The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

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

MS. WOODRUFF: And I'm Judy Woodruff in Washington. After the News Summary, we turn first to the ongoing controversy over what happened to American soldiers missing in action in Southeast Asia, excerpts of today's testimony on Capitol Hill. Then France's close vote on European unity. We have a Newsmaker interview with former British Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe. Next, a documentary report on the bug that's causing billion dollar damage to California's vineyards, and the head of the National Institutes of Health on a new research project on women's health. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: Former Nixon administration officials said today they knew American servicemen were being left behind in Southeast Asia at the end of the Vietnam War. Former Defense Secretary Melvin Laird and James Schlesinger told a Senate investigating committee many of the missing were stranded in Laos, where the CIA ran a secret war. The committee released documents showing as many as 350 U.S. servicemen were missing or captured there. But during peace negotiations with the North Vietnamese, U.S. officials were given a list of only 10. Schlesinger said the Pentagon had made direct contact with some of the missing, but none were on the prisoner list. He said the matter was overwhelmed by events such as the withdrawal from Vietnam and Watergate. Committee Chairman John Kerry had this reaction after the morning session.

SEN. JOHN KERRY, [D] Massachusetts: I think it's quite extraordinary when two former secretaries of defense both give evidence documenting that they had information or they believed personally that people were alive in Vietnam and not accounted for in Operation Homecoming. These are both Nixon appointees. They both worked at that time in the effort to bring our people back and they have acknowledged publicly that there is evidence that people did not come back that should have, and that they were held prisoners to the best of our knowledge.

MR. MacNeil: In Moscow, the top U.S. official on a joint POW mission said he was running out of patience with his Russian counterparts. The Commission is investigating reports that some missing U.S. prisoners from World War II and others captured during the Cold War might still be held in Russia. We have a report narrated by Louise Bates of Worldwide Television News.

MS. BATES: The POW Commission is about to get down to some serious business after three months of inactivity. A shared investigation between Russia and the U.S. was thought to be a good idea, but it hasn't come up with much evidence so far and patience is wearing thin. The U.S. won't be satisfied until they know there are no Americans still detained in Russia.

MALCOLM TOON, Co-Chairman, POW Commission: But our fundamental problem is, first of all, to find out whether there is, in fact, any American live POW held against their will on Russian soil; and secondly, we want to find out what happened to those who were held, you know, by Soviet and Russian admission.

MS. BATES: The Russians say they'll do their best to cooperate. Now that the KGB's providing evidence, the U.S. hopes it'll discover the fate of its missing men.

MR. MacNeil: We will have an excerpt from today's Senate hearing after the News Summary. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: President Bush pledged U.S. support today for a larger United Nations role in international peacekeeping. In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly in New York, the President offered no direct commitment of U.S. troops or funds for peacekeeping but said the U.S. would provide logistical support and emphasized peacekeeping activities in U.S. military training. The U.S. is currently 200 million dollars behind in its payments to the U.N. for its 12 active peacekeeping operations. The President did not pledge to pay that debt as he did in a U.N. speech two years ago.

MR. MacNeil: The weekend "yes" vote in France on the European Union Treaty prompted a call today for Denmark to try to reverse its recent "no" vote. That call came from European Community foreign ministers meeting at the United Nations in New York. All 12 EC nations must ratify the treaty for it to take effect. Danish voters narrowly rejected the treaty in June. The EC ministers said Denmark should vote again. The treaty won in France by a slim 51 percent majority, showing that strong opposition to it remains. We'll have more on the story later in the program.

MS. WOODRUFF: In the presidential campaign today, Bill Clinton was in Chicago, where he received the endorsement of a group of business executives from nearly 400 companies. Many were Republicans and had supported Mr. Bush in the last election. Mr. Bush's only campaign event today was on a radio talk show in New York. He said it was time for Bill Clinton to come clean on his draft record because, he said, he had not told the full truth. Later, Gov. Clinton responded that when Mr. Bush was ahead in the polls in February, he had stated the draft should not be an issue. That's it for the News Summary. Just ahead on the NewsHour, testimony about POW's left behind in Southeast Asia, a British view of France's "yes" vote, California's vineyards under attack, and putting women's health issues under the microscope. FOCUS - MIA TESTIMONY

MS. WOODRUFF: First tonight, verification that U.S. servicemen were left behind in Southeast Asia after theVietnam War. The issue of what happened to America's prisoners of war and missing in action has remained unresolved for 19 years after the treaty ending the Vietnam War was signed in Paris in 1973. Today a Senate Committee investigating the fate of MIA's and POW's heard from two former defense secretaries and other officials in the Nixon administration. They said they believed the peace was concluded without a full accounting of those lost during clandestine operations in Laos. The lead-off witness was former Defense Sec. James Schlesinger, who was director of Central Intelligence at the time. He was questioned by Iowa Senator Charles Grassley.

SEN. CHARLES GRASSLEY, [R] Indiana: I think I want to start by asking a very simple question. In your view, did we leave men behind?

JAMES SCHLESINGER, Former Defense Secretary: I think that as of now that I can come to no other conclusion, Senator.

SEN. CHARLES GRASSLEY: And --

JAMES SCHLESINGER: That does not say that there are any alive today, mind you.

SEN. CHARLES GRASSLEY: No, no.

JAMES SCHLESINGER: In 1973, some were left behind.

SEN. CHARLES GRASSLEY: But I appreciate your answer and then follow it up again with just what you base that on.

JAMES SCHLESINGER: In 1973, given the record of Communist regimes, Korea, the Soviet Union, itself, Communist China, they had -- they had followed a practice of holding back people, not in large numbers, but in small numbers. Despite the Paris agreements, there is -- there was no reason, in my judgment, to assume that the North Vietnamese would release everybody.

SEN. JOHN KERRY, [D] Massachusetts: What do you think about the prospects, based on the intelligence reviewed and people you've talked to, that someone would be alive and held by a government in one of those countries today?

JAMES SCHLESINGER: I believe that they would be -- those prospects would be very slim, Mr. Chairman, as of now. But it's conceivable that one or two may have survived, one or two or a handful.

MS. WOODRUFF: This afternoon, the Senate Committee heard from a panel of five members of the U.S. team that negotiated the Paris Peace Accords. They were asked if the war had been allowed to end with Americans still being held in Southeast Asia. Winston Lord was one of the negotiators.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: Amb. Lord, when Dr. Kissinger went to Hanoi in February of 1973, it's my understanding that he brought with him information on discrepancy cases, is that correct?

WINSTON LORD, Paris Peace Talks Negotiator: That's correct.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: I gather that he took with him a group of the most troubling cases, as we understood them then, where either Vietnamese propaganda or our own intelligence told us these people had been captives.

WINSTON LORD: That's correct.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: Now, you stated to us, I gather, that he took along about 80 of these cases, is that right?

WINSTON LORD: Again, on this issue, like so many other, my memory's been refreshed both by me reading books and a deposition where I was shown documents, but that is now my recollection, yes.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: And these cases, to the best of your recollection, represented the strongest possibilities. They didn't represent all of them, but they were the strongest, is that correct?

WINSTON LORD: That's correct.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: Now, Dr. Kissinger even showed photographs, I gather, of men who had been in captivity, and he demanded an explanation for that, is that --

WINSTON LORD: Yes.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: And the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, so- called, said nothing, gave no response that was satisfactory, is that accurate?

WINSTON LORD: Well, I haven't read the transcripts of the meetings completely. And I don't recall exactly. But obviously, it was an unsatisfactory response. I don't exactly remember what they said. They had no information, or they may have said, we've given you everything we know, something to that effect, but it certainly was unsatisfactory and not responsive.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: What is your understanding of the way in which our government resolved the question of whether to reject the Vietnamese list because of the discrepancies, because we had this body of evidence, or whether to go ahead with the cease-fire and complete withdrawal and so forth? Can you share with us the -- your understanding of that tension and how it was resolved.

WINSTON LORD: Again, 20 years, you know, dulls precision and memory, but the best I can reconstruct it, the President faced the following agonizing choice. I think reasonable people can disagree on whether he made the right one. I've made it clear I think he did, and I still believe that. On the one hand, you have an agreement. The world, and particularly the American public and Congress, is ecstatic that this war is coming to an end, again, on a basis better than most people thought that was achievable at that point. We were about to get 591 men, I think was the number, back. The evidence on discrepancies was strongly suggestive, very disturbing, that the North Vietnamese had not provided as big a list, particularly on Laos, but there was never, as you, yourself, mentioned a little while ago, there wasn't one specific case where we had 100 percent proof that they actually had that person alive at that point. So the President was faced with this choice. We suspect the North Vietnamese generally and beyond that, we had the specific incidents of these lists and discrepancies. Do you hold up the entire agreement, say stop the withdrawals, resume the bombing, in order to get better satisfaction on that, or do you go ahead, knowing that if you try to resume the bombing or stop the implementation that there will be a tremendous public outcry, that the Congress would probably not support this, that the 591 or wherever you were in that two-month process of the people you were going to get back would be stopped from being gotten back because the agreement would have been torn up. More people might have been captured and killed. And, therefore, based on all that, the President made what I thought was the right decision, not an easy one, that even though we strongly suspected we didn't have the full story, that others maybe were being left behind, we couldn't be sure. He thought on balance. He goes ahead with the agreement for the reasons I stated and then vigorously follow up continually on this question in the coming months.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: So, in effect, after the agreement is signed, after 591 came home, as you said, there was the euphoria about 591, and that seems to have eclipsed the question of however many others there were.

WINSTON LORD: Well, I think you've correctly stated the two issues. One was the right decision made, and I've given my views on that. There's a separate question: Having been made, then was the other part of the equation fulfilled, namely a vigorous follow- up? And different people have different views. Clearly, the record is sufficiently unsatisfactory on this basis, that you have a legitimate reason for inquiries, and reasonable people can disagree.

MS. WOODRUFF: Late this afternoon, former Nixon administration chief of staff Alexander Haig defended the handling of the POW issue. Haig told the committee the U.S. negotiating position in the Paris Peace Talks with North Vietnam was continually being weakened by domestic opposition to the Vietnam War. He said the anti-war sentiment in the U.S. made it hard for negotiators to press Hanoi on the POWs and other issues. Tomorrow, the Senate Committee hears from former Sec. of State Henry Kissinger. Still ahead on the NewsHour, reaction to France's vote on European unity, California's vineyards face a killer bug, and more research on women's health. FOCUS - WHAT NEXT?

MR. MacNeil: Next, what's happening to the idea of a united Europe. Yesterday, French voters said yes to the Treaty of Maastricht, an agreement that will lead to further political and economic unity in Europe. But they did it by the slimmest of margins. Now, that followed a week of currency turmoil that left a devalued British pound and much confusion in its wake. Today, European markets were relatively calm, but European citizens were wondering what's next. Nik Gowing of Independent Television News reports.

MR. GOWING: Le Petit Oui, the little yes, reverberated around Europe, the French relieved that their referendum anguish is over at last. But while the Paris boss and the frank held steady today, Europe's political problems have not gone away. They have been compounded in a most tortuous way. Two-thirds of the fifty-four people in the farming village of St. Mars Vieux Maisons East of Paris, for example, voted no. Their resentments against Europe's farming policy, which has killed off several hundred thousand farming jobs nationwide, leaves them just as anti-European today as they were yesterday.

THIERRY PIERCHE, Mayor, St. Mars Vieux Maisons: [speaking through interpreter] It means the disappearance of my job. The common agricultural policy has meant lots of foreign products have flooded into our country, and it's destroying French production.

MR. GOWING: Directives from Brussels to wrap French bread in plastic, for example, to curb a national tradition like duck hunting, to modernize and sanitize production of French cheeses to make them acceptable in other countries all remain like many other grievances across Europe sources of deep anti-European feelings, but not for the reasons many thing.

LAURENT COHEN-TANUGI, Author, "Europe in Danger": People have been upset. It's done a lot of harm for community in Europe, because people thought that Brussels was intervening in their local affairs. But, in fact, the cheese directive has been actually prompted to -- to help.

MR. GOWING: So it has been completely misunderstood.

LAURENT COHEN-TANUGI: Absolutely.

MR. GOWING: So the challenge for Europe now is to reverse the misunderstandings of the legalistic monster that is the Maastricht Treaty, and the complete failure to clarify what it contains.

FRANCOIS DE LA SERRE, National Foundation for Political Science: Obviously, one could restart within the treaty that would stop after 10 minutes either because it was boring, or they could not understand anything, and it wasn't enough, because some more information should have been supplied.

MR. GOWING: But can it be simplified, and, if so, how? Patrice Vial was France's chief negotiator, the chief drafter of the Monetary Union Treaty, until he left the French Civil Service recently.

MR. GOWING: Can you see how the whole text, certainly the economic text, could be simplified, where people can understand it, not be so frightened by what they see?

PATRICE VIAL, Head of French EC Economic Policy 1987-92: It's probably difficult to simplify the text, itself. What is -- and is certainly feasible to explain it more fully and to make people realize that some of the fears they can have are not real fears.

MR. GOWING: But the message from the French referendum to all EC political leaders remains stark and requires a dramatic sea change in attitudes.

CHARLES LAMBROSCHINI, Political Editor, "Le Figard": From now on, there is, indeed, a European public opinion. Before, you only had the so-called "technocrats," as the French say, in Brussels.

MR. GOWING: And today, Brussels and Europe got the message.

SIR LEON BRITTAN, Vice President, European Commission: We will both have to explain what the treaty says and what its advantages are, but also the community will have to show that it is prepared to learn the lessons of the discontent about it more generally, which I think is reflected in this, and we've got to show that we're not going to interfere in every nook and cranny.

UFFE ELLEMANN-JENSEN, Danish Foreign Minister: We, the politicians who have made the Maastricht Treaty, has simply moved ahead too fast. We have forgotten to get the grassroots with us, and if we intend to continue successfully, imploding after European integration, we shall deal with that seriously.

MR. GOWING: For Europe's politicians trying to save the Maastricht Treaty, the key challenge is how to convince their increasingly suspicious electorates that many grievances against Europe, important as they may be to each of them, should not, in reality, be blamed on the treaty, because Maastricht is not about what the foreign secretary calls the nooks and crannies of Europe. It is actually about increasing the powers of national governments in relation to Brussels.

PATRICE VIAL: From the beginning, we've wanted to change the balance of powers likely between the mission and the governments and giving stronger say to the governments on those new, very important matters that pertain to the economic and monetary union, and that has been completely missed by 50 percent of my compatriots.

MR. GOWING: More power to national governments?

PATRICE VIAL: Yes, more power to national governments.

MR. GOWING: That's how those like Chancellor Kohl welcoming the French result today remember the treaty they signed. It's now how the growing number of opposition voices see things.

RENATE SCHMIDT, SPD, Bundestag Vice President: [speaking through interpreter] I'm calling for a referendum. We need more clarification and explanation. I think people in Germany should be given exactly the same opportunity as was given the French.

BJORN ENGHOLM, SPD Leader: There are some meanings of some people in my party, some representatives, who want their referendum, but we don't have such a thing that was in our constitution.

MR. GOWING: So the mess left by the French referendum extends right across Europe. And the challenge for EC foreign ministers meeting in New York is to create a clear inventory as speedily as possible of what under Maastricht will remain within EC competence via Brussels and what will remain the sole responsibility of each national capital.

MR. MacNeil: Now the views of one who played a large role in European politics during the move towards unity. Geoffrey Howe served in the government of Margaret Thatcher from 1979 to '89, first as chancellor of the exchequer, and then as foreign secretary. He resigned over Mrs. Thatcher's resistance to European integration. He's now a member of the House of Lords, where he will join in the upcoming parliamentary debate on European unity. I spoke to him from London this afternoon.

MR. MacNeil: Lord Howe, thank you for joining us. What message do you think the French voters are telling the architects of a united Europe?

LORD HOWE, Former British Foreign Secretary: Well, their first message is that they have endorsed the treaty as required by the French constitution so that they have ratified it, and their yes is a yes. On the other hand, the small size of the majority echoes the Danish spoke in the opposite direction I think in representing a tug on the reins by the peoples of Europe, on the leaders of Europe, saying, hang on chaps, you're running a bit ahead of us, and we'd like to be sure we're keeping up with you.

MR. MacNeil: Some are saying today it actually means a sign that Europe should move faster towards unity and get the institutions in place more quickly.

LORD HOWE: No, that's not I think the right message to draw. I think if you're looking at a technical question like the theoretical desirability of a single currency to eliminate instability in the market, then as a theory that might be better than theories of competing currencies, but that's not I think the way in which to proceed in this context. I think in this context the people are saying, look, we are not against European partnership, but we do think that in some respects you've been moving too far, too fast, or without letting us know exactly what you've got in mind.

MR. MacNeil: For Americans who don't follow the niceties of this European integration movement day by day, explain what you think actually is on the minds of the Europeans who are -- who appear to be voting for a slowdown; the Danes, who by a small majority voted no, the French, who by a small minority voted no.

LORD HOWE: Well, I think you've got to recognize that in any referendum people may be voting on questions quite other than the subject of the referendum. They may well have voted because they don't like President Mitterrand, for example. The "No" campaign asked them to vote no against Mitterrand and Maastricht. So that's one confusing factor, one reason why we don't think it's right to have a referendum here. On the other hand, they may have been voting, as in Denmark, because of a genuine anxiety at Denmark being drawn more closely than they would wish into European Defense Department partnership. In France, as in England, there may be anxieties about the community appearing to probe too fully and too deeply into the nooks and crannies of national life without any good reason. Quite often, even that is a misunderstanding. For example, the imposition of better safety standards on the wrapping and marketing of cheese is designed not just to make the cheese healthier but to enable the French to sell more cheese, more widely, to a wider market. But they may not understand that.

MR. MacNeil: Do you think on a broader level that the end of the Cold War is working a little bit against European unity by stimulating a revival of nationalism, a desire to keep the character, ethnic and otherwise, of each country more distinct, rather than merging it?

LORD HOWE: Not I think quite in that way. I think the ending of the Cold War may have removed one of the imperatives which gave unity to NATO as well as to the European community, the feeling of fear of onslaught from the outside. But also the ending of the Cold War has seen a resurgence of competitive nationalism in the Balkans and in the former Soviet Union. And I think the lesson to draw from that is more strongly in favor of the community. The community has been outstanding for its success in claiming nationalism without suppressing patriotism. We want to keep that going. We shouldn't believe that Balkanization, competing nationalism, is a disease confined to the Balkans.

MR. MacNeil: Well, has this new state of affairs since the Cold War weakened the willingness which was so remarkable in the first stages of the European community, the willingness to surrender some sovereignty to the powers in Brussels?

LORD HOWE: I think it may have removed one element of it. I don't myself believe, in fact, that it has removed the case for it. If you take, for example, the need for we in Europe to have an effective common position to try and tackle the hideous continuing tragedy in Yugoslavia, the need for that is greater and not less. But the removal of the Russian threat may have allowed people to forget that for a moment.

MR. MacNeil: From where you sit in Britain, with an economy that's been in recession for some time and high unemployment, what does the logic of your economic position suggest about the need to be part of a greater European economic community?

LORD HOWE: Well, I've no doubt that we need to be and to be seen to be part of an integrated European community. For example, we have attracted the lion's share of inward investment from Japan and a large volume from the United States. We wouldn't be getting that investment in the job creation that comes with it if we were not part of an integrated European economy. That's why the completion, in all its respects, of the single market remains so important. But quite often people don't see it in quite that way. Europe is credited, for example, with causing problems for farmers. French farmers have been voting against it because they don't like the common agricultural policy. The truth is that the common agricultural policy has helped to pour huge subsidies into the French farm industry and helped to protect them from the pressures of the world outside which you Americans are rightly pressing upon us. You want us to get ahead and have a more efficient, less subsidized farm policy. But the French farmer doesn't understand it quite like that.

MR. MacNeil: Well, to come back to Britain, some people are saying in the wake of the -- of the currency crisis last week that the -- and some in your own party are saying, we told you so, that this whole Maastricht deal was all wrong. Are they now going to be given a lot more energy and life by the developments of the last week or so?

LORD HOWE: Well, they're certainly seeking to claim that. And some of them are proclaiming that our withdrawal from the exchange rate mechanism of the monetary system is a liberation of Britain. They tend to forget, I think, that it's after long consideration when Margaret Thatcher was still prime minister that we actually entered the exchange rate mechanism in order to give us more stability with which to lower interest rates. And they tend to forget that life in the world outside when we were on our own was very far from stable, and we were having to put up interest rates sometimes very fast and very far.

MR. MacNeil: You were under more pressure then when you were on your own than you've been under recently from the very high German interest rates?

LORD HOWE: At different times, yes, certainly. If you go back to the time when I was chancellor of the exchequer in 1981, we had a period of six months when the pound dropped from two dollars forty to one dollar seventy-five, and I had to pull up interest rates by 4 percent in two weeks, as it happens, just on the eve of our party conferences, which was profoundly uncomfortable. When we joined the exchange rate mechanism two years ago, when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister, we joined in order to strengthen our policy against inflation and to enable us actually, as we did, to cut interest rates in that week.

MR. MacNeil: Do you think Britain is going to be able to rejoin the system quickly?

LORD HOWE: The system is certainly going to continue. And I think the core currencies are determined to make a success of it. I believe that it will be important for Britain to find a way of getting back into that system as soon as we sensibly can. I can't tell you how quickly that will be. But I'm sure that we shall be better placed there in the end than on our own outside.

MR. MacNeil: Well, with a lot of opposition perhaps revived on the right of your party and also on the left of the Labor Party, is there -- do these developments now mean that Britain could vote against the Maastricht Treaty when it's presented to parliament?

LORD HOWE: What I think it means is that the parliamentary process of securing ratification approval of it is certainly more difficult than it looked like being some months ago, although it's always been recognized that there's a hard core of opponents of European integration who would have been challenging it all the time. But I think the central arguments that the Maastricht Treaty has secured many positive provisions which John Major negotiated hard, that if we try and go back to the drawing board, we shouldn't do anything half as well have got to be presented and will, in fact, prevail when the time comes.

MR. MacNeil: He is now saying, Prime Minister Major, that he won't present it to parliament for ratification until after Denmark reconsiders and the European foreign ministers today are -- in New York are urging Denmark to hold another referendum -- why is Prime Minister Major doing that do you think?

LORD HOWE: I think he's anxious to be able to show that all 12 partners are going to be able to go ahead at the same time. We've been very clear from the moment when Denmark had that small majority against ratification that it wouldn't be sensible or good Europe, especially for Denmark, for her to be left behind.

MR. MacNeil: It puts him in a rather funny at the moment, doesn't it? He is the rotating chairman -- president of the community until December, and here he is -- and he's called a summit meeting soon -- here he is seeming to call not for faster implementation of the treaty but to slow things down a bit.

LORD HOWE: Well, he's calling for effective implementation of it. And if moving at a slower pace will enable us to get all twelve people on board I think it's a reasonable objective.

MR. MacNeil: You said a moment ago that it would not do to try and open up the treaty again and renegotiate it, given that the negotiations were very bitter and hard fought before, but do you think it's going to have to be modified in some way in order to get all 12 members to ratify it?

LORD HOWE: I've always taken the view that any attempt actually to tamper with -- still less tear up and start again -- to tamper with the original text would take us into much greater difficulty. The Danes I think have been suggesting that they may need and be able to secure some additional declaration or provision to add to it which all the rest of us would have to agree with. So there may be scope for something like that. I think that anything resembling starting again on the basic text would make the thing much moredifficult.

MR. MacNeil: But as you see things this evening from London, are you still confident that this great step forward towards integration represented by Maastricht will in the end carry today in all the 12 countries?

LORD HOWE: Yes. I think that it will. I think we have to follow that by moving more cautiously and with more explanation to the people of what we're trying to do, and not just explanations, listening to them as to what they want to happen thereafter. But I believe it will go forward and in due course, I think we shall have to achieve greater monetary cooperation as well.

MR. MacNeil: And we in North America will be dealing by the end of this decade with one economic entity in Europe -- in Western Europe?

LORD HOWE: Yes. You already do deal with one European entity on trade matters. And I think that that will be covering a wider range of matters as the years go by. I think it'll be good for the strength and health of the world economy for Europe for getting its act together better.

MR. MacNeil: Well, Lord Howe, thank you very much for joining us.

LORD HOWE: Thank you. FOCUS - GRAPES OF WRATH

MS. WOODRUFF: Next, the story of an insect that is bugging grape growers in California's best wine producing regions. We have a report from Spencer Michels of public station KQED-San Francisco.

SPOKESMAN: I like this with almost everything. Goes well with duck and turkey and pasta, iguana, you know, whatever you're --

MR. MICHELS: The premium wines of Northern California's Napa and Sonoma Counties, full of color and nose and flavor, attract thousands of visitors to the 700 wineries here. They come to this romantic setting to taste and buy the pricey locally grown cabarnets, chardonniers, merlots, and zinphendels.

SPOKESMAN: The last time we looked there was some evidence of Phylloxera.

MR. MICHELS: Most of the visitors are unaware that lurking in the nearby vineyards is a bug that is raising havoc with the wine makers and menacing most of the vines in premium growing areas. The insect is called Phylloxera. And Dave Stare is fighting the infestation in the fields of his Dry Creek Winery.

DAVE STARE: Son of a gun, they're all over the thing, these tiny kind of little yellow bugs.

MR. MICHELS: In these peaceful valleys North of San Francisco, growers were slow to admit the presence of Phylloxera, even though the insect was discovered here more than four years ago.

DAVE STARE, Dry Creek Winery: You know, it's frightening. It's going to cost us -- and we're a relatively small winery -- it's going to probably cost us over a million dollars over the next 10 years.

MR. MICHELS: Two-thirds of the grape vines in these counties are susceptible to Phylloxera and will have to be torn out. That means a major economic disruption for the area, according to Mike Fisher, an accountant and consultant to the wine industry.

MIKE FISHER, Economic Consultant: We anticipate it to be in the range of $1/2 billion. The financial impact could even be greater. The number that we came up with, the $1/2 billion, is related to two things: the cost to replant the vineyards and, of course, secondly, the loss of crop.

MR. MICHELS: Fisher says that last year's harvest was the biggest crop ever, 280,000 tons of grapes in the two counties. Because of Phylloxera, that number will never be as high again in this century. This is the culprit, a six-legged insect about the size of a grain of sand whose diet consists of some, but not all, grape vine roots. Native to America, the bug was somehow transported to France, where in the 1870s, it wiped out the entire wine industry. Over the next 20 years, French scientists developed new resistant roots, restoring the industry and national pride. Scientists at the University of California at Davis say that in America Phylloxera has always been present in the soil. It destroyed some vineyards in the 1800s. But the infestation was largely controlled until the 1980s. Now, the bug has re-emerged as a threat. It is under intense scrutiny in the laboratory at Davis. Entomologists want to find out why Phylloxera is eating roots that for forty years have been considered resistant. Prof. Jeffrey Granett says the insect feeds as if it had a pump built into its head.

JEFFREY GRANNETT, Entomologist: It's mouth parts are essentially like a straw or a hypodermic needle. It pierces the surface of the root and sucks out the juices.

MR. MICHELS: Insecticides aren't much help. They don't reach all the Phylloxera far below the surface. And just one bug left alive can produce an army.

JEFFREY GRANNET: The insect is really engineered to be a very effective reproduction machine. There are only females. There's no males to get in the way so they -- all the animals out there lay eggs.

MR. MICHELS: Grannet and grape geneticist Andrew Walker believe that the Phylloxera currently attacking California vineyards have mutated or evolved to a new type. For some unknown reason, the bug now thrives on the most commonly used grape root, a rootstock known as AXR-1.

JEFFREY GRANNET: We can look at the Phylloxera that are killing this rootstock and other Phyllox, and they look identical. There's no -- no apparent difference between them in terms of structure or anything.

MR. MICHELS: It smells like you've got a little mystery.

JEFFREY GRANNET: We have a mystery. We don't know why. We don't - - we don't know why rootstocks resist them. We don't know why the insect can overcome the resistance in some cases.

MR. MICHELS: What they do know is that the old standby AXR-1 rootstock is no longer viable. It's a scene to make a wine lover weep. The one sure solution to the blight is to tear out the infected vines. That is going on here in the Napa Valley at a rate of a thousand acres this year, and over the hill in Sonoma County at a slower but increasing pace. The bulldozers are taking choice, expensive land out of production. It will take three or four years for new vines to produce a grape harvest.

DAVE STARE: Now this is what we tore up this past winter and spring.

MR. MICHELS: Then comes a major decision, what rootstock to use to replace the infected AXR-1. Dave Stare's vineyard manager has to plant next spring.

DUFF BEVILL, Vineyard Manager: Life was easy with AXR. It performed well. It produced well. It grew well. It grafted well. Now we have these -- there's other problems. They don't graft as well. They don't root as well.

MR. MICHELS: Almost all premium wines come from grapes that do not grow on their own roots. Rather, they grow on rootstocks, cuttings from an originally wild grape plant that is bred to grow well under local conditions. Another grape plant, like a cabarnet or a chardonnier, is grafted or attached to the rootstock. The combination, planted first in a nursery and then in a vineyard, produces a superior grape. Growers buy the grafted plant from a supplier like Rich Kunde, who grows several kinds of rootstock. His business is benefiting from the Phylloxera problem.

RICH KUNDE, Rootstock Supplier: Just a few years ago we thought we were going to d about 800,000 vines a year in grafting. And we planted rootstocks to meet that demand. This year we did 4 million.

MR. MICHELS: While Kunde is prospering, some of his customers are suffering. They must pay to prepare bulldozed land for planting, replacing the stakes and the trellis system that were destroyed, along with the bad vines. And then the planting must begin, using Phylloxera resistant root stocks that are largely untried in California soils. This is a risky and expensive process. Total cost is about $15,000 an acre. Kunde says that established growers with good credit can afford it, but others may not.

RICH KUNDE: A new grower that just bought land last year at thirty or fifty thousand dollars an acre and has to pay the interest payments can't afford to pull out a vineyard and start over.

MR. MICHELS: Growers complain that banks, already worried about the wine industry's financial future, are reluctant to loan money to replant for Phylloxera. American grape growers still fear a repeat of the French wine blight of a century ago. So for several years after Phylloxera was discovered in the Napa Valley, it was mentioned only in whispered tones in Napa and Sonoma Counties. But the label on this bottle of wine helped change that. Dry Creek put out Bug Creek Wine, a not so subtle joke acknowledging the presence of Phylloxera, and proving that it isn't a health hazard.

KIM STARE WALLACE, Dry Creek Winery: I presented it to our marketing people and they thought it was just terrible. They bombed it. They said it was the biggest mistake. They were very concerned that it would ruin the reputation of the winery.

MR. MICHELS: Bug Creek has sold well. And this winery, like most others, will probably survive the replantings over the next several years. But the wine industry won't be the same again. A tiny insect has brought home the fact that grape growing and wine making are, despite the glamour, agricultural pursuits. They are subject to the risks and dangers all farmers face. FOCUS - WOMEN'S HEALTH

MS. WOODRUFF: Next, the ongoing effort to beef up research into women's health. Long overlooked by medical researchers, women's health concerns are being taken more seriously. After years of protest by women and female elected officials, attitudes have changed. But the real work of filling the information gap on women has just begun. In a report issued today the National Institutes of Health indicate that hundreds of crucial questions about women's health remain unanswered. Women make up a slight majority of the U.S. population, almost 52 percent. But according to some, a woefully small minority of federal research dollars has been devoted to women's health. A case in point, AIDS. Women are now the fastest growing risk group, contracting the disease mainly through sex with infected men. But little is known about the heterosexual transmission of AIDS, exactly how the disease affects women, or even whether available treatments will work. That's because the vast majority of all AIDS studies have been done almost exclusively on men. The same is true of cardiovascular disease, the No. 1 female killer. Each year, just as many women die of heart attacks as men, but women have been virtually ignored in the major studies. One, the so-called physicians health study, proved that aspirin can prevent coronary disease, in men that is. Twenty-two thousand men were enrolled in that aspirin trial. The number of women, none. Nor were there any women in the federally funded multiple risk factors intervention trials which looked for heart disease risk factors in 15,000 men. Even the acronym of that study, Mr. PHIPS, said no women need apply.

REP. OLYMPIA SNOWE, [R] Maine: The bottom line goal of our efforts has been to ensure the fact that women are not a medical after thought, that, in fact, that they have been given and will continue to be given primary consideration in the medical research community.

MR. MICHELS: The Bipartisan Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues testified on Capitol Hill last spring with the female representatives pitching their pet causes to an all male House Appropriations Subcommittee. Congresswoman Olympia Snowe urged more funding for studies of osteoporosis, the bone-thinning disease that afflicts women after menopause. She released a study by the Office of Technology Assessment which said that current hormone therapies carry unknown risks. Little is known about menopause, a fact much in the news these days. In the next two decades, nearly 40 million American women will pass through the so-called change of life. Many say it's time to beef up the research into what happens next. Currently, the NIH spends about 150 million of its nearly 9 billion dollars on post menopause studies, but nearly half of that goes to breast cancer research. And many say even that figure is far too small, considering that one out of every nine American women will develop breast cancer at some time in her life. That risk has soared from only one in twenty in 1960, and no one knows why.

REP. MARY ROSE OAKAR, [D] Illinois: We spend $35 billion in military research and only $9 billion for all the diseases. I mean, it is out of proportion to where our values ought to be.

MS. WOODRUFF: Joining us now is Dr. Bernadine Healy, the director of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Healy took over the leadership of the NIH in 1991. Since her arrival, she has established the Office of Research on Women's Health and the Women's Health Initiative, a 14-year, $600 million study of 150,000 women across the country. The initiative will focus on the major causes of death and disability among women, heart disease, stroke, cancer and osteoporosis. To emphasize the need for further research beyond the women's health initiative, the NIH released a report today which details an even broader research agenda. Dr. Healy, thank you for being with us. Why the need for this broader research agenda?

DR. HEALY: Well, the women's health initiative that you've just mentioned really focused on women in the last third of their life. This particular report is a comprehensive research initiative focused on women's health that covers women across a life span.

MS. WOODRUFF: Why wasn't this included in the other -- in the previous announcement of the women's health initiative?

DR. HEALY: Well, you know, I think that we have seen a big deficit in women's health research. And just like the budget deficit, there's not one action that will -- will correct it. We have to have a multi-dimensional approach to women's health research and just one study which focuses on the unique problems of women as we get older, osteoporosis, heart disease, which do not affect younger women, that wasn't sufficient. This really is a comprehensive series of women's health initiatives, an agenda that touches women's lives at every stage as children, women in their reproductive years, and beyond.

MS. WOODRUFF: You probably saw part of the answer to this question in the report we just tried to -- to do, but why so much emphasis on women's health research?

DR. HEALY: Well, I think we have a very fair country and I think people recognize that for the longest time women's health research was simply neglected. It was neglected not for evil reasons. Part of it was the fear that putting women in clinical research could hurt them if they were pregnant, that it might hurt the study if they were having wild fluctuations in their hormones, but maybe most importantly the scientific misconception that men were the normative standard and that you could just extrapolate any information that you got from men to women. And that simply is not the case.

MS. WOODRUFF: How much is known at this point about how far behind your suggesting -- behind women's -- research on women's health is? I mean, do you now know, is it now known what areas need to be caught up in, or are you and the others, scientists you depend on for information, still discovering this as time goes by?

DR. HEALY: I really think we do know for the most part where we're behind. We certainly have a lot of work to do and one of the things that this comprehensive agenda does is outlined in numerous places where we are behind. Let me give one example which is particularly dear to my heart as a cardiologist, that is, we have always known -- scientists have always known that during child bearing years women are protected against heart disease in a way that men aren't. For the longest time we wondered was that because of estrogen. Sometime back in the seventies the government mounted a huge study trying to see whether estrogen would protect against heart disease. And I'll tell you, Judy, estrogen flunked miserably. It turned out estrogen harmed the heart. The problem is they tested estrogen in an exclusively male population, not one woman. You know, Mother Nature could have told us that that might not be a smart idea. So here we are in 1992 and we still don't have the answer to a simple question: Will estrogen replacement therapy in women when their estrogen-deprived post menopausally, will that protect them against the biggest killer of women, heart disease?

MS. WOODRUFF: How long and how much work does it take to answer some of these questions? Are we talking about studies that are going to take ten, twenty, thirty years? I mean, what's the timetable on that?

DR. HEALY: Well, of course, we're looking in many different dimensions. We're looking at many different issues. The question of osteoporosis, for example, which Congresswoman Snowe just referred to, that's something that the answers are coming in very quickly and we think that we're at the stage of trying to find out how we can prevent osteoporosis in women and how we can study more precisely interventions. We have very good leads there. Osteoporosis is a wonderful example of where we can move ahead very quickly. And I suspect we're going to have important answers in the next several years. There are other things like breast cancer, how we can prevent breast cancer. The science is exploding at the basic level, understanding genes that cause breast cancer, genes that suppress breast cancer, genes that relate to how breast cancer spreads through the body. And I think that the basic science there will lead very rapidly, probably in the next five to ten years, to phenomenal breakthrough therapies. But we also have to work with the patients who are ill today. You know, we can't neglect the patients of today for the patients of tomorrow. See, we always have to work at every level, and NIH is used to that. We want to make sure they're used to women as well as men.

MS. WOODRUFF: What about the whole area of sexually transmitted diseases, which is the subject that's given considerable attention today?

DR. HEALY: I think that one of the strengths of this report is one of the most powerful expositions on the problem of sexually transmitted diseases in women. What most people don't realize and what the public has to realize is that sexually transmitted diseases are disproportionately cruel to women, with the exception of AIDS. And I must mention that AIDS is more rapidly growing in women than it is in men. So it is a problem. That is an equal opportunity problem, men and women. But if you put AIDS aside, sexually transmitted diseases do not have the consequences in men that they have in women.

MS. WOODRUFF: And what do you include among the so-called STD - -

DR. HEALY: Well, for example, chlamydia, which is affecting probably 2 1/2 million women a year, a major cause of infertility, tubal scarring, human papilloma virus, which is a warty-like virus. And certain strains of human papilloma virus will cause cancer in women, cervical cancer. In men, they do not get cancer of their genital organs. Women are susceptible to this. Men don't face loss of fertility from these kinds of afflictions, gonorrhea, chlamydia, PID. These are devastating diseases in women and what is even worse, Judy, is that a man can protect himself from sexually transmitted diseases and at the present time we do not have any method to protect a women, except a cooperative male.

MS. WOODRUFF: And what's the timetable on this, I mean on this kind of research? Is this a quick answer situation, or not?

DR. HEALY: Well, NIH has just put as a high priority the whole field of contraceptive research. And of course, that also means protections against sexually transmitted diseases, and some people might consider pregnancy as -- an unwanted pregnancy as part of that spectrum. Just this year we funded three and will be funding three centers looking at contraception. We also have an aggressive program for better and improved barrier techniques to protect women even if she doesn't have a cooperative partner.

MS. WOODRUFF: Where do you go from here with these 150 or so questions? I mean, what happens next? Are there people out there ready to do the research? Is the funding there to pay for the research?

DR. HEALY: Well, we, first of all, we have to identify this as a priority within the overall NIH budget within each of our institutes within the entire NIH community. One of the good things about this report was that it was developed in conjunction with the extramural community. We had hundreds of scientists participating in this, clinical scientists, basic scientists, epidemiologist. So that the scientific community has bought into this.

MS. WOODRUFF: This wasn't just NIH doing this on its own?

DR. HEALY: This was not in a star chamber. This was not in a closed, smoke-filled room. I mean, this was done with the cooperation, the input and the development of scientists across the country. They know that women's health issues are a high priority and we've had a wonderful example just recently when we asked for applications for the women's health initiative, although I'm not supposed to divulge it precisely, the number of applications we had, we had more than we have states in the union. And we had a phenomenal response from virtually every good institution in the country. So people are listening. The scientists are listening and in part, they're listening because the public is demanding it.

MS. WOODRUFF: But when you say identify it as a priority in the NIH budget, what does that mean? Does that mean something else has to move aside so that this can be -- the money can go intothis research -- or what does it mean, more money on top of the money you're now getting or what?

DR. HEALY: Well, of course, with the NIH budget we -- we plead with the Congress and the OMB for what we think is an appropriate investment and in the present budget scene, in the economic situation today, we have got to be willing to do this within rather limited resources and without enormous growth, so that does mean that we are setting this as a priority and often it means incremental additions to what we're already doing. But we see this as a priority. And yes, it means some other things might not get as much attention.

MS. WOODRUFF: Like what? Do you know? Can you say?

DR. HEALY: Well, you know, one has to be careful. We're not in the business of making a Sophie's Choice. We're not going to say we're going to look at breast cancer and forget about lung cancer. I mean, lung cancer actually kills more women than breast cancer. I think what it does mean, however, is that we have to efficiently and aggressively put this forward as something that we want the scientific communities to address. Remember, a substantial part of our budget is spent because investigators are initiating research. And what we're saying to the scientific community is make sure when you initiate that research that women are on your mind, that women are part of your study, and that if you do a study which has a thousand people, it has to have men and women people. It's not more expensive to make sure that you have an equal opportunity approach to the subjects that are in a trial.

MS. WOODRUFF: And, again, the research dollars for this have to come initially from the federal government. You can't look to private sources for this, am I right about that?

DR. HEALY: Actually, no. There's -- one of the wonderful things about NIH is that we work in partnership with the private sector, including the pharmaceutical industry. And I will tell you that we've had a lot of pharmaceutical industry attention to the women's health agenda, the women's health initiative. And I think you're going to see a lot more attention in industry as well.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, Dr. Bernadine Healy, we thank you for being with us.

DR. HEALY: Thank you. RECAP

MR. MacNeil: Again, the main stories of this Monday, former top Nixon administration officials told a Senate panel that American servicemen were knowingly left behind in Southeast Asia at the end of the Vietnam War. President Bush said Bill Clinton should come clean on his draft record because he had not told the full truth. Clinton said that when the President was ahead in the polls earlier this year, he maintained that the draft should not be an issue in the campaign. Good night, Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Good night, Robin. That's our NewsHour for tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night with a debate over presidential campaign debates. I'm Judy Woodruff. Thank you and good night.