamster President Ron Carey. He defeated James Hoffa, the son of the former Teamster President. Overseer Barbara Zack Quindel said aides to Carey diverted $221,000 in illegal contributions to a last-minute mass mailing. Quindel said she delayed issuing her ruling until the end of the Teamsters strike against United Parcel Service. The federal monitoring was part of a 1988 consent decree aimed at eliminating corruption in the union. We'll have more on the story right after the News Summary. A federal judge today set May 27th as the trial date for the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit against President Clinton. U.S. District Judge Susan Weber Wright set the date in a court session in Little Rock, Arkansas. Wright said she hoped the case could be tried in five or six days. The judge let stand the major charge of sexual harassment, as well as claims for emotional distress, while dismissing two others. The accusations stem from an alleged 1991 encounter when Mr. Clinton was governor of Arkansas and Jones a state employee. Mr. Clinton has denied the charges. The President's lawyer was asked about the chances for an out-of-court settlement.

ROBERT BENNETT, President Clinton's Lawyer: The President will not apologize to anyone, to Miss Jones. He will not admit to conduct which didn't occur, and the terms of any settlement would have to be terms in which it could not reasonably be interpreted as an admission of wrongdoing. But, subject to that, you know, we're happy to talk to them.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mrs. Jones and her lawyers appeared before reporters next.

GILBERT DAVIS, Paula Jones' Lawyer: There are two points to be made. The first one is that we are gratified that this case is proceeding. The second one is that it is in a court of law, and that's where it'll be tried. It's not going to be tried in the public press. I know you all would like a lot of statements from us and sound bites, but it's where it's supposed to be. We're glad it's going forward now, and we intend to proceed with it.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: In the hearing the lawyers agreed to a January 30th cutoff day for pretrial questioning of witnesses. On the Mir story a major repair job took place today. Howell Jones of Independent Television News reports.

HOWELL JONES, ITN: Mission Control listened in as Mir's crew performed the first repairs to the damaged module, the most difficult task this crew has faced and the most dangerous. This is the Spektr module, battered by a collision in June. Latest pictures show its conditionon the outside. What the cosmonauts didn't know was the danger that might lie inside. The operation began in the main Mir module, with the three men donning spacesuits. British- born Michael Foale moved straight into the Soyuz escape module, waiting there while the others transferred to the core module to carry out repairs. But as the two Russians prepared to enter Spektr cosmonaut Pavel Vinigradov sent Mission Control an emergency message. Air was escaping from the glove of Vinigradov's spacesuit. He'd rehearsed putting on the suit many times before. Now, he had to change his glove very quickly, or face disaster. That crisis over, the two Russians replaced Spektr's old hatch with a new one. Vinigradov moved into the damaged Spektr capsule, where he connected nine cables carrying power from its solar panels. Success with Mike Foale sending his best wishes to Earth.

MICHAEL FOALE: I think this is a super day, and we carried out everything that we set out to do and more.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The crew is scheduled to check its handiwork Monday. If successful, three quarters of the lost power could be regained. On Wall Street, a roller coaster day for the Dow Jones Industrial Average brought an end to a roller coaster week on the New York Stock Exchange. After hectic trading in which the index fell as much as 177 points, it closed down 6 points at 7887.91. Last Friday, the Dow fell 247 points, its second biggest point drop since the 1987 crash, to close at 7694.66. But from Monday through Wednesday it gained more than 300 points to close above 8000. Yesterday brought another drop, 103 points and today another 6 points, leaving the index almost 200 points ahead of where it was last Friday. British Telecommunications will go ahead with plans to buy MCI, the American long distance phone company, but at a considerably reduced price, company executives said today. The merger, originally announced in November last year, has been in doubt since MCI disclosed in July it could run up losses as high as $800 million this year. Under the new terms the merger will cost the British company approximately $18 billion, or about 20 percent under the original offer. And in overseas news today, the Bosnian Serb military told Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic that it would use "all available means" to preserve the unity of the Serbian part of Bosnia. The warning came in a statement from military officers in the town of Pale, who are loyal to former Bosnian Serb Leader Radovan Karadzic. There is a widening split between Pale and Banja Luka, where Mrs. Plavsic is based. Two days ago, after an appeal for help from Mrs. Plavsic, NATO troops in Banja Luka ousted local police loyal to Karadzic. Record rains fell in Hong Kong today, the latest bout of weather turbulence hitting both sides of the Pacific Ocean. Streets and sidewalks were flooded in the former British Colony now under Chinese rule as more than 11 inches of rain poured down. The rainfall was a product of Typhoon Zita, how headed to the mainland of China. A previous typhoon, Winnie, caused at least 200 deaths in China, Taiwan, and the Philippines earlier this week. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to new troubles for the Teamsters, Shields & Gigot, a new treatment for stroke, and a David Gergen dialogue. FOCUS - TEAMSTER TURMOIL

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The new turmoil in the Teamsters Union is first tonight. Charles Krause has that story.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Today's decision to void last December's Teamsters election centered on improper contributions to Teamster President Ron Carey's winning campaign. He defeated James Hoffa, Jr. by a slim margin, less than 4 percent. Earlier this afternoon I spoke with Barbara Zack Quindel, the federal election overseer who ruled that the campaign contribution was improper and, therefore, ordered the new election. Because her decision may be appealed she couldn't comment on certain aspects of the case.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Barbara Quindel, thank you very much for joining us. The improper campaign contribution, where did the money come from and where did it go?

BARBARA ZACK QUINDEL, Teamsters Election Overseer: I think I've described in my decision that there was a campaign committee, the Teamsters for a corruption for union, and that that's where illegal--improper contributions came into this campaign. Because of that and because those contributions may have affected the outcome of the election I've ordered a rerun election.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Now, this campaign committee that you mentioned, that was a carrying committee.

BARBARA ZACK QUINDEL: That's correct.

CHARLES KRAUSE: How much money came in altogether?

BARBARA ZACK QUINDEL: The contributions from that committee were $221,000.

CHARLES KRAUSE: What was the money used for?

BARBARA ZACK QUINDEL: The money was used for mailing, get-out- the-vote mailing, on behalf of the Carey campaign.

CHARLES KRAUSE: What kinds of things were they doing?

BARBARA ZACK QUINDEL: Well, the mailing went to members urging them to vote. And I found that that may have influenced the outcome of the election and, therefore, ordered the rerun. That's accountability. When rules are broken, there has to be and were here serious consequences. I think it's an important message to members for whom an election is really the clearest opportunity they have to control their union. And this union belongs to its members. They have a right to an election without outside interference. It's critical that the union be able to maintain its most valuable resource: the confidence and support of the members. That's why the rerun election has been planned, and we have gone to the courts with a plan for how that rerun election I think should be handled. The plan includes some new provisions.

CHARLES KRAUSE: All right. But let's go back for a minute, if you don't mind. The scene that you described to funnel improper money into these mailing campaigns, was there an attempt to cover that up? Was this really a plot of some sort?

BARBARA ZACK QUINDEL: Well, one of the things you have to understand is I'm a court officer, and what I found in this decision is subject to appeal. And I am not going to go into the details of it. But I can say that what we found was that there was- -there were these contributions that came into the campaign. The contributions were used for a mailing that was sent on behalf of the Carey campaign to voters. And because that mailing could have affected at least a small percentage of the voting membership and given the narrow margins that existed in this campaign, in this election, I found it may have influenced the outcome of the race.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Who was responsible for this?

BARBARA ZACK QUINDEL: Who was responsible for--

CHARLES KRAUSE: For this scheme.

BARBARA ZACK QUINDEL: A number of people. And those people are identified in the decision, as our investigation found. We interviewed dozens of people in order to reach our conclusions as to how this scheme was implemented.

CHARLES KRAUSE: How about Mr. Carey, himself, is there any reason to believe--do you have any reason to believe that he knew about thisscheme?

BARBARA ZACK QUINDEL: My decision finds that from the evidence that we have that Mr. Carey did not know or participate in the scheme. We do, however, find that there are questions that remain unanswered and that my investigation as to Mr. Carey's participation would remain open as to any issue of disqualification. This decision does not disqualify Mr. Carey.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Does not disqualify him, but there is the possibility--and I read that in the description of your decision that I was given--you talk about the possibility that he or perhaps Mr. Hoffa too could be disqualified before the election actually takes place.

BARBARA ZACK QUINDEL: Well, any candidate in the course of an election can be disqualified. It's one of the remedies in the rules that we follow for actions or violations. The whole question of disqualification, though, is it's a drastic remedy. It's one that isn't imposed without a thorough review of the facts of the situation in every specific case. So it is something that could yet happen, yes.

CHARLES KRAUSE: But could yet happen because you have additional evidence that you are looking at, is that why it could happen?

BARBARA ZACK QUINDEL: The investigation remains open. As of issuing my decision I have stated the evidence that we have as to Mr. Carey or his--involvement.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Now, there is also a grand jury in New York that is looking into this whole issue. How does that relate to your investigation?

BARBARA ZACK QUINDEL: It's a separate investigation. The grand jury is considering violations of criminal laws, and that's really a separate matter from my role, which is to investigate under the consent decree the election rule violations that occurred in this case.

CHARLES KRAUSE: So your findings may to some extent some of what the grand jury may be looking into in terms of criminal matters.

BARBARA ZACK QUINDEL: I'm really not in a position to comment at all about the grand jury, which is a, you know, confidential matter. I don't know what the grand jury is looking at.

CHARLES KRAUSE: There have, though, been reports that Mr. Carey did, in fact, testify before the grand jury.

BARBARA ZACK QUINDEL: I think there have been press reports, but what I'm saying is that I have no personal knowledge.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Did he testify before you, or did he give--

BARBARA ZACK QUINDEL: Yes.

CHARLES KRAUSE: --evidence before your--

BARBARA ZACK QUINDEL: Yes, he did. And that's outlined in the decision that we conducted a lengthy interview with him.

CHARLES KRAUSE: And he cooperated with your investigation.

BARBARA ZACK QUINDEL: Yes, he did.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Why did you wait until now to release your decision calling for a new election?

BARBARA ZACK QUINDEL: Well, this was an extensive investigation. It took a great deal of time and effort. And I was not ready--in a position to issue my decision until, you know, within the last few weeks. The UPS strike was underway when I was ready to issue my decision, and I--it was delayed slightly because of that, because--

CHARLES KRAUSE: Why?

BARBARA ZACK QUINDEL: Because I had--I was not going to interfere in a labor-management situation. The members of this union in order to have confidence in my court-ordered process, cannot view that process as interfering with economic livelihood.

CHARLES KRAUSE: At the same time, how do you respond to the Hoffa charge today that it was improper for you to have delayed your decision?

BARBARA ZACK QUINDEL: I'm sure there's going to be charges from many camps and problems people have with my decision. What I did was on behalf of the membership of this union and, as I said, not to become a factor in labor-management relations.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Finally, I think it's important to understand exactly how it is that the federal government has appointed you to oversee the Teamsters elections. Why is that?

BARBARA ZACK QUINDEL: My position as election officer came-- emerged out of a consent decree that was entered into in 1989 between the government, the Justice Department and the Teamsters Union as part of the Justice Department's RICO action. Under that consent order there were court officers provided an election officer was run. There was an election officer appointed to conduct the 1991 election. I was appointed not by the Justice Department but by the court with the ascent of the Justice Department and the union.

CHARLES KRAUSE: But the consent decree, as I understand it, came about because of past corruption and other problems in the Teamsters Union.

BARBARA ZACK QUINDEL: That's right. And a democratic rank and file election process was viewed by the court--is viewed by the court as a cornerstone to democratizing the organization, maintaining an open and corruption-free union.

CHARLES KRAUSE: So that's what--

BARBARA ZACK QUINDEL: That's what I'm assigned--the election-- running that election is what I was assigned to do, and I'm a court appointee.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Barbara Quindel, thank you for very much for joining us.

BARBARA ZACK QUINDEL: You're welcome. FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Now, our regular political analysis by Shields & Gigot. That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot. Welcome back, Mark.

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: Thank you very much, Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What are the political implications of what we just heard from Barbara Quindel and the victory of the Teamsters in the strike this week?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, potentially very serious for Ron Carey, the president of the Teamsters. He had been the first Teamsters president to run as a real reformer. And to read the results he eked out or didn't eke out a very close victory over Jimmy Hoffa, Jr., a name not associated with labor reform in the past in American workers' movement. And now he runs--is forced to run for election or to--for another election. This time you won't run as a reformer. His credentials have been somewhat tarnished, but he will run as a guy who delivered, who took on the biggest guy in the block, UPS, 80 percent of the market. They were Goliath. He was David. The Teamsters have always in the past always had sort of this image of a guy in a pinkie ring, size 52 jacket with a tatoo. They had a different face put on their movement this time. The face was that of the UPS driver, and anybody who is a UPS delivery person knows they like 'em. And they brought UPS to their knees, a billion dollar profit company last year. They won, so it's--it reinvigorated the American labor movement, did a whole bunch of things, but right now, I mean, Ron Carey in this moment of great victory, his maximum moment of peril--there's a grand jury continuing to investigate it and continuing here.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: How do you see it?

PAUL GIGOT, Wall Street Journal: Well, I think it changes everything, what happened today. I mean, Mark made the contrast between the Teamsters saying it's part-time workers, it's about social justice, it's about corporate greed. Well, maybe it was about Ron Carey's motivations to say that his job is union president because now we have a court-appointed official in the Justice Department, the Clinton Justice Department, saying that this is--he was elected in a fraudulent fashion. But now by winning that strike he can go back to the Teamsters and say, see, I delivered for you, and he might have lost that election. And the real question if I were UPS, I'd say to myself I think we settled too soon. I mean, it would have been a very different public dynamic, I think. You've got a lot of the union bosses saying-- union leaders saying, look, really for once the American public was siding with the unions. It would have been very different I think if people had understood this background, so UPS might very well settle too soon.

MARK SHIELDS: I think Paul's point is legitimate point. I don't think it's a persuasive point. I think the die was cast in this one. There's no--there was no question that the American labor movement in the form of the Teamsters prevailed in public opinion. They were by a two to one margin--people came down to the workers' side. I mean, this was a sea change from 1981 when Ronald Reagan fired 11,500 striking professional air traffic controllers. This was a big time--the Teamsters are not a sympathetic institution or organization. And UPS is not known as sort of Daddy Warbucks, meanspirited employer, but there was no question that it did strike a responsive chord that argument about part-time America is not working; that it did strike what people have been known about downsizing, had downsizing in their family, and anxiety, and they point out that 83 percent of the people hired in the last four years have been hired on part-time--that really made them a lot more sympathetic in people's minds. And I think UPS knew that they were in big trouble. And they could have hung on for a few more days, but public opinion wasn't going to shift in their direction.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: How does this affect the President and Alexis Herman? She got pretty good marks for this, and will that continue, even though there is now a whole new story about the Teamsters today?

PAUL GIGOT: Well, I'm not so sure it will. I mean, Alexis Herman did her job as treasury--I mean as labor secretary. She showed up for work. She told 'em settle. She looked 'em in the eye. I don't think she had that big a role to play, frankly, in whether or not they settled. The big decision was the President's not to get into the strike. That was the big decision, and then the other big decision was UPS, the company deciding not to hire replacement workers. Once they did that the economic dynamics were such that they probably had to settle. The big winner, though, I'd say is Al Gore, Vice President Al Gore, because any time between now and the year 2000 when this administration can do a favor for the unions, the unions that Al Gore really wants in the primary fight for the presidency in the year 2000, that does Al Gore a very big favor. And Bill Clinton, this administration did do a favor because the Teamsters, you have to understand, are kind of unique within the AFL-CIO. They used to be sort of a rogue union in a political sense. They endorsed Ronald Reagan twice, I believe. They-- they would endorse Republicans. Ron Carey has brought them firmly in the 90's, back into the Democratic camp. And under John Sweeney, the new AFL-CIO had firmly in there--they were one of the biggest players on behalf of the Democratic Congress in 1996. The President returned that favor in the strike.

MARK SHIELDS: I don't know if he returned the favor. I think it's pretty tough to make a case that this was in the national security- -the strike. I mean, it wasn't like people were suffering from disease or malnutrition or anything of the sort. And it always amazes me, my good friends on the right, my conservative Libertarian friends want the government to come in and do this. I think Alexis Herman, whom I have not had the highest of praise in the past, deserves some credit. She did what a cabinet officer is supposed to do here. She took the heat. She said this was on her beat and her responsibility. She played a role. She brought them back in. She made it more difficult for each side not to negotiate. And apparently the information she gave to the President was right because I know a number of people when the President said that, was it Sunday, Monday, there was going to be a settlement, now he's saying, where is he getting his information, he's been on Block Island or something, and obviously the information she was getting was right. Paul is absolutely right; the Teamsters have been the Republican union. I mean, they were Jimmy Hoffa, Fitzsimmons--and- -

PAUL GIGOT: Jackie Presser.

MARK SHIELDS: Jackie Presser, a distinguished American labor--

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: I need to get onto another story now. Paul, what about--the judge has now set May 27th as the date to hear the Paul Jones case against the President. The President is enjoying very high approval ratings right now. It seems that the scandals have not affected those approval ratings. What effect will this have, if any, do you think?

PAUL GIGOT: Well, what we know is Paula Jones is going to get her day in court. I mean, that's I think the big news. The White House strategy has been for delay, put this off until after the President leaves office. It looks like that won't happen. You're going to get the day in court. I think this increases the pressure on both sides, the President especially, to now get serious about the facts and probably settle before it goes to trial.

MARK SHIELDS: I think that this was the one that's always been the problem for Bill Clinton. The land deals in Arkansas have never engaged the public or S&L thing in 1986 or whatever. I don't think it's ever--but this one does. I mean, this one is one that it's the boss and the employee. It's the disproportionate allegations involved, disproportionate power, and a person in a lot more vulnerable position. And man, woman, sex, I think--I think this is, and I think Paul's right. I think it does put pressure on both sides to settle, but there's no question, there's no more ducking and there's no more postponements on this one.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And finally, another big story this week was the interview by NBC's Tom Brokaw with Johnnie Chung, a key figure in a key figure in campaign fund-raising investigation. This is the man who told the LA Times last month, "I see the White House is like a subway. You have to put in coins to open the gate." Why, Mark, do you think he came forward now? Is this somebody--the Senate hearings--

MARK SHIELDS: I would love to have him, and I'm sure Fred Thompson would, and I think John Glenn would, I mean, have--it would certainly engage and force all the networks to cover it if Johnnie Chung with quotes like that on the front page of the LA Times were under oath making these statements, instead of Tom Brokaw, the LA Times, both of whom deserve--both of which deserve credit for getting him on the record but neither of whom has the power to prosecute for perjury, if there is any perjury. But I think Johnnie Chung, I think John Huang, I think anybody who was a guest at the White House for a tea, a coffee, an overnight, should be responsive, and I think the President--it's incumbent upon the President and the Vice President of this administration to urge in the strongest terms possible for them to come forward and testify in these matters. And I don't--I haven't heard that. I'm still waiting for that sense of urgency from the administration to say yes, come on, bring this up to Fred Thompson and to the hearings on Capitol Hill, where you can make these statements under oath.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Paul, what struck you about the revelations in Johnnie Chung's interview?

PAUL GIGOT: First of all, the Justice Department or the Senate ought to get NBC News because they're the only ones who can get these people on the record, so give 'em credit for doing that. What struck me, though, is that you have firsthand, first person testimony who said what this was now--Johnnie Chung was saying this was not an attempt by the Chinese or the Taiwanese to influence us. This was essentially an American shakedown. This was the American government officials saying we'll have a meeting with you, or a petrochemical executive, but would you write a check on the side for 25 grand, the cabinet member's charity, Hazel O'Leary's charity, former Energy Secretary. Now, she denies there was any such request, but that's what Johnnie Chung now says on the record is exactly what happened. That looks to be a crime. That's very serious stuff.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay. I think we'll come back to this next week or right after that. Thank you very much. FOCUS - STROKE DRUG

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, a new treatment for strokes and a David Gergen dialogue.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Next, a promising new treatment for stroke, the third largest cause of death in the United States. Lee Hochberg of Oregon Public Television reports.

LEE HOCHBERG: In January, Orvin Anderson was rushed to a California emergency room. He had fallen down and the left side of his body wasn't working.

SPOKESMAN: He doesn't see well to the left. He has a weakness of the left side of his face. He's clumsy with his left arm, clumsy with his left leg, doesn't quite feel it.

LEE HOCHBERG: Anderson had suffered a stroke, suddenly impaired blood circulation to its brain. It's the No. 1 disabler of adults in this country, and there has been no emergency treatment for it. A half a million Americans have strokes every year; 2/3 never recover, and 150,000 die every year.

SPOKESPERSON: You need the tubing over here with the drug and the pump. Yes, now.

LEE HOCHBERG: But Anderson may recover fully from his stroke because of a new drug. Dr. Richard Atkinson of Mercy Sacramento Hospital.

DR. RICHARD ATKINSON: We've seen people get better while we're giving the drug. I mean, we know that that can happen. We'd love to see it in the next half an hour.

LEE HOCHBERG: The drug is called Tissue Plasminogen Activator, or TPA. It's been used for years to dissolve blood clots related to heart attacks, but it's now being used on clots in the brain that cause stroke. Half of the patients who've received it have recovered fully within three months.

MARY DOMREIS, Stroke Patient: I'm just fine. I don't have any residual from the stroke that I know of at all.

LEE HOCHBERG: Seventy-five-year-old MARY DOMREIS walks a mile and a half through her Portland, Oregon, neighborhood every day, only months after she suffered a severe stroke while driving.

MARY DOMREIS: At the intersection, there was a police car coming from the--onthe right side. He was parked, ready to turn. And that's all I remember until I woke up in my car just a few minutes- -a minute or two later with a policeman outside the car trying to open the door, and I couldn't talk.

LEE HOCHBERG: Paramedics rushed Domreis to the stroke center at Oregon Health Sciences University.

MARY DOMREIS: My son explained it to me the next day. He said that my mouth was all twisted to one side.

LEE HOCHBERG: She received TPA, and within 12 hours she could speak almost normally. She progressed so well she was released that week and never even went through rehabilitation.

MARY DOMREIS: I'd always thought that after you had a stroke you'd have to be bedridden probably and would not be able to talk. It feels to me that somebody didn't think I needed to die yet.

LEE HOCHBERG: Despite success stories like this, TPA is only being used on about 3 percent of stroke patients. That's because the drug needs to be administered within three hours of the onset of stroke. If it's used later than that, it may cause bleeding into the brain. And administering it within that three-hour time window is proving difficult. Oregon Stroke Center neurologist Dr. Helmi Lutsep says its rare that patients even get to the hospital within three hours. While many Americans recognize full-blown stroke symptoms, like paralysis and impaired speech, only half can identify the immediate, more subtle signs.

DR. HELMI LUTSEP, Neurologist: People can develop minor symptoms like subtle numbness, for instance, or loss of vision, which they may not recognize as indicating a stroke.

LEE HOCHBERG: Domreis says she was lucky a police officer, who saw her veer off the road, got quick help.

MARY DOMREIS: That's the reason I'm still here probably because if the policeman hadn't been on the corner immediately--I'm just really lucky that they were there.

AD SPOKESMAN: It used to be called stroke. Today we call it a brain attack.

LEE HOCHBERG: The National Stroke Association is trying to speed up public reaction to stroke and generate more of a crisis response by giving stroke a new name.

AD SPOKESMAN: Explosive headache. A brain attack is a medical emergency.

LEE HOCHBERG: Experts say faster response could enable 1/3 of stroke patients to be treated with TPA. But they add it's not just the public that needs to respond faster. Doctors and hospitals have to too. Lutsep says most emergency rooms are unprepared to process stroke patients quickly.

DR. HELMI LUTSEP: The patient may sit there--you know, presumably, they could sit there for an hour or two while they're waiting their turn.

LEE HOCHBERG: Even a stroke patient.

DR. HELMI LUTSEP: Even a stroke patient. The trouble has been in the past that we didn't have emergent therapies for stroke, so stroke cases were considered to be, you know, sort of further down the line in terms of acuteness of their care. And they may not have been brought to the attention of a physician very quickly.

LEE HOCHBERG: The Oregon Stroke Center has adopted new emergency room protocol to treat stroke patients faster. It gives them quick access to neurologists and radiologists and leaves gathering of some medical histories for later. Lutsup says the process can save a crucial hour.

DR. HELMI LUTSEP: I need to make sure when this started. Okay. When did the stroke start?

LEE HOCHBERG: Still, there are problems. Lutsup and a translator tried hard to determine if a Chinese woman had gotten her husband to the hospital within the three-hour time window.

TRANSLATOR: About 8:30. So we only have a few more minutes if we're going to be able to give medicine if he needs it. So I'm going to have to go kind of quickly now.

LEE HOCHBERG: As if to emphasize how treating stroke patients quickly goes against the grain, even at the Stroke Center, even as the three-hour deadline approached, Lutsup had to hustle along an ER worker, who had other priorities.

DR. HELMI LUTSEP: We've only got 15 minutes if we're going to get blood, so we's going to have to wait. I'm sorry.

ER WORKER: He's got an extremely distended bladder.

DR. HELMI LUTSEP: I know, but we can't get the TPA in after 15 minutes from now.

ER WORKER: And I can't put a catheter in after you put TPA in either.

DR. HELMI LUTSEP: A hospital can't wait and take time in doing the next step. It needs to happen very quickly.

LEE HOCHBERG: There's another barrier. The new drug can actually worsen the condition of some patients, even causing death. Though most strokes are caused by a blood clot in the brain and TPA works well on those, the drug can aggravate 15 percent of strokes that are caused by a brain hemorrhage. Doctors need to do a CAT scan quickly to determine which kind of stroke they're treating. At most hospitals the wait for the CAT scan machine is lengthy. Oregon Stroke Center has tried to change that.

DR. HELMI LUTSEP: The stroke patient used to have to wait their turn to get on the scanner. And now we've got the advantage that the stroke patient is given, if not highest priority, very quick priority after some of more severe trauma cases.

LEE HOCHBERG: Quick access to a CAT scan is problematic at many smaller hospitals which often don't have radiologists on call 24 hours a day. And Lutsep says even at some larger facilities doctors unaccustomed to treating stroke as an emergency are resisting the new demand of overnight calls. Stroke centers are also finding they need to retrain 911 dispatchers to make stroke a higher priority. They're teaching dispatchers to call the ambulance that's closest to the stroke patient. And ambulance services are being urged to transport patients to hospitals that have streamlined stroke protocols in place.

DR. HELMI LUTSEP: Insurance is starting to become problematic as well; that if a patient's insurance dictates that they go to a particular hospital, that's the hospital to which they go to.

LEE HOCHBERG: Whether or not that hospital has a CAT scanner?

DR. HELMI LUTSEP: That's correct. And I don't think right now that there's a mechanism in place to send a patient to the one with a CAT scanner.

LEE HOCHBERG: Cost is yet another barrier to accessing TPA. A dose of the drug can run as high as $5,000. Even at that cost neurologists contend it will reduce expenditure on stroke by cutting the $30 million a year now spent on rehabilitation. Oregon Stroke Center neuroradiologist Gary Nesbit.

GARY NESBIT: Rehabilitation costs over a year anywhere from thirty to fifty thousand dollars, or even more. And so when you look at the cost effectiveness, if we can get patients out of rehabilitation hospitals, out of nursing homes and back home, not only will it make them better, but we also decrease costs.

LEE HOCHBERG: Oregon doctors are experimenting with drugs that might get around TPA's problems. This man arrived at the Stroke Center last year practically brain dead nine and a half hours after his stroke. Dr. Wayne Clark injected a drug called Urokinase directly into the blood clot.

DR. WAYNE CLARK: By the next morning I still was not hopeful, but when we came in and saw, he was now moving his arms and was responding to verbal commands. So it--overnight, he had made a remarkable recovery.

LEE HOCHBERG: The man went home after six weeks of therapy. Patients at 50 hospitals nationwide have undergone this new treatment with three out of four able to return home. But doctors say using TPA in the first three hours, as they did with Orvin Anderson, is still the better course. Anderson's home now in Sacramento, doing fine. The challenge is to remove the barriers that prevent many other stroke victims from similar recoveries. DIALOGUE

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Finally tonight a Gergen dialogue. David Gergen, editor at large of "U.S. News & World Report," engages Timothy Ferris, science writer and author of "The Whole Shebang: A State of the Universe's Report.

DAVID GERGEN: Tim, your new book makes it clear that in the 20th century there's been an absolute explosion in our knowledge about the universe. Tell us about it.

TIMOTHY FERRIS, Author: At the beginning of this century we knew essentially nothing about the universe as a whole. We knew that the Earth was a planet and it circled the Sun; that the Sun was a star, and that there were other stars in the sky. And that was about it. We didn't know what made those stars shine. We didn't know that they were part of this great pinwheel of several hundred billion stars that we now call the Milky Way Galaxy. We didn't know that there were lots of other galaxies out there. We did know that they were moving apart from one another as cosmic space expands from a fiery beginning, the Big Bang. And we didn't have the tools, either the hardware or theoretical tools, like Einstein's Relativity Theory to begin to come to grips with the universe as a whole. We come back now at the end of the century. Cosmology is a science. We have these tools. There are lots of scientists working in the field. They've got the telescopes and everything that they need. And we know the rudiments. We have, so to speak, the table stakes. If an alien had come here at the beginning of the century and had to go back, his report would have been well, you know, they seem like nice people, but they don't know beans about the universe as a whole. I'm not sure what they would say today, but at least their report would indicate that we were slightly more enlightened than back at the beginning.

DAVID GERGEN: Now, at the beginning of the century and, in fact, today, when you go outside on a dark night, the Northern Hemisphere in the United States and look up, and you see all the stars up there, you're basically looking only at our galaxy, is that right?

TIMOTHY FERRIS: Yes. All the stars are in our galaxy. And you're seeing at any given time about two thousand or so, two or three thousand of them make up the stars in the nice dark desert night.

DAVID GERGEN: But that's one galaxy, the Milky Way Galaxy.

TIMOTHY FERRIS: Yes. And those are 2,000 of the approximately 400 billion stars in this one galaxy.

DAVID GERGEN: So we're just seeing part of one galaxy. And how many galaxies altogether?

TIMOTHY FERRIS: Well, at least 100 billion, maybe a whole lot more than that. So cosmology has a kind of job security to it. It's--these scientists are not going to run out of subject matter.

DAVID GERGEN: And what they can observe now you say is still even just a small piece of what's out there?

TIMOTHY FERRIS: Yes. The observable part of the universe is a fascinating thing in itself because the whole history of time is laid out for observation. And we're just starting to get telescopes good enough to begin to look at it. If you look at a galaxy ten or twelve billion light years away, you're seeing light that is almost as old as the universe, itself. So you see those galaxies the way they were back when the universe was young. And with the Hubble Telescope and the Keckt Telescope and some of these new tools we're really starting to get pictures of these things that do yield real information, real insights to how the universe has evolved over time. So that observable part is terrific, but that part is limited by those things from which there has been time for light to reach us. So the observable part of the universe is a little area within a larger, unobserved part, the dimensions of which are still not really known.

DAVID GERGEN: So it goes and goes essentially.

TIMOTHY FERRIS: No one knows quite how much. In the--when the Big Bang was discovered, the expansion of the universe and the curvature of cosmic space were laid out, and this science started to get going. It was thought that the part we could see was about 2/3 of the total. So if you modeled the space of the universe as the surface of the Earth, it was as if you could ultimately theoretically see everything, except maybe the South Pacific Ocean. But now we're starting to get models that are called the inflationary models that suggest the universe is much, much larger than that, in which case the observable part is a much smaller proportion. On these models the observable part would be about the size of a dinner plate compared to the surface of the Earth.

DAVID GERGEN: What do we know about what happened when the Big Bang occurred, and what was this, sort of a primal plasma that exploded? What was it?

TIMOTHY FERRIS: Well, the very beginning remains a mystery. Maybe it always will be. The inflationary theories suggest that the beginning occurred as kind of bubble or aneurysm in a preexisting space, sort of like if you had an old bicycle tire, you know, and it starts to balloon out at a weak spot. There's some reason to believe that space does this all the time; that our universe may have come from other universes. But, be that as it may, once the expansion begins, it's essentially a high energy physics experiment. And actually, we have a fair amount of experience in this society with high energy physics, owing to the work with nuclear bombs and all. And there are some reasonable conjectures as to what happened in the universe, going back to the first fraction of a second. And they'd make predictions. And some of those predictions have started to be fulfilled too. So I don't know if I really believe the physicists when they say that the Big Bang is a simple problem. A lot of them say it's simpler say than understanding how a star works. But they do have an impressive record for 30 years now of reconstructing events as it happened in the Big Bang. It was during a time when all the atoms that are around now were being put together.

DAVID GERGEN: One thing I've never really understood. In my mind I conceptualize the universe as a sphere, but it's a three- dimensional sphere, and I never understood the idea of a fourth dimension that comes in with Einstein.

TIMOTHY FERRIS: Not surprisingly. You know, there's nothing in our evolution to have prepared us for this. What's amazing to me isn't that it's hard to picture or impossible to picture but that it is possible for humans for some reason to do the mathematics. The amazing thing is that there is an Einstein; you know, that such a thing ever occurred. Einstein--for all his fame in his lifetime- -was probably underrated as a thinker. General relativity is an amazing piece of work, and it's not at all clear that it would have been invented by now had Einstein, you know, never been around to come up with it. It seems to be a perfect system for mapping cosmic space on the large scales. And it interprets gravitation as simply a result of curvature. You and I--what we feel as gravitation is the result of a curvature in this space-time continuum, and it affects our local world--

DAVID GERGEN: With time being a fourth dimension.

TIMOTHY FERRIS: Time is a fourth dimension in this state. When Einstein wrote this theory, out of its equations unbidden, unknown to him came the mandate that the universe must be expanding or contracting; it won't stand still. And this amazed him, and he tried to fix the equations because no astronomer had ever heard of an expanding universe. The fix didn't work. The equations kept saying if the universe is built this way, it must be a dynamic universe. The expansion was discovered a little over a decade after that.

DAVID GERGEN: We think it began with a Big Bang. Where is it likely to end, fire, ice, how?

TIMOTHY FERRIS: Fire and ice, you know, comes from that Frost poem, as I'm sure you know. Robert Frost wrote that poem "Fire and Ice" after talking to Harlowe Shapley, the astronomer, about just this question. Shapley was the guy who'd figured out that we lived in a galaxy. He was the one who did that mapping. And it refers to the question of whether the universe will keep expanding forever, in which case it is presumed that some sort of heat death would eventually--eventually meaning a thousand billion years from now occur and everything would run down. Or will the expansion halt and there will be a collapse into a new Big Bang? The evidence somewhat currently indicates an open universe that would expand forever. People have matters of taste about this. They have a preference. I'm not sure why. To me, it seems better if it's open because they you have an unlimited future for innovation. You know you can imagine things going on forever; whereas, if it's going back to a Big Bang, then everyone's got the same times zero in their futures. But the fact is no one really knows.

DAVID GERGEN: Timothy Ferris, I'm afraid that has to be our whole shebang for the night. Thank you.

TIMOTHY FERRIS: Thank you. RECAP

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Again, the major stories of this Friday, a federal official ordered the Teamsters Union to hold another election after finding illegal campaign funds may have helped elect Ron Carey president last December. A federal judge set May 27th as the trial date for the Paula Jones civil rights sexual harassment suit against President Clinton. And the Mir crew undertook repairs to restore power that the space station lost in June after it was struck by an unmanned cargo ship. We'll be with you on-line and again here Monday evening. I'm Elizabeth Farnsworth. Thank you and have a good weekend.