The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

Intro

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. These are tonight's main news headlines. The U.S. and top economic allies agreed on a campaign against terrorism. The Tokyo summit also criticized the Soviets for withholding information on the Chernobyl nuclear accident. NASA said that a short circuit may have caused the destruction of a Delta rocket on Saturday. Details of these stories in our news summary coming up. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: After the news summary we have a newsmaker interview with Treasury Secretary James Baker fokyo, then an extended look at the string of disasters that have struck the U.S. space program, and finally a documentary report on the post-polio syndrome. News Summary

MacNEIL: President Reagan and six other leaders of industrial democracies agreed today on a joint campaign against terrorism, with particular mention of Libya. In the first day of the Tokyo summit President Reagan and the leaders of Britain, France, Canada, West Germany, Italy and Japan also criticized Moscow for not offering more timely information on the Ukraine nuclear accident. We have a report from Tokyo by Jim Angle of National Public Radio.

JIM ANGLE, National Public Radio [voice-over]: The summit leaders met this morning to look at what their aides had spent all night negotiating, a statement on terrorism. American officials said they were satisfied with what had emerged, but one leader was not, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Great Britain. One of her advisers had written a note on Mrs. Thatcher's copy of the draft saying, "It's pretty weak." Mrs. Thatcher insisted the statement be strengthened and kept hammering away for changes, and she finally got them. American officials were clearly delighted.

GEORGE SHULTZ, Secretary of State: I think Mrs. Thatcher is a terrific leader, and I can't imagine any way that we could give her more support. If somebody could point it out, we'd do it. I think it's a terrific statement. I can't tell you how pleased I am at how strong this statement is.

ANGLE [voice-over]: The summit members approved a number of steps that could be taken against states that support terrorism, such as ending arms sales to them, limiting the size of their embassies, restricting the travel of their diplomats and refusing entry to those suspected of terrorism. The statement singled out Libya by name, and Shultz says that sends a clear message to Qaddafi.zSec. SHULTZ: The message is, "You've had it, pal. You are isolated. You are recognized as a terrorist." And as far as terrorists are concerned, more and more the message is, no place to hide.

ANGLE [voice-over]: The allies agreed to no major new steps against Libya, but Shultz said the major democracies are now united, and that is the way to win the war on terrorism.

[on camera] The summit leaders also issued a statement on the Soviet nuclear accident at Chernobyl. After expressing sympathy with the victims, they said they still want detailed information on the accident and proposed an international agreement that would require prompt notification in the future. Tomorrow, with the summit more than half over, the leaders turn to the original purpose of the meeting, international economic issues.

MacNEIL: The statement on terrorism contained no mention of the April 15th U.S. bombing raid on Libya which several governments did not support. And the U.S. did not win support for a boycott of Libyan oil. To make its argument more forceful the administration reportedly set a deadline of June 30th for the five U.S. oil companies still operating in Libya to leave. Jim?

LEHRER: The Soviets released more information today on the reactor disaster. In a television report they said for the first time radiation had spread beyond the immediate area of the plant itself, and the newspaper Pravda reported flames from the burning reactor shot up 100 feet into the air. The article said the fire is extremely difficult to extinguish, but the Soviet newspaper said the crisis at the plant remains complicated. The map shown on the Moscow evening news program gave no indication of where the radiation might have spread, nor did the woman who read the commentary. The program did show pictures of a man using a Geiger counter to check for radioactivity. An official statement said the emissions were continuing to decrease. But no specific measures of radiation levels were given. The news broadcast said radiation checks of farms in the area near the damaged plant showed crops with no radiation above the permissable amounts.

In Washington the State Department said American officials found no signficant health risks in Moscow and Warsaw at this time, and the U.S. government's task force on the accident said small amounts of radioactivity from it have been found off the Pacific Northwest coast of this country. But spokesmen said they were found at high altitudes and posed no health threat.

MacNEIL: Members of Congress today called for a complete reassessment of NASA control procedures following the nation's third space disaster this year. A Delta rocket carrying a weather satellite was destroyed on Saturday after its main engine suddenly shut down 71 seconds after launch from Cape Canaveral. John Yardley, president of McDonnell Douglas, which made the rocket, said the failure was apparently caused by a short circuit. It was a view shared by NASA officials who briefed the press today.

LAWRENCE J. ROSS, NASA: Well, we have some data that does tend to indicate there was an electrical malfunction on the vehicle, the consequences of which may very well be the MECO, the premature MECO that we saw, and I think Bill can go into that in some more detail than I can at this time.

WILLIAM RUSSELL, Delta Project Manager: At about 0.8 second before this happened we see a large amplitude spike on the main engine battery current. At that time -- in blowing this up, it was a very, very short duration, oh, six or eight milliseconds. We see a corresponding dip in the battery voltage, down to as low as 11 volts. That goes away and everthing's all right for the next ensuing 0.8 second. Then right after, just preceding the shutdown, we see another spike of about the same amplitude, about 150 amps. This time, though, it occurred for about 14 or 15 milliseconds, and then the stage shuts down.

MacNEIL: Both the space agency and McDonnellDouglas said that sabotage had not been excluded, but that possibility was regarded as extremely remote.

LEHRER: The U.S. Supreme Court today handed down a major decision on capital punishment. It said it was all right to exclude jurors from death penalty cases who are opposed to capital punishment. The vote was six to three and involved a case in Arkansas. If the court had gone the other way, several hundred people now on death row could have had their cases reopened for review. The high court today also said a final no to convicted Florida murderer Theodore Bundy. He is the subject of a two-part TV miniseries now on NBC. The court refused to hear Bundy's appeal of a death sentence for the 1978 murder of two Florida State University sorority sisters.

MacNEIL: In Atlanta, the state of Georgia paid $1,008,000 to a university instructor who said she was fired for protesting against special academic treatment for athletes. Under an agreement made in U.S. District Court, Jan Kemp will also be rehired as coordinator of a remedial studies program in English at the University of Georgia. In return, she agreed to drop her claim for more than $2.5 million.

LEHRER: And that's it for the news summary tonight. Now we talk with Treasury Secretary James Baker in Tokyo, look at the disasters that have hit the U.S. space program, and get a documentary report on what doctors are calling the post-polio syndrome. Balancing Accounts

MacNEIL: First tonight, we go to the Tokyo summit for a newsmaker interview with Treasury Secretary James Baker. Although the first day has been dominated by political statements about terrorism and the Soviet nuclear accident, economic issues are expected to resume their central place tomorrow. President Reagan's key adviser in that area is Treasury Secretary Baker, who joins us live from Tokyo where it is now Tuesday morning. Welcome to breakfast-time television, Mr. Secretary.

JAMES BAKER: Thank you very much, Robin.

MacNEIL: In the clip we just showed in our news summary Secretary Shultz was positively beaming. Why is the U.S. so happy about the statement on terrorism?

Sec. BAKER: Well, because I think it's a strong statement, and it is a stronger statement than was originally planned for this summit. The United States and some other countries succeeded in beefing it up considerably during the course of yesterday's discussions and we're very pleased with it.

MacNEIL: Well, both Mr. Shultz and President Reagan on the way to the summit said what was needed was not talk but action. What action is there represented in this statement?

Sec. BAKER: Well, I think there's action when you specifically name one country as being prominent with respect to terrorism, and the statement names Libya and it was not easy to get that in there. I think it's action when you call for removing nationals of countries that practice state-sponsored terrorism from the countries represented here at the summit; when you close down People's Bureaus; when you agree, or have industrialized countries agree, not to transfer weapons or parts for weapons to countries that sponsor terrorism. I think that all of those are actions, and there were a couple of other action steps in there.

MacNEIL: In your own field, the U.S. did not succeed in getting agreement on economic sanctions against Libya or on a European boycott of Libyan oil. Was that disappointing?

Sec. BAKER: Well, it would have been preferable, I suppose, to have gotten that, but I think an agreement not to sell spare parts, not to sell arms and that sort of thing is, in a sense, an economic sanction. It's a political sanction, partially, but primarily it's an economic sanction. So I don't think it's quite accurate to say we got nothing by way of economic sanctions. The countries that we approached back in January and February when we first announced our sanctions against Libya are far more ready today to cooperate with us than they were then.

MacNEIL: Was the U.S. operating with its hands tied a little bit because of the presence, which Europeans kept pointing out, of five U.S. oil companies still operating in Libya?

Sec. BAKER: Well, that's been something that other countries have used, I would say defensively. When we've suggested economic sanctions, some of them have come back to us and said, well, that's all very well and good for you to say but you're still permitting your oil companies to operate there. So it was our view that we had probably just about run out the string with respect to giving our companies an opportunity to sell their assets in Libya and that shortly they should plan to pull out.

MacNEIL: Is it true, as reported, that they now have to be out by June the 30th?

Sec. BAKER: I'm not going to, and I can't, confirm a specific date for you. I think it's important to note that at the time we first imposed our sanctions we seized a large amount or a large number of Libyan assets. And if some of our companies have to walk away from their interests over there, if they should be seized by the Libyan government, we would hold assets as security for that seizure.

MacNEIL: If their assets are not seized by the Libyan government, will the U.S. government compensate them anyway for forcing them to get out?

Sec. BAKER: Well, if their assets are not seized, they would not be subject to an economic loss, provided they were still compensated for their net profits interest and provided they were still compensated under the agreements they have. If they're not compensated by the Libyan government then we hold assets as security for that lack of compensation.

MacNEIL: I see. Although you don't want to name the date, were you able -- was the U.S. able to assure these European countries in particular that the U.S. oil companies will be out by a certain date?

Sec. BAKER: We were able to assure them that the string had just about run out, that we had given our companies an opportunity to dispose of their assets by granting them license exemptions, and it was almost -- we were just about to the point that shortly we'd see them pulling out of there.

MacNEIL: I see. Just one more question on terrorism. Was it a disappointment to the U.S. that no mention is made in the statement of either the U.S. raid or the use of force against terrorism?

Sec. BAKER: No, although I suppose it would have been completely acceptable to the United States to see that. But I don't think we would characterize that as a major disappointment, because we were so pleased to see the statement strengthened in the manner in which it was strengthened.

MacNEIL: On the statement about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, there are a lot of stories out of Tokyo quoting U.S. officials as saying they were not trying to score a propaganda victory against the Soviet Union but were pushing hard for a joint statement. I just wondered why the U.S. was pushing so hard for this joint statement on the Soviet disaster?

Sec. BAKER: Well, we were pushing hard for a joint statement because there is serious concern here at the summit among the industrialized democracies that the Soviets have not handled that disaster properly, that they have not discharged their obligations to mankind, if you will, by fully and promptly informing other countries which were at risk of the consequences, or possible consequences of the disaster. And I think feelings are very strong on that because we're dealing, after all, with nuclear risks.

MacNEIL: Was it hard to get the other countries to agree to a statement criticizing the Soviets on that?

Sec. BAKER: Well, it was not hard to get the other countries to agree that this issue -- of course, this issue, this broke just before we arrived for the summit and there were no plans prior to that time to discuss it here, but it certainly was not hard to get agreement among all that the matter should be discussed and addressed and made the subject of a public announcement.

MacNEIL: Is it the U.S. administration view that the Soviets are still underplaying the casualties and the effects of the disaster, that there actually were --

Sec. BAKER: Well, we are not --

MacNEIL: That there actually were more people --

Sec. BAKER: We're really not positive about that.

MacNEIL: You're not? I see.

Sec. BAKER: It's possible that they are continuing to underplay it, but I don't think we have absolute proof in that regard, so we're not suggesting that.

MacNEIL: Moving on to tomorrow, or today where you are, is the summit going to produce an agreement on working towards greater stability in world currency markets?

Sec. BAKER: Yes. I think there's an excellent chance that the communique which will be announced here this afternoon at 4:00 will contain a major proposal and major strengthening, if you will, of the international monetary system, a strengthening of the process which is used in monetary matters.

MacNEIL: How will that work to strengthen it?

Sec. BAKER: Well, I'm not at liberty to go into all of the details because we don't have -- the communique is not going to be released until 4:00 this afternoon. But we'll see, I think, a substantial strengthening of the international monetary system. We'll see an improved mechanism for dealing with fluctuations in exchange rates, and I think we'll see an improved mechanism for dealing with cooperation, or coordination, perhaps, is a better word, of international economic policy generally.

MacNEIL: Is this a move, as some have suggested, towards freezing again the exchange rates and getting away from -- and having fixed rates and not floating currency rates?

Sec. BAKER: No. It would be a mistake to interpret this as a move back to fixed rates. We are dealing here with the floating rate exchange system. Everyone, I think, as this summit agrees that the floating rate system has served us well in many respects, but it's got a lot of instability in it, a lot of volatility, and it can be improved. And I think the measures that will be adopted here today will be seen as major improvements in that system.

MacNEIL: Are you hearing from a lot of your colleagues there, like the Germans and the Japanese, that they feel the dollar has gone down far enough under this floating marketplace exchange system? And are you telling them in turn you'd like it to go down some further?

Sec. BAKER: Well, as you know, we have no target for the dollar and we don't talk about what the appropriate rate of exchange is for the dollar against any other currencies. We read in the papers that there is some concern on the part of the Japanese and the Germans, particularly, with respect to these levels. But I must say those are not concerns that have been stressed in a very strenuous way with us. Our view is that the level of the dollar ought to be set by the market. It will be set by the market, and that underlying economic fundamentals are what really should determine these matters.

MacNEIL: And you personally --

Sec. BAKER: I don't think there's any real disagreement on that score with the Japanese and the Germans.

MacNEIL: But you personally would like it to go down further?

Sec. BAKER: No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying we don't have a target for the dollar, and I'm not going to tell you whether I think it's at the appropriate level or whether it ought to go up or go down, because the minute I even make a suggestion of that nature or give a hint to that effect, we see a great deal of action in the foreign exchange markets. So our position is we don't have a target for the dollar and we don't have a target for any other currencies.

MacNEIL: One final point. Have you made any progress in persuading the other two of the big three economies, Germany and Japan, to stimulate a little bit, to adopt more of a growth policy, so that they could absorb more U.S. exports and reduce these trade deficits?

Sec. BAKER: Well, I think both of those economies would agree with us that this is a particularly good time to look for additional growth in the world economy wherever we can find it. We've got interest rates coming down, inflation rates are as low as they've been in many, many years, and remaining now, and oil prices are continuing to decline. That gives countries the opportunity, or the latitude, if you will, to take some policy actions that could result in greater growth. And I think you might -- you'll see certainly expressions, I think, by all of the countries here that that is the case.

MacNEIL: Well, Secretary Baker, thank you very much for joining us from Tokyo. Jim? NASA: Troubled Again

LEHRER: Two Air Force Titan rockets exploded, there was the shuttle tragedy with the loss of its seven crew members, and now the Delta rocket destroyed Saturday 91 seconds after liftoff from Cape Canaveral. What's going on here, is the question NASA officials, members of Congress and the public are asking, and we join in asking tonight. Is it bad luck, bad coincidence, bad technology, bad management, or none of the above? And in what kind of crisis, if any, does it place the U.S. space program? We go first to a NASA official. He is Phil Culbertson, a 20-year veteran of the agency who now serves as its general manager.

Mr. Culbertson, short circuit is the word today on the cause of the Delta rocket explosion. Is that the way it's pointed?

PHILIP CULBERTSON: That's where it's pointed.

LEHRER: What caused the short circuit?

Mr. CULBERTSON: We don't know. We can't tell quite yet. We have telemetry signals which say there was apparently a short circuit and that's what we're looking for right now.

LEHRER: And a short circuit, meaning just like a short circuit that you would have in an electrical circuit at home, or is it -- I mean, the electricity just stopped, is that it?

Mr. CULBERTSON: Well, there were two very, very short spikes in the electrical continuity. It dropped out for just a few fractions, very small fractions of a second, and they were spaced less than a second apart. And, yes, it's somewhat like what in the kithappens chen. Things go off. And in this case the Delta engine relies on electric power to keep it operating, and it is built in a way that if it has insufficient power, then the electric circuit is open and it causes a shutdown in the engine.

LEHRER: And that second what you call spike, the second short circuit, is what caused the engine to stop and forit to fail, correct?

Mr. CULBERTSON: We are assuming that that is correct. It was coincident in time. But it's too early to jump to a final conclusion, I think. That's one of the problems we have in tracking down something like this, that it's very early to jump to a conclusion that we know what it is and abandon looking anywhere else. And we've been misled that way occasionally in the past. So you don't quit just because you have a strong supposition.

LEHRER: Okay. No clues, real serious clues as to what caused the short circuit?

Mr. CULBERTSON: Not at the time that I left the office this afternoon, anyway.

LEHRER: They're still working on it as we speak?

Mr. CULBERTSON: Oh, yes. We are still working on it.

LEHRER: All right. Are there any patterns that are developing among these four accidents?

Mr. CULBERTSON: Well, there's a pattern that we have problems. That's the only pattern that I can find. The three rockets, and of course there were two Titans that were involved and three systems. The Titan, the shuttle and the Delta, are quite different. They all use solids and they all use liquid systems, liquid propulsion, at the same time. But they're built by different manufacturers, they are launched by different teams, two of them by NASA teams and the two Titans by an Air Force team, or contractors working for the Air Force and contractors working for us. No, I can't say that there's an absolute pattern shaking out of this at all, and that's what's so terribly frustrating because we seem to be working on three and maybe even four quite different problems.

LEHRER: What about the suggestion that was brought up today of sabotage, the possibility of sabotage, in any one or all four of these?

Mr. CULBERTSON: I think you can list a dozen different things that we will look at. I can't -- we can't rule out sabotage. I'm certainly not including that as the number-one supposition in my thinking, however, but we'll look.

LEHRER: Is there any evidence yet that would indicate in a positive way toward sabotage, or is that just on the list?

Mr. CULBERTSON: Once again, as of the time that I left the office, it is just one of those things that's on the list.

LEHRER: Some members of Congress have suggested that what all of this points to is possibly a quality control problem at NASA. Would you agree with that?

Mr. CULBERTSON: It may be that, and particularly I think in the case of the Delta. And let me say why that is. The Delta is a very proven design. We had 44 successful flights just preceding this one, and this was, I think, something like flight number 177. It's clear to me that the design has been demonstrated to be satisfactory. Now, that leaves two kinds of problems, it seems to me. We do upgrade rockets. The Delta has had many changes, to introduce new technology or new ideas or higher performance and that sort of thing, over its lifetime. I don't know, we don't know right now whether this could have been in an area which was upgraded that way. So its history is less complete than the history on the rest of the Delta. So there is a possibility that when I said the design is understood, the design in some areas may not be that well understood. But putting that aside, then what is left, it appears to me possible that we do have a quality control problem, particularly in the Delta. If you look at the shuttle, I think it may have been a combination of a number of things, but it appears to me that we had a design problem in the shuttle, and we're going about it as though we had a design problem in the shuttle. I can't comment on the Titans because I'm not part of that investigation.

LEHRER: Mr. Culbertson, it's also been suggested since Saturday, since the Delta explosion, that this has created a crisis in the space program, particularly in getting satellites launched into space. Would you agree?

Mr. CULBERTSON: well, that's a strong word but it's probably pretty close to that. Now, crisis I guess I would feel is a little bit strong. I'm spealing here for the civil space program, and really I can't comment on the national security interest in the military and in the intelligence sense, whether it is considered a crisis there. In ours it has created a very difficult situation for communications satellites in the private sector. It has created a difficult situation for the scientists and other people that NASA supports directly in that we do not have launch services. And that is what we live on, of course, within NASA.

LEHRER: Thank you, Robin?

MacNEIL: For a look at what kind of impact the latest accident is likely to have, we turn to David Webb. He's a space policy consultant and member of the National Commission on Space, a persidential advisory group, Mr. Webb, coming on top of the shuttle disaster and the Titan explosions, how big a problem or crisis is this for the space program?

DAVIE WEBB: I believe it's a very significant problem, I think that the nation is faced with a watershed decision to make as to the necessity to start spending a great more effort and money in developing new technology to get into space. I think these are old chickens coming home to roost.

MacNEIL: Well, if they are proven technology, as we've just heard, why would new technology be needed?

MR. WEBB: Well, I think that you could say the same things about airplanes. They were proven technology in their dasy. These basically are 1950s technology that we're looking at, and the shuttle is 1960s technology. We're in the mid-'80s going into the '90s and we're going into space station activity with vehicles which basically are 30, 40 years old. I don't think it's good enough for this country.

MacNEIL: Coming back to the dimensions of the problem, just going back to where we started, is this a national security problem as well as a civilian space program?

Mr. WEBB: Yes, I think it's a national security problem. It's also a public safety problem. We have one weather satellite that the United States is now relying on, and we have one reconnaissance satellite. Both of these are problems. One's national security, the other's public safety. And I believe that it is also a breakdown in our own policy process that we do not have spares, particularly in the meteorological satellites, to launch in a short period as soon as the launch vehicles are available.

MacNEIL: What is the earliest that the U.S., do you think, could get another satellite, military or civilian, up in space with these setbacks now? How long will there be -- what am I talking about? -- no capacity to launch.

Mr. WEBB: Well, that is a very tricky question that I'm not relly capable of answering, except that it appears now that the different investigations have to be carried out on both the Titans and the Delta, and the shuttle, as we know, will be held up until such time as sifficient repairs are made. I would imagine we're looking at a down time of a minimum six to nine months on Delta-Titan, and probalbly a year on the shuttle.

MacNEIL: What's the effect going to be on commerical satellite companies?

Mr. WEBB: I think it's going to be very severe indeed, and it is also going to mean that our commercial people will be looking for alternative launch capabilities and there aren't very many of those, which may be fortunate for this country, insofar as Arianespace bus is pretty well booked out through '88 now.

MacNEIL: That's the Western European one?

Mr. WEBB: The Western European, yes, European Space Agency.

MacNEIL: And what about Japan?

Mr. WEBB: Well, Japan hasn't got the capability for launching heavy vehicles at this time. China has probably got the capability, but we don't know exactly how good that vehicle is. It's been launched on six ocassions. And it may be-- I believe the Swedes are negotiating with China at the present time to launch one of theirs.

MacNEIL: Where do you see the problem? Do you see it as coincidence, as quality control, as decision-making in NASA, technology, where?

Mr. WEBB: None of those, I see it as a major policy governmental problem, where we're looking at decisions coming home to roost that were made in the '70s and in successive administrations and successive Congresses. And we're looking at underfunding of technology and we're loooking basically at a national issue where the nation turned its back on space. didn't understand exactly what we were doing in space, and now we're suffering the consequences. Quite evidently, if we are going to go into space this nation must understand that you cannot open a frontier on a haphazard, ad hoc basis. This is a planned requirement that is needed here, and we must understand that we have to give what it takes to undertake such an enormous venture.

MacNEIL: Mr. Webb, thank you.

Mr. WEBB: Thank you.

MacNEIL: Jim?

LEHRER: Next, the view of John Pike, associate director for space policy for the Federation of American Scientists, a private science and public policy organization. Do you agree with Mr. Webb's analysis of the cause of these recent problems?

JOHN PIKE: All right, I think it's really unclear what the problem is here. On the one hand, it could just be a coincidence. These rockets typically fail every 25 or 30 launches, and after 44 successful launches you could say that the Delta's number was up. On the other hand, the fact that we have had so many failures with our launch vehicles since August, the fact that we've had difficulties with different types of upper stages over the lst year or two, and also reliability problems with satellites that were in orbit, the reason that we only have one operational high-altitude weather satellite today. This pattern of failures over the last several years at least suggests the possibility that the space industry as a whole, both civilian and military, has an industry-wide quality problem of some discription.

LEHRER: Caused by what? How do you go about having a quality problem that's industry-wide?

Mr. PIKE: Well, again, it's not clear that we do. Maybe we're just having a run of bad luck. But one thing that has happened in the last five years has been a tremendous expansion of the space industry, both the military and civilian. Employment in the missile, rocket and satellite industry has increased from about 200,000 in 1980 to over 300,000 in 1985. That means that you have a lot of new people coming into the business, people who may be unfamiliar with the technology. Accordingly, many of the veterans of the space program who came in in the '50s and '60s are starting to retire. This at least suggests the possibility that you have a dwindling number of experienced people supervising a growing number of inecperienced people. That was certainly one problem that we had in the late 1950s when our rockets were blowing up all the time. The rocket industry had expanded very quickly, and the level of experience and the level of managerial control was just not up to the technology. Again, it's not clear that that's the problem that we have today. Maybe it's just a bad infestation of gremlins. But it suggests that we might have a problem.

LEHRER: What about the impact of this? You heard what Mr. Webb said, that this has created a public safety problem and it's created a national security problem of tremendous dimensions, according to him.

Mr. PIKE: This is clearly not the type of situation that you'd like to be in. As he said, we're only depending on one high-altitude weather satellite for storm warnings and only one photo reconnaissance satellite for verification and intelligence collection. On the other hand, I think the Chernobyl reactor accident last week indicated that even with only one satellite our intelligence-collection capablities are, nonetheless, quite impressive. If we are able to get the shuttle back on line next year and the satellite that's up there right now lives out its expected operational life, I dont think we're going to have a gap in coverage. This is not the type of situation you'd like to be in, but fortunately we're not in a real crisis, because we do have a very robust capability of satellites that are in space today.

LEHRER; Do you agree with him when he says that the real problem here is a policy question that the administrations and the Congresses hae not given enough money to this space effort?

Mr. PIKE: One consistent problem, I think that the space program has had is that the administration in preparing its budget, and too often the Congress in looking at the budget, has tended to shave off just a little bit at the margins, only giving, say 90% of what was actually required. Well, you can do that in a number of other areas, but going 90% of the way to the moon really doesn't make too much sense, and unfortunately that's the way we've been trying to run our space program for far too long.

LEHRER: Thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: The latest NASA incident is being scrutinized on Capitol Hill as well. Joining us now is Senator Ernest Hollings, Democrat of South Caroline, who is ranking minority member of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, which oversees NASA. Senator, has Congress systematically been shortchanging the space program?

Sen. ERNEST HOLLINGS: Not rally. We've been giving the money that was asked for. It could be that the administrations making the request have been cutting back on those particular requests. I fact, you look at the track record, and in many instances we've increased the particular request made. But I'm not trying to lay away the blame or anythig. got a lot of work to do now, Robin. We're going to have to look at the quality control, we're going to have to look at cost overruns, and then when we talk about cost overruns we've got to look at responsibility underruns. One of the big disturbances that we have in this Challenger accident was that, well, we had a known deficiency, a mechanical problem that was known by NASA and I'm told by NASA experts that they have never lauched over the objection of a contractor. Here we launched over the objection of two contractors on January the 28th. So I think that's going to be repaired right quickly. This afternoon we had the debates on the floor of the United States Senate respecting the appointment of Dr. Jim Fletcher as the new administrator at NASA, and I think that from what he stated in the hearings that he's ready to take over that particular responsibility. We just do not like the attitude that once it's happened that, ho hum, these kind of things happen and all that we did, the way we did it, we would do it again. That's a terrible approach and attitude, and I think Dr. Fletcher will correct that.

MacNEIL: Let me ask you about something you said on the "Today Show" on NBC this morning. You urged a change in the NASA emphasis on commercialization. Would you spell out what you mean there and how it's relevant to this situation?

Sen. HOLLILNGS: Well, I think the trend has been going by the administration. They've been going away from what we called expendable launch vehicle. That's why we're so shy now, hoping that they'd privatize that particular endeavor and that private industry would pick it up, but they can't get the insurance for it. And it's a new venture and so people are going to still depend upon the shuttle and what we have there. And so privatization has not take over. the Congress has been going for commercialization in the sense that, you know, cost benefit, it can pay for itself, and has tried to hype the whole thing. We have had senators and we were to have schoolteachers and now journalists and everybody else coming up there. I think we in the Congress have got to understand that this is a research and development program still in the research stage, and we shouldn't fool the public and we shouldn't fool ourselves that somehow or the other we can make money out of this thing. We're going to have to launch specifically on a safety basis and the research needs.

MacNEIL: What's the solution to that, do you think?

Sen. HOLLINGS: Oh, I think we're going to have to give the proper monies and quit kidding ourselves that we can get by on the fringe of doing some of that cutting and taking the admisistration and saying, "Oh, we don't quite need this." I go along with-- all three of these gentlemen have been very much on target as far as we in the Congresss feel. We need new technology, we need more money in it, and in order to stay competitive, it's not necessarily to go commercial with the program. it's to go technologically ahead and be sure we put the money to the technology.

MacNEIL: Okay. Thank you, Senator. Jim?

LEHRER: Mr. Culbertson, what do you make of that argument on commercializations? Have you all been pushed too much out there to try to make some dough on space?

Mr. CULBERTSON: Well, We've been pushed from the budget standpoint, perhaps not as hard as some people would have liked, but we have been pushed, both as we have dealth with the rest of the administration and then as we've dealt with Congress, although I agree with Senator Hollings that Congress has generally been very supporative of the request as it came down from the administration. In part our interest in commercialization did come from a feeling that the space program must be an effective program which was economically structured so that at least part of it cound survive on its own economically. I'm not sure that that is bad, although I certainly agree with Senator Hollings that the majority of the program remains a very high-tech program. We are trying to push technology forward--

LEHRER: And it's an experi-- you agree with him that it's basically still an experimental program?

Mr. CULBERTSON: Well experimental is a little bit harsh, I think, Senator, but I do think that the statement that it is on the very edge, the cutting edge of technology is a correct thing. So to the degree that that's experimental, then we are in complete agreement.

Sen. HOLLINGS: Well, that's kind of a fine track record. Look, that's number one that, look, this program is going to be absolutely necessary for our national security, absolutely necessary for this program. We'd have to cut it off if we didn's have satellites. So we're up in space for good. Now, how well we do it is the real test for us in the national Congress and the national government. And when you talk of a governmental program, you need to start banding together now and bringing the talent in, and I think that's the good change that we've made here in bringing Dr. Fletcher in.

LEHRER: What do you make of the senator's other comment, though, that under bringing Dr. Fletcher back in, he's-- I think the term he used, there is not going to be this attitude of, well, ho hum, I think he said-- wasn't that what you said? Ho hum, we're going to do it again the same way? Etc., etc., etc. Does that make the hair on the back of your head stand up a little?

Mr. CULBERTSON: No, it doesn't. I don't think ho hum is, once again, quite the right word. Going into space will never be ho hum in the minds of any of us. There is a piece of it, though, that you learn by repetition. You learn by repeating things. And we do try to get the procedures and inspections and that sort of thing down so that we are doing the same thing over and over again because that, we think, is the safer way to go. I don't think that's what Senator Hollings meant when he said ho hum.

Sen. HOLLINGS: Well, there's no question about Mulloy. Let's go to Huntsville and Grady, the rest of them there, Hardy, I should say, and Mr. Mulloy and everything else. I watched his testimony on the hearings before the Rogers Commission and everything else, and he seemed to think everything was fine. He'd do the same thing over and just jump right on out on McDonnelll and the folks right at Morton Thiokol, get that thing up. Why am I going to have to wait until April and everything else like that. He was saying why not to get it up, and now we know why.

LEHRER: Mr. Webb, let me ask you. Is there, from the outside looking in, do you believe that NASA and the others involved in the U.S. space program began to take too much for granted?

Mr. WEBB: No, I don't think they took too much for granted. I think they had to little to work with. And they probably took too much for granted in thinking that they could do it for so little. That may be they did. They didn't squawk enough. There should have been a lot more pressure being put on the administration to give more funds, and I think NASA should have acted in a more political manner, though some people would-- that would really surprise them for me to say that.

LEHRER: You mean, you're suggesting that these accidents probably would not have occurred had NASA been given more money.

Mr. WEBB: Oh, indeed. I am absolutely convinced that it wouldn't have occured, particularly in the shuttle. The shuttle was never designed-- orginally NASA's design for the shuttle was not the vehicle they got. They had to build it down to a price, not up to a standard.

LEHRER: Mr. Culbertson?

Mr. CULBERTSON: There's a certain degree of truth in what Mr. Webb is saying in that we committed to build the shuttle on a price, and there is always pressure from your peers and everybody else to try to keep it reasonable within that price budget. We read today about the terrible overruns that we've had in the past. And we've been reminded about overruns when we've gone to the capitol, to the Hill, once in awhile and gone to the House and the Senate. We'ver been chastised a little bit. Now, I'm not trying to off-load the blame on congressmen in and sense at all. It's our problem and we've got to lick it. But we were very conscious of budget limitations, and we deferred a number of things. I will disagree if it is said that we deferred things which were directly related to safety with disregard of safety. Now, we allowed ourselves, I think, some thin areas which we gave special attention to, but which were thinner than we would have liked to have had with more money. So certainly money is a part of it, but NASA will not say that the reason that we had these failures was a lack of money.

LEHRER: What about the specific on down time that Mr. Webb and Mr. Pike were discussing, as to haw long it will be before there is another launch of a rocket vehicle that can put a satellite into space?

Mr. CULBERTSON: Well, with respect to the shuttle, we've been working on a 12-month down time schedule and another schedule which says 18 months. Our present plan and expectation is to be prepared to launch in about a year. But there's still some unknowns about that. We have not yet gotten the reports from the national commission and we haven't done all of our own thorough analysis. But it's going to be between 18 months-- I mean, betweel a yar and 18 months. I am optimistic right at the moment about a shorter down period for the Delta, for the simple reason that I believe-- I think there's reason to believe that we don't have a major design problem on the Delta, as we did in the shuttle. And when you have a design problem you have to redesign, rebuild, retest, and there's a lot of things that have to be gone over. If it is a quality program or a precedural error or something like that with Delta, and if we can find it fairly quickly, I don't expect to be down the year to eight, nine months-- I mean, six to nine months the people have been talking about.

LEHRER: Senator, do you see this as a crisis, that there is a critical need to get something up there?

Sen. HOLLINGS: I think there's a critical need. There's no question. We don't have an amount from the White House. They have yet to submit a budget. And they've been dragging their feet to, quite the point, and over in the Congress all who are interested in getting into this and trying to find out says to the President, to the administration, for heaven's sakes, tell us how and how much it's giong to cost and everything else. So in passing the budget last Friday morning early in the morning we were just guessing at a figure.

LEHRER: Okay. Gentlemen, all four, thank you very much. Robin?

Post-Polio Problems

MacNEIL: Finally tonight we have another look at a disease this society thought it had beaten a generation ago, and that is polio. Suddenly many survivors of the polio epidemics of the '50s are having symptons of the illness recur 30 years later. It's called post-polio syndrome, and we have a report on it from Art Hackett of public station WHA in Madison. Wisconsin.

ART HACKETT, WHA (voice-over): Bill Haefner of Waukesha was stricken severly by polio when he was five years old. He was paralyzed from the neck down. He needed a respirator to help him breathe.

BILL HAENFER: polio victim: They had told my father that was waiting outside, they just told him that there was no chance for me at all. They just literally came out and told him that you were going to have such expensive medical bills becaise of all the treatment I was getting that they suggested that he just leave and go back to work, because I was going to be dead anyway.

HACKETT: (voice-over) But he didn't die. Hemade a recovery some would call a miracle.

Mr. HAEFNER: In my freshman year of high school I was in a cross-country and was the fastest one in my junior high school.

HACKETT: (voice-over) He went on the work as an inspector at this electical equipment plant. But several years ago he started to notice something was changing.

Mr. HAEFNER: What was a normal day was now getting difficult to do. And there were seveal times I was on top of a transformer and I got stuck up there. I got so weak I couldn"t get down, and I had to have fellow-employees come up and get me and then they would bring me down woth a lift.

HACKETT: Did you know that this was related to your polio?

Mr. HAEFNER: I had asked, and everybody told me no. Nobody knew exactly what it was. They just couldn't pinpoint it, but everybody told me it wasn't polio, because I had recovered from that, and it was not polio.

HACKETT: (voice-over) Bill Haefner found out about post-polio syndrome by watching a television news program. His suspicions were confirmed by doctors at Warm Springs, Georgia, where a clinic set up by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who also had polio, was just starting to deal with post-polio patients. Haefner now goes to the Currative Rehabilitation center in Milwaukee for therapy where Dr. Richard Salzstein heads the post-polio clinic. This morning one of his patients in Beth Fennigkoh, who was stricken with polio when she was only five months old.

BETH FENNIGKOH: polio victim: There were about 12 people on my block that cought it the same day I did.

Dr. HACKETT: A great deal of polio on the block?

Ms. FENNIGKOH: Yeah, on the block, right. And there were about 12 people on the block that had it, and six people died.

HACKETT: (voice-over): After undergoing extensive therapy, Fennigkoh was left with no impairments other than some weakness in one side, until anout 25 years after she had polio. For some reason the post-polio systoms almost invariably show up about three decades after the acute problems of polio.

Ms. FENNEGKOH: 1976, a week before I was supposed to get married, I woke up one morning and I couldn't move my arms. Most of my problems were in my four extremities.. I couldn"t lift up my arm. I had excruciating pain. It feels like there's a knife jabbing--

Dr. RICHARD SALZSTEIN: Into your back?

Ms. FENNIGKOH: Yes, into my back.

Dr. SALZSTEIN: Okay. Do you have it in your chest, too, or just in the back?

Ms. FENNIGKOH: It radiated to here, in front of my chest here, but no, that has since gone away.

HACKETT: (voice-over): As was the case with Bill Haefner, doctors didn't know what was causing the problems. They said it didn't have anything to do with her having had polio.

Ms. FENNIGKOH: And the doc down at Columbia said that I had a psychiatric problem, that it was all in my head. So for six years it was just terrible. It was hard on my husband. I thought I was going nuts. I was depressed. It was terrible.

HACKETT: voice-over): Although she now knows what she has. Beth Fennigkoh still doesn't know what is causing it. Doctors have almost totally ruled out a reinfection with the actual polio virus. Some physicians believe the syndrome may be a premature from of aging. Dr. Salzstein says im may well be that many patients have simply overstressed their bodies by trying to adjust to the damage caused by polio.

Dr. SALZSTEIN: Does this give you amy discomfort?

Ms. FENNIGKOH: Yeah, when I turn to the left.

Dr. SALZSTEIN: And where is the discomfort again, in the back?

Ms. FENNIGKOH: Right in my back.

Dr. SALZSTEIN: The whole orientation of polio back 30 years ago was if you work hard you get better, and if you work real hard, you get a great deal better. But at this point, their back, their hips, many other structures are beginning to wear on them.

HACKETT: (voice-over): Because of the possibility patients may have damaged their bodies by using muscles for functions they weren't designed for, the amount of physical therapy that can be prescribed is minimal.

Dr. SALZSTEIN: Vigorois exercise is not the way to go. This whole population, like I said, beat the reaper 30 years ago by exercising like crazy and even exercising more than that. And now they come back in frequently wanting an exercise program so they can build those old muscles back up.

HACKETT: (voice-over): But being told to take it easy is not something polio survivors want to hear.

Ms. FENNIGKOH: It's very apparent that a lot of us are the same. We're high achievers, we're very goal-oriented type of people. And I think for us to realize that things now-- having to change our lifestyle, things are happening. It's very hard.

Dr. SALZSTEIN: We know that there are people still in this country who had polio, like we talked about, at the turn of the century, who are still very functional with a variety of difficulties. I cannot look at either of the two women we saw this morning as, say this is all the worse it's going to get.

(in therapy) Can you pick your leg up against my hand? Don't let me press it down. Pick it up here.

HACKETT: (voice-over): As doctors see more and more post-polio patients and as they set up special programs for them, a body of statistics is starting to evolve about what the future of patients might be.

Dr. NEIL CASHMAN, University of Chicago: What all these statistics say is that the people who had the worst polio are the most sesceptible to developing post-polio syndrome, and people with involvement in one limb or two limbs may be at mush less risk for developing the syndrome.

HACKETT: But you're not sure about that?

Dr. CASHMAN: No, we're not.

HACKETT:(voice-over): Certainty is hard to come by because, as we said, doctors aren't exactly sure what causes the problems. Roberta Simon is a former nurse who had to retire after she was stricken by post-polio syndrome. Doctors are using a device called a single-fiber electromyograph to measure how good a connection Simon's nerves make with her muscles. Doctors have noticed that polio survivors' nerves have extended to take over the work of neighboring cells which were destroyed by polio.

Dr. CASHMAN: You can regard a nerve cell as a tree. A normal nerve cell will have 20 branches or 100 branches. A nerve cell that's had to take over the function of its neighboring nerve may have 10 times as many branches. With time, the outlying branches may start to degenerate, may become unstable.

HACKETT: (voice-over): Dr. Cashman says if this poor connection caused bu the breakdown of the nerve cells is in fact responsible for the patient's problems, it is good news since some drugs, such as mestinon, can improve the connection.

Dr. CASHMAN: That seems to help with the disabling fatigue that many patients with post-polio syndrome complain of, but that's only one of the three major symptons, pain, weakness, and fatigue. We can do something about fatigue, we can do something about pain, but we can't do much at this point about progressive atrophy and weakness.

HACKETT: (voice-over): Dr. Cashman feels that the overextended nervous systems that may be at the root of the post-polio problems may be the result of the extensive physical therapy the patients underwent 30 years ago. Most doctors are telling patients like Bill Haefner to do as little physical activity as possible withut letting the body go completely to waste.

Mr. HAEFNER: If you have pain, stop whatever you're doing and immediately go and rest. They've restricted me to walk from the car to the house and that's it. I'm only allowed to go up and down the stairs once a day because it just is too much of a toll on my lower trunk.

HACKETT: (voice-over): Polio, which often crippled children before they ever really learned to walk and lead a normal life, was thought of in it's time as a particularly unfair disease. So it is with the symptons of post-polio.

Mr. HAEFNER; The people that were the most active physically seem to be the people that are hit the hardest.

HACKETT: It's almost like it's something seeking revenge for--

Mr. HAEFNER:-- for having gone out and enjoyed myself. But if you ask me, would I do it again. I would do it again. Thirty years of having been out there on the field beats 30 years of sitting on the bench and trying to think, what would it be like to be out on the field.

LEHRER: The Lurie cartoon tonight is about trade talks at the Tokyo summit. (Lure cartoon -- Japanese leader tells Uncle Sam how good it is to see eye to eye, but Sam is standing tall where his trading partners stand on successively higher steps to reach Sam's eye level.)

MacNEIL: Once again, the main stories of the day. The U.S. and top econimic allies agreed on a campaign against terrorism. They also criticized the Soviets for withholding information on the Chernolyl nuclear accident. The Soviet newspaper Pravda confirmed that an explosion ripped the power plant apart, sending flames nearly 100 feet high. NASA said a short circuit may have caused the destruction of a Delta rocket Saturday. Good night, Jim.

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