The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. Leading the news this Wednesday, Alaska fishermen took over the oil spill cleanup to save their livelihood, the Justice Department charged Panamanian banks with massive laundering of drug money, government economic indicators pointed to a slowing economy. We'll have details in our News Summary in a moment. Judy Woodruff is in Washington tonight. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: After the News Summary, the damage from the Alaska oil spill is our lead focus. Fishermen Peter Isleib and Norman Cohen of Alaska's Department of Fish and Game will join us. Then Nina Totenberg has the latest on the trial of Oliver North. Elizabeth Brackett reports on the ongoing debate over the best way to treat breast cancer, then a blue ribbon panel calls for better treatment and more pay for federal workers, Paul Volcker joins us for a News Maker interview, and finally Anne Taylor Fleming has some pre-Oscar thoughts on the movie "Working Girl".NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: Alaska's Governor said today that authorities are losing the battle to clean up the nation's worst oil spill and local fishermen worked to protect their industry. Ten million gallons of crude oil leaked when the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground Friday. The spill has spread over a 500,000 square mile area. Some of the oil has been washing up on Alaskan beaches. Gov. Steve Cowper said Exxon's response had been too slow and inadequate. He said officials are now focusing on the more limited goal of trying to protect surrounding fish hatcheries from the oil. Also today it was reported that the Valdez, unlike many other tankers, was not built with a protective second hull, a measure which can sometimes prevent leaks when ships run aground, but the Coast Guard said the ship met all construction standards. A federal investigator on the scene disclosed today that a Coast Guard officer detected the smell of alcohol when he boarded the Valdez after it ran aground.

REPORTER: The Coast Guard officer who boarded the vessel, I think Mr. Thelosure, did he characterize the demeanor of the captain?

WILLIAM WOODY, Chief Investigator: He seemed to be completely functional, completely functional, in possession of his faculties, performing satisfactorily, no indication of anything wrong with him.

REPORTER: Was that the time that he also detected the odor of alcohol on the captain's breath?

WILLIAM WOODY: At the same time.

REPORTER: Did he have a one on one conversation with the captain and that is how he determined the smell of alcohol?

WILLIAM WOODY: He detected some indication, yes.

MR. MacNeil: It's been reported that the ship's captain who was not at the helm at the time of the accident has had a history of drinking problems. Investigators said that both the captain and third mate were refusing to answer questions about the accident. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: The Justice Department today announced what it called the largest crackdown on drug money laundering ever carried out by the federal government. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh said 127 people had been charged in the case and the government has obtained conspiracy indictments against two South American banks, one in Panama, the other in Colombia. The Attorney General said the international ring had ties to drug trafficking.

RICHARD THORNBURGH, Attorney General: This billion dollar money laundering ring has direct links to the Colombian Medillin drug cartel and certainly one of the most effective weapons in our war on drugs is to take the profit out of illegal drugs and to deprive those who are engaged in these far flung operations around the world of the gains that they seek through their activities.

MS. WOODRUFF: In connection with the investigation, arrests were taking place in Atlanta, New York, Los Angeles, and Miami, and federal agents were seizing accounts at banks in those cities as well as in San Francisco. Former President Reagan sent word through an attorney today that he objects to testifying in court on behalf of his former aide, Oliver North, unless North's lawyers say precisely why they want him and what questions they will ask him. Former Attorney General Edwin Meese continued on the stand for the second day in a row today as a witness for the prosecution. Meese testified that after twice urging North to tell the truth, North still did not disclose critical details about the diversion of Iran arms sale money to the Nicaraguan Contras.

MR. MacNeil: There was more evidence today that the economy is slowing down. The government reported that the index forecasting the future course of the economy dropped .3 percent last month, after posting sharp gains in the previous two months. The government also said that new home sales plunged 9.4 percent in February, the lowest level in more than a year. In other economic news, federal regulators seized control of 20 failed banks owned by MCorp, the second largest banking company in Texas. The bailout is expected to cost between 1 and 2 billion dollars. And Michael believe may be linked to the controversy over Salman Rushdie's book, "The Satanic Verses". The two men were both found shot in the head at Brussels Mosque. Officials said the spiritual leader, Abdullah Al Adal, had received threats following recent broadcast interviews. In the interviews, he condemned the Rushdie book, but said the Ayatollah Khomeini's death order against Rushdie was aimed at public opinion within Iran. That's it for the News Summary. Still ahead, Alaska's troubled waters [Focus - Troubled Waters], an update on the Oliver North trial [Update - Day in Court], treating breast cancer [Focus - Treating Breast Cancer], Paul Volcker on raising government pay [News Maker], and an Oscar contender [Essay - Working Girl]. FOCUS - TROUBLED WATERS

MR. MacNeil: First tonight another look at the Alaska oil spill that Gov. Steve Cowper said authorities have lost hope of containing. He said that efforts are now concentrated on protecting the valuable fishing areas both North and South of the reef where the Exxon Valdez ran aground. The area's $76 million salmon industry is jeopardized by the fact that several salmon hatcheries are now close to the giant oil slick. Oily waves today were washing up on several beaches, including those of Naked Island. Patches of the 500 square mile slick continued to move rapidly Southward, threatening fish hatcheries and breeding grounds. In a last ditch effort to stop the slick, local fishermen targeted four important areas and deployed a dozen boats. The fishermen laid booms across several inlets in an attempt to keep the slick from drifting further. Peter Isleib is a commercial fisherman with 20 years experience in Prince William Sound. Norman Cohen is the Deputy Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. They join us from public station KTOO in Juneau to discuss the spill's impact on the fish and wildlife in the area. Mr. Cohen, are you beginning to get a picture of what the damage to wildlife will be?

NORMAN COHEN, Alaska Department Of Fish & Game: Yes, we are. The damage could be in the worst case devastating to the Prince William Sound area. In the best case, we expect that it will be at least significant if not major impacts. We're talking about fish, including salmon, herring, shellfish species such as tanner crab, dungesque crab, king crab, and shrimp. In addition, there are reports of over hundreds of oiled birds as well as oiled sea otters. There are whales that are entering the area at this time and should be in and normally will be in the areas which have already been oiled. So we expect to have very serious impacts in the Prince William Sound area.

MR. MacNeil: Now what is the difference between best case and worst case? I mean, is it just a matter of good luck and God's will at the moment, which way the oil goes, or can you and the other agencies do anything to edge it towards the best case?

MR. COHEN: We don't feel that there is much that we can do at this time to try to keep it towards the best case. The issue is that there will be damage right now. Mitigation efforts, efforts at cleaning up, efforts at stopping further damage are very difficult to achieve. We are trying, as you stated earlier in your introduction, to have some hatcheries boomed off so that the small fish which are the ones that are in the most sensitive life stage and which are most susceptible to damage are protected, but even if the hatchery areas and the natural spawning areas are protected, there's still a chance that they will be protected when they're released into the marine environment. These fish would have to cross areas that are right now oiled.

MR. MacNeil: When you say booming off, that means putting booms made of what, floating on the surface of the water, made of what?

MR. COHEN: Well, it's made up of absorbent material so that the oil will not pass through this material into the inner shore areas. That's --

MR. MacNeil: Is that pretty effective? Does that really stop the oil moving?

MR. COHEN: It can stop the oil from moving but as we've seen thus far with any kind of sea conditions that are other than calm, it's very very ineffective. The main bay hatchery, which is one of the ones on your map in the Western side of Prince William Sound, which is owned by the state and which is a very major sock eye hatchery facility, with salmon presently in the netpens in the marine water, there is a break right now in the boom, so we are trying to fix it in order to make sure that those fish are protected until then they're released, and then it's a question as to what will happen once they're released.

MR. MacNeil: We had an official from Exxon on on Monday night, and he said that oil is ultimately biodegradable. Now how rapidly does that happen, and how does that affect animal life? I mean, is that an optimistic scenario?

MR. COHEN: Well, oil will weather and its toxic properties will change. However, we believe that there will be at a minimum in areas of high, in rocky coasts with high wave conditions, the impacts probably will be shorter than in more protected areas, but in those protected areas if the oil sinks and gets into the sediment, the impacts could be years and maybe decades.

MR. MacNeil: Let's go to Mr. Isleib. Describe, Mr. Isleib, how the oil affects the kind of fish and seafood that is your industry.

PETE ISLEIB, Commercial Fisherman: Oil in the marine environment, especially at the early life stages of many of the fish in Prince William Sound such as young salmon and herring are often ingested through their transferal of hydrocarbons that are picked up in the plants in bloom this time of the year. The spring is a very delicate time of the year and the larvae stages, eggs, young fry or salmon going to sea of various species, they're eating the fito plankton and zoe plankton which has absorbed the hydrocarbons. It goes through the fat of the animal and builds up and often makes them sick or die.

MR. MacNeil: How many generations of fish are likely to be affected if they're in an area like this?

MR. ISLEIB: It's hard to say. It depends on the cycle of the fish. If when the adult fish are coming in, they can be impacted through the take up of hydrocarbons and then it goes into the eggs, so that the reproductive capacity of that year's egg cycles will be destroyed. In future years, that would be they would be returning as adults several years down the road and that would mean their numbers would be diminished or nonexistent, so this could be a long time in recovering certain species such as herring and salmon, and also a similar problem with crab and shrimp.

MR. MacNeil: How important are herring and salmon to you, I mean, all you in the fishing industry, not just you, yourself?

MR. ISLEIB: It is the main stay of the Prince William Sound economy, of portions of three large communities and two native villages and the total economic base for one of the cities.

MR. MacNeil: What do you fish yourself personally?

MR. ISLEIB: I fish herring and salmon.

MR. MacNeil: And how does it look now to you for your own economic outlook for this spill?

MR. ISLEIB: I would say my income is in serious jeopardy.

MR. MacNeil: Do you believe, Mr. Cohen, that the livelihood of Prince William sound economy is in real jeopardy after this spill now?

MR. COHEN: Yes, we do. The fishery last year grossed just to the fishermen -- that's not with the multiplier effects that you would have as the money goes through the economy -- of over $100 million, and so that is a great deal of money to this very small section, this section of Alaska and these five communities. In addition, two of the communities, the native communities of Tatitlik and Chaniga, rely on the commercial fishery, and then for their food source, the fish of the Sound, for their livelihood and sustenance, so they're in very deep danger as well, and thus far we have closed two fisheries, a fishery which takes place in the Northwest side of Prince William Sound, as well as a fishery that was going to open next week, that would be the Sable Fish or Black Cod Long Line Fishery. We are at the present time determining whether to open or not the herring fishery. There are four different types of herring fisheries that go on in Prince William Sound and we'll be making those determinations this weekend on whether we should open or close them. Two of the herring areas, herring spawned in Prince William Sound and basically four areas that we have laid out, two of those areas are on Naked Island and Montague Island and those are oiled, heavily oiled in the areas where the herring spawn, so that places those fish and the future generations of those fish in severe jeopardy. We don't know if the adult herring when they return will spawn in these areas, or whether they will be displaced to other areas.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Isleib, apart from actual damage to the fish, what about the damage to the reputation of fish from your area in this country and overseas, I mean, are people going to stop buying them because they think there may be something wrong with them?

MR. ISLEIB: Many of us are concerned with that. I mean, like two grapes from South America disrupted a large market the last week or two. However, we have been assured that the Department of Environmental Conservation which will be checking any product coming out of Prince William Sound, will be scrutinizing anything that comes out, but we are concerned with the perception that products from Alaska or Prince William Sound would perceive to be tainted in some manner.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Cohen, finally, could you briefly describe, we've been talking especially about fish because it's such a big industry, but what about other mammals and birds that come under your purview?

MR. COHEN: Well, the mammals and birds are pretty serious as well. As I said, there are whales that are coming into the area. There have been sightings of over a hundred oiled sea otters and one story that was relayed was a fisherman looked on the beach and he saw some oily spots up the snow into the bushes and walked up into the bushes and saw a dying sea otter which a lot of the birds and the sea otters when they get oiled and go to die will go out of the water and into the bushes and hide basically from our ability to find them, so we will never really know what the extent is. But this is a very important bird area as well as marine mammal area. The birds will be in the, millions of birds will be in the area in the next couple of weeks as they fly North from their wintering grounds in California, along the West Coast states, Mexico, and even as far away as Florida.

MR. MacNeil: Well, Mr. Cohen and Mr. Isleib, thank you both very much for joining us. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Still ahead on the Newshour, an update on the Oliver North trial, a documentary report on the fight against breast cancer, Paul Volcker on how to keep people in government, and an essay on the Oscar contending movie "Working Girl". UPDATE - DAY IN COURT

MS. WOODRUFF: Next tonight the Oliver North trial. On the witness stand today, former Reagan administration Attorney General, Edwin Meese. Charlayne Hunter-Gault has more. Charlayne.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: It was Meese's second and final day on the stand. He was the twenty-fifth witness called by the prosecution which is expected to rest its case tomorrow. The trial is currently in its ninth week and we look at its progress now with Nina Totenberg, Legal Affairs Correspondent for National Public Radio. Nina, the big witness, as we've been just saying for the last two days, was Ed Meese. Tell us about that and what was the importance of his testimony?

NINA TOTENBERG, National Public Radio: Well, Charlayne, Ed Meese conducted an investigation for the President of the United States, an investigation that was to determine all the facts involving the Iran arms sales. And in the process of that investigation, his subordinates found a memo in which Oliver North outlined the diversion of profits of the Iran arms sales to the Nicaraguan Contras and Oliver North was called in and interviewed by the Attorney General, and Ed Meese testified yesterday and today that Oliver North lied to him in the course of that interview. Now he didn't use the word "lie", but that is what it amounted to, because when North was asked about this memo, even though Attorney General Meese advised him twice to tell the truth, that it was very important, that it was very important that the President not be "protected" but that the facts get out, in fact, what Mr. North told the Attorney General was that this whole project of diverting profits was not an American project, it was an Israeli project, and that the Israelis had diverted profits from their sale of arms to the Iranians into bank accounts that were set up by the Contras.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So what does that add up to?

MS. TOTENBERG: Well, what it adds up to is testimony that is very damaging to Mr. North because it means that he was not telling the truth to the President's investigator, and as the prosecutors said today, the prosecutors said on redirect examination, so when this interview was over, you knew nothing about Swiss bank accounts, answer, no, you knew nothing about shredding, no, you knew nothing about altering documents from night to day, no, you knew nothing about General Secord or Albert Hakim having anything to do with these bank accounts, you knew nothing about the National Security Council marking up the weapons so that there would be profits, and so in the end I think it was fairly damaging testimony.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Was there any significance to the part of Meese's testimony in which he said that the interview with North was like a chit chat, I think was the phrase that was used, and not part of, conducted as if it were part of any kind of criminal investigation?

MS. TOTENBERG: I think that is somewhat significant because after all, what the prosecution is alleging is that North obstructed an investigation by the Attorney General, lied to the Attorney General in the course of an investigation, and what Mr. Meese said was this wasn't really an investigation, it was a fact finding mission for the President, it was more like a chat between co- workers, so in that sense it mitigated his rather damaging testimony.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What about, there was testimony today also from former Asst. Attorney General Charles Cooper, was there anything significant that came out of that?

MS. TOTENBERG: Well, there were two things I thought. First of all, Cooper, it was very interesting, today Meese backed off of something that he had said yesterday. Yesterday he had said that he was afraid that the whole Iran/Contra affair might lead to an impeachment process against the President. Today he backed off of that, but Cooper on the witness stand said they all knew in the course of this investigation that this affair, the Iran/Contra affair, could lead, and I'm quoting here, to the end of Mr. Reagan's terms, so they knew what the political stakes were, what the impeachment, possible impeachment stakes were. The other interesting thing that Cooper said, and it was sort of interesting from a broad point of view, not necessarily just a trial point of view, he was one of Attorney General Meese's point men in this investigation and he described a meeting that he had on November 20, 1986, where he went to the White House and he met with CIA Director Casey and Oliver North and a whole bunch of other folks and Oliver North in that meeting urged that the testimony that CIA Director Casey was to give the next day, that that testimony include a statement that nobody in the United States Government knew about the 1985 Hawk missile shipment to Iran. Now North knew that that was untrue, everybody at that table almost knew it was untrue, but Cooper didn't know it was untrue, and he testified today that it was his impression at that meeting that it was news to everybody, it would have been news to everybody there to learn that there had been a Hawk missile shipment, that nobody there knew there had been a Hawk missile shipment. Here was the Assistant Attorney General for the United States, the lawyer for the President's lawyer, and he was being a dupe.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: The last time we talked to you I guess was about two weeks ago, it was when McFarlane was still on the stand or concluding his testimony. I mean, how does the prosecution shape up now after two weeks, in your view?

MS. TOTENBERG: Well, it's still a very difficult process for the prosecution. Almost every witness for the prosecution turns out to be in sum or in part a witness for the defense. Most of them are emotionally committed to Oliver North. Fawn Hall wept on the witness stand.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: She testified earlier this week.

MS. TOTENBERG: She testified about a week ago.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: About a week ago.

MS. TOTENBERG: North's assistant, Robert Earl, testified this week and really went to great lengths even admitting that he'd lied to the FBI he said in an attempt to protect national security, but he also said it was in an attempt to protect Oliver North, and so it was a very difficult case for the prosecution to make. In the end, I suspect the jury is going to have to decide whether all these folks who are obviously trimming their sails in a lot of ways are doing it to protect President Reagan from the person, from the person of Oliver North, or to protect Oliver North from the evil President Reagan who doesn't want to take responsibility. When I say evil, I don't mean that I think he's evil, but that's the sort of the scenario. They're going to have to decide who's the bad guy, Oliver North, did he dupe the President, or did the President use Oliver North and now escape responsibility?

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: All right, and North's lawyer, Brendan Sullivan, will begin his defense on Friday. What are we likely to see?

MS. TOTENBERG: He's not going to begin until Monday.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Oh, until Monday.

MS. TOTENBERG: He said today that his defense will take only between three and nine days. Now that's very interesting. I take it from that that it is a great possibility that Oliver North will not testify. He started out saying that the defense was going to take four months and a few weeks ago he said it would be four to eight weeks. Now we're down to three to nine days.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What do you read into that?

MS. TOTENBERG: I read into that that if it's nine days, possibly Oliver North will testify. If not, it will be a rather short defense. I think the defense may think they have a pretty good case already --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Without having North testify.

MS. TOTENBERG: -- without having North, and they don't want to open this up to give the prosecution a chance to put on a rebuttal case.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But what about President Reagan now, where does he stand in all this in the likelihood of his coming to testify? The judge has not definitively ruled on this yet, right, on the request that he be provided for the defense?

MS. TOTENBERG: The judge is going to hold a hearing probably tomorrow on the defense's outstanding subpoena for Mr. Reagan -- [network difficulty] -- the Justice Department this evening will file objections. It's just a guess but this judge has said that he has the naked power to force Mr. Reagan to testify, but he would be likely not to want to do that, and I think that the defense will have a clear showing of what they intend to get from President Reagan and the judge warned the defense today that if they got from what Mr. Reagan what they say they think they're going to get, and I should add parenthetically that that is not known to the public, they've submitted that assertion to the judge under seal, if they get what they say they're going to get, it'll conflict with his previous statements in written interrogatories that were submitted to the Grand Jury.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: All right. Well, we'll just have to see next week what happens. Nina, thank you again for being with us, and we'll see you soon.

MS. TOTENBERG: Thank you, Charlayne. FOCUS - TREATING BREAST CANCER

MR. MacNeil: Next tonight a look at breast cancer, a disease that will strike one in ten American women. For those women with early stages of breast cancer, a new study has confirmed that women who underwent lumpectomies had the same survival rate as those who underwent radical mastectomies or the removal of the entire breast. The eight year study appears in tomorrow's New England Journal of Medicine. This latest information only adds to the wealth of information that women with breast cancer must consider. The varied options for treatment leave some women confused about what's best for them and even the experts don't always agree as Correspondent Elizabeth Brackett reports.

ALEXIA LALLI: [Talking to Doctor] What kind of doctors do you suggest that I see?

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Five days after Alexia Lalli lost a breast to cancer, she had a tough decision to make, whether or not to undergo chemotherapy to better the odds against a recurrence of the cancer.

DOCTOR: [Talking to Alexia] So you're in a dilemma because you're in this great situation where you have a tumor where the likelihood is at least 90 percent that if you did nothing you're going to be cured.

MS. BRACKETT: A year ago, Lalli may not have faced such a choice. Then few doctors were recommending follow-up chemotherapy for women with small tumors like Lalli's. About half the women who get breast cancer each year fall in Lalli's category. The cancer is detected early, is relatively small and has not spread beyond the breast. In cases like these doctors used to recommend a mastectomy or lumpectomy followed by radiation, and that was it, but all that changed last May when the National Cancer Institute issued an alert saying, women with early stage cancer that had not spread to the lymph nodes could also benefit from chemo or hormonal therapy. The studies backing up the alert were published in February. Dr. Vincent DeVita issued the alert when he was with the NCI. He is now at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. He continues to push for additional or adjuvant treatment for nearly all womenwith breast cancer.

DR. VINCENT DeVITA, Memorial Sloan-Kettering: I think all women with invasive cancer of the breast, there are some that have non- invasive cancer, should have the option to get adjuvant therapy and most of them should get it, yes.

MS. BRACKETT: How many women's lives do you think would be saved if this procedure was carried out across the country?

DR. VINCENT DeVITA, Memorial Sloan-Kettering: Well, the calculation is roughly 5,000 out of the 70,000 you would treat would have their lives saved, presuming the results continue the way they are.

MS. BRACKETT: But halfway across the country, another doctor points out a different side to the numbers. Dr. William McGuire is at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. He says to save 5,000 lives, 65,000 women would be treated unnecessarily, the cost for that treatment $338 million a year.

DR. WILLIAM McGUIRE, University of Texas Health Science Center: All women with no negative breast cancer, with tumors less than two centimeters, 96.3 percent of those patients are alive and well at five years, so why in the world would you want to treat all of them? 95 percent would receive no benefit whatsoever and yet they would suffer all the side effects, toxicities and cost. I just couldn't understand why anybody would want to treat that particular group of women.

MS. BRACKETT: This battle between the experts focuses primarily on tumors that are between one and two centimeters in size.

DR. DAVID DERSHAW, Memorial Sloan-Kettering: These smaller lesions, these tiny mammographically detected lesions, are not lesions where debate is ongoing about giving therapy. These larger lesions are node positive lesions where additional treatment is routinely given. It's these intermediate lesions that are often node negative, and this is the area where the question of therapy or no therapy has been raised.

MS. BRACKETT: that debate has left women with breast cancer confused. At this weekly meeting of Share, a New York-based, self-help group for breast cancer, women talked of their frustrations.

DEBBIE STEELE: I decided after about four weeks of totally being unable to decide that I would do the prophylactic treatment and I would do chemo, and that was I guess the hardest decision I've ever had to make, because I realized that the doctors weren't able to tell me do this, Debbie, and you'll get better, or don't do this. They were saying, well, here's the data, it's up to you, so think about it and let us know what you want to do. You know, it was like buying a new car, let us know what model you want.

BEVERLY WISE: Today I saw my oncologist and we discussed the next phase of treatment which they're suggesting now, the chemotherapy, and it's really a tough decision to make. I was node negative and before last year a radiation treatment would have been it for me.

GROUP LEADER: Have you made a decision, Beverly, or are you still thinking about it?

BEVERLY WISE: I'm still thinking about it. My gut feeling is preservation of the species, and that's my gut feeling, but I have a lot of fears and reservations about it.

REBECCA PACKER: My oncologist, the same as yours, said you could still walk out of here and you'll probably belong to the 80 women out of 100 who don't have a recurrence, except that my logic was there was only a 1 out of 10 chance that I'd get breast cancer to start and now he's telling me there's a 2 out of 10 chance that it won't happen -- so I decided if I could belong to a rather large minority the first time, I certainly could again, and I --

MS. BRACKETT: That is the heart of the dilemma. How does a woman know for sure if she will be in the group whose cancer does not recur? Dr. DeVita says there is no way to know.

DR. VINCENT DeVITA, Memorial Sloan-Kettering: You've got to look at 70,000 women with breast cancer of whom 5,000 will die if you don't treat the 70,000. Yes, I'd rather not do it. I'd rather be able to pinpoint the 5,000 just like that and give only those people the drug. There isn't any cancer that we know of that we can make that kind of a precise determination.

DR. WILLIAM McGUIRE, University of Texas Health Science Center: I don't think it's that difficult at all. I think our methods may not be perfect, but I think we have a very good handle on which patients are cured by surgery and/or radiotherapy alone, and which patients are likely to recur.

MS. BRACKETT: What McGuire and DeVita are really debating is the value of prognostic tests. Are they accurate enough to predict who will and who will not suffer a recurrence? McGuire says with tools like this flow citometry machine, predictions can be made. The machine's lasers measure the growth of the tumor. The results are then graphically displayed.

DR. WILLIAM McGUIRE, University of Texas Health Science Center: This is what we look at to see how fast the tumor is growing.

MS. BRACKETT: If a small tumor shows a slow growth rate, McGuire says that is a very good indicator that further treatment may not be needed.

MS. BRACKETT: What is the danger in saying that women with node negative cancers and small tumors should be treated?

DR. WILLIAM McGUIRE, University of Texas Health Science Center: What if that woman falls into the good prognostic group where the chances are overwhelming she's going to be alive and well five years from now and she elects treatment? She may be getting more than she bargained for. What if she has a treatment-related death? What if she develops cancer of the uterus? What if she develops one of the other side effects? She may be emotionally prepared to take that risk, but she may be getting more than she bargained for.

MS. BRACKETT: Fran Davidowitz got more than she bargained for in her follow-up treatment. The mother of a three-year old, Davidowitz had a lumpectomy last year. She made the decision for chemotherapy, but ended up in the hospital with severe vomiting, diarrhea and dehydration. She recalls her oncologist's reaction.

FRAN DAVIDOWITZ: I remember her standing at the door of my room and saying, I'm still convinced we did the right thing, I'm sure she must have really felt concerned about what happened, and she says, I just read your pathology report again and I'm sure we did the right thing.

MS. BRACKETT: So who did you feel she was trying to convince?

FRAN DAVIDOWITZ: Herself.

MS. BRACKETT: Davidowitz also had another common side effect; she stopped menstruating. But her periods did return and doctors say she can consider having another child in several years. She also lost her hair, but despite the tough time she had with side effects, she does not regret her decision to take chemotherapy.

FRAN DAVIDOWITZ: I think I always knew I was going to do it. I just needed to be convinced. I guess one person who said, a physician, a friend of my brother's, who said that it's cancer, you have to treat it as aggressively as possible, you can die from cancer, and I think I, that was the only thing that was in my mind, I don't want to die, and if I have any possible options of not dying, I have to take them, I have no choice.

MS. BRACKETT: Teddy Carter was also concerned about side effects when she was told chemotherapy was now recommended following her lumpectomy, but she decided to play the odds and turned down the additional treatment.

THEODORA CARTER: As a thinking, intelligent adult, I just looked at all the things that were in my favor and decided I would take my chances without having chemotherapy. I may have been proved wrong. Down the line it may come out that chemotherapy is beneficial, but that's not been proven to my mind at this point in time.

MS. BRACKETT: Have you had any regrets since the decision?

THEODORA CARTER: Not a regret. I feel wonderful. I have a very positive outlook anyway, and the power of positive thinking is a healer in itself, but I feel good. I feel that I wouldn't feel as good as I do now had I taken the chemotherapy.

MS. BRACKETT: The dilemma over whether or not to have follow-up therapy is an indication of how cancer treatment has progressed in the last few years. Ten years ago there wasn't enough data to even have a debate. There is a choice now and most women we talked to did choose either chemo or hormonal therapy. They saw it as a kind of insurance policy against a possible recurrence. Alexia Lalli discussed the pros and the cons of chemotherapy with her daughters. She eventually decided for chemotherapy even though her own mother who had breast cancer 30 years ago had had a very hard time with the treatment.

ALEXIA LALLI: It still seems to me that any risk factor is enough for me to take the chance and I don't think that chemotherapy is as scary as it was when my mother had it when she was, you know, diagnosed as needing it. That meant she was going to die, that was it. Once you had chemotherapy, you're going to die.

MS. BRACKETT: What's it mean to you?

ALEXIA LALLI: Me, it means I'm going to live. NEWS MAKER

MS. WOODRUFF: Next tonight the crisis in public service. As we mentioned a moment ago, a blue ribbon commission today warned President Bush if the federal government doesn't move quickly to better attract and hold talented workers, America will be left with a government of the mediocre.

PRESIDENT BUSH: The thrust of their report was the need to encourage more people to be involved in government service, and I want to encourage in every way I can those who serve their country, whether it's military or civilian in the civil service or wherever else.

MS. WOODRUFF: The panel cited examples of a government already beset by a crippled nuclear weapons plant, defense procurement scandals and near mid air conclusions. Those were but a few of the dire observations in the report released today by the National Commission on the Public Service, a prestigious panel with former President Gerald Ford and former Vice President Walter Mondale among its members. As remedies, the report listed some 45 recommendations, the most controversial of which will be a proposal to raise federal salaries. The Commission also stressed the importance of improving the American public's perception of government workers and the role they play in the smooth, safe and secure functioning of society. Earlier this afternoon I spoke with the head of the Commission, Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. Mr. Volcker thanks for being with us.

MR. VOLCKER: Nice to be here.

MS. WOODRUFF: Why was the study necessary in the first place?

PAUL VOLCKER, National Public Service Commission: Well, there's a perception, speaking of perceptions, there's a limited perception among a lot of people who've had experience in government, many of whom, some of whom arerepresented on the Commission, that indeed over the past 20 years, 10 years, 15 years, there's been a perceptible decline in enthusiasm for government, let me put it that way, attributable to a lot of things which are hard to identify. Maybe Vietnam has something to do with it, maybe a feeling that government isn't performing very well has something to do with it. We've had a couple of administrations that kind of ran against Washington, and I think that kind of --

MS. WOODRUFF: The most recent administration.

MR. VOLCKER: The most recent and previous to that.

MS. WOODRUFF: The one before that.

MR. VOLCKER: And this was translated, deliberately or otherwise, I think in a lot of people's minds, including civil servants' minds, that they were the ones being bashed. Some members have a perception that there is some reality there. The depths of talent -- there's still a lot of talent in government -- the depths of talent is not what it once was. There is a lot of statistical evidence that young people are simply not interested in any degree in going into government.

MS. WOODRUFF: So you spent, the Commission spent, what, two years, nearly two years looking into this.

MR. VOLCKER: Right.

MS. WOODRUFF: And what were the primary things that they found that are going wrong that most of you didn't realize?

MR. VOLCKER: Well, we certainly put almost in first place that idea of perception. Now how do you deal with perception is a lot more difficult. We concluded obviously the President has a role in dealing with perceptions and the report is very timely in the sense that President Bush spontaneously comes from a tradition and certainly is respected in public service, he, himself, in all his actions and spontaneous statements, almost exudes pride in public service, and we hope that that can be part of a turning point and very important in terms of atmospherics. We find a lot of what I think is the nuts and bolts. It's hard to get hired. It's hard to get fired too, which probably doesn't help from the federal government. There are a lot of mechanics that need to be dealt with. We propose a lot more decentralization of personnel decisions and put it out in the agency, put it out in the department, so everybody doesn't get bogged down in red tape; it's important. We talk a lot about the proper mix of political appointments and career appointments. They're both important, you need an expertise, you need a background from the career people, you need a political input. We think it's a little bit too balanced toward the political side now.

MS. WOODRUFF: What sort of reaction though do you get from a new administration that's anxious to give out a lot of plum jobs here?

MR. VOLCKER: I don't know. You hear some talk about they find the difficulty of getting some of these jobs filled. People don't realize but there are 3000 political appointments in a new administration and that's double what it was 20 years ago or so; it's quadruple what it was at the end of World War II. The total size of government hasn't increased that much, but the total number of political appointments has increased. We make what I think is a modest suggestion, maybe we can cut the 3,000 down to 2,000. You're still going to have the cabinet officers, the assistant secretaries, the undersecretaries, but you don't need to go so deep in the bureaucracy in the President's own interest, in our opinion. He will get more effective government relying at a certain point on the professionalism and continuity of the career servants.

MS. WOODRUFF: Now here you are once again this year recommending a hefty pay raise for government employees. Why is that and what in the world makes you think you're going to get it?

MR. VOLCKER: Well, that is the most difficult part of it. I don't want to see all the attention in this report on the pay raise. We think that is an important factor. We don't think it's the only factor and it's not the only thing that should get attention, but the fact is there's, this debate's been going on. Pay for a relative handful of top officials to judges, cabinet officers, subcabinet officers, have declined in real terms by more than 40 percent over the last 20 years. And you can debate precisely where that should be. I have no criteria to give you that that's precisely what a government salary should be, but we do think given the responsibilities they have, given the kind of talent you want to get, that 40 percent compression should be repaired and offset.

MS. WOODRUFF: Do you think you've got public support out there for increasing --

MR. VOLCKER: Well, you know, it got all mixed up in Congressional pay and the proposal a couple of months ago, the focus was an increase in Congressional pay. Now I'm not going to argue that the increase for the top civil servants is a lot more popular than the Congress or the judges, but it probably should be. I think there's a very special political issue in the Congress. If Congress doesn't want to increase their salaries, that's too controversial, that's too much of a hot potato, let's leave that alone and what we say is go ahead and increase the others, these people at the top, 25 percent, 25 percent now, then come back and make up the rest of that shortfall after you've had in connection with another election basically.

MS. WOODRUFF: So for the very high level executive government employees, and the judiciary, you're talking about what, 50 percent increase over the next two years.

MR. VOLCKER: Roughly, to make up for the 40 percent decline over the next two years beginning with 25 percent now, and look at it later and see what you want to do later, but roughly in that order of magnitude, yes. But that's only to offset what decline has been over past years.

MS. WOODRUFF: But you've been around this town for many years. What do you think the prospects are that that's going to happen?

MR. VOLCKER: I think they ought to go ahead and it's why we stated it this way with a first step. We don't expect them to take a second step right now but if they could take the first step right now, I think that would be very helpful and send a message and you can argue this up and down what is right. I don't think it is inappropriate that an Undersecretary of the Treasury with all his responsibilities or an Undersecretary of State or an Assistant Secretary of HUD gets paid as much as we pay in my little investment firm people out of business school.

MS. WOODRUFF: There was a comment today I noticed from an official of the Treasury Employees Union who said that you didn't pay enough attention in this report to rank and file government employees, that you addressed the upper level and not the --

MR. VOLCKER: We addressed the rank and file too I think, but we focused the report more on what we thought were the leadership questions, but we do have proposals for pay for civil servants across-the-board. We make I suppose in this area what's historically been a radical suggestion, that we don't go for across-the-board increases, but do it where it's necessary locality by locality or occupation by occupation. And we do think there are areas, the doctors, National Institute for Health, NASA scientists, I think there is a very clear case for the increase.

MS. WOODRUFF: That's what I'm going to ask. If you're the average citizen sitting out there watching this program, you think wait a minute, you know, do these guys really deserve that much more money, what case can you make to them?

MR. VOLCKER: Well, this is not as far out of line as this relative handful of people at the top, but in many areas, particularly if you're in New York, you cannot get FBI agents to go to New York, and do what FBI agents do in that city and the costs that are involved as easily as you can in lower cost areas of the country and we've got to recognize that and there are important responsibilities there that have to be discharged. They're most expensive in New York, and Washington, and San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

MS. WOODRUFF: And what about those other folks who are saying, well, but, you know, we've never expected that much of the federal government anyway, you know, it's a bureaucracy --

MR. VOLCKER: I think it's a minority attitude, that some people have that attitude, but do they have that attitude when they're sitting up in an airplane and wonder whether the air controller is keeping them out of trouble with another plane? Did they think about that when Three Mile Island took place run by a private company, afraid of an atomic meltdown, and finally some bureaucrat, some civil servant, came up from Washington, and finally gave us some assurance that somebody finally knew what was happening and could tell us what to do. When Legionnaire's Disease comes along, and everybody runs around, doesn't know why these people are dying in Philadelphia, they go down to Atlanta, the communicable disease area and they want a bunch of civil servants, a bunch of bureaucrats to get an answer right away. You've got some poison in grapes from Chile, and suddenly we're supposed to have an answer as to how to deal with the possibility of cyanide in grapes. Who do you turn to? You turn to some civil servants, and you hope they know how to do their job.

MS. WOODRUFF: Last question. What happens now to these recommendations? Does your Commission sort of go away quietly, or do you hang around and try to fight to see some of these things?

MR. VOLCKER: We're considering that now. We're going to have to hang around for a little while anyway. We'd like to see a little impetus here. There are other people interested in the subject and we hope that some of the organizations that have a professional and long-term interest will help take up the torch and keep the process going. And I hope the focus isn't totally on salaries. Inevitably, we end up talking a lot about salaries, but there are 45 pages of analysis and recommendations in that report. Salaries are about three pages.

MS. WOODRUFF: Speaking of money, do you want to put on your former hat and predict whether we're going to have a recession this year?

MR. VOLCKER: No. I got enough --

MS. WOODRUFF: You're not going to make any predictions.

MR. VOLCKER: That's right. You only make those predictions when you're on a government salary.

MS. WOODRUFF: Paul Volcker, thank you very much for being with us.

MR. VOLCKER: Thank you. ESSAY - WORKING GIRL

MR. MacNeil: Tonight is Oscar night and one of the big winners could be one of the year's big movie hits, the comedy "Working Girl". It's collected seven Oscar nominations, including one for best picture. The film has sparked a great deal of discussion about relationships between women in the work place and that's the subject of tonight's essay by Los Angeles writer Anne Taylor Fleming.

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: Oh, oh, something's gone wrong. The glorious dream of sisterhood isn't managing to endure in the small offices and gleaming corporate towers of America. No, the word is out Women in the work place just aren't treating each other very well. In a recent Glamour Magazine Survey, 42 percent of the women polled said they'd been sabotaged at work, not by men, but by other men, and 35 percent said their female colleagues were competitive in a sneaky and back stabbing way. The most delicious demonstration of this is the current hit movie "Working Girl". It's a moral fable, the ultimate yuppie fantasy in which the up from the tracks secretary turns the tables on her scheming female boss and ends up herself with a swank office and a secretary to call her own. It's all amusingly catty like one of those 1940s girl in the office comedies with, of course, the requisite happy ending. Or is it happy? What's to say this woman will treat her secretary any better than she, herself, was treated? That's the dark question that hangs over the film and hangs heavy in many a female heart. My friends, be they professors or editors or artists, you name it, all have bad stories about female co-workers and bosses. We swap them now. There are new war stories. They've taken the place of bad stories about bad men. We've met the enemy; she is us. I don't say this lightly. There's a great deal of pain and anger going on with this reckoning, a sense that we've been had, turned against each other by the pin striped male power structure. There's a deeper sense though that we aren't who we thought we were or hoped we were back in the heady days of women's marches and consciousness raising groups. Back then, we carried the idea of sisterhood close to our hearts only to find it buried now at the bottom of our bulging briefcases. Were we just naive to think we could bring the warm hearted, coffee klatch mentality into corporate land, wrong to think with our innate mothering instincts we could civilize the whole atmosphere, wrong about those innate nurturing instincts in the first place? Are we just cats under the skin as we've long been portrayed, ready to claw each other's eyes out to get the good man or the good job? And what was that sisterly solidarity, just the interlude, the illusion? These are the questions we're asking ourselves now. Even a TV show like Designing Women becomes food for thought. Here are four nice Southern women in business together. They're funny and sharp tongued and downright nasty to each other. Is this how women really behave? I used to say no, that shows like this and like Cagney and Lacey were based on a male idea of female friendship. That's how they saw us, as scratchy, catty colleagues. Now according to the new polls, women are seeing themselves that way. Have we bought in, sold out, lost our souls? Perhaps not enough of us are in true power positions yet to offer up this post mortem. We're not the big fish yet. Most of us are still in the office pools. And many of our hearts are clearly torn between home and work, children and promotion, so that we do have an excuse to be more tense and torn on the job than men, a tension we inevitably vent not against the men in power, but against each other. But I'm just not sure any of this is enough of an excuse for the way working women are treating each other, and most of my friends don't think so either. RECAP

MS. WOODRUFF: Taking a final look at the main stories of this Wednesday, Alaska's fishermen took steps to protect their industry from the nation's worst oil spill and charges were brought against banks and individuals in the largest drug money laundering crackdown ever carried out by the federal government. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Judy. That's the Newshour tonight and we'll be back tomorrow. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.