The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MAC NEIL: Good evening. I'm Robert MacNeil in New York.

MR. LEHRER: And I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington. After our summary of the news this Wednesday, we have Newsmaker interviews with the Secretary of Defense, William Perry, and with Senate Republican Leader Bob Dole about GATT, and Tom Bearden reports on the flap over the Enola Gay. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: President Clinton and Senate Republican Leader Dole reached agreement today on the trade treaty known as GATT. Today's agreement sets up a panel of U.S. judges to determine if too many trade dispute decisions go against the United States. If so, Congress could decide to withdraw from the trade organization set up by GATT. They made the announcement during a joint news conference at the White House.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: We have moved one step closer toward gaining broad bipartisan support for GATT. I'm pleased to announce that an understanding has been reached with Sen. Dole to reaffirm our United States sovereignty and to make sure that the reaffirmation will be protected in the GATT process. That means that the WTO will be accountable and fair and will meet our expectations.

SEN. ROBERT DOLE, Minority Leader: This event has been going on now for about three months. We've been working on some of the problems that I thought should be addressed on behalf of my constituents and on behalf of some of my colleagues on the Republican side. And now that we've resolved concern about the WTO, principally about the WTO and other concerns, I've agreed with the President that we've fixed this as much as we can. And that's been my hope from the start, we fix it, not kill it. Let's fix it.

MR. LEHRER: Sen. Dole said he will send a letter to all Senate Republicans suggesting they support the GATT. We'll have an interview with the Senator later in the program. In economic news today, the Commerce Department reported orders for durable goods fell 1.5 percent last month, the first drop since July. Robin.

MR. MAC NEIL: NATO jets launched new air strikes on Serb missile sites near the besieged Muslim town of Bihac, a U.N.-designated safe area in Bosnia. The air strikes followed a Serb attack yesterday on two British jets, which were part of the U.N. peacekeeping force. We have more in this report narrated by Richard Vaughan of Worldwide Television News.

RICHARD VAUGHAN, WTN: NATO Jaguars leave on another bombing raid. After months of routine patrols over Bosnia and accusations of doing too little, NATO has shifted up a gear. This mission targeted three rebel Serb missile sites, one of which had on Tuesday fired on and missed royal navy harriers. It was NATO's second major military operation this week. Returning crews from the area of Tornadoes and Jaguars said all went smoothly. But reconnaissance films showed some of the targets had not been hit. So later in the day, the jets returned to finish the job. The mission does, though, remain limited, its goal to protect NATO aircraft rather than stop the Serb onslaught around the Bihac safe area.

MR. MAC NEIL: U.N. envoy Yasushi Akashi said today he worked out a peace agreement on the Bihac area with Serbia's president Milosevic. He has yet to present the plan to all sides in the war.

MR. LEHRER: The United States has transferred more than 1/2 ton of weapons grade uranium from Kazakhstan to the United States. Defense Sec. Perry said the transfer was done secretly over a period of six weeks. A team of 31 Americans worked to prepare the uranium for safe travel. It was shipped to an energy facility called Y-12 in Oakridge, Tennessee. Kazakhstan became caretaker to the enriched uranium when the former Soviet Union collapsed. The last of the nuclear material arrived in Tennessee this morning. Sec. Perry spoke at a Washington news conference.

WILLIAM PERRY, Secretary of Defense: We have just placed in safe hands enough nuclear material from the former Soviet arsenal to make more than 20 nuclear devices. In fact, some of this material was in the form that could be used directly to make nuclear weapons. By removing it from the Alba Metallurgical Facility in Kazakhstan, where it was stored, and placing it at the Y-12 plant, we have put this bomb grade nuclear material forever out of the reach of potential black marketeers, terrorists, or new nuclear regimes.

MR. LEHRER: We'll talk to the Secretary about this and other matters right after this News Summary.

MR. MAC NEIL: A TWA jet collided with a twin engine Cessna on a runway in St. Louis last night. Both occupants of the small plane were killed. The Cessna had strayed onto the wrong runway and was hit as the jet accelerated for take-off. Eight of the one hundred thirty-two passengers on the TWA flight suffered minor injuries. Yesterday afternoon's shooting at a Washington, D.C. police headquarters resulted in the deaths of four people, two FBI agents, a city detective, and the gunman, himself. The gunman used a semiautomatic assault weapon in the incident. He'd been questioned a week ago by a joint FBI-D.C. police unit about a triple murder in Washington.

MR. LEHRER: President Clinton took possession of a live turkey today and immediately granted it a Thanksgiving pardon. He was following a tradition started in 1947 by President Truman. At a Rose Garden ceremony, Mr. Clinton told a group of schoolchildren the 50 pound Tom turkey will be sent to a replica of a 1930's working farm in Virginia. The turkey was donated by the National Turkey Federation. Later, the President and First Lady visited a Washington, D.C. soup kitchen. They took turns adding cranberry sauce and bread to Thanksgiving meals for the needy. The Clintons will spend their holiday at Camp David. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to Sec. Perry, Sen. Dole, and the Enola Gay. NEWSMAKER

MR. LEHRER: We go first tonight to a Newsmaker interview with the Secretary of Defense William Perry. He's here to talk about the uranium deal with Kazakhstan and new NATO air strikes in Bosnia, among other things. Mr. Secretary, welcome.

SEC. PERRY: Thank you, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: First, on the uranium thing, it is now in Tennessee, is that right?

SEC. PERRY: It is in Tennessee. It's in safe storage as we speak.

MR. LEHRER: And how did it get there and over how long a period of time?

SEC. PERRY: Well, the discussions went back late summer and the early fall, but the actual physical processing and movement of it took place during the last six weeks. We flew it there by Air Force transport airplane.

MR. LEHRER: In one flight?

SEC. PERRY: Well, no. We took the flight to Dover in Delaware, the Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, and then we took it down by land transportation from there to Tennessee.

MR. LEHRER: Why was it done in secrecy?

SEC. PERRY: Because of the -- we wanted to be absolutely confident that there was no attempt to interfere with the transportation.

MR. LEHRER: Was there some indication that somebody wanted this uranium?

SEC. PERRY: No, there was not. This is a caution that is worth taking when you consider the value of this material in the hands of a terrorist.

MR. LEHRER: Now, we just ran the clip from your news conference in our News Summary just now, but there was enough uranium that if it had been used properly there could have -- 20 bombs?

SEC. PERRY: Twenty, perhaps a few more than that, but at least 20 bombs could have been made. There was 600 kilograms of --

MR. LEHRER: Six hundred kilograms.

SEC. PERRY: -- uranium, much of it -- most of it was very high enriched uranium, that is it was uranium that in its present form is capable of being used directly to make bombs.

MR. LEHRER: And was this just in storage there in Kazakhstan?

SEC. PERRY: Yes, it was in storage in, it was called the Alba Facility in Kazakhstan.

MR. LEHRER: And how long had it been there?

SEC. PERRY: It had been there for several years.

MR. LEHRER: Was it in jeopardy? I mean, was it being not properly cared for?

SEC. PERRY: No. The Kazakhstanis were -- had set up special guards and were taking special provisions. They were very sensitive to the importance of guarding it, but they do not have the right kind of facilities for doing that. And they recognize that, and so they very wisely, I believe, asked us to take care of it. We can simply include it in the facility we have at Tennessee, which has thousands of kilograms of material of that sort. No extra effort for us to store it there because we already have the security division set up to maintain it.

MR. LEHRER: And that's what's going to -- I mean, it isn't going to be destroyed, or isn't going to be used for anything, it's just going to be kept there in storage.

SEC. PERRY: No. In time, in time we will convert it to a form of uranium which can be used to power commercial reactors. There's a process of blending it so that it can be used properly for reactors, and it'll become a material sum value then when we do that.

MR. LEHRER: Did we buy this? Did the United States buy this stuff?

SEC. PERRY: No. We have a compensation package with the Kazakhstanis which I'm not free to discuss at this time, but --

MR. LEHRER: Is it money?

SEC. PERRY: Yes. They will get some money. They will also get some assistance.

MR. LEHRER: And why, why did they get that? You suggested that they couldn't just store it themselves. We're going to do it for them. Why do we pay them for this privilege?

SEC. PERRY: Well, it is a valuable material. Uranium has a market value, and we will, in fact, end up selling the uranium after it's suitably processed.

MR. LEHRER: So it's now the possession -- it's owned by the United States.

SEC. PERRY: It's now owned by the United States, that's correct, and we will in time process it, and what we can sell, we will sell.

MR. LEHRER: And this is part of the program designed to do what?

SEC. PERRY: This is a part of the so-called Nunn-Lugar program which was legislation introduced a few years ago by Sen. Nunn and Sen. Lugar designed to help the nuclear states of the former Soviet Union dismantle their nuclear apparatus. We call that program defense by other means, and this is a perfect example of how we get defense benefit to the United States by means other than military means. In this case what we're trying to defend against was the terrorist getting ahold of those bombs and threatening to use them and using them against ourselves or other countries.

MR. LEHRER: Were there indications that terrorists wanted this particular uranium? Were there offers to sell it or offers to buy it from either terrorists or people that the United States thought might lead to terrorists?

SEC. PERRY: We have -- we have quite a bit of information about terrorists trying to get nuclear materials, and they have succeeded in small amounts and particularly some uranium that's not weapon- grade or not bomb-grade uranium, not enough to be a danger in and of itself to this point. We have no information that we had identified this source, and we're seeking to get it. So this is a precautionary measure on our part. It was not a response to a particular known threat.

MR. LEHRER: Put this into a perspective in terms of how much is still there, not only in Kazakhstan but in the -- all the former Soviet republics. Howbig a hunk of the total problem does this represent?

SEC. PERRY: This is a very small percentage of the -- of the material that we have and the material that Russia has, but we are striving to move towards making Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Ukraine nuclear free, that is free of this sort of threat. And we're making good progress in that direction. Another part of the Nunn-Lugar program is sending the nuclear bombs that were on the SS-19 and SS- 24 ICBM's in Ukraine to Russia for dismantlement. That's been another major part of that program in that we've already sent hundreds of bombs that were formerly aimed at the United States to the dismantlement factory in Russia. But the goal is to have, of the remaining material, to have all of it in approved safeguard facilities.

MR. LEHRER: In the United States?

SEC. PERRY: In the United States. Russia also has safeguard facilities which would be adequate for this.

MR. LEHRER: Why did this go to the United States instead of --

SEC. PERRY: Because the Kazakhstani government requested the United States to take it. Now, we -- they did coordinate that with Russia. They informed Russia what they were doing. The Russian government concurred that this was a good action to take. There was no disagreement with Russia on this, but the Kazakhstan government came to the United States and requested that we take this off their hands.

MR. LEHRER: Is this -- I guess what I'm really trying to get at here finally on this issue, is this a major development today, or is this just another step in many that have come before and the committee must follow in order to accomplish what we want to accomplish?

SEC. PERRY: This is unique in that we have never had such a large amount of, of fissile material of this sort that was transferred out of a place that could have potentially become dangerous and put it under safeguarding, but it was only part of this Nunn-Lugar program, the whole objective of which is to safely wind down the nuclear threats which were built up during the Cold War.

MR. LEHRER: But this wasn't an emergency situation, oh, my goodness, if we didn't get that out of there, it was going to fall into the wrong hands, or it was going to deteriorate and cause a real problem, or something like that?

SEC. PERRY: It wasn't an emergency as measured in days or weeks, but we did want to get it out there this year, and in particular because of the weather developing, the winter coming on, we wanted to get it before winter set in. So we did undertake the transfer of this on an expedited basis. The six weeks' time that it took us to process and store and transport the material was moving very fast.

MR. LEHRER: All right, sir, let's on Bosnia and the NATO air strikes today --

SEC. PERRY: Yes.

MR. LEHRER: Can you update us on that as to how successful they were, how many planes were involved and what the impact of those air strikes were?

SEC. PERRY: Yes. Let me -- if I could, Jim -- put this in context, first of all, because people see U.S. planes and NATO planes engaged in air strikes and they think we're in some sort of a war, and I wanted to make clear that our objective in Bosnia is trying to bring about peace there. We're not fighting a war, we're trying to bring about a peace. The role of the military, both NATO and the U.S. military in the war, is limited to three objectives, one of which is, is to keep the war from spreading, a second of which is to limit the violence, levels of violence of war, and the third of which is to mitigate the violence through humanitarian aids. All of the U.S. military aid in Bosnia has had one of those three objectives. Now to get back to the question of this particular mission, we are concerned about the war spreading out of Bosnia and into Croatia as a result of this war -- this fighting at Bihac has taken place very, very close to the border. So that is one particular danger here, but the other thing in limiting the violence, we have sent an ultimatum from NATO that none of the participants in this war may use airplanes to, particularly to conduct attacks on cities, and the air strike that took place the other day was specifically in response to the fact that the Serbs have violated that and were using bombers to attack Bihac. So the other day we were doing that as a way of limiting violence. Today we were responding to the fact that they had surface-to-air missiles which were engaging the NATO airplanes, and we simply wanted to stop that. We cannot conduct the NATO missions over there if we're in the face of surface-to-air missile attacks. So this was imply to just suppress the missile -- the surface-to-air missiles which the Serbs had.

MR. LEHRER: Are there any indications at all that any of these air strikes are actually making any difference as far as the Serbs and the way they're conducting themselves?

SEC. PERRY: In terms of the limited objectives I believe they've been successful. The objective of the first strike was to stop the airplanes from bombing Bihac. I believe we have succeeded in doing that. If they send more planes out to bomb Bihac, we will go back and bomb the airfield again. The second two strikes, the two strikes that took place today were to make the -- make it safe for NATO airplanes to fly and by destroying those two surface-to-air missile sites, we certainly --

MR. LEHRER: And those have been destroyed?

SEC. PERRY: They have -- I can't give you within a few hours after the strikes I can't give you a fully competent assessment. I know we hit -- successfully hit -- both the radars and some of the electronic bands in that area, so I would believe that they're probably disabled.

MR. LEHRER: There was a report this afternoon that the United Nations is considering or some of the nations who have forces in the United Nations peacekeeping force are seriously considering about pulling them out. Is that -- have you heard that, and is that, is that something they ought to be considering at this stage of this game?

SEC. PERRY: All of the defense ministries with whom I have discussed in the last few weeks their intentions, they plan to stay the course, they plan to stay in there. They see a tough winter ahead, and they think it's very important that they keep the troops there through the winter.

MR. LEHRER: And what about -- the concern has always been that when there are air strikes even like today again that there will be retaliation against the U.N. forces, the British, the French, and the other forces that are on the ground there. What happened today? Was there any retaliation of any kind?

SEC. PERRY: This is always a concern. You can be sure that the British and the French and the Dutch have that concern very high in mind because they have troops on the ground there, but the three of them all participate in these air strikes. These air strikes that took place were not just U.S. air strikes. It was all four nations were involved in those air strikes. We had almost 40 aircraft flying there, and including from all four nations. There were -- to this point, I am not aware of any retaliatory actions taken by the Serbs. I'm not complacent about it. I think it's entirely possible that it could happen, but this is a risk that we take when we're going to air strikes that we believe that the deterrent value of the air strikes is very good.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Secretary, on the question of the readiness of the U.S. military, Sen. Wallop on this program last night was among the latest to say that you, Secretary of Defense, have even acknowledged that the American military is not in a full readiness position. What is the situation on that?

SEC. PERRY: Let me be very direct and very clear about that. The United States military today is the finest military force in the world and the finest military force that we have ever assembled. It's not the largest military force we have ever assembled, but soldier for soldier, unit for unit, it is the finest military force we have assembled, and its readiness is high enough that it can perform all of the missions which we assign to it, which are likely to be assigned to it. Now, having said that, let me now state specifically what I informed the Congress of a little over a week ago and which I'm sure Sen. Wallop was referring to. I sent them a letter in which first of all I reaffirmed just what I've told you, that we have the finest -- we have a high level of readiness in the military. But I also pointed out to them that a few months ago I had reported to them that there were three of our units, three of our divisions in the army had been reclassified to what we call the C-3 level of readiness, and this was because those three divisions had not done the training that they were scheduled to do in the last two months. And our system is a very strict system. When the unit doesn't do its training, we downgrade it, the same soldiers, the same capability in a sense that existed a few months ago, but they had not done that training, and, therefore, we downgraded the readiness. Now the reason for that, the reason for this problem is twofold. In the '94 budget, we did not include any funds for contingency operations. We proposed them, but the Congress did not grant them, and, therefore, when we had contingency operations, we said --

MR. LEHRER: Like Haiti --

SEC. PERRY: Haiti and Rwanda.

MR. LEHRER: Right.

SEC. PERRY: We had to take those funds out of our readiness account, which in this case was training.

MR. LEHRER: The point, the point Sen. Wallop was making was to support the point that Sen. Helms was making, Sen. Helms' point that the American military did not support President Clinton, at least the ones he had heard from, individual members of the American military, because of these kinds of issues, that they weren't being given the proper equipment and forces to do their job.

SEC. PERRY: Well, Jim, I've been to military bases all over the country, indeed, all over the world. Every time I go to a base I sit down and talk not just with the commanders. I talk with the enlisted men, the NCO's. I always sit down and have a breakfast with the senior NCO's. Every time the first question I ask them is: What is your level of readiness? How confident are you about being able to do your job? What is your state of morale? And I can report to you from firsthand experience that that is just not correct. We have high levels of readiness and high levels of morale in our force.

MR. LEHRER: Have you talked to them about their attitudes toward President Clinton?

SEC. PERRY: I have. I've seen it firsthand. I've been with President Clinton when he's gone to our military bases. Most recently I was with him when he went down to Norfolk, and to the extent he needed any protection there, it was from the fact that all of the soldiers wanted to come over and shake his hands and get his autograph. The level of enthusiasm, the level of response was very high.

MR. LEHRER: Do you take Sen. Helms' remarks that he would need a bodyguard to go to military bases in North Carolina, do you take that as a serious statement, or as a light -- the Senator said he said it, you know, just a light remark to a reporter -- how do you take it as Secretary of Defense?

SEC. PERRY: I can't believe he's serious, but even as a non- serious, I think it is a very inappropriate remark to make. It challenges, it erodes away at a very important and fundamental constitutional point which is civilian control of the military. That is well accepted by our military. I've never seen that questioned by any of our military people at any level, from the four star down to the NCO level. So that's a very important point, and we cherish that. That's a very important tradition. You go to countries all over the world in Eastern Europe and Latin America where they don't have that tradition, and you see how important it is for that tradition in this country. I think our leaders both in the Congress and Executive Branch should be doing everything they can to reinforce this concept of civilian control of the material. It's a very important factor.

MR. LEHRER: Is what Sen. Helms said a serious matter to you? I mean, does it hurt anything? Does it matter what he said?

SEC. PERRY: I think it is -- only hurts in the sense, as I said, it shows a senior leader in the Congress seemingly questioning this concept of civilian control of the military, and I'd like to see that concept reinforced, not questioned. Now, Jim, I do want to say that on this readiness question on those three divisions, two more important points. The three divisions were selected that did not get the training, were selected to be divisions that are not on alert and not on a contingency basis, and, therefore, they're the ones that would be sent to reinforce if we had a -- they're not the ones who be sent over, so we would have time to get them ready. And secondly, the supplemental funds needed to do that training have subsequently been appropriated by the Congress, and the training is now scheduled. That problem will be fixed up in a few months. So I don't want to make too much of it. I think it was important to announce it to the Congress, but it should not be taken out of context.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Secretary, thank you very much.

SEC. PERRY: Thank you, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come, Senator Bob Dole on the GATT Treaty, and the flap over the Enola Gay. NEWSMAKER

MR. MAC NEIL: Next tonight, a Newsmaker interview with a man who today helped move the GATT world trade deal one step closer to congressional approval. Margaret Warner has that story.

MS. WARNER: The White House has long regarded the support of Senate Republican Leader Bob Dole as crucial for winning congressional approval of the GATT accord next week. Sen. Dole had expressed several reservations about the deal but today he said he would vote for it. Sen. Dole joins us now to explain why. Welcome, Sen. Dole. Thanks for being with us.

SEN. DOLE: Thank you.

MS. WARNER: What tipped the balance for you in deciding to support GATT today?

SEN. DOLE: Well, we had about five areas of concern, and these have been, I must say, as Mickey Kantor would agree, we've been negotiating these for probably three months or four months. The largest one was the world trade organization, the question of sovereignty and whether Congress could have any role. I know that the treaty says we can get out of it in six months if the President makes a request or whatever, initiates something. I don't think any President will do that, so we look for some way for Congress to take action if we have adverse decisions to answer a lot of these questions from well-meaning people. In addition, there's a question about patent protection. There was this question about whether the so-called pioneer preference, whether Cox Broadcasting or the Washington Post got a favorable deal, the question about agriculture, whether they were going to take money out of agriculture and nothing else, whether they did single out agriculture, and then finally a question of whether we get their attention on capital gains. I have here about I think a dozen pages of documents, letters from Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Bentsen, from Leon Panetta, the chief of staff, from Mickey Kantor, the U.S. trade ambassador, and I believe they've -- I think it's a better treaty now or will be when we pass this legislation next year with the administration's support. That's why I said I wanted to fix it. I never wanted to kill it. I wanted to fix it and I hope we fix it enough to have the 60 votes we need on this technical budget point of order.

MS. WARNER: Why did you give up your effort to link White House support for capital gains with this? Did you feel the White House, for instance, was willing to let GATT go down rather than agree to this linkage?

SEN. DOLE: Well, what I would -- I'd like to have them say, sure, we'll treat the budget waver the same with capital gains. We want you to treat it with GATT, but my own view is when it came down to that issue, GATT is too important. It means too much to too many working men and women, ranchers, farmers, and others all across America. But I think we got their attention.

MS. WARNER: Did you get any kind of private understandings regarding GATT -- I mean, excuse me, regarding capital gains?

SEN. DOLE: Capital gains. Well, probably not, if I'd be very candid about it, but I think we have some leverage left and probably will have more leverage in January. The letter I received from Sec. Bentsen talks about capital formation. What I really wanted was him to say let's treat the scoring on capital gains the same as we ought to treat scoring on GATT. I couldn't -- I couldn't get that. I tried. The President said no. The Secretary said no. So my choice was okay. Should I go off and say I'm not going to vote for GATT? I think there's a connection, I must say, between capital gains rate reduction and GATT, because we're talking about trade. With GATT, we're talking about freeing up capital to create jobs for more trade with the capital gains rate reduction. But we can fight that battle next year.

MS. WARNER: Now, turning to the assurances you did get on the World Trade Organization explain exactly how that would work.

SEN. DOLE: What we would have, we'd have five retired appellate judges make up a special commission, and they would look over the decisions, the adverse decisions in these tribunals over Geneva that so many people worry about. If there's an adverse decision affecting any company or any business in America that's based on certain standards we have in the agreement, they would take a look at it. And if they find three times in a period of five years that this tribunal who made the decision has acted capriciously, arbitrarily, diminished our interest and things of that kind, then we could pull out of the World Trade Organization by resolutionof the Congress that would have to be signed by the President. If he vetoed it, I think the veto would be overridden. So we set up a mechanism so Congress would have some role to play, not just some chief executive who gives six months -- after six months gives notice. We don't think that would happen, any President would ever get out of the current agreement.

MS. WARNER: Your opponents are saying, though, that this is really pretty toothless, that it's sort of just a fig leaf for you.

SEN. DOLE: I don't know who the opponents are, but if you identify them, if people wanted to fix it, I know Sen. Gramm has announced this afternoon now that we improved GATT, he intends to support it. Ralph Nader, of course, was never for it. I've been working with Ross Perot. He knows -- he's known every step of the way for the past several weeks that we're negotiating certain areas. I think he said it might be some improvement but I know last night in Wichita, Kansas, he had a big rally, and I was sort of set up that if I voted for it, it would be all my fault because I was the one person who could stop it. I'm not certain that's the case, but my view is we've made improvements on patent protections. We've made improvements on the World Trade Organization. We've made improvements in the agriculture area, and we're going to try to address this question, whether somebody got favorable treatment in these so-called pioneer preferences, and that was my intent at the outset. Now, if the administration, I think they acted in good faith. If they didn't, I'll be back next year as majority leader.

MS. WARNER: But how practical is it really to think that once a whole new trading system is underway and tariffs have been dropped that the U.S. or Congress would ever really withdraw American businesses, will have made decisions based on it? I mean, can you ever really put the genie back in the bottle once something like this gets underway?

SEN. DOLE: Oh, I think so. It's the fears that people have, and we're getting about 2,000 phone calls a day. If the fears -- and a lot of it's generated, I know, a lot of it's misinformation. You know, they're saying, in effect, if we lose our sovereignty, if we give up our sovereignty, they can override state and federal laws. That's not true. Judge Robert Bork, for instance, has addressed the sovereignty issue and said it's nothing but a myth. It's not accurate, the statements by Ralph Nader and others. So my view is that the answer is yes. And Congress is not going to be powerless, and some of us who feel strongly about trade also feel strongly about protecting the rights of the average working man and woman, not the big multinational companies. They'd take most anything. And I must say the business community has been less than helpful in trying to get GATT approved. They'd better get busy. There's only about a week left. And I'm not certain the votes are there yet.

MS. WARNER: Let's talk about the political prospects. You said that the Capitol Hill switchboard had been jammed or a couple of thousand calls. I assume most of them were negative?

SEN. DOLE: Well, one or two a day would come in positive.

MS. WARNER: Where is this opposition coming from? Who's generating it?

SEN. DOLE: I think Wichita, Kansas, is sort of the anti-GATT capital of the world. It's been generated by Ross Perot, Pat Choate, Ralph Nader, other people who feel very strongly, farmers, ranchers, businessmen, business women, union members, because I think a lot of it was misinformation, and I must say, as much as I appreciate working with theadministration, they came in late last year, and then Sen. Hollings exercised his rights and put it off till after -- you know, in this special session. So there's been a lot of time for a lot of misinformation to seep in. And I think -- I think the benefit of GATT has been overstated. Maybe that's true in any administration. All the jobs it's going to create, all these great things they're going to let happen, it may or may not be true in every case. But, on balance, it's a good agreement, and it should be approved by the Senate.

MS. WARNER: And you're saying that the business supporters have not really done an aggressive enough job selling it?

SEN. DOLE: I called Boeing Company today in Seattle. They have thousands of employees in Wichita. I said, you know, why don't you do something? You support GATT, but you have to do something, because the opponents are out there leaving the impression that nobody is for this agreement. And the same is true of many farm organizations. They support it. I met with 14 farm groups yesterday. Well, they're going to start next Monday. The opponents have been at work for six months, and it seems to me that the others should have been out there giving information, pointing out the defects, saying it's not perfect. But my view is it's going to be helpful to the United States, and it's going to create jobs and opportunities for a lot of people, and it deserves our support. I'm going to write to every Republican member of the Senate, send them all the information I received today from the various federal agencies, and I think, on balance, they're going to say this improves it enough for me to vote for it.

MS. WARNER: And as an experienced vote counter, where do you think the votes are now in the Senate?

SEN. DOLE: Well, I'm not certain because we were doing what we call, you know, a head count, whip check. But many were saying, well, I want to see what Bob Dole does, the leader does, if he works out anything on the World Trade Organization. Phil Gramm has announced this afternoon that he's going to vote for it based on improvements that were made. I think others may do the same. And these are Senators who are, you know, very bright. They're not going to just fall into line because somebody has a pile of paper. They think it's an agreement that should be approved, should have been improved and now should be approved.

MS. WARNER: Now Pat Buchanan, reportedly, said today that this is going to really hurt Republicans, and Ross Perot, I gather, said today that passage of GATT would inspire him to start a third party movement for 1996. Do you think this could have major political repercussions for you and the President?

SEN. DOLE: Well, I assume anything you do that people oppose will have a repercussion. And we've had people calling for weeks saying if Bob Dole caves in, we're never going to vote for him again. Maybe they haven't voted for me in the first place, but they're not going to vote for me again. I'm not certain I'm going to run for anything again, but there's strong feeling out there. Some of it's very sincere. There are people making fifteen, twenty, thirty thousand dollars a year, and they don't want to lose their jobs. And I don't want them to lose their jobs. But my view is if we don't trade, if we're going to isolate ourselves, we're not going to create any jobs or any opportunities. So this is an agreement that's been in progress for a number of years in the Bush administration. It's had Republican input, Democratic input. And I know Pat Buchanan's opposed to it, and I know others are opposed to it. But we'll just have to wait and see what the consequences are.

MS. WARNER: Senator, before we close, I want to ask you again about Jesse Helms. The New York Times today called on you to deny him the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee based on some of the things he said about the President. Are you considering such a move?

SEN. DOLE: I couldn't do that if I wanted to. I don't want to, but I couldn't do it. We have a committee process. I did talk to Sen. Helms this morning, and I must say the clear implication was that he regretted very much this ever happened. He said he was joking about it but probably shouldn't have maybe joked about it. I said, you know, Jesse, when you're the chairman of a committee, what might have been a joke as a ranking minority members some people take seriously. So my view is that it's over, probably shouldn't have been said, even in jest, and I hope it's not said again.

MS. WARNER: Do you think this kind of thing won't be said again by him?

SEN. DOLE: I don't think so. I mean, I know Jesse Helms fairly well, and you know, I think, as he said, it was a mistake, his statement. He made a mistake. And he knows when you make a mistake, you don't try to repeat it.

MS. WARNER: With all due respect, Senator, Defense Sec. Perry was just on this program a few minutes ago, and he said that -- I don't know if you were able to hear him -- that he felt comments, and it was more than one, by Sen. Helms really eroded the whole notion of civilian control of the military. Don't you think it's -- do you think it's -- do you agree with him that it's deeper than a joke, that it could do damage?

SEN. DOLE: You know, my answer is I wouldn't have said it. Maybe you wouldn't have said it. Maybe Sec. Perry wouldn't have said it, but it's been said. Now, what's the reaction? What do you say, well, that's enough, he's got to go? No, that's not the way to deal with it. When he becomes chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, then I think we, we see what happens. And I think you're going to find Sen. Helms many, many times, more often than not, supporting the administration, supporting Sec. Perry, supporting the President -- President Clinton, supporting Warren Christopher, and that's what's very important to the administration with the new Congress coming in.

MS. WARNER: So I gather you would disagree then with the Times editorial which said that this was --

SEN. DOLE: I disagree with most Times editorials.

MS. WARNER: That this was a test of your leadership, whether --

SEN. DOLE: They had one yesterday calling me the trade bully too. I disagreed with that one.

MS. WARNER: Well, Senator, thanks very much.

SEN. DOLE: Thank you.

MS. WARNER: Thank you for being with us. FINALLY - ENOLA GAY - BITTER MEMORIES

MR. MAC NEIL: Finally tonight, the debate over how to tell the Enola Gay story. The Enola Gay is the airplane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima nearly 50 years ago. Last night, the fuselage of the B-29 bomber was carried down Washington's Independence Avenue to the Smithsonian's Air & Space Museum. It'll be the center of an exhibit about the atomic attack which has set off a bitter debate between veterans' groups and historians. Tom Bearden reports.

MR. BEARDEN: At 2:20 AM on August 6, 1945, Col. Paul Tibbets and his crew climbed aboard a heavily laden B-29 bomber named for Tibbets' mother, the Enola Gay. After a six-hour flight, the plane dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion virtually obliterated the center ofthe city and killed an estimated 130,000 people. The Enola Gay returned safely from the mission, and after the war was donated to the Smithsonian Institution, which kept the disassembled aircraft at a restoration center near Washington. The museum began planning for the first major exhibition of the plane nearly 10 years ago. Workers are putting the finishing touches on this section of the fuselage, scheduled to go on display next May, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the bombing. All was proceeding on schedule until last January, when a 500-page draft of the script for the exhibit became public. Veterans' groups went ballistic when they saw it. The man who flew the Enola Gay to Hiroshima was especially outraged.

BRIG. GEN. PAUL TIBBETS, Enola Gay Pilot: I thought it was a package of insults.

MR. BEARDEN: Retired Brig. Gen. Paul Tibbets believes the original draft deliberately distorted history.

BRIG. GEN. PAUL TIBBETS: I thought, and I still think today that they had one thought in mind, and that is really to play down the achievements of the military services of the United States in the war in the Pacific. And I don't think it should be played down. In other words, they're trying to orient the young people's minds into a direction different than I think they should be.

MR. BEARDEN: Michael Heyman heads the entire Smithsonian Museum Complex. Dr. Martin Harwit is the director of the Air & Space Museum. At age 15, he emigrated to the U.S. from Czechoslovakia and is himself a 1950's era veteran of the U.S. Army.

DR. MARTIN HARWIT, Director, Air and Space Museum: What has happened is that because the draft was made public, which normally doesn't happen with the first draft, we were criticized roundly for all kinds of statements that were difficult to defend at the time. The first draft is not polished and often has a lot of errors and even foolish statements in it.

MR. BEARDEN: Some veterans' groups thought the first draft was more than foolish; it was downright anti-American. The Air Force Association Magazine pointed to passages like this: "For most Americans, this war was fundamentally different from the one wages against Germany and Italy -- it was a war of vengeance. For most Japanese, it was a war to defend their unique culture against western imperialism." The script said the emotional center of the exhibit would be a display of artifacts from Ground Zero at Hiroshima, like a melted school lunch box. There would also be photographs of civilian casualties so graphic as to require a parental warning. Air Force historian Dr. Richard Hallion reviewed an early copy of the script.

DR. RICHARD HALLION, Air Force Historian: I think the, the curators came to the exhibit with a point of view that they wished to exercise, and this point of view was that nuclear weapons are bad, atomic warfare is wrong. This was a morally reprehensible act.

MR. BEARDEN: Veterans' groups said the script also totally ignored the historical context in which the bomb was dropped. They said it didn't mention the fact that Japanese troops had killed millions of civilians while occupying China or Japan's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, or that Japanese soldiers slaughtered thousands of defenseless American prisoners during the infamous Bataan Death March.

DR. RICHARD HALLION: It's as if Japan in 1945 was a helpless victim. And, of course, that tied very closely with their original notion that had been written in the original script that said that the war for Americans was a war of revenge, while the war for the Japanese had been a war to preserve their unique cultural identity against western imperialism. That seemed to be a very peculiar approach to take to a conflict as morally unambiguous as the Second World War.

MR. BEARDEN: Columnists, editorial writers, and military historians said the script not only lacked context, that it questioned popularly accepted historical perspectives by inflating the importance of old documents found in wartime archives. One major controversy revolved around whether or not the bombs saved lives. American troops had sustained heavy casualties in the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Based on that experience, some U.S. officials had predicted that as many as five hundred thousand to one million Americans would be killed or wounded in the invasion of the Japanese home islands which had been scheduled for November of 1945. But the Smithsonian script questioned those estimates. Dr. Barton Bernstein is a Stanford University historian who consulted on the first draft. He says post war documents indicate military planners expected more like 39,000 casualties.

DR. BARTON BERNSTEIN, Historian: The later claims of a half million and a million, often inflating casualties and fatalities, are post-war judgments sometimes emerging from a lack of information, sometimes perhaps forms of psychological self- deception. There is no warrant in any document I have seen, and I'd ask the foes of these numbers to provide countering documents that anyone at the highest levels pre-Hiroshima forecast anything like half a million casualties or dead.

MR. BEARDEN: But Dr. Hallion told producer Liz Callan that actual combat experience disputes such a claim.

DR. RICHARD HALLION: There were 42,000 casualties of the American forces invading Okinawa at that time, dead, wounded, missing. The arguments now that some people have made that suggest that we could have invaded Japan with far fewer casualties than we actually experienced at Okinawa I think make as much sense as people who argue that the Holocaust didn't occur.

MR. BEARDEN: Military historians say so many purple hearts were produced in anticipation of the invasion that the military is still drawing on the stockpile, even after having given medals to all the servicemen wounded in Korea, Vietnam, and every other military action since 1945. The Smithsonian script went on to question whether dropping the bomb was really necessary, suggesting that American leaders knew the Japanese were so badly beaten that they would have surrendered before the invasion actually took place. Not so, according to Dr. Edward Drea of the Army's Center of Military History. He says de-coded messages like this showed the Japanese had no intention of surrendering, that they actually planned furious resistance.

DR. EDWARD DREA, Army Center of Military History: And you have to remember I think in fairness that this was the Japanese government's own carefully constructed and fabricated image of a samurai nation, of 100 million people willing to die, united for the emperor, to defend the sacred homeland.

MR. BEARDEN: That's the way veterans like William Troy and Grayford Payne remember it. Payne is a survivor of the Bataan Death March. Both were captured in the Philippines and were prisoners of war in Japan when the bomb was dropped.

GRAYFORD PAYNE, Army Veteran: If they had not dropped them and the American troops had started landing, the orders were put out by Hideki Tojo and signed in my camp and posted that when the first American troops land on the homeland, all prisoners will be shot.

WILLIAM TROY, Veteran: There was more or less a mass resignation that this is it. All you had to do was go one, two, three, and you count those six machine guns. It would have been like clay pigeons just zooming down.

MR. BEARDEN: Troy and Payne believe the bomb forced the Japanese to surrender and that to say otherwise distorts the truth.

GRAYFORD PAYNE: I went through too much. I paid too big a price. And the boys who fought in the Pacific, they paid a price too. The boys sitting out on those transport ships waiting for the order to unload on Japan, you ask their mothers and fathers if they thought it was necessary. They'll tell you yes, it was necessary. It saved on both sides, both nations saved.

MR. BEARDEN: Does it make a great deal of difference to a person living in that era who had lived through the horrors of World War II whether or not it was twenty-five thousand or forty-nine thousand or five hundred thousand Americans dead when it came to deciding whether to drop that bomb?

DR. BARTON BERNSTEIN: I think your question is astute and you're correct. For Americans in 1945, saving any appreciable number of Americans easily legitimized and morally justified the use of the bomb. And for Americans at a later time, removed from the passion of war, in a very different world, it could lead to a different assessment.

MR. BEARDEN: That is the crux of the issue for many veterans. They believe the Smithsonian's different assessment made them out to be bad guys.

BRIG. GEN. PAUL TIBBETS: I hate to see our younger generation being fed this kind of information to mold their minds to believe that their uncles, their grandfathers, their fathers, or somebody else were people wearing black hats.

MR. BEARDEN: Besieged by negative publicity, the museum reacted by holding a series of meetings with veterans groups like the American Legion, headquartered in Indianapolis. Hugh Dagley is the Legion's director of internal affairs.

HUGH DAGLEY, American Legion: We were asked by the Smithsonian folks to come in and to hear their side of the controversy. I would characterize that as a condescending presentation, an effort to convince us that they knew best, they had the corner on the truth, and that our, our role is to sit quietly and consume the information that they wish to provide to us.

MR. BEARDEN: But Air & Space Museum Director Harwit says the Smithsonian has listened while writing a series of revisions.

DR. MARTIN HARWIT: What we did not do in the first draft, and which is really essential, is to recognize the strong emotions, the strong feelings that veterans have, that people of all persuasions have, and to bring into the exhibition a sympathy for those viewpoints.

MR. BEARDEN: The museum conducted man-on-the-street interviews in Washington. Harwit says they were surprised to learn that most people had little knowledge of World War II. Some thought the Japanese had dropped an atomic bomb on Pearl Harbor. So the museum decided to expand the exhibit to cover a much broader period of time. The latest script calls for an exhibit almost double the original size. This Navy fighter will become the central artifact in a whole new section of pictures, placards, and films that will document the entire course of the Pacific War. Smithsonian Secretary Michael Heyman.

MICHAEL HEYMAN, Smithsonian Secretary: That removes, I think, the, the impression that could have been and was communicated, and I think that people once they start to realize that we now have a show, an exhibition that is covering a much longer period of time they're going to feel much more comfortable about it.

MR. BEARDEN: But Gen. Tibbets is not satisfied.

BRIG. GEN. PAUL TIBBETS: I think that's a pacifier. I think that came up as a pacifier. Why did they start out in the first place doing all this bashing that they're doing, all this negative attitude that they were putting out through this exhibit?

MR. BEARDEN: Tibbets and others have a fundamental quarrel with the whole concept of the exhibition. In the beginning, the Air & Space Museum simply displayed important aircraft like the Wright Brothers' plane, Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis, and the X-15 Rocket Plane. Tibbets thinks that's how the Enola Gay ought to be shown, without interpretation.

BRIG. GEN. PAUL TIBBETS: I'd like to see the Enola Gay sitting out just like, well, Lindbergh's airplane or somebody else, with a sign hanging around it, "This is the first airplane to drop an atomic weapon."

MR. BEARDEN: But Sec. Heyman says the Smithsonian owes the public more than that.

MICHAEL HEYMAN: The Smithsonian has been looked at as simply a place of celebration and a place of really of adulation, a place of, of patriotism. And I don't want to denigrate that word, because I think that's very important, but a place solely of that. And really the history of the last 10 years of the Smithsonian is it's becoming more like other museums, that curators have a role to play. They really are like teachers, but we have to use a lot of processes to try to assure balance.

MR. BEARDEN: But a host of critics say the Smithsonian has shown very little balance in the exhibitions it has staged in recent years. Newspaper columnists said the science in American life exhibit at the National Museum of American History was actually anti-science. Dr. Hallion agrees.

DR. RICHARD HALLION: This particular exhibit is devoted to American science which has drawn a great deal of criticism for its incredibly bleak and disingenuous portrayal of science as a source of all the problems we have in our society.

MR. BEARDEN: Some critics believe the Enola Gay exhibit was merely the latest example of a trend they characterized as political correctness. The American Legion's Hugh Dagley.

HUGH DAGLEY: Do you elevate academic historic debate to a level of fact in conclusion by including it in a museum like the Smithsonian Institution? The Air Space Museum in particular is not chartered for that purpose, although the curators, the director will tell you they have a responsibility to do that in a museum. We can disagree on it. And that disagreement may never be resolved.

MR. BEARDEN: But Stanford's Barton Bernstein says historians have always interpreted history in light of information not available to people at the time, that the museum is engaging in scholarship, not political correctness.

DR. BARTON BERNSTEIN: I think museums are like textbooks and like scholarship and teaching, they should try for truth and honest and accurate portrayal and not for vengeful patriotism or narrow-minded conceptions. We want people who go to a museum to be educated and informed, not to be rendered more patriotic on the basis of inadequate information and tilted interpretations.

MR. BEARDEN: Do you believe the opponents are promoting vengeful patriotism?

DR. BARTON BERNSTEIN: I think judging from some of the statements that I've seen quoted that the patriotism which in all sincerity they embrace does have some retrospective, vengeful quality, yes.

MR. BEARDEN: The disagreement over the script is far from resolved. Dagley, Harwit, and other representatives of both the American Legion and the Smithsonian meton October 19th in Indianapolis to review the fifth version of the script. Afterward, the Legion said there had been progress but they were reserving judgment until they had seen all of the visual material that will accompany the text.

JOSEPH GERSON, Writer: What I'm saying is that as currently written, the function of the exhibit is to legitimate an unnecessary and cruel bombing.

MR. BEARDEN: Last week, a group of historians and peace activists critical of America's atomic bombing of Japan accused the museum of capitulating to veterans and of historical cleansing. Privately, some Smithsonian staffers said they wondered if the exhibit would actually open in such an environment. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Wednesday, Senate Republican Leader Dole announced his support for the trade treaty known as GATT, the Senate is scheduled to vote on it next week, and NATO jets launched new air strikes on Serb missile sites near the besieged Bosnian Muslim town of Bihac. Good night, Robin.

MR. MAC NEIL: Good night, Jim. That's the NewsHour for tonight. We'll see you tomorrow night, Thanksgiving night. Have a nice holiday until then. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.