The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

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

MR. MacNeil: And I'm Robert MacNeil in New York. After the News Summary, we update Somalia following the killing of 22 Pakistani peacekeepers by forces of a warlord. We have a report on the mystery illness afflicting Navajo Indians. We look at the flood of illegal Chinese immigrants dramatized by the grounding of a smuggling vessel off New York, and essayist Anne Taylor Fleming on the message behind the play "Angels in America." NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: There was talk of compromise today on President Clinton's economic plan. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell began the day saying he expected a modified plan would emerge with less in the way of tax increases, more in the way of spending cuts, and a modification of a broad-based energy tax. Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole was also talking about changing the plan. He spoke at a conference in Washington.

SEN. ROBERT DOLE, Minority Leader: I just think we ought to start over. I think if they started over, they might get some Republican support, but I don't see how any Republican could support the present package, and we're not trying to embarrass the President, we're not trying to have a confrontation, but there's no way you can sell this package. It's nothing but taxes. I just think they've got a lemon here and they ought to stop squeezing it and look for something a little sweeter.

MR. MacNeil: The Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee said he was looking for some $51 billion in additional spending cuts from the President's budget. New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said yesterday 35 billion of that could come from Medicare. He and Senate Majority Leader Mitchell discussed possible changes with President Clinton at the White House late this afternoon. Earlier, the President told the League of Women Voters what he would say to them.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I will tell them that I intend to designate the Treasury Secretary, Sec. Bentsen, to work with them to come up with a budget that the American people will accept and that the Congress will pass. As we complete work on this growth plan, I intend to do everything I can to say I welcome additional cuts. But I will fight to protect the most vulnerable people in this country, and I will fight to protect our investments to create jobs.

MR. MacNeil: President Clinton named a new communications director today. It is Mark Gehran, the former campaign manager for Al Gore. He replaces George Stephanopoulos, who will continue to advise the President but in a lower profile capacity. Roger.

MR. MUDD: NASA today unveiled four new designs for the space station. All of them are cheaper than the $31 billion model which had been under development for the past nine years. Space Station Freedom was first proposed by President Reagan as a permanently occupied space laboratory to conduct experiments, repair space vehicles, and manufacture products requiring a weightless environment. But three months ago, President Clinton said $31 billion was too much, so he ordered NASA engineers to develop three options costing five, seven and nine billion dollars. Today they came up with four options, not three, and the cheapest one cost $11.9 billion. The plans were presented today to a Blue Ribbon panel which will make recommendations to the President by Thursday.

MR. MacNeil: Researchers at an international AIDS conference in Berlin reported today that needle exchange programs were effective in reducing the spread of AIDS among drug addicts. The researchers said most intravenous drug users would stop sharing needles when exchange programs were available. There are now needle exchange programs in 33 U.S. cities.

MR. MUDD: The White House said today President Clinton will most likely announce the name of Supreme Court Justice Byron White's replacement by the end of the week. The President, himself, said, "Stay tuned. I haven't decided yet, but I'm working on it." The White House has not denied that Interior Sec. Bruce Babbitt is on the so-called "short list." Babbitt, a Harvard Law School graduate, has been attorney general and governor of Arizona. The court itself today issued two decisions on religion. First, it ruled unanimously that religious groups must be allowed to hold after hours meetings at public schools if other community groups are also allowed to, and second, the Justices let stand a lower court ruling permitting student-led prayers at graduation ceremonies. That ruling applied to public schools in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

MR. MacNeil: Nearly 300 Chinese refugees smuggled to New York were sent to detention centers today. The ship carrying them ran aground off a New York City beach before dawn Sunday after a 17,000 mile trip. Eight people died and sixteen were injured after jumping into the frigid waters in a desperate attempt to swim ashore. They were on the ship for about three months, with only limited supplies of food and water. The refugees are believed to have paid or incurred a debt of some $30,000 each to Chinese underworld figures. They will spend up to 18 months in immigration hearings to determine whether they're entitled to stay in the U.S. We'll have more on the story later in the program.

MR. MUDD: The United States Government today condemned the weekend killing of 300 people in the West African nation of Liberia. Most of the victims were women and children. The attack took place at a farming camp near the capital, Monrovia. More than 700 people were injured. A State Department spokesman said it was unclear who was responsible, although witnesses blamed forces of guerrilla leader Charles Taylor. Taylor denied staging the raid, saying it was the work of other militias involved in Liberia's bloody three and a half year old civil war. Two Somalis were killed today in a clash with Pakistani troops serving as United Nations peacekeepers. It happened in the capital, Mogadishu, where 23 other peacekeepers were killed and 50 injured in an attack by Somali militia on Saturday. The attack was the dead list incident involving U.N. forces in more than 30 years. International aid agencies evacuated many of their workers from the capital because of the unrest. We'll have more on the story later in the program.

MR. MacNeil: The Bosnian government today accepted the new United Nations plan to protect Muslim safe havens. The government earlier said the plan adopted by the U.N. Friday would turn the six safe havens into ghettos for the Muslim population. There were reports that two of them, Gorazde and Srebrenica, came under Serb attack today. The President of Ukraine promised today that his country would approve two key nuclear arms treaties within a month. He made the statement before a meeting between U.S. Secretary of Defense Les Aspin and Ukrainian officials in Kiev. Members of the Ukrainian parliament have balked at ratifying the Start I and the Nonproliferation Treaties. They've demanded additional security guarantees and compensation for destroying about 2,000 nuclear weapons on their territory.

MR. MUDD: The man who was Guatemala's top human rights official has become its President. Romero De Leon Carpio was sworn in yesterday after his election Saturday by the Congress. De Leon Carpio was an outspoken critic of the military and narrowly escaped arrest two weeks ago when his predecessor, Jorge Serrano, declared emergency powers. The army ousted Serrano last week. the State Department said today the U.S. will now resume aid to Guatemala which was suspended when Serrano seized power. That's our summary of today's news. Now it's on to the deadly peace in Somalia, the mysterious illness in the southwest, the shipwrecked hopes of some Chinese immigrants, and essayist Anne Taylor Fleming on "Angels in America." FOCUS - UNDER FIRE

MR. MacNeil: Our lead story tonight is the eruption of violence in Somalia and what it means for international efforts to restore stability to that African nation. An international force, including 4,000 Americans, is deployed in Somalia to help protect food distribution and to maintain civil order as the country tries to regain self-government. But a brutal attack on U.N. troops over the weekend has raised new doubts about all those aims. We'll get some analysis after this background report from Liz Donnelly of Independent Television News.

MS. DONNELLY: The international agencies are scaling down their presence in Somalia. Today, aid workers and United Nations personnel arrived safely in neighboring Kenya. The bloody weekend ambush which killed more than 20 Pakistani soldiers in Mogadishu is now raising the question of whether the United Nations is losing control in Somalia.

SPOKESMAN: We were pinned down in our compound. We haven't been able to move. We've seen a lot of people killed, Pakistanis being captured and tortured. It's been quite bad.

MS. DONNELLY: Pakistan has nearly 5,000 troops in Somalia, a larger presence than any other nation contributing to the U.N. effort. The ambush which killed 23 of its soldiers and wounded at least 50 others is the most serious attack on United Nations troops for more than 30 years. In New York, at U.N. headquarters, any further attack on this scale could call into question the viability of the whole worldwide United Nations peacekeeping role.

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, U.N. Ambassador: We are totally outraged by what has happened in Mogadishu. We consider this incomprehensible and unacceptable.

MS. DONNELLY: Last night, after meeting in emergency session, the U.N. Security Council called for the arrest, prosecution, and trial of the gunman responsible for the attack. The man the United Nations are holding responsible for the ambush is Gen. Mohamed Farah Adide, the warlord who controls the southern half of the capital, Mogadishu. He's blamed the bloodshed on the United Nations soldiers, accusing them of carrying out provocative attacks on the city. The international operation to increase stability in Somalia was launched last December by former President George Bush. It was presented as a moral crusade to control the warring factions in the horrifying civil war and allow food to reach the starving. U.S. troops arrived with vast supplies of up to date weaponry. Now their presence has been reduced to just over a thousand men. But when the power changed just last month, the United Nations troops replacing them were nothing like so well armed. Observers say they're outgunned by the warlords. The many well publicized attempts to bring Somalia's warring leaders together and broker a political settlement have failed to make any progress. So unless the United Nations moves quickly to restore its credibility, the danger is that the civil war will again move out of control and the serious United Nations setback here in Somalia could undermine the confidence of its operations around the world.

MR. MacNeil: And there were reports just in that heavy gunfire erupted in central Mogadishu early Tuesday their time when helicopter gunships of the U.N. peacekeeping troops hovered low over the city. They said a gun battle broke out near a traffic circle of the city center which is close to the headquarters of U.N. operations in Somalia. Now four views on the security situation there. Robert Oakley is the former U.S. envoy to Somalia. He's now a senior adviser at the United States Institute of Peace, a think tank in Washington. Tom Getman is director of government relations at the relief organization World Vision. Mohamed Sahnoun is the former United Nations envoy to Somalia and is currently on a fellowship with the U.S. Institute of Peace. And Said Samatar is a professor of African history at Rutgers University and managing editor of the Horn of Africa Journal. He is Somali. Robert Oakley, people who followed Somalia here and then began thinking about other things probably assumed the warlords had been neutralized or put down. Apparently not so, would you agree?

MR. OAKLEY: Obviously, some of them have not been put down, and this process was begun but it has not been completed either in the south, where the substantial amount of progress was made, or in the north, where the United Nations has yet to move. So this is not part of the United States mandate. This has been signalled for some time if you watch the situation on the ground, if you listen to what Adide's radio station has been doing. He'd been calling for attacks upon the United Nations, calling for attacks upon the United States, and in private, they've been even more virulent than they have in public in trying to get this sort of thing to happen. So it's not really a surprise. It's unfortunate. One must pay tribute to the brave Pakistanis who are doing their best and to the other members of U.N. forces. I'm confident the situation will be redressed.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Getman, this didn't surprise you, you told us. You even predicted it last December. But why were you not surprised at this incident?

MR. GETMAN: Robin, it's a bad news/good news story. We have people throughout the country. You have to remember that Somalia is as large as Texas, and as recently as two weeks ago, all of the relief workers, not only World Vision's relief workers, but all of the relief workers in the country were warned through the intelligence network that Adide might be up to something and was looking for a pretext to attack either the U.N. troops or international relief workers, particularly American relief workers. There is a transition to normalcy in the countryside. There are community health teams developing where the folks in the villages, the elders and so on are putting together teams of folks to manage the development, whereas, we were feeding five thousand people a day in my organization alone and hundreds of thousands of people a day in the other agencies, today many more thousands of people have been equipped to raise their own food. The sorghum is knee high. People are going to take care of themselves. But we knew that the problem, the root problem had not been solved. We can send hundreds of thousands of troops in there, but unless we take care of the pressure that is causing these high pressure cooking, then we are going to run into trouble down the line. We need real serious preventive diplomacy, not only in Somalia but many other places. We need the troops replaced by a police force that are trained by the Germans and Italians, managed by the U.N. The mandate for the U.N. has to be increased still today and particularly on the judiciary. And the people who perpetrated this crime must be brought to justice quickly, and punishment must be meted out, or the line will not be drawn in the sand, and we'll be back in the soup again.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Sahnoun, as a former U.N. envoy, why do think this attack was launched on the Pakistanis and attacks of similar scale have not been launched on the American troops there?

MR. SAHNOUN: Well, in fact, these tragic events should be fully and thoroughly investigated. It is rather unbelievable that the U.N. troops should allow themselves to be trapped in a city where they have been in operation for several months and which they know where well. Is it communication? Is it intelligence? Is it a political misunderstanding? Whatever it is, the management and the leadership both there in Mogadishu and in New York should investigate the matter. There were rumors that the UNOSOM wanted to take over the radio station. This is being denied. That has apparently been a rumor in Mogadishu for several days. There is a credibility gap. There is a problem of confidence between the U.N. and the environment, and unless steps are taken to resolve this kind of credibility gap and win the trust back of this sort of environment, we will have trouble again.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Samatar, how do you read this situation? What does Adide want?

MR. SAMATAR: Well, Adide wants one thing. Adide wants to rule Somalia. And if he can't rule Somalia, he's going to ruin it. I have said often on this program and in others is what is needed is that we've got to deal with Gen. Adide very tough. If, for example, some months ago when he organized his people, literally his own group, to throw stones at the secretary general of the United Nations, if the United Nations personnel on the ground said to him, look, we know that it is you who's organizing this, stop it, and if you don't stop, we will deal with you effectively. I might even say this incident might have been avoided. Adide has been getting away in many cases with murder. One has to try to marginalize these warlords. And I must say happily due to the good efforts of Amb. Oakley and others, the warlords have been marginalized, but this marginalization process could have been done faster, and it should be done effectively with force.

MR. MacNeil: How do you say about that, Mr. Oakley, Amb. Oakley, can, can the U.N. get, is it within the U.N.'s mandate to get tougher with somebody like Adide?

MR. OAKLEY: Sure. It certainly was in the mandate of U.S.-led forces and the Security Council resolution that was passed on the 26th of March gave the United Nations forces broad latitude to carry out its mission, including the use of force. The Security Council resolution that was passed last night reaffirmed and strengthened this mandate, so it is within the capabilities and the mission of the United Nations. I suspect that the United Nations forces on the ground will be further reinforced in days to come and they will carry out this mission. They were waiting till more forces arrived from India and elsewhere to complete the job, but now I think they'll have to accelerate. Otherwise, as Tom said, and Mohamed Sahnoun, the environment will, will further erode. But most of the country is fairly quiet. But part of this problem is, indeed, Adide's protest against the political process which has been set in train. There were a number of agreements reached at the Addis political conference last March in which he participated, in which he agreed to, which he didn't like. And he's trying to unseat that and uproot it if he possibly can.

MR. MacNeil: Well, what happens if he is not dealt with sternly in this case, or if it's true that his men did it, killing 22 Pakistani members wearing the blue helmet of the United Nations?

MR. OAKLEY: Well, there have been previous instances of attempted intimidation by Adide's forces, the SNA, by Morgan Hersey's forces, and by others that had been dealt with sternly, of an attempt to intimidate the regional council that had been formed in Baidoa. The Australians arrested the people who were guilty, sent them down to Mogadishu. The court system, the rudimentary one that is there, because one of the individuals involved had been guilty of murder and this case was documented, he was sentenced to death and executed, quite properly. So this is the way in which it can be done by the Somalis, themselves, with the support of the United Nations. And I am confident that it will happen.

MR. MacNeil: Are you confident, Mr. Sahnoun, that the United Nations leadership and command structure in Somalia are capable of being that tough?

MR. SAHNOUN: Oh, it remains to be seen really. I think the Operation Restore Hope achieved a great success, and it handed over to the U.N. and we had the first thing we see now is the U.N. facing this dilemma. It is a big problem. I, one of the questions one would ask, and how come that there are weapon storage sites in Mogadishu, and that, in fact, one of these weapon storage sites was close to the radio broadcast. When the U.N. troops went to verify or check, they said that there was supposed to be about less than a hundred rounds of ammunition. And they found 600 rounds of ammunition. All this is really confusing. Something is wrong with the management of the operation. So that's why I am rather skeptical, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Well, you say something is wrong with the management of the operation. You mean that those, those caches were permitted and what, what would be right for the operation to go and say no more arms caches and seize them? Is that what would be the right thing to do?

MR. SAHNOUN: The right thing, yes, is the disarmament should be to destroy totally, not keep them in storages which are accessible to the Somalis, so that they can resort to them whenever they want and use these arms. They should be either destroyed or taken away out of Somalia altogether. This disarmament process, which I think was started very nicely and diplomatically by Operation Restore Hope should have been followed, should have been pursued and very thoroughly so that no arms remain there in the hands of the militias and of the looters.

MR. MacNeil: Amb. Oakley, is it politically realistic for the U.N. to do that?

MR. OAKLEY: I think it's politically realistic to get through, to get rid of the heavy weapons. As Mohamed Sahnoun said, something was begun but something wasn't carried all the way through. As I mentioned in the very beginning, I think now it has to be done. And I'm banking on the United Nations being able to do it. I believe at the moment they're fully prepared to do it, have the capability, but I believe they will be able to do that, and their capability will be reinforced.

MR. MacNeil: Does the, do the warlords like Adide at the moment have heavier weapons than the U.N. peacekeeping forces?

MR. OAKLEY: No.

MR. MacNeil: They don't?

MR. OAKLEY: In this case they mounted a surprise attack. It wasn't because they had heavier weapons.

MR. MacNeil: I see. Mr. Getman, some relief people have pulled out, some for security reasons, as some U.N. personnel have done. What has this incident done, and what will it do to the ongoing effort which is achieving positive results that you described a moment ago? Is this going to stop all that?

MR. GETMAN: Absolutely not. More have stayed. The truth is our people on the ground are more troubled by malaria and dysentery than they are by violence. The troops that are out in the countryside are being very effective in continuing to protect the relief and development operation. What's going to happen if the U.N. doesn't get control of this, and it isn't only possible, it's absolutely essential, is that the huge, much larger development program, recovery and development program that has been put in place by the major agencies of the world -- and, remember, the troops went in to support the work of the non-governmental organizations will be stopped. World Vision has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on distributing food, but we have an $11 million budget to do development work, and that's where the crunch is going to come. If this isn't dealt with and dealt with sternly, then the agencies are going to suffer in the short-term and the people on the ground are going to suffer in the long-term.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Samatar, as you see it, is there a danger that if this isn't squelched, this effort by Adide to intimidate the U.N., that it'll just, the whole situation will just slide back down to where it was before the American forces went in in December?

MR. SAMATAR: Absolutely, and Mr. MacNeil, that takes us back to the question that you raised earlier in the inquiry, namely, why the Pakistanis were targeted. I was in the country not long ago, as you know, and as I walked around in the streets and talked to people, one thing that came out very clear, and I was in Gen. Adide's part of the city, one thing that came out very clear is that Adide's people do not have respect for the Pakistanis. Why? Because when the first contingence of Pakistanis was sent there, apparently they were sent without adequate equipment, and so that these tribal militias repeatedly infested the airport under the very eyes of the Pakistani troops.

MR. MacNeil: Just to remind people, the Pakistanis were the U.N., small U.N. peacekeeping force of about 500 soldiers who were there at the very beginning before President Bush sent the American forces.

MR. SAMATAR: Correct. And then the impression got acceptance among the Somalis that these Pakistanis came to fight, that they were going to run over them.

MR. MacNeil: Just Pakistanis, or is it disrespect for the whole United Nations operation?

MR. SAMATAR: I'm afraid there's a general disrespect for the United Nations as an organization that can't get its act together in Somalia.

MR. MacNeil: Is that -- do you share that view, Mr. Sahnoun, that there's a general disrespect for the U.N. organization there?

MR. SAHNOUN: Yes, I believe so. I think to a large extent, the operation, Operation Restore Hope, was offering a good opportunity, a golden opportunity for the U.N. to regain its credibility. But it seems that they have a hard time to do so.

MR. MacNeil: Amb. Oakley, do you agree that the U.N. has not seized that opportunity and built up some credibility with the Somalis?

MR. OAKLEY: Well, we expected that sooner or later there was going to be a major test of UNOSOM II, the new U.N. force. I agree with Prof. Samatar that this is aimed directly at the Pakistanis, because they were seen to be the weakest. In early March, when there was a similar, much smaller uprising, it was aimed at the Nigerians, because they were felt to be weak, but this is the tactic that's used to try to separate them and try to split them off. I am confident, as I said before, that General Beer will get his hands on this situation and deal with it. Don't forget the Turks are very good military men and they have a solid organization there, but it needs beefing up, and then they need to act decisively.

MR. MacNeil: I'd just like to ask all of you whether you agree with Mr. Samatar, do you , Mr. Oakley, that this could slide -- if nothing is done now, this could just slide back to the chaos and the factional fighting that was causing so much starvation and misery before?

MR. OAKLEY: It could, because if Adide's forces are not brought under control, all the others will react. So far, they've been remarkably restrained. You've seen provocations here and there, but the others have realized the best thing for them to do is to follow the political process which is being put, being erected, if you will, by the United Nations not to get bogged down to a renaissance of clan warfare, but Adide, if not stopped, could, indeed, touch it off.

MR. MacNeil: Do you agree with that, Mr. Getman, that all the good work will be undone if this isn't nipped in the bud now?

MR. GETMAN: It's almost too much to think about. I pray that, in fact, it will be managed and that it will be a crossroads not only for Somalia but the many other places in the world where the U.N. peacekeepers have to, have to be effective, have to be victorious.

MR. MacNeil: Well, gentlemen, thank you all four. Roger.

MR. MUDD: Still ahead on the NewsHour, solving a health mystery in the southwest, shipwrecked Chinese immigrants, and essayist Anne Taylor Fleming. FOCUS - SLEUTH STORY

MR. MUDD: Next tonight, a medical mystery. It's been just over three weeks since the first cases of a mysterious, flu-like illness swept through the Navajo Reservation in the southwest killing young adults who were seemingly healthy. There have been no new cases reportedly recently, and researchers are now optimistic they have solved the mystery. But as Special Correspondent Tony Burden reports, there are major questions left to be answered.

MR. BURDEN: This weekend, after a whirlwind investigation, New Mexico's infectious disease specialist, Dr. Gary Simpson, announced that the work of more than 200 medical investigators had paid off and tentatively identified the virus that has killed at least 11 people.

DR. GARY SIMPSON, New Mexico Department of Health: And I think we're all feeling an enormous amount of gratitude that we are at least at this point in investigation so early.

MR. BURDEN: A form of panna virus, an obscure virus common in China and the Orient, is being blamed for the unusually lethal epidemic in the vast Navajo Indian Reservation, a spectacular area sprawling across northern New Mexico and Arizona. Almost all of the reported cases have lived on or near the reservation. The majority of the victims have been native Americans, all young adults, all apparently healthy. But there the similarities end. There seems to be nothing else to link the cases of the mysterious disease or explain who falls victim. It begins like a mild case of the flu but suddenly, sometimes in a matter of hours, worsens, attacking the lungs, causing the victim to suffocate. Until the cause is known and a pathogen can be positively identified, doctors are referring to the disease as unexplained Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome, ARDS for short. Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome is nothing new. Scattered cases have been reported for decades. But this outbreak on the Navajo Reservation is the first time that so many people have been struck so suddenly and without an apparent cause. Victims can feel healthy in the morning and then be dead by that night.

DR. SARAH ALLEN, University of New Mexico: They presented as though they had the flu then suddenly developed failure of their respiratory system.

MR. BURDEN: Dr. Sarah Allen is a professor of infectious diseases at the University of New Mexico and has seen a number of the epidemic's victims. She says there's another mysterious aspect of the current epidemic. Why are all of the victims strong, young adults, all physically fit? Disease typically strikes the very young or very old, or those debilitated by illness.

DR. SARAH ALLEN: Sometimes if a person who's debilitated or very sick or very elderly dies in an unexplained fashion, people are not necessarily driven to determine the cause as much as a 19 year old who runs marathons who comes in and just dies before your eyes.

MR. BURDEN: Dr. Richard Koster of University Hospital in Albuquerque has treated the bulk of the epidemic's victims. In a special isolation ward at the hospital, he has put them on a mechanical respirator and administered heavy doses of antibiotics.

DR. RICHARD KOSTER, University of New Mexico: I'm not sure that the antibiotics are playing much of a role in the recovery of these patients. We can't really know that until we identify a pathogen, but we do think that early intervention with mechanical ventilation, a respirator, is critical to the survival of these patients.

MR. BURDEN: Dr. Koster credits the ventilator with saving at least four of the victims. Over the weekend, one of the two remaining patients was released, and the other was well enough to be taken off the respirator. The fact that antibiotics had no obvious effect tended to indicate that this was not a bacterial infection. By the process of elimination, the investigation began the focus on a virus as the cause of the mysterious disease. When a mysterious disease began striking gay men in the early eighties, it took two years to identify the virus as HIV. Carol Tulenko of Albuquerque's University Hospital says new genetic techniques can now identify a virus in a matter of days.

CAROL TULENKO, University Hospital: Well, the current laboratory technology is actually looking at the DNA of an infectious agent. It's actually taking a small amount of the genetic material and multiplying it so that it can be then compared to known genetic material and help identify the organism.

MR. BURDEN: It was this type of genetic comparison that told investigators they were dealing with a form of exotic virus rarely seen outside of the Orient. Antibodies in specimens from epidemic victims closely fit the genetic profile of pana virus, an obscure Asian virus that has been reported in American servicemen serving in Korea. Even though there's a close genetic match, there are indications that the current epidemic is being caused by a new and much more virulent form of pana virus. Dr. Jim Cheek is an epidemiologist with the Indian Health Service.

DR. JIM CREEK, Epidemiologist: We may have identified the agent involved, but that's only half the story. Obviously, we don't know exactly why these people were the victims, and that's where we will focus at this point with our field investigations, attempt to define exactly what activities or what exposures these individuals had that caused them to be the ones that became ill with the virus.

MR. BURDEN: The Navajos are a people deeply rooted in tradition. It met the current epidemic relying on the best medicine from two worlds. In addition to screenings at the Indian Health Service Hospitals, there are traditional ceremonies intended to cleanse the land. This week, Dr. Cheek and others from the Indian Health Service are administering an epidemic questionnaire on the reservation trying to find any common exposures that link the victims. The elders of the tribe have urged cooperation, but it will be a difficult experience for most Navajos. Their tradition is filled with taboos surrounding them. It's a custom that no one speaks of the dead person for three days following a death. Death and illness are viewed as a disruption of the balance between man and his environment. There may be one clue as to how the disease has been spreading on the reservation. Dr. Ron Voorhees, an epidemiologist for the state of New Mexico, says it's known that the panna virus is carried by rodents.

DR. RON VOORHEES, Deputy State Epidemiologist: The primary modes of transmission is actually in the secretions of the rodent, can be in feces, can be in saliva, and it's most commonly found in the urine, and so when a mouse were to urinate, there would be some, some aerosolization, making that into, getting that into the air. That's the clearest mode of transmission for the other viruses of this family.

MR. BURDEN: When the disease first struck the Navajos, the elders and medicine men said there had been signs that a plague would settle upon them. They pointed to a disruption in the normal cycle of the pinion nut as evidence of pending illness. As the men of modern men were announcing the likely solution to the mystery disease, they graciously shared the credit with traditional medicine men.

DR. JIM CHEEK: Fairly early in the investigation we heard from Navajo elders and medicine men that this year was only the third time in this century that pinion nuts, a local prime nut, had been available year round. And they felt that that was a cause or associated with this particular illness. I think they may have been much closer than any of us guessed, because along with the pinion nuts are the rodent populations. And when you have pinion nuts year round, you have an awful lot of rodents, so I'd like to give credit where credit's due, and I think the Navajo elders and the medicine men knew all along.

MR. BURDEN: Relationships between the Navajos and whites have been tense for centuries. Medicine and healing have always been an area where the two cultures have collided. But the Indians have proved unusually cooperative with the investigators, and the investigators have been remarkably sensitive to Navajo tradition. FOCUS - CRUEL VOYAGE

MR. MUDD: Next tonight, the story of almost 300 Chinese illegal aliens who spent 114 days at sea. Their harrowing voyage on a freighter began in Fuzhou, China, on February 14th, and ended Sunday morning near New York City. It was 2 AM when the tramp steamer ran aground off the Long Island coast. By 3 AM, four helicopters, dozens of ambulances, and hundreds of police and firefighters had converged for a rescue effort in the pounding surf. Waves were six feet high, the water temperature 53 degrees. Though the ship was in little danger, many who had made the perilous journey from southeastern China began jumping overboard in panic and in terror.

SPOKESMAN: They took some beatin' gettin' through that surf, which is what was also keepin' them, it was throwin' them under, people were going under, and fortunately a lot of them held on.

MR. MUDD: Eight of the refugees died trying to swim for shore. A handful escaped in yesterday's pre-dawn chaos, and by this afternoon, authorities said they had accounted for 282 immigrants, mostly men. Some were loaded onto buses today bound for detention centers in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Immigration officials say those in custody have asked for political asylum, a process that could take 18 months. The Golden Venture is the 24th vessel with human cargo intercepted since August 1991. And yesterday's incident is the third in less than two weeks, highlighting a dramatic surge in illegal Chinese immigration. On May 24th, a freighter dumped 240 refugees from Fujian Province at the foot of Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and then sailed back into international waters, where it was intercepted by the Coast Guard. And that same day, police in Jersey City, New Jersey, raided an abandoned auto body shop where they say smugglers held 57 illegal Chinese immigrants at gunpoint.

DENNIS O'CONNELL, Jersey City Police: They were being held captive all right. There were bars on the windows. There was no way anybody was getting in or out of this building. It's hard to believe that people come over from China to be locked up in this over here in America.

MR. MUDD: Immigration officials say that up to 100,000 Chinese may be entering the U.S. illegally each year, heading for jobs in communities like New York's China Town for wages as low as $1 an hour. Many work as indentured servants for years to pay off smugglers' fees of tens of thousands of dollars. Those who arrived on the Golden Venture say they or their relatives had paid smugglers called "snakeheads" up to $35,000 for the trip during which they were confined to the ship's cargo hold and were fed once every other day. For more on the story, we're joined now by William Slattery, who's the director of the New York Office of Immigration & Naturalization Service. He's in our Denver studio tonight. Mr. Slattery, where does the Golden Venture and these 280 illegal aliens fit into the overall problem of illegal immigration?

MR. SLATTERY: Well, they represent a pattern that we've been witnesses over the last several years in terms of the smuggling and illegal entry of Chinese aliens. They're one of three elements. We have Chinese coming across our land border with Mexico. We have Chinese flying into our international airports, and we have them coming by sea. The first ship was intercepted in August of 1991, off Hawaii, and since then, we've had 24 vessels. That's better than one a month. In New York, where I'm the district director, I can say that 1990 Chinese illegal aliens apprehended at Kennedy Airport represented 2 percent of our work load. Today they're 22 percent. So you can see the trend is getting progressively worse.

MR. MUDD: Why is the trend going up?

MR. SLATTERY: Well, these individuals are coming from Fujian Province. It's a blue collar province. They earn about $80 a month over there. And they're coming here in hopes of that economic opportunity. They're committing to pay smugglers about $30,000 per head, and, obviously, most of them don't have that kind of money. Subsequent to arrival in the United States, they're normally held hostage until family or friends come up with the $30,000, or until the alien is sold into some type of forced servitude.

MR. MUDD: Held hostage by whom, Mr. Slattery?

MR. SLATTERY: Well, your piece referenced the hostages over in Jersey City. The smuggling activity is directed by Asian organized gangs.

MR. MUDD: Why -- in the case of the Golden Venture, why would a ship go three-quarters of the way around the world to, to beach at Rockaway Beach in Queens, rather than go to San Francisco, just a third of the way around the world?

MR. SLATTERY: Well, ironically, wherever the ships seem to land, the destination of the Chinese is normally New York City. Even those vessels that landed on the West Coast, the aliens were then intending to travel the United States to New York. New York is the, is the home of Asian organized crime within the United States, as Hong Kong is over in Asia.

MR. MUDD: We saw the aliens being put on buses and we reported that they are now on their way to detention centers in the area. I thought that those who applied for political asylum generally were released pretty quickly. What's the change in policy?

MR. SLATTERY: Well, what's happened is you're referring to the phenomena we're experiencing at Kennedy Airport. We intercept 15,000 inadmissible aliens a year at Kennedy Airport, and we can detain but about 3 or 4 percent of them. The other 96 percent, regardless of filing a claim for asylum, are paroled into the United States to await a court date. What we're doing here is the administration wants a deterrent, and we intend to detain all the Chinese aliens who are coming by ship. We intend to prosecute the crew, and we're going to seize that vessel. Those are some of the things we're doing to send a message to organized crime we're not going to tolerate this type of activity.

MR. MUDD: This was the result of a direct task force on illegal immigration set up at the White House?

MR. SLATTERY: Well, the White House has approved a working group with representatives from the State Department, the Department of Defense, the intelligence communities, Justice, INS, and the Coast Guard, to work on both preventative plans and contingency plans should any successfully land in the United States.

MR. MUDD: Have you got the money at INS to take care of 300 detainees for as long as it takes?

MR. SLATTERY: I'm told that we have sufficient funds to detain these Chinese, yes.

MR. MUDD: What about the crew of the, of the Golden Venture, half Indonesian, half Burmese, what happens to them?

MR. SLATTERY: That's correct. There was one captain and twelve crew. We intend to prosecute all thirteen of those individuals for smuggling, however, if any of the crew and/or the captain wish to cooperate with us and identify the organized crime members, then probably the U.S. attorney would take that into consideration.

MR. MUDD: A simple run of mathematics tells us that if you have three hundred to four hundred on one of these freighters at $30,000 a pop, you've got about a nine million to twelve million dollar cargo, is that right?

MR. SLATTERY: That's correct. That's correct. There's a lot of money involved in alien smuggling.

MR. MUDD: So what, what effect has that had on the pattern of drug smuggling versus alien smuggling?

MR. SLATTERY: Well, ironically, it's the same crime groups that smuggle narcotics that have now started smuggling aliens. In fact, many of them will tell us that alien smuggling is more profitable and less risky.

MR. MUDD: Just to back up a minute, you mentioned that they're all coming from Fujian Province, which is a maritime province. What sort of people are they? Are they, are they peasants, or are they any professionals? Characterize them for me.

MR. SLATTERY: If you were going to generalize, you would say that they were blue collar workers, mostly unskilled, common laborers. That's why they were limited to about $80 earnings per month. And they're coming to the United States, and most of them will acquire jobs in restaurants.

MR. MUDD: One of the detectives of the New York Police Department from the 5th Precinct was quoted in the New York Times this morning as saying that on board the Golden Venture were a lot of street enforcers. What did he mean by that?

MR. SLATTERY: Well, within the group of smuggled aliens are enforcers. These are also illegal aliens who earn their passage to the United States by enforcing the, the will of the smugglers on the, on the smuggled aliens. In other words, when these aliens were rescued and when we put 'em altogether in one location, many were reluctant to talk to us because of enforcers being in the nearby vicinity. One of our challenges is to weed those enforcers out. We've already identified at least one, and we suspect several others.

MR. MUDD: Describe for me, Mr. Slattery, what the conditions were like, as best you know, on that trip, that one hundred fourteen day trip.

MR. SLATTERY: The conditions were absolutely horrible, deplorable conditions. You had a vessel that no more than 150 feet in length with hundreds of Chinese, many of whom had been on it for at least 112 days. Ironically, what we're learning is that this vessel was a back up vessel to an original vessel that broke down in Africa and that these aliens had spent some time over in Mogadishu before they boarded this vessel, so although they were on this vessel a length of time, they were also stuck in port for a while.

MR. MUDD: How does, how does an outlaw vessel such as the Golden Venture, how does it refuel, and where does it go to get, get supplies to keep going?

MR. SLATTERY: Gosh, you know, I really don't know where it refuels and what degree of supplies they carry. I can tell you by the time those aliens jumped off the ship yesterday, there were no supplies on that vessel.

MR. MUDD: Back to the question of political asylum, what are the grounds, or do the grounds differ for political asylum with Chinese as opposed to Haitians, Cubans, or others?

MR. SLATTERY: Well, the grounds are the same. In order to prevail, you have to have a well founded fear of persecution. The one thing differently for the Chinese is the issue of forced sterilization in China. If an individual wants to have more than one child and he believes that the government is going to persecute him for having more than one, he has a basis to file asylum. My understanding is that the immigration courts have been approving about 25 percent of those claims.

MR. MUDD: And overall, what's the percentage of asylum granted to Chinese applicants opposed to the overall granting of asylum?

MR. SLATTERY: Well, I don't know if it's, if it's higher or lower than the average. I've seen some numbers in the press lately that indicated it was 80 percent for Chinese versus 30 for other groups. I don't know where that data comes from. What we've observed here in New York is that most of the Chinese who file a claim for asylum never pursue it. If they're successful in getting out of INS custody, they just never return to our offices to, to pursue the claim. And that reduces the number of final grants.

MR. MUDD: One final question, Mr. Slattery. Could not the, the Defense Department's tracking system that has been in place for so long during the Cold War be used to track the vessels as they approach either East Coast, West Coast?

MR. SLATTERY: The Defense Department has been cooperating with the, with the Justice Department, and, indeed, they're a member of the work group.

MR. MUDD: But I mean, so then why was the Golden Venture not spotted approaching Rockaway Beach?

MR. SLATTERY: Well, it was spotted at several points en route, and then it was lost evidently. The Coast Guard did have a lookout on it, that the possibility was that that vessel could land anywhere from New Jersey to Maine. And we were actively looking for the vessel.

MR. MUDD: And give me a quick estimate of how long it'll be before those 282 Chinese will have their cases disposed of.

MR. SLATTERY: If they remained in detention for the entire period of time, there's no reason that it should last more than four months.

MR. MUDD: Good. Thank you very much, Mr. Slattery.

MR. SLATTERY: Thank you, Mr. Mudd. ESSAY - ON THE MARCH

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight, the Broadway show "Angels in America" won four Tony Awards last night. The show prompted some thoughts by essayist Anne Taylor Fleming on life, death, and art in the age of AIDS.

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: Periodically, some group rises up out of the masses and takes center stage, their protest marches snaking through our conscience like a moral undercurrent. Suddenly they're in the streets, full of old grievances and new resolve, lit up with an enviable vitality. The union rallies in the '30s, the civil rights demonstrations in the '60s, the women's protests in the early '70s. And now in the '90s, the gays and lesbians are on the march. It is their moment and everyone knows it. And over them, as they march out of the closet and into our living rooms, demanding our attention, our respect, their right to serve freely in the military, over them all hovers the angel of death with her bag of AIDS, her devilish compote of killing infections. That angel now hangs over the marquis of a Broadway theater that is showing the most highly touted play in years. The play is the first half of Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize Winning "Angels in America," a gay fantasia on national themes in the words of the author. Kushner is not alone. He is part of an eloquent, grief-struck explosion throughout the arts. There's Larry Kramer with his plays, "The Normal Heart," and more recently "The Destiny of Me," and Randy Shultz's books, And the Band Played On, and his newest, Conduct Unbecoming, Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military, and Paul Minette with his AIDS memoir, Borrowed Time, and this year's National Book Award, Becoming a Man. All three of these men are HIV positive. It is Kushner's desire and reach to summarize all of their experiences in one great big swooping play. He does not leave a stone unturned, a theme unplayed. Life, death, redemption, religion, homophobia, hemophilia, drag queens and closeted Republican gays. They're all here in this circa 1985 play, Ronald Reagan haunting the whole like the angel, herself. But at the heart of it always is the character of Pryor Walter, the self paradigm, emaciated prince of AIDS with his buoyant fatalism.

ACTOR: Lesion No. 1, look at it, the wine dot kiss of the angel of death. I'm a lesionnaire, the foreign lesion, the American lesion, lesionnaire's disease, my troubles are lesions.

OTHER ACTOR: [in play] Stop!

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: This is Kushner's world, part Sophocles, part sitcom, in which people communicate in one-liners, reaching out to each other through pain-filled, wisecracking star turns that sometimes dance into true and tender feelings and just as quickly back out of them. All is dangerous in this era of AIDS, especially love.

OLDER ACTOR: It afflicts mostly homosexuals and drug addicts. Do you think I'm a junkie, Henry?

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: Hate is much easier, Kushner reminds us, in the persona of his other AIDS victim, the lawyer Roy Cohn, who struts and spits and wields power with a demonic gleam, even as the angel hovers over him.

OLDER ACTOR: You are a -- go on Henry, it starts with an "h!" With an "h" Henry and it isn't hemophiliac! Come on! Stay while I tell you I'm a homosexual! And I will proceed systematically to destroy your reputation and your practice and your career in New York State, Henry, which you know I can do!

ACTRESS: You're wearing make-up.

ACTOR: So are you.

ACTRESS: But you're a man.

ACTOR: Ahh! [screaming]

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: It's vibrant stuff, funny, electric, and able in its insistence on gay themes to transcend its own gayness, so that Pryor Walter is the Androgenous Any Man Waiting for Godot as we wait with him.

ACTOR: The hands and the feet give it away. [laughter in audience]

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: Would we do it Pryor's way or Roy Cohn's, hiding away in frothing vitriol? Isn't self knowledge finding everything? Isn't compassion? There are no easy answers here, and in some ways, there are too many questions. The parts seem bigger than the sum of the whole. But "Angels in America" is big theater, a bold, passionate work about sex and death and politics, and finally about the redeeming power of art, itself, of theater, this theater, and that theater. I'm Anne Taylor Fleming. RECAP

MR. MacNeil: Again, the main stories of this Monday, Senate leaders said a compromise appeared close on the President's economic plan, one with less taxes, more spending cuts, and a modified energy tax. NASA came up with four options for a scaled down version of its space station but none of them was within the five to nine billion dollar range called for by President Clinton. A new eruption of gunfire was reported in the Somali capital near U.N. headquarters. An ambush attack in the city killed twenty-three United Nations peacekeepers over the weekend. Good night, Roger.

MR. MUDD: Good night, Robin. That's the NewsHour for tonight. We'll be back tomorrow. I'm Roger Mudd. Thank you, and good night.