The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

Intro

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. In the news today, Soviet human rights activist Anatoly Shcharansky urged Congress to keep pressure on Moscow to release Jews and dissidents. The Soviets planned to seal off the Chernobyl reactor where radiation will last for centuries. NASA's new boss said space shuttles may fly again by July next year. Details of these stories in our news summary coming up. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: After the news summary we look at the coming of Anatoly Shcharansky to Washington and the Soviet Jewish immigration problem he represents. We have an update on a disease that affects 15 million women and, finally, a new debate over following the psychiatric ways of Sigmund Freud. News Summary

LEHRER: This was Anatoly Shcharansky Day in Washington. The freed Soviet dissident leader was honored by Congress at the Capitol building; at the White House by President Reagan. He thanked all for the successful U.S. effort to gain his release in a February prisoner exchange. The congressional ceremony was held in the Capitol Rotunda, where Shcharansky said more needs to be done for Soviet Jews.

ANAATOLY SHCHARANSKY, Soviet emigre: The time hasn't yet come for us to rest on our laurels. I am released, but 400,000 Soviet Jews are still kept as prisoners in the Soviet Union. Dozens of members of Helsinki Group are still in the camps. That role which American Congress plays in formulating American policy gives you a unique opportunity to make the Soviet Union to open the gates for Soviet Jewry.

LEHRER: Shcharansky is on a two-week visit to the United States after which he will return to his new home in Israel. Robin?

MacNEIL: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev will make a televised speech tomorrow night, possibly about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. A highly unusual announcement on the main television news said Gorbachev would be on that program tomorrow night. Today the two official newspapers, Pravda and Izvestia, carried detailed accounts of the continuing effort to clean up the damaged plant and permanently seal the radioactivity which will last for centuries inside. Pravda quoted a physicist at the scene as saying that a week ago the reactor core threatened to burn through the earth and into the groundwater before it could be cooled. The scientists decided to drill holes in the reactor to create a cooling zone, and they said that worked. Soviet TV showed the first pictures of the cleanup at Chernobyl, including a variety of vehicles arriving at the scene. Pravda appealed for drillers and crane operators to join the cleanup and said volunteers were coming from as far away as Siberia.

The Food and Drug Administration said today it had detected the first radiation from Chernobyl in imported food but at levels far below any threat to health. The trace radiation was found in isolated samples of Norwegian salmon and Italian mushrooms. Swedish scientists detected the first traces of plutonium in rainwater. The levels were not considered dangerous. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Hans Blix, today criticized both Western and Soviet reporting of the disaster. Blix, who visited the site at Chernobyl, said Western accounts were fast, massive and often very misleading while the Soviet were late, meager, but probably not untrue.

LEHRER: NASA is aiming to have another space shuttle launched by July, 1987. That was the word today from James Fletcher, the new administrator of NASA. It was among several points he made in testimony before a House committee that included criticism of press coverage of NASA. And a pledge to review NASA management procedures.

JAMES FLETCHER, NASA administrator: It's hard to believe that some of the media articles that are written about NASA is the same agency that we talked about a year ago. It is the same group, but we've made some mistakes. And we've had problems. This last one, on January, was certainly the biggest problem we've had. But we've had other problems in the past. We're an R&D agency, and if we didn't have problems we wouldn't be doing our job. Having said that, I don't want to have another problem like the one we had in January.

LEHRER: NASA officials at Cape Canaveral today announced the finding of wreckage from the Delta rocket that failed just after liftoff May 3rd. NASA provided videotape of the damaged engine as it arrived in port. The space agency said the wreckage also included an electrical relay box. They said the two components could provide information about what caused the rocket to fail. The theory is that the problem began with a short circuit in the wiring.

MacNEIL: Republican leaders today told President Reagan that he faces an uphill battle to reverse the congressional rejection of missile sales to Saudi Arabia. Both houses overwhelmingly voted down the $354-million sale, but Mr. Reagan plans to veto those resolutions later this week. Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was one of the Republican leaders who talked with the President today.

Sen. RICHARD LUGAR, (R) Indiana: He believes that we've got to spend what time is required to get the votes that are going to uphold his veto. He did indicate he would veto, that he had to do that. He indicated that Iranian activity in the area, he believes, is attributable in a way to the congressional vote. They become bolder and the Saudis have been standing up to that. They need our help.

MacNEIL: Israeli newspapers reported that the United States asked Syria to remove new tank positions within artillery range of the Israeli border. The report said Undersecretary of State Richard Murphy went to Damascus at Israel's request to ask that the tank positions in the Bekaa Valley be dismantled. There are no American confirmation of the reports. Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres said today that Israel had tried to begin a peace dialogue with Syria but had been rebuffed.

LEHRER: Back in this country, House Democrats unveiled their new international trade bill today. The legislation would help American companies get remedies from unfair trade practices of foreign competitors, among other things, but the sponsors denied at a news conference it was protectionist and said such legislation is needed to help U.S. industry compete.

Rep. DAN ROSTENKOWSKI, (D) Illinois: Without a tougher trade policy our position in world markets will continue to weaken. The administration continues to respond to the world economy of 1986 with the trade policies of 1946. The bill is not an edict for protectionism; rather, it gives the President a clear set of objectives and the power to negotiate fair exchange of imports and exports. The overall mandate is simple: we want to make America more competitive.

LEHRER: The House measure was criticized immediately by Clayton Yeutter, the administration's chief trade official. He told reporters it was a "most unwise course of action" and said the administration will concentrate on getting a better bill through the Republican-controlled Senate. On the economy today, the Commerce Department reported retail sales were up 0.5 in April. Experts mostly termed it disappointing because a rise twice as big had been anticipated.

MacNEIL: That's our news summary. Coming up, a major focus on Soviet dissidents and U.S. policy. We'll have an update about a disease that affects 15 million women and a new debate over Freudian psychotherapy. Which Way to Freedom?

LEHRER: Anatoly Shcharansky held Washington's center stage today and his cause holds ours tonight. On February 11th, the 38-year-old Soviet dissident leader was exchanged on a German bridge for some Soviet-bloc spies. He went on to Israel and finally now to the United States for a two-week visit. Today he talked to members of Congress and to President Reagan. His message: keep the heat on for the 400,000 others who remain.

Mr. SHCHARANSKY: I want to express my deep gratitude to the Congress of the United States of America for their firm stance and declaration of human rights, for their unique support of Soviet Jewry and, of course, for that helping hand which they lent to my wife, Avital, during all the years of her struggle for my release.

Congressional actions such as the Jackson Amendment or the public law of July 1985 drive home to the leadership of the Soviet Union a basic truth, that they continue to hope to circumvent. The Jackson Amendment must be maintained and reinforced so that the Soviets will realize that only real and irreversible progress, and not public relations gimmickry, only the release of the 400,000 Soviet Jews who have decided to emigrate can serve as a foundation for real dialogue. If we will be insisting, the dialogue can begin and can result in a better world for us and for our children.

Compromising these principles that can give meaning to a renewed dialogue would damage Americans' world credibility and, in the long run undermine the stability of any economic or political understanding between the major powers. I address you today after having discussion with the leaders of Congress and Senate, and they assured me that they will continue their firm support of the cause of Soviet Jewry, of the cause of human rights in the Soviet Union. I am very grateful to them for this, and I hope that in future we will continue the struggle together.

In the Liberty Garden in the center of Jerusalem there is a bell which is an exact replica of the Liberty Bell in the United States of America. The words inscribed on the bell were given to the world through the Jewish people thousands of years ago and form the basis of the American ideal, "Proclaim liberty throughout the land." History has conferred on you the task of maintaining that ideal. I am absolutely sure that you will be equal to it. Thank you.

MacNEIL: The Jackson Amendment which Shcharansky referred to was an attempt by Congress in the early '70s to tie Jewish emigration to U.S.-Soviet trade. Since then, Jewish emigration has ebbed and flowed. Only 72 reportedly left last month, up from previous months, but well below the thousands who left in the peak year, 1979. Many thousands of Jews have applied to leave and are subjected to economic hardship and official harassment and repression. They are called refuseniks. With us tonight are two who managed to leave but whose families remain in Russia. Leonid Slepak emigrated in 1979 and is now an assistant agent at the William Morris Agency in New York. Alex Goldfarb emigrated 11 years ago. He's an assistant professor of microbiology at the Columbia University Medical School.

Mr. Slepak, your mother and father are not allowed to leave. Do you know why? Are they told why?

LEONID SLEPAK, Soviet engine: Originally the reason was the secret job my father had in '60s, 1960s.

MacNEIL: What kind of job was that?

Mr. SLEPAK: He was the head of research laboratory for TV institute. Since then he hasn't been working in his field. It has been 17 years since he quit his job. Nevertheless, he's still in Russia and I believe he is the oldest refusenik there has been.

MacNEIL: What has happened to them, your father and mother, since they applied to leave the country?

Mr. SLEPAK: About 15 times my father was arrested and detained for 15 days without a trial, and finally, after Anatoly Shcharansky was arrested as a member of the Helsinki Group, as my father was -- my father was arrested and sentenced to five years in Siberia.

MacNEIL: On what ground was he sentenced? What was the charge?

Mr. SLEPAK: The official charge was the hooliganism. My brother at that time was already in Israel and my parents, who wanted to go to demonstrations, were detained at home under house arrest, and they displayed the banner on the balcony, "Let us go to our son in Israel." The doors were smashed. They were both arrested and sentenced to five years, and my mother was sentenced to three years. Her sentence was suspended and she joined my father voluntarily in Siberia.

MacNEIL: The Helsinki Group was the group set up to monitor the Helsinki Accords, where the Soviets were to be held to a certain standard on human rights. Mr. Goldfarb, your parents and your sister and her family are not allowed to leave. What reasons are given them?

ALEX GOLDFARB, Soviet emigre: Well, the standard reasons for denying exit visas is state security, and in the case of my family it's applied to my father. He was trained as medical doctor and he was working as a professor of genetics in the Academy of Sciences. He never was involved in any secret work.

MacNEIL: Could he have any secrets that could harm the Soviet state?

Mr. GOLDFARB: Well, about two years ago he was told that his visa is forthcoming, and just before he was about to leave, the KGB searched his apartment and confiscated a set of old bacterial strains which they claimed that he was trying to take out of the country and which they claimed as secret. Which created an uproar around the world because these materials were sent to him by his colleague in Stanford University in the United States.

MacNEIL: What is life like for your parents?

Mr. GOLDFARB: Well, my father is a sick man. He has diabetes and he depends completely upon the medicines that I manage to smuggle into the Soviet Union because the Russians do not allow medicines sent there. And my parents are retired. My sister is working as a physician in a night out-patient clinic, and they are just sitting there waiting for better times. Socially they are outcasts. People are afraid to deal with them.

MacNEIL: Do you have communication with your parents? Can you call them? Can you write them letters?

Mr. SLEPAK: You can call. You can write. It doesn't mean you can get through. Occasionally you get through. I receive letters and I speak with them on the phone, but it's not on regular basis and it's rather, rather difficult.

MacNEIL: Do the Soviets interfere with the communications?

Mr. SLEPAK: Oh, yes, absolutely.

MacNEIL: [TEXT OMITTED FROM SOURCE] Apartments are bugged and we lived with bugged apartments for all these years since my father got involved in the movement. And the phones were always -- you can always feel there is somebody else on the phone.

MacNEIL: What kind of communication do you have with your family?

Mr. GOLDFARB: The same. I can write. I can telephone and I can ask people who go there. I myself tried twice; they won't give me a visitor's visa to come and visit them. There is interference occasionally, and there is no doubt that the communication is monitored.

MacNEIL: Are you American citizens now?

Mr. SLEPAK: No, I'm an Israeli.

Mr. GOLDFARB: I'm an Israeli.

MacNEIL: You're Israeli. Can you go back to the Soviet Union and see your families?

Mr. GOLDFARB: No, I have tried to go there, not even as a tourist but as a member of an Israeli delegation to a scientific congress in Moscow, and although my paper was accepted by the organizers, my visa wasn't given.

MacNEIL: What about you?

Mr. SLEPAK: I haven't tried. I don't want to take chances.

MacNEIL: I see. Tell me about your family, your parents, and yours, about their political attitudes. I mean, why do they want to emigrate, where do they want to emigrate to, and what is their attitude towards the Soviet government? I mean, could they be accused of wanting to change the Soviet system or something that would give the Soviets an excuse for not letting them out?

Mr. SLEPAK: In only one respect they want to change the Soviet policy, and that is to let the Jews go. And as any people in the world, they have the right to choose where they want to live. My father personally, my parents, want to go to Israel. And that was the reason for starting the whole movement. It didn't even start as a movement. It grew into a big movement. They just wanted to leave the country. They wanted to go to Israel.

MacNEIL: And what about your parents?

Mr. GOLDFARB: Well, the very fact of trying to leave the country is in a way a challenge to the system and they are not letting people go because emigration is one of the major changes that the system can undergo. The system is based -- it's a closed society and both the possibility of leaving the country and the flow of information back would presumably --

MacNEIL: Is it your assumption that if the Soviets decided to let lots more Jews leave that they would then have to let non-Jews, leave Soviet non-Jews, too? That it would represent not just an opening for Jews but for anybody else who wanted to come and go, that it would be a floodgate, in other words, not just a Jewish problem? What do you think about that?

Mr. GOLDFARB: Definitely I think many people --

MacNEIL: A chain reaction?

Mr. SLEPAK: There would be a chain reaction.

Mr. GOLDFARB: Many people would try to leave, but this is not the only problem that they face with emigration. The other problem is that they claim that their society is the best in the world and that people are best served and it's the paradise, in a way, at least as compared to the capitalist societies. And those who are trying to leave, even for private or personal or ethnic reasons, pose a threat to the very foundation of the regime.

MacNEIL: Gentlemen, thank you. We'll come back. Jim?

LEHRER: We turn back now to Anatoly Shcharansky. As we mentioned earlier, he met with President Reagan late this afternoon. He said this to reporters afterward.

Mr. SHCHARANSKY: Of course I expressed my deepest gratitude for all the President of the United States of America makes of human rights and for Soviet Jewry in particular. And I was deeply impressed by personal interest, personal involvement which President Reagan displays to these problems, his understanding of the problem of Soviet Jewry, and his commitment to the cause, to the struggle for the right of our people to leave the Soviet Union and to join their people in Israel and to human rights in general. So I am very impressed with this meeting. I am very encouraged with this meeting, and I am very grateful to the President of the United States of America to be given me such an opportunity.

LEHRER: A policy question for the United States in this matter has long been a subject of much debate. We air it now with Mark Palmer, deputy assistant secretary of state for European affairs and Secretary Shultz's principal adviser on Soviet affairs, and Mark Epstein, executive director of the Union of Councils of Soviet Jews. Mr. Palmer, Shcharansky says the United States must keep the heat on publicly on behalf of the 400,000 folks like him who remain in the Soviet Union. As a basic premise, do you agree with that?

MARK PALMER: Yes. The President of course today met with Mr. Shcharansky. The President feels very strongly that this is a central issue in our relations, that there is no other issue more important to the American people, and to him as we look at the Soviet Union, than getting freedom of emigration and other freedoms for teaching Hebrew in the Soviet Union, for freedom of religion, for a whole range of freedoms.

LEHRER: When you look at the release of Shcharansky himself, how would you characterize the kind of diplomacy that was involved in securing his release?

Sec. PALMER: Well, as I think Anatoly himself has said and recognizes, it was a mix. On the one hand, it was a consistent effort from the beginning of the administration, and in fact went back earlier as well, to keep attention on his case, to keep attention on the centrality of human rights. So it was George Shultz, for example, in meeting after meeting with Foreign Minister Gromyko raising human rights as the first issue on the agenda. It was all of that, and it was also a quiet effort to convince the Soviets that there were some gains for them as well as for the United States and that this made sense in terms of dealing with a rather hard-nosed, even cynical Soviet government. You in the end have to get into some quiet efforts as well as continuing the public pressures.

LEHRER: It's been suggested that too much public pressure can be counterproductive. Is that true?

Sec. PALMER: I think it's important to recognize that there are different roles to be played here. The Congress has a role to play, Mark Epstein's group has a very important role to play. There are roles for the public pressures. There are also important roles for people like President Reagan to play directly with the secretary general and the Soviet Union. So I would say that you have to balance these things off, recognize that all fronts have to be pursued at the same time, some quietly, soe publicly.

LEHRER: Mr. Epstein, do you agree with that?

MARK EPSTEIN: Yes, certainly, and we as believers in strong grassroots action have relied on the Congress as an effective voice, the Helsinki Commission, as well as a productive relation with the White House under various administrations and the State Department. But I think the truth of the matter is the Soviets will react only when they feel true pressure and only when they are convinced that it is so uncomfortable for them to continue with their policies that they will make concessions. They do not make concessions gratuitously. They do not make them out of good will. There is no humanitarian gesture involved. They deal in terms of hard reality and propaganda.

LEHRER: Well, define pressure. What do you mean by pressure? What's the kind of pressure that works in this case?

Mr. EPSTEIN: Well, certainly they're sensitive to embarrassment, to public embarrassment. They are sensitive and complain when their diplomats are exposed to demonstrations. They complain when their diplomats are criticized and their government's policy criticized in meetings within the context of the Helsinki process, and they react strongly against it. They publish extensive propaganda at home attacking individuals, not only people like Slepak and Goldfarb but others, and the fact that the state itself creates institutions designed to attack refusniks, designed to attack dissidents, designed to attack dissenters of all sorts tells us how seriously they are concerned about any kind of deviation and any attack on their public image. And I think the reference earlier to not allowing anyone to even entertain the notion of leaving socialist paradise is exactly to the point.

LEHRER: Well, let's be specific here for a moment, gentlemen. Shcharansky, for instance, went to the White House today, saw the President of the United States, and yet no photographers were allowed to take the picture of the two of them together. The President did not appear with Shcharansky afterward. Is this walking a fine line, Mr. Palmer?

Sec. PALMER: Well, to some extent it is. He was received in a very visible way by the United States Congress. I participated in a meeting with him with the Secretary earlier today and as you said the President also did receive him. I think there is just no question about this administration's loyalty and determination in this field. At the same time, we're dealing with a large government with a lot of power, and if we care about results in addition to making ourselves feel good, we have to think about how to achieve that. And the President has decided on his way of doing that. It has achieved some results -- modest, but some -- and we think that by pursuing this combination of tactics -- and I know that Shcharansky agrees with that combination of tactics, that we will see more results. Mrs. Bonner herself, of course, did get out. We have some things that are not achieved at all, but we have had some results.

LEHRER: Mr. Epstein, does the fact that the President would not allow his picture to be taken with Shcharansky, or that he would not see Mrs. Bonner, who is Andrei Sakharov's wife, who is here for medical treatment, also a dissident leader, does that bother you?

Mr. EPSTEIN: Well, it's disappointing. The visual image is something which the President mastered early in his career and something which Gorbachev seems to find fascinating. And so it seems to me a disappointment not to have exploited the visual image. But those are the constraints which the administration apparently set for itself.

LEHRER: So you believe that if a photograph had been taken today with the President of the United States and Anatoly Shcharanskyand Gorbachev saw it, it would have had what kind of effect on Gorbachev?

Mr. EPSTEIN: Well, I don't know Gorbachev. Other people do. But it seems to me he's so interested in image and confrontation that he would not have been happy about it.

LEHRER: It might have helped your cause, you think?

Mr. EPSTEIN: Perhaps.

LEHRER: You experts in the State Department looked at the same question and said, no, wait a minute, that might hurt it a little bit. Is that correct?

Sec. PALMER: Our only concern is, how are we going to get people out. And our judgment and, more importantly, the President's judgment is that the kind of path we've been pursuing has been working to some extent and we should continue with it.

LEHRER: Has there been marked improvement under Gorbachev on this specific issue, Mr. Palmer?

Sec. PALMER: There was a period late last fall around the timing of the summit when we had some results. The last few months have been deeply disappointing. There has in fact been a setback recently. So I would not --

LEHRER: Why? What's the problem?

Sec. PALMER: I would not ascribe to the new Soviet leadership a major liberal tendency in this field. It's not there yet.

LEHRER: What's the problem, gentlemen? Why has Gorbachev not made any major gestures along this line?

Mr. EPSTEIN: Well, I'm not sure that I am quite so sanguine that there was real progress around the summit. There were many hints oG progresxDs, and we read in the press of anticipated exits and there were rumors around the world. But in fact the numbers remain low and a case like Shcharansky's release or Mrs. Bonner being allowed to leave the Soviet Union temporarily for medical treatment doesn't solve the long-term problem, and I believe the Soviets in fact benefited greatly by having set before the world the image of improvement, and many people, including people in the press, thought there was improvement, and it hasn't been the case. There were many hints of it, but I'm not sure that I could identify truly tangible change. I'm not pleased with what I see, and I think in fact that Gorbachev has now set the stage for an even more repressive policy in the coming months, and unless --

LEHRER: You mean fewer? Fewer Jews are being allowed out?

Mr. EPSTEIN: Well, I don't think the numbers can decline below 30, 40, 50 per month. It's zero, compared to 51,000 and more in 1979. But I think that there can be a continuation of recent attacks on Hebrew teachers, on cultural activists, the suppression of those who wish to speak out, and hence they will have a chilling effect on everyone's attempt to keep these people alive, healthy and well.

LEHRER: Is the administration considering a new approach of some kind? Saying, hey, wait a minute, this may not be working as effectively as we wish, and looking for a new way to approach the problem?

Sec. PALMER: No, we have an approach and it did achieve modest results, but it did achieve 20 of the divided-family cases, for example, cases like the GoldfarbfiSeplak cases were resolved around the time of the summit. So we think that we have an approach. The Soviets are always making the point that when you have an overall improvement in the relationship you get human rights improvement. We reject that as a matter of principle. They want commitments --

LEHRER: They want something in return, in other words.

Sec. PALMER: They are very hard-nosed, as I said before, and we of course recognize that, and we link trade. We siets are hurting economically we think this gives us something. And my own sense is that if we have another summit you will see as we get closer to it, again, some improvement. So I share Mark's view that we should keep very much realistic understanding of how limited these improvements have been and are likely again to be. There's a long way to go. This is very long-term problem.

LEHRER: Okay. And is it your position that all 400 -- there are exactly or roughly 400,000 Jews in the Soviet Union who want out of the country?

Mr. EPSTEIN: Yes, at least. We know that at least 650,000 people asked for the invitation necessary to begin the process of applying, and we know that some 250,000 have left in the last decade or more, 15 years, and so we deduce 400,000 still wish to go, but there is a chilling effect of current policy and of low numbers. We've seen repeatedly in the past that whenever the number of exit visas granted increases so does the number of applications, as few people are willing to apply knowing that no one is getting out and simply expose themselves to the loss of jobs, the suppression and the attacks, the harassment by the KGB which follows. And hence, should there be an increase in emigration we can anticipate also a renewal of interest in receiving invitations. So perhaps the potential is even higher than 400,000.

LEHRER: Thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Mr. Goldfarb, you've been through this personally. What do you think, given all the good will there apparently is in this country to help, what is the right way to get Mr. Gorbachev to let more Jews out?

Mr. GOLDFARB: I agree on the idea that the combination of quiet diplomacy and public pressure is the best way to go about. The Russians are not letting people go for altruistic reasons. They want things back and for them it's a deal. One thing that was left out of the discussion, in my opinion, is that in addition to the President and the Congress there is American public and press. And here there is a lot to do and a lot of things can be improved. When American universities, for example, sign exchange agreements on research with Soviet minister of health, the participants should know that this is the same ministry which maintains so-called medical care in prison camps. And when ministry of culture sends ballet here, people who attend these performances should know that this is the same ministry of culture which refuses to register Hebrew as a legitimate language and which is involved in censorship of manuscripts.

MacNEIL: Let's ask Mr. Palmer about that. Secretary Palmer, why is the new Soviet cultural exchange pursued? For instance, why is the Kirov Ballet allowed to come here when the United States wants something from the Soviet Union like the release of more Jews? Why is Aeroflot recently allowed to resume its flights here?

Sec. PALMER: Well, I think all of the dissident community -- I worked in Moscow and had daily contact with dissidents and refusniks. They all believe that the central problem is the closed nature of the Soviet system and that all of these programs to open up the system, to bring more contact, more Americans into the Soviet Union and more Soviets out, is a good thing. It gives us more linkage, leverage; it gives us more opportunities to make the kinds of points that have just been made.

MacNEIL: Do you agree with that, Mr. Slepak, that these cultural exchanges are a good idea?

Mr. SLEPAK: To a certain extent, very limited, because I think the pressure has to be on always. And economical and cultural.

MacNEIL: Okay. I asked Mr. Goldfarb what he thought. What do you think is the answer? How do you get Gorbachev to -- how does the United States get Mr. Gorbachev to let more Jews in?

Mr. GOLDFARB: Well, it seems to me that Soviet government needs technology, scientific knowledge, and it needs grain. And these are the sources that can be used to influence the Soviet government --

MacNEIL: You mean the United States should just refuse to give them grain, technology and so on unless they change their policy? Just absolutely refuse? Do you support that, Mr. Epstein, as strong a linkage as that?

Mr. EPSTEIN: Well, I think that linkage between various aspects of our policy is fundamental and the success of the Jackson-Bannock Amendment as a tool for influencing Soviet policy was exactly through that kind of linkage. It may be that five years hence we have to deal in other areas. While no one would go so far as to suggest no arms control agreements are possible unless there is improvement, I think we have to acknowledge that there is a natural linkage among all issues, and if the Soviets persist in poisoning the bilateral atmosphere by these policies, they will have immense difficulties in the Senate in getting ratification for any treaties they may propose, and certainly linkage between trade areas and strategic areas is something which has been accepted policy and has proved to work. The question seems to me what price they want from us now and whether it's a price that a rational world can pay.

MacNEIL: What is that, Mr. Palmer? How does the United States assess what the price is the Soviets are asking for on this issue, and to what degree either is the U.S. ready to pay it or, contrariwise, what is the United States willing to refuse to give the Soviet Union -- for example, grain -- in exchange for changed behavior?

Sec. PALMER: Well, I think first of all, all Americans feel a certain sense of repugnance even about this type of discussion, to sort of act that we have to buy people out from another society says a great deal about the nature of that system. But within that, because we have to live in the real-world context that we have, within that we do look very carefully at where the Soviets want some things from us. They obviously would like to have most-favored-nation trade status --

MacNEIL: And that's being refused at the moment?

Sec. PALMER: And that's being refused.

MacNEIL: But refused explicitly with the idea that if their record was improved on this it would be available to them?

Sec. PALMER: We have made clear, and the leaders of the Jewish community in this country have made clear that under the right circumstances if there was large-scale emigration, as Jackson-Vannik provides for, the President would issue a waiver, they would get most-favored-nation trade status. So that's a concrete example of something they could get with the right kind of performance on emigration.

MacNEIL: Finally I'd like to ask all of you just very quickly -- I have a minute left -- Mr. Shcharansky suggested that if Gorbachev comes to Washington and there's a summit that 400,000 people representing the Jews confined to the Soviet Union should go there and demonstrate. Do you think a huge public demonstration like that is a useful thing?

Mr. GOLDFARB: I think it's an absolutely useful thing for all aspects of this policy.

MacNEIL: You do. What about you, Mr. Epstein? Do you think that's a useful thing? Would your union call for that?

Mr. EPSTEIN: Absolutely, without doubt. It has been our practice since before Shcharansky's arrest to employ that kind of tactic, and we would pursue it with all the means at our disposal.

MacNEIL: What about you, Mr. Palmer? Is that a good idea from the U.S. government point of view?

Sec. PALMER: We think that it should be very clear to Mr. Gorbachev now, as well as during any possible visit, the strength of our feelings on this. How that precisely is expressed is not clearly for the State Department to determine.

MacNEIL: I have to thank you, Mr. Palmer, Mr. Epstein, Mr. Slepak and Mr. Goldfarb. Jim?

LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, an update report on a disease that has hit 15 million women, and a debate over a charge Freud is a fraud. Battling Brittle Bones

LEHRER: Next, an update on a little-known disease that afflicts more than 15 million women in the United States. Our report is by Victoria Fung of public station KCTS-Seattle.

NURSE: Come right on behind the door and we're going to get your weight today.

ELLA WHITE, osteoporosis victim: Okay.

VICTORIA FUNG [voice-over]: For most of her life Ella White was five feet, seven inches tall, but over the past decade she's been shrinking, and today at age 76 Ella measures just over five feet tall.

Ms. WHITE: Well, actually I've lost about seven inches, as you know, and everything is way too long for me, any clothes that I -- and nothing with a normal waistline fits me because I have shrunk so from my waist up.

FUNG [voice-over]: Ella White has osteoporosis, a degenerative condition marked by a progressive loss of bone tissue. Her bones are becoming thinner and more brittle. She has the familiar dowager's hump because her spine is slowly collapsing, unable to support her body as it once did. Like most victims of osteoporosis, Ella was unaware of the problem until it became painful and debilitating. The victims of osteoporosis are mostly post-menopausal women, women whose bodies produce less estrogen and absorb less calcium. Their bones actually lose density, becoming more fragile as the years go by. The result is they break very easily, sometimes spontaneously. Until recently, doctors couldn't diagnose osteoporosis until it was already a problem.

Dr. JAMES BENSON, endocrinologist: In the past if one looked at an X-ray of the back one couldn't even pick up thin bones until about 30 of the bone mass had decreased.

FUNG [voice-over]: But today sophisticated technology is enabling medical experts to spot the disease in its early stages. This machine, called a dualphoton absorptiometer, measures bone density. It uses a small dose of radiation to scan the spine. Doctors say the test is both accurate and safe.

Dr. LAURENCE HAVELIN, radiologist: The radiation exposure to the spine from dualphoton absorptiometry is about 10 millirems. A chest X-ray is about 20 to 40 millirems. So the exposure that we're talking about is minimal.

FUNG [voice-over]: This reading from the dualphoton absorptiometer shows normal bone density. This reading is a warning flag.

Dr. HAVELIN: You can see almost right away from the pictures that the density of this printout is considerably less than the other ones. So we get some pictorial information. But her bone mineral density is below one gram per centimeter squared. She's lost about 22 of her bone mineral when compared with a young person. So she has demineralized and she is mildly to moderately demineralized. This is someone you'd want to treat.

FUNG [voice-over]: Dr. Havelin recommends photon densitometry testing for women who are entering menopause and for high-risk candidates. Fair-skinned women with ancestors from Northern Europe, the British Isles, China or Japan are genetically predisposed to osteoporosis. Thin women, women who smoke and those who don't exercise are also at risk. Although osteoporosis may not be entirely preventable, it can be delayed. Women over age 35 are advised to supplement their diets with calcium, at least 1,000 milligrams a day. A second tactic is to take extra vitamin D, which helps the body absorb calcium. A third strategy is exercise. It's been proven that physical activity actually strengthens bones. Estrogen supplements for post-menopausal women are helpful but controversial.

Dr. BENSON: There's some potential risk of estrogen treatment in a woman who has a uterus still intact. Then there's an increased risk of three to five times a normal person of developing cancer of the uterus.

FUNG: Should all women be concerned about osteoporosis?

Dr. BENSON: Yes. It's an insidious disease; that is, for years, a decade, a woman may have thin bones, osteoporosis, but not have any symptoms until they break a rib coughing or have a compressional fracture or fall and break a hip. So that we need to be worried at a time when it isn't bothering people.

FUNG [voice-over]: Medical experts are trying to make the public more aware of osteoporosis, and with new techniques like photon densitometry, early diagnosis can help prevent the pain and deformity some women would otherwise suffer for the rest of their lives.

LEHRER: That report by Victoria Fung of public station KCTS-Seattle. Is Freud a Fraud?

MacNEIL: Sigmund Freud started it all a century ago when he opened his first office in Vienna for the practice of psychoanalysis. For decades, Freud's brand of therapy, the so-called talking cure, dominated the profession and it forms the foundation for many of the 250 varieties of therapy available today. Now, as Judy Woodruff tells us, there is a new debate over whether it really works. Judy?

JUDY WOODRUFF: It's estimated that some 80 million Americans living today will seek psychological counseling at some point in their lifetimes, and that they'll spend about $4 billion a year to get it. But in recent years questions have been raised about just how effective psychotherapy is, that is, the talking therapy method of treating emotional and psychological problems largely based on work done by Sigmund Freud. Joining us tonight to argue those questions out are two psychiatrists, Dr. Garth Wood, who has written a book called The Myth of Neurosis, in which he attacks Freud's theories, and Dr. Harvey Ruben, an associate professor at Yale Medical School and an official of the American Psychiatriatic Association, which is holding its annual meeting this week in Washington.

Dr. Wood, let me begin with you. First of all, what is neurosis, and what does it have to do with whether psychotherapy is useful or not?

GARTH WOOD: Well, neurosis is a rotten word that means different things to different people. Neurotics are those sad, unhappy, anxious people, and we're all of us sometimes like that, who are having a little bit of difficulty coping with the problems of life. That's normal. That's par for the course. Life isn't supposed to be easy. Nobody promised that it would be. What we've got to do is to come to terms with that. What has happened since Freud and his co-conspirators started the whole ball rolling is that there's been a conspiracy to medicalize unhappiness and to turn us all into patients. We're told that doctors, that experts, have the answer to our problems, that if we can take our problems to a doctor, the doctor learns in medical school or somewhere along the line the secrets of how to cure us. This is rubbish. He is not -- he has no superior skills in the treatment of common unhappiness than does the bank manager, the man over the garden fence, our friends and our loved ones.

WOODRUFF: Well, are you saying there is no such thing as neurosis, that it's just something that people have created?

Dr. WOOD: Absolutely. Freud, you see, suggested that we were all to some extent ill. We all needed psychoanalysis. In his essay, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, he suggested that you and I, everybody watching this program, needs psychoanalysis. Further, in his paper Psychoanalysis, Terminable and Interminable, he suggested that we all needed endless psychoanalysis, which of course is a terrific way of paying the bills and the mortgage, but isn't doing a lot for the patients because the evidence is that psychoanalysis does not work; further, that it's harmful; it creates dependence, a sterile naval-contemplating passivity, which is the worst sort of thing that you can give to people who are not ill at all.

WOODRUFF: So you're at the opposite end of the spectrum? You say there's no need for psychotherapy whatsoever?

Dr. WOOD: Absolutely. Psychotherapy does not work. It is unscientific. It is not valid scientifically.

WOODRUFF: All right, Dr. Ruben, let's go to you. You heard what he said; it's unscientific, it doesn't work and so on and so on.

HARVEY RUBEN: The problem, Judy, is that unfortunately I think that you, Garth, are mixing apples and oranges because you're coming to us from Great Britain, you have never practiced psychiatry in this country. To my knowledge you're not a psychoanalyst. I want you to know some things just so that you can keep the story straight for yourself. There are only 2,800 members of the American Psychoanalytic Association. This is not a powerful organization. There are 32,000 members of the American Psychiatric Association. We are not treating the worried well. We are treating -- psychiatrists in this country are treating people who have emotional illness. In your book you talk about the emotional illnesses schizophrenia, manic depressive illness, anxiety disorders, severe depression. That's what we treat. We're not treating --

Dr. WOOD: I have no argument --

WOODRUFF: What about -- excuse me. What about the statistic we quoted earlier, that some 80 million Americans at some point in their lifetime --

Dr. RUBEN: But over what course of time? Eighty million Americans -- the statistics from the National Institutes of Mental Health are that 20 of all the people in this country have diagnosable psychiatric illness. Only a fifth of those are ever going to receive treatment and, of those, only a small number from psychiatrists. Most of those people will receive treatment from --

Dr. WOOD: Can I make a point?

WOODRUFF: Well then let's talk about those people who are getting psychotherapy.

Dr. WOOD: I'd like to make a point about the DSM3, which is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in this country, in which the mental illnesses, the so-called mental illnesses, are codified. In that extraordinary document we have tobacco misuse disorder, we have specific work inhibition disorder, we have rapism. They're trying to get rapism admitted into the DSM3.

Dr. RUBEN: But more importantly we have done away with the term neurosis.

Dr. WOOD: What I'm saying is that the National Institute of Mental Health, which says 40 million Americans are mentally ill, have a mental disorder, is rubbish. They don't -- tobacco misuse disorder is not an illness.

WOODRUFF: His point is that there are a lot of people out there who don't need treatment --

Dr.RUBEN: But they're not talking about those people. Those are not the people who are being diagnosed with some of the proposed diagnoses that he's talking about. What we're talking about is the fact that there are 20 million people who have serious psychiatric disease. They're the people, 20 rather, the 40 million people, who have serious psychiatric disease. Those are the people who are the people psychiatry is treating.

WOODRUFF: And is psychotherapy being used to treat them?

Dr. RUBEN: Psychotherapy plus medications, plus, in many instances, various behavioral techniques are the most effective treatments.

WOODRUFF: Now, is that what you have a problem with?

Dr. WOOD: I have no problem with real, proper, card-carrying psychiatry. There are only five illnesses in psychiatry, and they are most of the ones that Dr. Ruben mentioned -- manic depressive illness, schizophrenia, the eating disorders, obsessive compulsive illness, and clinical anxiety. Those are the five illnesses. Outside that we're all well. Drug abusers are not ill. Alcoholics are not ill. Alcoholism is not a disease.

Dr. RUBEN: I would have to differ with you. We have million alcoholics in this country who know that they have a disease. They are addicted to alcohol. They cannot stop drinking. They have craving, they have tolerance, they have lack of control. These are people who have to be treated medically, not psychiatrically, treated medically to be withdrawn from their addictive drug --

Dr. WOOD: Of course that's the case. They --

Dr. RUBEN: -- and then they have to receive supportive psychotherapy and other kinds of treatment.

Dr. WOOD: Alcohol needs to be withdrawn medically under tranquilizers and vitamin replacement, certainly, in hospital. But the actual business of choosing to drink is a choice. If you choose to drink to excess, that is your decision. It is not a decision that is made for you in your childhood. You see, since Freud started this whole psychotherapy --

Dr. RUBEN: You are denying the biological basis of emotional illness, and there is a biological basis --

Dr. WOOD: No, I'm not. I'm not.

Dr. RUBEN: -- and there is a biological basis to alcoholism. We know that there is a hereditary predisposition to alcoholism.

WOODRUFF: All right, but let's get away from alcoholism for just a moment and get back to psychotherapy, which is what we're here to talk about. What is it about psychotherapy that you say, Dr. Wood, doesn't work?

Dr. WOOD: Well, it doesn't work, for example, because they cannot produce results to show that it works. Take Arnold Cooper, the past president of the American Psychoanalytic Association. In 1985 he said the time has come to recast psychoanalytic assumptions so that they can be tested scientifically. Eighty-five years after Freud, millions and billions of dollars having been spent on psychotherapy.

Dr. RUBEN: Where does this figure come from, millions and billions of dollars? There is no study to show that -- this is a figure you're pulling out of the air.

Dr. WOOD: From your introduction to this program, you talked of very large sums of money.

Dr. RUBEN: But that's not all for psychoanalysis. You're talking about psychiatric treatment. You're talking about medical treatments and you're lumping apples and oranges together.

WOODRUFF: But isn't his point that just talking to people as therapy sometimes often doesn't work? Or I guess you say it never works.

Dr. RUBEN: He has no proof of that.

Dr. WOOD: I do.

Dr. RUBEN: He's making an assumption that he cannot back up --

Dr. WOOD: Can I just give you -- let me just give you --

Dr. RUBEN: -- any more than Arnold Cooper can back up psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.

Dr. WOOD: You will know about spontaneous remission rates. Basically at the two-year stage something like two-thirds of the symptoms of so-called neurosis remit spontaneously with time. Now, if you go to the psychoanalysts and ask the central fact-finding committee of the American Psychoanalytic Association, what is their success rate at the two-year period, they will say 61 for fully analyzed patients and 31 for semi-analyzed patients. They have actually retarded the process of recovery, and they have charged $100 bucks an hour --

WOODRUFF: By using psychotherapy? Is that your point?

Dr. WOOD: By using analytic psychotherapy they are milking the unhappy of a fast buck. They are taking millions and billions of dollars out of people, pretending to sell a treatment which has no scientific basis, and they admit themselves that it is not tested scientifically.

WOODRUFF: Let's give Dr. Ruben a chance.

Dr. RUBEN: You see, Garth, your book unfortunately is irrelevant at best and at worst it's destructive because most of the people in this country are not being treated by psychoanalysts. They are a very small number of the mental health professionals in this country --

Dr. WOOD: Can I --

Dr. RUBEN: -- and the people that they are treating are people who may have diseases that they call neuroses, but DSM3, the manual that you described, does not talk about neurosis anymore. We changed the term because it was a term that was very confusing to people and, more importantly than that, we have a situation where you're coming on television talking about this, and it's destructive in the sense that we're trying to educate people to what an appropriate role for psychiatry and psychiatrists is in this country when they should have treatment. When they listen to you they think they should never see a psychiatrist.

WOODRUFF: What about that?

Dr. WOOD: Let's hear some more statistics. Let's hear, for example, that psychotherapy, the Stotzs work at Vanderbilt showed that the psychotherapists admit themselves that they produce lasting damage in up to 6 of the patients they treat. One in 15 of the people walking into a psychiatric office will suffer a lasting deterioration to their mental health --

Dr. RUBEN: They only studied 150 psychotherapists, and we have thousands and thousands of people --

Dr. WOOD: One hundred and fifty of the top psychotherapists in this country were characterized by Stotz --

WOODRUFF: He's saying you're exaggerating, that the statistics have been exaggerated.

Dr. RUBEN: Very definitely. The statistics are lying.

Dr. WOOD: Let me just quote Durlak's work at the University of Southern Illinois. Now, he looked at 42 studies in which experts --

Dr. RUBEN: But that's an antiquated study, though.

Dr. WOOD: -- experts were pitted against non-experts in the treatment of unhappiness, if you like. The non-experts in 42 of those -- in 40 of those 42 studies did better than the professionals. These were mothers, the parents --

Dr. RUBEN: But psychiatrists don't treat unhappiness. We treat emotional illness, and you're talking about unhappiness --

WOODRUFF: Friends of --

Dr. WOOD: Friends are better at doing this -- xDZDr. RUBEN: This is irrelevant, unfortunately.

Dr. WOOD: -- thing than the experts are. And they don't cost any money.

WOODRUFF: If somebody comes to you and says, I'm depressed, I can't handle my life, what do you say to them?

Dr. WOOD: First of all I check them for depressive illness and all the other genuine illnesses. If they have no genuine illness, I say to them, I have not learnt the secrets of life in my medical training. I don't know how to help you. I'm no better at leading your life than I am my own. We just are pretending to a spurious expertise as a profession that we do not possess.

WOODRUFF: Dr. Ruben, what do you say to the same person who comes to you?

Dr. RUBEN: I have been a psychiatrist for 18 years, and if they don't have severe depressive illness, for which I would use medication, psychotherapy --

Dr. WOOD: So would I. Not psychotherapy.

Dr. RUBEN: -- to treat them. If they have a depressive reaction, a situational adjustment reaction, I believe I have enough intelligence and expertise to give them some help, to do some crisis intervention. Brief treatment, three or four sessions.

WOODRUFF: So what's the difference between your treatment and his?

Dr. RUBEN: Well, the difference is he's talking about psychoanalysis that people are not doing for what he's saying they're doing it for, and there are many psychiatrists doing crisis intervention, brief treatment that does not cost a lot, that is something that is affordable, it's within the grasp of all of your viewers today, and we can help them.

Dr. WOOD: What I'm saying is --

WOODRUFF: Dr. Wood, what about that specific point that he just made?

Dr. WOOD: -- there is no evidence to suggest that psychiatrists are any better at dealing with people in crisis than are ordinary friends and neighbors. In fact, the evidence suggests that the friends and the neighbors are better at crisis intervention. There was a study in Durlak's study --

WOODRUFF: All right, let's ask Dr. Ruben about that.

Dr. RUBEN: The fact of the matter is that friends and neighbors who may be well-meaning don't always understand exactly what's happening with a patient, and they also have their own agenda.

Dr. WOOD: Neither do psychiatrists.

Dr. RUBEN: So when they give advice they frequently give misguided or inappropriate advice than objective third person --

Dr. WOOD: So do psychiatrists.

Dr. RUBEN: And I have to say that psychiatrists aren't the only people who do crisis intervention. Psychologists, social workers, psychiatric nurse practitioners. There are many quite appropriate mental health professionals in this country doing psychotherapy for people with life crises.

WOODRUFF: Last question. Where do each of you see psychoanalysis, psychotherapy going from here? Do you see it disappearing eventually?

Dr. WOOD: Oh, I hope and I feel sure that it will disappear because this is one of the great mysteries of the 20th century, how this extraordinary psychological rubbish should have taken over the intellectual high ground of the psychiatric and medical professions. Most extraordinary.

Dr. RUBEN: But you see, it hasn't taken over anything. And the fact is it's a very small segment of what is known as mental health treatment in this country, and it's a very important academic discipline; it's a way of teaching other therapists, other psychiatrists about ways to conceptualize human behavior and the functioning of the mind, and for that reason it's not going to go away. But as Dr. Cooper, the former president of the Psychoanalytic Association said, we've got to update it. We've got to make it fit in today.

WOODRUFF: I don't think we have agreement on a single point, gentlemen, but thank you for being with us. Dr. Garth Wood, Dr. Harvey Ruben, thank you both.

Dr. RUBEN: Thanks for having us.

Dr. WOOD: Thank you.

LEHRER: Editorial cartoonist Ranon Lurie's view of a Soviet meltdown is next.

[Lurie cartoon: Soviet boss angrily asks the West to mind its own business while his country melts off the globe under his feet.]

MacNEIL: Once again the main stories of the day. Human rights activist Anatoly Shcharansky urged Congress to keep pressing Moscow to release Jews and dissidents. The Soviets plan to seal off the Chernobyl reactor where radiation will last for centuries. NASA's new boss said space shuttles may fly again by July next year. Good night, Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin. We'll see you tomorrow night. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.