The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MUDD: Good evening. I'm Roger Mudd in Washington.

MR. LEHRER: And I'm Jim Lehrer in New York. After our summary of the news this Thursday, we sample life along the flooded Mississippi River as lived and reported by six newspaper editors and writers. Then Jeffrey Kaye has a major documentary report on the search for the homosexual gene. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: Floodwaters receded in some Midwestern towns today but rose in others. Heavy rain made matters worse in Kansas and Nebraska. Rivers in Iowa were generally lower, but Des Moines was still shut down, and its residents went without running water for a fifth straight day. Damage estimates over the eight-state region are now approaching $5 billion. In Quincy, Illinois, sandbaggers worked to protect a mile long, thirty-four foot high levee. If it fails, floodwaters will close the only open bridge across the Mississippi for a 212-mile stretch. President Clinton has asked Congress to approve nearly $2 1/2 billion as the first installment of federal aid. He was on Capitol Hill today to discuss it with congressional leaders. White House spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers said Mr. Clinton will make his third visit to the flood area Saturday. We'll have much more on this story right after the News Summary. Roger.

MR. MUDD: This was day one in the long awaited and much ballyhooed congressional effort to reach a compromise on President Clinton's economic plan. More than 200 House and Senate negotiators, almost 40 percent of the membership, met for less than an hour to state their positions mostly for the cameras which were let in for the opening session. The main differences are over tax increases. The House bill contains a BTU energy tax, the Senate bill a tax on gasoline and diesel fuel. Democrats think some taxes are necessary to cut the deficit by $500 billion in the next five years. Republicans say what's necessary are more spending cuts, not more tax increases. Republicans have voted unanimously against both versions. Here's a sampling from the opening statements.

REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT, Majority Leader: It's been my experience that the keys to creating legislation of this kind is cooperation and compromise, and I hope and believe that the people in this room who are gifted public servants can achieve that compromise in a short period of time, bring a bill back to that, to both Houses of the Congress and put this bill on the President's desk and get this country on the road to economic recovery and the creation of jobs.

REP. JOHN KASICH, [R] Ohio: Unfortunately, and I say unfortunately for our country, this "tax and spend" proposal that is before us today is not a job creator. This "tax and spend" proposal that's before us today is a job killer.

MR. MUDD: President Clinton today proposed legislation to help make bank loans easier to get in poor neighborhoods and in rural areas. The plan, which he promised during the campaign, would cost $382 million over four years. It would provide grants, training, and technical assistance to groups seeking to create community development banks for distressed areas. Procter & Gamble today announced it will close thirty plants and eliminate 12 percent of its work force around the world over the next three to four years. The company's chairman said it was an attempt to slim down and stay competitive in the world market. Two days ago, the company said it would cut the price on a range of its detergents. All told, 13,000 jobs will be lost, about 1/3 of them in the U.S. Defense Sec. Les Aspin today delivered to President Clinton a proposal for revamping the gays in the military policy. Recent newspapers had sad Aspin could recommend a "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Recruits would not be asked about their sexual orientation, and homosexuals would not be allowed to say they were gay. That plan has reportedly been approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but there was no official confirmation of that, and White House Press Sec. Meyers said Mr. Clinton may not accept Sec. Aspin's recommendations exactly as presented. She said the final decision could come tomorrow.

MR. MUDD: A federal task force arrested eight alleged white supremacists today on charges they plan to destroy a black church in Los Angeles. The U.S. attorney's office identified the church as the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, which is prominent in South Central LA. Authorities say they confiscated an undisclosed number of weapons and pipe bombs. Federal agents reportedly uncovered the alleged plot by infiltrating two so-called "skinhead" groups, the Church of the Creator, and the White Aryan Resistance. The Cable News Network reported today the group also had planned to kill Rodney King, the black motorist who was beaten by white police in 1991.

MR. LEHRER: About 2,000 Somalis demonstrated in Mogadishu today against the United Nations. Dozens have died in a U.N. crackdown on one of the country's warlords. There were also protests in Rome. Italy has criticized the U.N. mission. The U.N. has requested the removal of an Italian U.N. general for failing to cooperate with his fellow commanders. Italy has so far refused. United Nations envoy Rolf Ekeus arrived in Baghdad today to try diffuse a crisis over monitoring of Iraqi weapon sites. He met with the foreign minister and other top officials. Iraq has refused to let the U.N. install surveillance cameras at two missile testing facilities.

MR. MUDD: Serbian forces surrounding Sarajevo eased their two- week fuel blockade of the Bosnian capital today, but most of the city of 380,000 still is without running water or electricity. There was also more fighting between Muslims and Croats in the southern city of Mostar. We have a report narrated by David Symonds of Worldwide Television News.

DAVID SYMONDS, WTN: Without generators to run hospitals, without gas to cook food, Sarajevo has been starved of resources for almost a month. The Serbs have stopped convoys from leaving the airport until now. Three trucks carrying 75 tons of diesel have been allowed through after a two-week impasse. The fuel will be used to pump water, bake bread, and power hospitals. The Serbs have also reactivated a natural gas pipeline. Sarajevans can cook at last, but the facilities are not guarantee. They're controlled by Serbian command. In the hospital, generators finally provide welcome relief. Without power, treating patients has been difficult and too often extremely dangerous. Even life support systems have had to be turned off. Production of thick, doughy bread has resumed. The city's favorite commodity after cigarettes has been off the menu for 10 days. While the Bosnian Muslims are in Sarajevo being attacked by the Serbs, in Mostar they're under heavy fire from the Croats. It appears HBO forces are preparing for a major assault on the city.

MR. MUDD: The U.S. announced today it will send 40 warplanes to Europe to protect the U.N.'s safe haven from Muslims in Bosnia. A Pentagon spokesman said the deployment would include four special forces AC-130 gunships which were recently used in Somalia. The aircraft will be part of the force that will include the French, the British, and the Dutch. And that's it for the News Summary. Just ahead on the NewsHour, the big flood story and genes and homosexuality. FOCUS - EDITORS' VIEWS - DATELINE: DEVASTATION

MR. LEHRER: Life along the flooded Mississippi and other Midwest rivers is our lead story tonight, and we get it from six newspaper editors and writers who are living and reporting it right now. From north to south, they come from St. Paul, Minnesota; La Crosse, Wisconsin; Davenport, Iowa; Des Moines, Iowa; Quincy, Illinois; and St. Louis, Missouri. Let's start in St. Paul. Denise Johnson is an editorial page writer for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The worst has come and gone for you, has it not, Ms. Johnson?

MS. JOHNSON: Yes. We're in that kind of mode now. The cleanup is beginning, particularly in urban areas, although agriculture has been hit very hard, and of course, things are still very difficult for them.

MR. LEHRER: We have some pictures that were taken on July 12th, which was, which was Monday, that shows your, your city underwater, at least part of it. There we go. The -- can you see those? You see the skyline of your city?

MS. JOHNSON: Yes.

MR. LEHRER: What are we looking at there?

MS. JOHNSON: Very high water levels. The Mississippi River. In fact, our printing plant for the Pioneer Press was in danger of being underwater, however that did not happen. You can see that the levels are really very high, up to the bridges. There have been bridges in the twin cities area that have been closed down. Many of them are reopened, however.

MR. LEHRER: And it's, and the water's going down, right?

MS. JOHNSON: Yes, it is. Indeed, it is.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. How did the city react to, to this?

MS. JOHNSON: Well, of course, there was a lot of concern, a lot of, a lot of help, a lot of caring, an outpouring of support, volunteers showing up asking what they could do, a lot of church organizations. The state has had a real aggressive response, working very hard with, with FEMA in order to set up regional emergency centers. In fact, five more counties in our area were added to the list of emergency type counties, and three centers were open today.

MR. LEHRER: Do you think there's going to be any lasting damage to your city?

MS. JOHNSON: There will -- I think the bigger impact will be toward tourism industry up north because of rains over drought, the spring, into the summer, and with agriculture. The estimates are 400 million to a billion in terms of impact on farms.

MR. LEHRER: Okay. Well, thank you. Let's move on now to Wisconsin, to David Fuselier, who's the editor in chief of the La Crosse Tribune and he's with us tonight from La Crescent, Minnesota. Mr. Fuselier, we have some shots also of your city that were taken on the 25th through the 28th of June. We've got some flooded streets that I'm sure are going to bring back some bad memories for you. Do you see those?

MR. FUSELIER: Oh, yes.

MR. LEHRER: How would you describe what happened to La Crosse?

MR. FUSELIER: Well, La Crosse had minor flooding. There was more flooding on the Black River, that's a tributary from here, and more flooding downriver from here, but there are flood plains all around this city that the water runs into when it gets that high.

MR. LEHRER: Did it bring out the best or the worst in the people of La Crosse, Wisconsin?

MR. FUSELIER: Oh, always brings out the best, brings out the sense of humor too I think. I was in the park here and one day of this flood, and people were diving off of picnic tables into the water, swimming in it. Most of the people here grew up along the river. They lived along the river for a long time. They know that the river brings some penalties from time to time, but it brings a lot of good things too.

MR. LEHRER: This is just a part of life in La Crosse, Wisconsin, is that right?

MR. FUSELIER: Well, yeah, very much so, but this is a little more part of life than we'd like to see, I think.

MR. LEHRER: Sure. All right. Let's move now to Iowa to Daniel Hayes who's the editor of the Quad City Times in Davenport. He joins us tonight from the studios just across the river in Moline, Illinois. Mr. Hayes, how are you today?

MR. HAYES: High.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. We have some shots that were taken on the 6th of July of your town. Of course, these were, I don't have to tell you, they were all over everybody's television set. Your city looked like a lake there as we see in these shots. Tell us what we're looking at there, that famous baseball stadium shot.

MR. HAYES: That's, that's our levee where we have a beautiful park and all sorts of activities.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. But that's what this is? What are we looking at right now? This is downtown, but what was that we were looking at? Was that a park we were looking at?

MR. HAYES: This is 2nd Street. That was part of the downtown we were looking at, the park area. This is more of West 2nd Street, downtown Davenport. Water's going down and spirits are going up. Water's dropped about a foot and a half since the record crest a week ago today. Thousands of people are still very far away, out of it. Five hundred homes, two hundred and fifty businesses damaged in the immediate quad cities, mostly in Davenport. Just down river to the south in Buffalo, Iowa, 200 homes and businesses just down from there, in Keysburg, Illinois, 2/3 of the town, 200 homes, so there's a lot of cleanup to do. That's the main order of business right now is to try to get it behind us. Actually as we look down river and mainly inland to Des Moines, where a quarter of a million people are without water, we're feeling pretty fortunate. Our tourism industry is back and going. A riverboat went into operation last night. Our biggest, traditionally our biggest celebration of the year, is a week away.

MR. LEHRER: Are you going ahead with it?

MR. HAYES: Yes, we are. It, it's the biggest event of the year. It consists of the Vicks Spider Mick Memorial Jazz Festival, downtown street festival, and the Quad City Times Vick 7 Road Race, one of the top seven road races in the country. As I said before, all that happens down on the levee. It's torn up a little bit. Some adjustments in the sites, but you bet, we're all ready for something good to happen, and it's about time.

MR. LEHRER: All right. You mentioned Des Moines. Dennis Ryerson is with us. He's editor of the editorial page of the Des Moines Register. Dennis, it isn't over for you in Des Moines by a long shot, is it?

MR. RYERSON: Hardly so. We're into about day five of no water at all in town. This isn't a situation like it was in Milwaukee several weeks ago where they didn't have drinking water. We have no water. There's no water for showers, no water for toilets, no water for bathing. People are rather ingenious in how they're coping with it. Some peopleare just standing out in the backyard when it rains with their children and bathing out there. People have found ingenious ways to deal with toilets and what not to make it work. It's a horrible inconvenience.

MR. LEHRER: Sorry. I just wanted to tell people what we're looking at here. That is the water plant, is it not?

MR. RYERSON: This is the water plant.

MR. LEHRER: It was shut a couple of days ago. Yeah.

MR. RYERSON: Early Sunday morning it was inundated by water from the Raccoon River. These are the sandbaggers, did an enormous job in trying to raise the level of the dikes around the water plant so that if there's another crest, the water plant will be protected, that they can continue with the cleanup operations.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. What's it like to live without water, without running water?

MR. RYERSON: Well --

MR. LEHRER: Most of us can't imagine that.

MR. RYERSON: It's not a lot of fun. It's the kind of situation people are showing a lot of good humor, putting up with it pretty well. There are something like 92 sites around the city where they've got water delivery stations set up where large tankers have come in. A lot of people from smaller communities are coming in with tanks in the back of their pick up trucks and other kinds of vessels to provide water for Des Moines. Some people are driving thirty to fifty miles just to find a laundromat so they can take their clothes to have them washed. It's just been a horrible inconvenience. There's also a matter of the health and safety that's of great concern to city officials. The mayor today just issued a declaration ordering all non-essential people out of the downtown area, essentially saying, don't come to work. Normally there are 60,000 people who work in downtown Des Moines. That's tapered off to just a trickle, because for some time they didn't have power. Power was restored, but now there's no water, so when you've got a high rise office building, no sprinkler system, no way to put out a fire, it's a pretty hazardous situation, so those of us that are working downtown are in operations without air condition. It's hot. It's stuffy. We're wearing flood uniforms. They're casual shirts, shorts, and running shoes. And that's about the way it works.

MR. LEHRER: Do you think Des Moines, Iowa, is going to be a different place after this flood is over?

MR. RYERSON: I don't know if it'll be a different place. I think in some ways this has been a big boost. The fact that we've received a lot of national attention and sympathy for what's happening, but also the heightened sense of community that I think has been created by all of this, good deeds, the reaching out that people have done, the sense of humor that they've displayed, the sense of caring. We're finding all sorts of things that are happening. We're running a package on our editorial pages tomorrow morning. Readers have called in the good deeds that have been done for them and by others, including such things as a five year old boy showing up a sandbag site with a hunk of bologna, a loaf of bread and some Kool Aid and wanting to know who wants food, so those kinds of things are happening, and that's the fun part of this disaster.

MR. LEHRER: That's terrific. Let's move further down the river now in the Illinois side to Joseph Conover. He's the editor of the Quincy Harold Whig. You got a crisis on your hands right now tonight, do you not?

MR. CONOVER: Yes, we do, Jim. Tonight's the critical night. The river is supposed to crest sometime before midnight. It's at three times its normal height. The predicted crest is roughly 32 feet. That's about three and a half feet over the record crest in the flood of 1973. So this is very important to us. You referred to the bridge earlier.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah.

MR. CONOVER: In the broadcast. About a fourth of our work force crosses that bridge every day, and about a third of our local economy is dependent on that bridge. So the people at Anapide Manufacturing, which is a truck driving firm, and the people in Missouri whose livelihoods depend on this and the city's livelihoods, we're working darn hard to keep that levee there on the Missouri side of the river and keep that bridge open.

MR. LEHRER: What are the odds tonight do you think? Here we've got a picture of right outside of Quincy. Can you tell us what we're looking at there? Can you see that?

MR. CONOVER: Well, I don't see your video, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: I'm sorry. Well, what we've got is a lot of water and huge, what it looks like, grain elevators. There's the levee. I see the levee on the other side that -- well, I'm not sure what I'm looking at. We're just seeing an awful lot of water. It must be - -

MR. CONOVER: I see now.

MR. LEHRER: You do. Okay.

MR. CONOVER: That's just the river. Quincy --

MR. LEHRER: There's the bridge. That's the bridge, right?

MR. CONOVER: That's the bridge that's open.

MR. LEHRER: Okay.

MR. CONOVER: The old bridge is to the right of the picture.

MR. LEHRER: Wow.

MR. CONOVER: That one's closed. The new bridge is the one that's open and they're working to protect.

MR. LEHRER: And what -- I'd just ask you what you think the odds are making it. What do you think?

MR. CONOVER: I would hesitate. I would hesitate to say what the odds are. It's held so far.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah.

MR. CONOVER: I would like to think the odds are in our favor.

MR. LEHRER: How are your people holding up?

MR. CONOVER: The people are holding up fine. The community, just like everywhere else up and down the river, the community outpouring here has been just tremendous. We have thousands of volunteers for the last week. They've been in the parking lot at the Quincy University stadium filling sandbags. The city made this possible with sand and trucks and bags and ties, but the volunteers have been doing the work, everything from kids to grandparents, and they're putting out about a hundred and fifty thousand sandbags a day for the last week from this site. Again, the agricultural impact is the greatest here. In the eight county area on both sides of the river that Quincy is in the center of, we have about 120,000 acres of some of the nation's best farmland underwater. We've got towns that are underwater, bridges underwater. The tragedy of the whole thing is just immense, but the spirit's good, and everybody's been pulling together, and we have people coming in and calling WGEM Radio, what can we do, what we can bring, everything from zip lock bags for the National Guardsmen to keep their wallets in to doing their laundry to filling sandbags and feeding people and this sort of thing.

MR. LEHRER: Okay.

MR. CONOVER: So the spirit is, is really great.

MR. LEHRER: Delighted to hear that. Finally, let's go back across the river to Missouri and further south to William Woo, the editor of the St. Louis Post Dispatch. What's the situation in St. Louis, Mr. Woo?

MR. WOO: Well, the situation here is not nearly as desperate at the moment as it is in some other places, but it's bad enough. We have a metropolitan area of about 2 1/2 billion people, and of this less than 1/2 percent, about 12,000 people have been forced from their home, and this --

MR. LEHRER: We're showing it. Can you see this picture?

MR. WOO: Oh, I can see it, yes. There's the gateway arch and the water is just about up to, up to where it -- that

MR. LEHRER: This was two days ago.

MR. WOO: Yeah.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah.

MR. WOO: The river is going up to 45 feet on, on Monday. The crest has been pushed back day after day, after day, and it will be pushed back after, after that. In terms of the total population, as I was saying, most people here are not even inconvenienced by the flood, but for 12,000 people or so in this area, which is quite a lot of men and women and kids, it is a bad thing, and they are coping as well as they can.

MR. LEHRER: But you're on -- don't you have a terrific business impact as well because of the river traffic on the bridge that's not happening, right?

MR. WOO: Well, that's right.

MR. LEHRER: I don't mean the river. I mean the river traffic -- not on the bridge but on the river itself. You have barge traffic.

MR. WOO: The river is shut down.

MR. LEHRER: That's what I mean, yeah.

MR. WOO: And none of the barge traffic is going. This has been a boon to the trucking companies, and the railroads are, are running full bore and coming, coming to St. Louis. And I can say that it hasn't affected the riverboat gambling trade either.

MR. LEHRER: Is that right?

MR. WOO: As men and women a few miles up the river and a few miles down the river are desperately piling up sandbags in these gambling boats, some of them connected to shore with a 200 foot gang plank, you know, there are these Babylonian scenes of people gambling away and while outside the flood goes on and rages.

MR. LEHRER: Well, look, now to all six of you, beginning with you, Mr. Fuselier, in La Crosse, you know massive federal help is, is coming. The President has asked for 2.5 billion. Mr. Panetta said on this program last night it could go as high as 5 billion by the time it's over. There's talk now of even going even higher today. The question has arisen: Why should people who choose to live along the side of a river that is known to flood be compensated when the river floods?

MR. FUSELIER: Yeah. Well, I've heard that question a lot. Damage in Wisconsin I think is about 300 million. We certainly appreciate all that federal money you want to send our way but, in fact, this is a fairly conservative area. And I've heard it talked a lot about here that if someone chooses, in fact, to live along the river, that the Mississippi River floods is not news to anybody. It's been flooding since long before any of us were here, and when people make those choices -- I just talked to one guy the other day who said that I live on top of a bluff and I get about twice as much snow as a result of that; should I get federal aid because I choose to live on a bluff? So aid to flood victims here is not completely without its opponents.

MR. LEHRER: How do you feel about that in St. Paul, Ms. Johnson?

MS. JOHNSON: Well, much of the damage here has centered around the agricultural industry, and I think for people who are concerned about whether or not the aid should be forthcoming, this is where food is coming from. It's where it's provided, and I think we have a responsibility to make sure that we bail people out who are in the agricultural industry.

MR. LEHRER: That's different, you're saying, than being, than living in a house that's right by a river and having it flooded out, is that, is that what you mean?

MS. JOHNSON: Yes, that is, that is different, but I think that's the majority of the damage that we suffered here.

MR. LEHRER: Right.

MS. JOHNSON: There have been some people who have had their homes flooded but not nearly as devastating as the farmers.

MR. LEHRER: Now, Mr. Hayes, Davenport does not have a flood wall, is that right?

MR. HAYES: That's correct.

MR. LEHRER: Now, do you all feel, feel badly now that you don't have a flood wall, and is that, is that just the price you pay for, for beauty, or what's the deal? Explain the local -- is that it?

MR. HAYES: That's going to be the big debate around here. It happened after the 1965 flood, the big one, that we've now eclipsed, and it came before the city council in three major times and every time it got voted down because the feeling that we are the river and we block off one of our major assets, the view of the river, is equally devastating. I think it's important to keep the historical perspective. This is a one in one hundred year flood. That's what they told us in 1965. It's been 28 years. It will be another twenty-eight years or a hundred years or what. There are a lot of people that are asking that question now. The mayor who pretty much was around the clock with this thing is now saying he wants to see a flood wall. So that's going to be a big item for us.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. In Des Moines, Mr. Ryerson, how is this flood viewed, as just the price of living in Des Moines, Iowa, or is it like a hurricane, the Gods didn't like Des Moines, or what?

MR. RYERSON: Well, a few people are saying that we're getting some sort of just revenge for our, our terrible ways. I, I think that we're looking at this as a horrible disaster that it's more like a hurricane than something that happens regularly. This is looked at as a one in five hundred year flood. A lot of businesses, a lot of homes were located in areas that aren't regularly flooded. They weren't expecting this, and I think that's where the question of federal disaster aid really comes to play. Nobody is going to be made whole by all of this, and I think what's going to happen, it'll make the difference between a lot of businesses from surviving or going out of business, and I think potentially the economic impact of not doing something is much greater than, than of spending the money to help these people survive.

MR. LEHRER: We had, we've had reports every night the last several nights. We had one from your city last night, Des Moines, and a woman was saying her house is underwater and she said, hey, look, I've been paying federal taxes all my life, it's my turn now. Is that generally the view of the folks in Des Moines?

MR. RYERSON: I think so. Iowans are fairly tight with their pocket books, as are everybody. But I think people here, no matter what political party you're part of, they're thinking there are some basic things that we expect government to do. One of those things is to provide help when we have a truly significant disaster, and that's what this really is.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Conover, what's the view in Quincy? I mean, you all made the clean decision to live on the Mississippi River. Is what's happening to you now part of the bargain?

MR. CONOVER: Well, this question has come up, and it's struck me as sort of a silly question. I, I think the question of whether you help people who live in the flood plain was answered when they built the first dam and they built the first levee. And if you work by that same logic, I guess you, we would resist helping people in Florida, because they live where there are hurricanes, or people who live in California, because they choose to live in a state that has earthquakes. People are in need. The agricultural economy is badly damaged, and people are in need, and they need help, and they pay taxes too, and it's just something we, we need to do. We need to help them out. Quincy, for example, in the midst of all of its woes, managed to send several tank trucks of drinking water up to Des Moines here this week, so we help each other out, and I think there's perhaps a governmental responsibility too.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Woo, what's your view of this?

MR. WOO: Well, I think we ought to separate the issue of flood insurance from the issue of flood relief. In terms of flood relief, as some other editors have noted, it's simply a federal responsibility to come to stricken, to come to stricken people, and I can say that in this area, FEMA has opened up shop very quickly and already some checks have been, have been distributed. On the issue of flood insurance though, we need to bear in mind that only about 17 percent of people who live in the flood plains actually have flood insurance. So we're not talking about massive insuring of all these people who recklessly live in the flood plains. Many of those who live there live in very modest circumstances. You know, we're talking of maybe a twenty, twenty- five thousand dollar house. If they could live out of the flood plain in a $50,000 house, they'd do it. So I, I think we need to bear in mind the economic circumstance of these people [a], and [b] that very, very few in terms of, in terms of the overall number there actually are going to be helped by this flood insurance.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. Generally, generally speaking in St. Paul, just quickly, Ms. Johnson, are you -- have you gotten what you wanted in terms of relief from the federal government and other agencies when you had a problem in St. Paul?

MS. JOHNSON: I think the relationship here with FEMA has been very good. Of course, people are aware of what, what happened in Florida and concerned about acting slowly and so forth, that has not been the case in Minnesota. We were fortunate in a way in that this problem began to develop in April and in May, and we were declared a disaster area quite early. FEMA came in, worked very well with our state emergency operations, and so I think people have been pretty pleased with their performance here.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Fuselier in La Crosse, have you gotten what you have wanted when you, when you wanted it and needed it?

MR. FUSELIER: I thought FEMA did a very good job here. You know, we got the flood first, so it wasn't a big national story. When it got here, they weren't responding to national pressure of any sort, but they had an office in Black River Falls where flooding was very bad almost immediately, and let's say something about another federal agency, the Corps of Engineers too. One reason the flood wasn't very bad in La Crosse was because of all the work the Corps of Engineers has done here for about the past sixty or seventy years building dikes, building canals, preparing for this sort of flood. They never get any mention when the floods come, but they did a terrific job in protecting La Crosse from the worst of what's happened.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Hayes, what about the situation in Davenport? Did you get what you wanted when you needed it the most?

MR. HAYES: Absolutely. People from FEMA are working their hearts out right now. I'd like to echo what Dave Fuselier said about the Corps of Engineers. The National Guard was all over everything and protected our water supply right away. Everyone has just been wonderful.

MR. LEHRER: Is there anything you don't have now that you need?

MR. HAYES: Less water.

MR. LEHRER: Less water. Right. Okay. I can't do you any good there. Mr. Ryerson, you also want less water. What else do you need in Des Moines? You've still got critical needs. You've got, you've got enough water, but you've got the wrong kind, right?

MR. RYERSON: We can't, we can't drink it or do much else.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah.

MR. RYERSON: We need patience, and I guess also, I think people need to understand the whole city is not underwater. A lot of things are functioning very well, and as soon as we get this water thing licked, we'll be in pretty good shape. It's going to take probably until Monday now before we get any water at all out of the tap and probably 30 days or so after that before we get drinking water, so we've got a long siege here. For the next couple of days, it's going to be really inconvenient, and then after that it'll be more of a minor inconvenience, buying tap water or buying drinking water, or going to one of the locations and picking up drinking water that's provided free.

MR. LEHRER: Generally speaking, Mr. Ryerson, are the people of Des Moines pleased with what, with the response that they have received from outside Des Moines to their plight?

MR. RYERSON: So far I think that's true. Of course, we'll know more in a week or so after we get through this. We're still cleaning up --

MR. LEHRER: Sure.

MR. RYERSON: -- and dealing with it. But the federal officials have done very well. They came in very quickly providing purification plants, water purification plants for hospitals. The local state and federal officials I think have done a very, very good job responding very quickly and honestly and candidly with our people.

MR. LEHRER: Now, Mr. Conover, you've got, still got many needs on, on your table as well. How do you feel that the response has been in Quincy?

MR. CONOVER: At this point it's a little early to tell. FEMA has opened an office in the middle school here in Quincy, and it has an office down in Hannibal, Missouri, which is 17 miles to the south of us. They've responded quickly. As far as I know, this activity is working properly, and of course, the American Red Cross is very active here as is the Salvation Army, and we've had volunteers from all over the Midwest come in to help us out. At the moment, we just need a lot of prayer, I think, to, to get through the night perhaps.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. Mr. Woo, and things have gone so far, have gone well in St. Louis so far in terms of what you've wanted and needed?

MR. WOO: Well, we're not really quite sure I think what it is we're going to need.

MR. LEHRER: Sure.

MR. WOO: Because the crest, the main crest of the flood isn't due here till, isn't due here till Wednesday. We have a -- we are right just about on the confluence of the Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers. There is rain in Kansas and Nebraska today. I came through a rainstorm here to get to the, to get to the studio. So I don't think we're quite certain as to, as to the magnitude of what's going to happen. I thought Dennis Ryerson used just the right word when he said "siege." The, the Corps and others are saying here that the river's going to be above flood stage well into the middle of August. We're talking about a long time without people getting back into their homes. We're talking about a long time with kids worried about being separated from their pets, let's say, or from their toys. The whole issue of a siege psychology with this, with this flood has yet to be, has yet to be played out.

MR. LEHRER: Well, Mr. Woo, gentlemen, Ms. Johnson, thank you all six for being with us, and good luck to all six of you and your friends, family, and colleagues out there. FOCUS - SEXUAL CHEMISTRY

MR. MUDD: Next, the possible biological underpinnings of homosexuality. On a day when the White House and the Pentagon were trying to settle their policy on gays in the military, a new scientific report suggests that being homosexual may be linked to genetics. The study, the latest in the succession of studies on sexual orientation, appears in tomorrow's issue of Science Magazine, and claims of homosexuality in some men appears to be partly inherited. Correspondent Jeffrey Kaye of station KCET-Los Angeles reports on the study and its potential political impact.

ERIC STULTS: I think I was gay from birth.

MR. KAYE: Like many gay men, Eric Stults believes his whole sexuality is innate.

ERIC STULTS: I have no romantic or erotic interest in women, anymore so than in a baboon. It's like a different species. It just goes against my nature.

MR. KAYE: His younger brother, Evan, is also gay.

EVAN STULTS: It's not a choice of a lifestyle. It's not a conscious choice. It's sort of following of a natural path.

MR. KAYE: The Stults brothers and their family were subjects in a groundbreaking study at the National Institutes of Health, the NIH.

SPOKESMAN: Hi, Eric. Good to see you again.

MR. KAYE: The report published by the Journal of Science offers the strongest evidence to date that male homosexuality may be a hereditary trait.

DR. DEAN HAMER, National Institutes of Health: What we found in a nutshell is a direct linkage between a genetic locus on the X chromosome and sexual orientation in men. And this is the first real physical, direct evidence that people's sexuality is at least influenced by their genetic inheritance. This type of research clearly shows that developing as a gay or lesbian is just as natural as is developing as a heterosexual man or woman.

MR. KAYE: Molecular biologist Dean Hamer and his NIH colleagues are not claiming to have found a gay gene, but they do believe they're closing in on a DNA fragment that controls some aspect of sexual orientation in gay men.

DR. DEAN HAMER: [interviewing Older Stults] How many children do you have?

TAYLOR STULTS: Three, three sons.

MR. KAYE: By examining families like the Stultses, Hamer found many more homosexual relatives than would have been expected by chance. Of the 114 gay, white men he studied, 13 1/2 percent had gay brothers, a finding consistent with earlier surveys, versus an estimated 2 to 4 percent of homosexuals in the general population. But Hamer also found something new.

DR. DEAN HAMER: When we looked at the families of gay men, we found that there were increased rates of being gay in the maternal uncles but not paternal uncles.

MR. KAYE: In addition, Hamer found unexpectedly high numbers of gay cousins on the mother's side. So he narrowed his search to the X chromosome which men inherit from their mothers. Then he began analyzing the X chromosomes of gay brothers to see if they shared any unusual genetic material. Hamer isolated a region on the tip of the X chromosome that contains several hundred genes. He says at least one of them influences sexual orientation.

DR. DEAN HAMER: The way that this type of study works is that we select out pairs of brothers who share a homosexual orientation, and then we look for regions of identity on the chromosome. And we were able to find such a region. We can't say that that locus affects sexual orientation per se, that is, we can't say that it somehow wires a person's brain so that they're attracted to men or attracted to women, but somehow ultimately it must affect their sexual orientation.

MR. KAYE: In Seattle, the Men's Chorus turns a Cole Porter standard into a celebration of homosexuality in a concert capping off Gay Pride Week.

[MEN'S CHORUS SINGING]

MR. KAYE: For accompanist Evan Stults, who marched with the Chorus in the annual parade, taking part in the Hamer study was an equally political act.

EVAN STULTS: [at parade] Hey, the Christian Coalition is here.

EVAN STULTS: The reason why I wanted to participate relate to my feelings as I sit in front of a TV or sit and read a paper and experience the incredible rhetoric that occurs in this culture about homosexuality. I was interested in participating in a study that might try and move that dialogue, move that rhetoric away from discussions of morality if it were proven that there were some genetic indicator.

ERIC STULTS: I think it might help persuade some people to look at, look upon us with a bit more open-mindedness.

MR. KAYE: Eric, Evan, and David Stults were raised by open-minded parents. Of the three, only David, Eric's fraternal twin, is heterosexual. Differences between the twins were apparent at an early age.

JANET STULTS: I guess I was naive. But I, I always celebrated the differences in our boys.

MR. KAYE: Janet Stults and her husband encouraged the boys to find their own identities. One Christmas the twins posed with the gifts they'd requested. David, the heterosexual brother, with his war toys, a rifle, a tank, an army tent, and Eric with his baby doll, kitchen set, and cardboard house.

JANET STULTS: I didn't think about their sexuality. I thought about what wonderful boys they all were, and they were all giving us different things to enjoy.

MR. KAYE: Eric didn't reveal his homosexuality to his parents until he was a college sophomore.

TAYLOR STULTS: My love was there as strong as ever, and I thought, I realized that I had a lot to learn, because I'd known of homosexuality as a kind of thing that was elsewhere or it happened to other people, and so my feelings were not hostile, but I just realized that I was needing some help from people, Eric and others, who could be helpful to my, to my understandings.

MR. KAYE: Coincidentally, Taylor Stults's Antioch College classmate, Richard Pillard, is a psychiatrist with a personal interest in understanding and researching the genetics of sexual orientation.

DR. RICHARD PILLARD, Psychiatrist: I was realizing in my twenties that I was a gay person, a gay man, I also began to realize that my sister and brother were both gay. There are three of us in the family. The leading theory of the time was that homosexual orientation was the result of some developmental abnormality. And that just seemed to me wrong.

MR. KAYE: Pillard, a professor at Boston University's School of Medicine, is one of a number of scientists who laid the groundwork for Hamer's research. In a family study published last year, Pillard found that the identical twin of a gay man has a 52 percent chance of also being gay [52 percent of monozygotic cotwins]. He believes the findings point toward a very strong genetic basis for homosexuality.

DR. RICHARD PILLARD: Too often in the past I think parents had tended to blame themselves or to try to find something in the way they reared their children to account for the child's gayness. Since there is a genetic predisposition, it may simply be the whisper of the genes showing through.

MR. KAYE: Another gay scientist with gay siblings, Simon Levay, has become the most outspoken proponent of a biological basis for homosexuality. He studied the brains of gay men who like his lover had died of AIDS. Levay made news around the world in 1991 with his discovery that a portion of the hypothalamus, the part of the brain responsible for the sex drive, was smaller in gay men than in heterosexual males.

SIMON LEVAY, Neurobiologist: It's really showing that a part of the brain that's involved in sex behavior has these structural differences between gay and straight men. I think it reinforces the notion that gay men have always had about themselves, that their sexual orientation is not something so trivial or superficial or something they can put on or take off, or could easily change. It's really a deep set part of their personality.

MR. KAYE: Is that perhaps a grandiose conclusion to draw after looking at only 19 gay men?

SIMON LEVAY: Well, only, and I took a long time to analyze that number of brains, it's hard work.

MR. KAYE: Levay has since left the scientific life to write, lecture, and campaign for gay rights.

SIMON LEVAY: Whatever the accomplishments of science, we won't gain our rights by the research of any scientist. We'll gain our rights by fighting for them.

MR. KAYE: But while Levay spreads the message that homosexuals are born that way, critics, including some scientists, argue that too much has been made of the biological and genetic research. At Harvard University, neurobiologist Evan Balaban studies how behavior, in this case bird calls, is influenced by genes and the brain. Although he supports gay rights, Balaban believes that studies linking biology and homosexuality are all flawed.

EVAN BALABAN, Neurobiologist: I believe that the science in the studies is really not up to the standard that you would want to be able to accept the conclusions that have been drawn from some of them.

MR. KAYE: Of Levay's conclusion that gay men have smaller portions of the hypothalamus, Balaban argues that something as simple as stress levels could account for the difference. As for Pillard's twin studies, Balaban questions the genetic explanation since the twins were raised together. He says that confuses the effects of nature and nurture. And he questions the latest report by Dean Hamer linking part of the X chromosome to sexual orientation. Balaban thinks that conclusion could overlook other traits the gay subjects may have in common.

EVAN BALABAN: Since this method relies on just a correlation between two things, you would wan to ask: Is there any other aspect of these individuals that is also similar besides their sexual orientation? Because a correlation, anything --

MR. KAYE: Eyes, length of nose, anything like that.

EVAN BALABAN: You name it. I mean, this is the problem with these kinds of studies, and the example I always like to give is that it is probably possible for many years of data to come up with some significant correlation between stock market prices and phases of the moon. And I think it would be a mistake to connect phases of the moon as causing changes in stock market prices without first looking at other obvious things such as economic indicators. And so in a way, if you are only correlating differences in genetic variation with one aspect of people, you're risking doing something similarly ludicrous.

MR. KAYE: Could there be other things that you didn't look for that all these people had in common that had nothing to do with being gay? Could they all be left-handed? Could they all have big ear lobes? Could they all have large noses?

DR. DEAN HAMER: Well, they weren't all left-handed. They didn't all have big ears, and they didn't all have big noses, nor did they share any other obvious characteristics that we assayed for. It's also possible that such characteristics exist, but if they do, it will then follow that that characteristic in turn is correlated with being gay.

MR. KAYE: Correlation between homosexuality and biology are being welcomed by many in the gay community. Most of the people we spoke with at this Seattle Gay Pride Parade said the latest scientific findings validate their own feelings. But any notion that homosexuality is inborn is hotly disputed by those Freudian psychoanalysts who claim to be able to cure it. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association took homosexuality off its list of mental disorders. The leader of the fight against that move, which he still feels was a mistake, was Dr. Charles Socarides.

DR. CHARLES SOCARIDES, Psychiatrist: In my opinion, the causation for homosexuality has been discovered now psychoanalytically, which is really counter to all the genetic studies. We feel that the homosexual, the homosexual becomes homosexual due to a disturbance in the early development. The basis is perhaps an abdicating father who would not allow the child to identify with him and a mother that was too psychologically crushing, so he is unable to form his individual identity as a boy.

MR. KAYE: The classical Freudian explanation for homosexuality - -

MAN: Oh, God. I'm sorry.

MR. KAYE: -- is, as you know, an aloof father and an overprotective mother.

MR. KAYE: Gay brothers, Ralph and David White, were among the volunteers for the Hamer genetic study.

DAVID WHITE: We did not necessarily grow up with Ward and June Cleaver, but we did grow up with two loving parents who were normal human beings and may have had faux pauxs at moments but, no.

RALPH WHITE: This Freudian's theory, it's this sort of slap that suggests that had they done their jobs right, you wouldn't have turned out this way, and that I'm tired of. I mean, I don't believe that the way I turned out is because of something that my parents failed to do.

MR. KAYE: Just as some psychoanalysts don't subscribe to a biological explanation for homosexuality, neither do religious conservatives. The Rev. Louis Sheldon is a Presbyterian minister who heads the Traditional Values Coalition. Sheldon lobbies against gay rights and resents any suggestion that homosexuality might be something other than an immoral choice.

REV. LOUIS SHELDON, Traditional Values Coalition: Homosexuality is not genetic. I would say basically it's a very, very simple thing. It's so simple it's complicated. The body parts don't fit. And I don't believe nature would do that to the human race.

MR. KAYE: Might your feelings change if it is proven that homosexuality is biologically caused?

REV. LOUIS SHELDON: The feelings would not change on my part, because if people are, have the propensity to be homosexual from some reason or like alcoholic problems that arise or some kind of propensity for that, you still cannot justify the lifestyle.

MR. KAYE: Sheldon views the gay civil rights movement with alarm. He fears that genetic explanations for homosexuality will make more people feel it's okay to be gay. But what the Rev. Sheldon considers worrisome, Torie Osborn welcomes.

TORIE OSBORN, National Gay & Lesbian Task Force: [speaking before crowd] I love you! You look so beautiful! This is the beginning of the Queer Nineties!

MR. KAYE: As executive director of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, Osborn was a major player on the political scene who more than once has locked horns with Louis Sheldon.

TORIE OSBORN: Much of what the Lou Sheldons, the Christian Coalition, the Pat Robertsons, the Pat Buchanans say in their arguments against us is that these people choose to be this way. So I think an effective argument, an effective political argument, effective even sort of legal argument is that no, in fact, increasing scientific evidence shows that we don't choose, or most of us anyway don't choose to be this way.

MR. KAYE: Nonetheless, notwithstanding your opinion of Lou Sheldon, don't you think he, he does speak for many Americans?

TORIE OSBORN: I don't fool myself about this. People are still uncomfortable with us, what I call the "yuck" factor. They, when confronted with the idea of homosexuality or a discussion about it, people just want it to go away. They want to bury it. They want it to ask, don't tell, you know, and it's, and that's because we are at the beginning of a conversation with America about an issue that's very uncomfortable.

MR. KAYE: It's more than just a conversation. As gays rally for civil rights on issue after issue from the military to motherhood, they confront America's most cherished institutions. Gay leaders hoped the scientific studies could be powerful weapons in anti- discrimination battles. As more and more gays emerge from the closet, some meet forces trying to push them back in. In 1978, just as he was coming out, Eric Stults was brutally assaulted in a Dartmouth College dormitory. He wound up in intensive care.

ERIC STULTS: I was very close to death and was attached to all kinds of life support systems, and they said that I'd been found in the back of my closet of my dorm room, and I'd been there for seven days evidently before someone had found me, and I was naked and covered with cuts and bruises, and I immediately thought, well, I've been fag bashed.

MR. KAYE: While few gays have been so violently abused, many have experienced some form of discrimination. In 1982, Ralph White says he was asked to leave his job as legislative aide to Sen. Sam Nunn simply because he was gay.

RALPH WHITE: It was very painful. I now understands what it means to be dismissed from a job because someone doesn't like who you are.

MR. KAYE: And do you think these kinds of studies that are coming out might prevent the kinds of things that happen to you?

RALPH WHITE: I'd like to hope so.

MR. KAYE: According to polls, most Americans believe homosexuality is immoral and oppose gay rights. But those who accept a biological explanation tend to be more tolerant. With so much at stake, some are questioning the motives of the scientists doing the research.

DR. CHARLES SOCARIDES: It's remarkable that these studies are coming out mostly by gay scientists in an effort to prove that homosexuality is innate. I think this is very ill advised.

MR. KAYE: Why?

DR. CHARLES SOCARIDES: I think it has a political agenda.

MR. KAYE: Do you believe that there's a political environment outside the lab, or maybe even inside the lab, that's driving this kind of research?

DR. DEAN HAMER: I think that there are certainly political and social consequences of this research, but at least in my laboratory it certainly is not what drives the research. Scientific studies of the sort that we've done should be judged solely on their scientific merits.

MR. KAYE: Hamer's lab is pressing forward. His next step will be to isolate the gene that may be responsible for sexual orientation and then try to figure out how it works. Meanwhile, one of Hamer's colleagues, Dr. Angela Paritucci, is conducting a similar study on lesbians.

SPOKESPERSON: This side of the family certainly is extremely interesting.

MR. KAYE: Preliminary findings indicate that lesbianism is also an inherited trait, and the investigators are hunting for the genetic clues to sexual orientation in women. But as advances are made in this research, scientists like Hamer worry their findings could be misused. Conjuring a future in which homosexuals would be genetically altered or potentially gay babies would be aborted.

DR. DEAN HAMER: Our research is not designed to try and test whether or not people or gay or lesbian, but, of course, it's always possible that in the future somebody less scrupulous than us, for example an insurance company, might try to design some sort of blood test or amniocentesis test which would identify people's sexual orientation. I think that that would be fundamentally wrong. I think it would be unethical, and I think that because it's wrong to discriminate against people based on their genes.

MR. KAYE: Besides, even the strongest proponents of a genetic theory of homosexuality are not ruling out environment as a contributing factor. Right now all scientists can say with certainly is that sexuality is complex. But as the debate over gay rights escalates, the mounting biological evidence will be thrust to center stage. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again the major story this Thursday remained the Midwest flood. Rose in some cities, receded in others. President Clinton met with congressional leaders about aid for the area. He plans to make his third visit to the region Saturday. Good night, Roger.

MR. MUDD: Good night, Jim. We'll be back tomorrow with coverage of the flood and our regular Friday political analysis. I'm Roger Mudd. Thank you, and good night.