The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. Leading the news this Wednesday, the House voted to override the President's veto of the Chinese students' bill and Iran-Contra figure Richard Secord was sentenced to two years' probation. We'll have the details in our News Summary in a moment. Judy Woodruff is in New York tonight. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: After the News Summary, we go first to Azerbaijan [FOCUS - AZERBAIJAN] and the crisis it presents for the Soviet leadership. Joining us are three experts, former State Department Adviser Paul Goble, Soviet Journalist Melor Sturua and former head of the National Security Agency, Gen. William Odom. Then more bad news for taxpayers [FOCUS - SAVINGS & LOSS] about the cost of bailing out the savings & loans. We have a background report on the government's struggles to sell those that have gone broke and an interview with the man overseeing the effort, FDIC Chairman William Seidman. Finally [FOCUS - ESTROGEN DILEMMA] Charlayne Hunter- Gault looks at the dilemma estrogen therapy creates for many women. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: Pres. Bush lost his first battle over China today. The House by an overwhelming 390 to 25 vote overrode his veto of the bill that would guarantee the right of Chinese students to stay in the United States. Mr. Bush said the bill was an unnecessary intrusion on his Presidential right to manage foreign policy. He told reporters this morning he could protect the students without the legislation.

PRES. BUSH: Every American should know, I want to take this opportunity to state this as strongly as I can, that I will not break faith with the Chinese students here. I've made that very clear from the very beginning and right after Tiananmen, I moved to protect the Chinese students in this country, not one was sent back, they were safe then, and they are safe now and they will be safe in the future. The bill is totally unnecessary, the long-term policy consequences are potentially great and Congress, in my view, will have only itself to blame.

MR. LEHRER: There could be a vote in the Senate as early as tomorrow. A much closer vote is expected there. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Pres. Bush was also asked at his news conference about Azerbaijan. Mr. Bush said the ethnic unrest there and elsewhere in the USSR is presenting a serious challenge to Mr. Gorbachev. The President said he hopes that Gorbachev, in his words, not only survives, but stays strong, because it is in the interest of the U.S. for perestroika to succeed and go forward. In Azerbaijan, Soviet TV said there was a battle between Soviet troops and Azerbaijanis in the harbor of the capital city Baku. The Soviets said they succeeded in breaking an Azerbaijani blockade. The number of people killed since the fighting between Armenians and Azerbaijanis began 11 days ago is now believed to be more than 170. We have a report from the Armenian side of the border by Bill Neely of Independent Television News.

MR. NEELY: Armenia today laid to rest the last and the youngest victim of its latest battle with Azerbaijan. Orson Nemedian was an 18 year old computer student. Five days ago he took a gun to the border. Within hours he was dead, shot by a sniper. Thousands took to the streets today to mourn him. His cortege brought the center of the Armenian capital to a standstill, a student carried on a troop carrier to his grave. Meanwhile, the Soviet army continues its advance into Western Azerbaijan. This convoy airlifted in two days ago carried 200 troops. They snake along the Turkish border past Mt. Ararat, the symbol of Armenia. At the border with Azerbaijan, Armenian guerrillas gave them a rousing welcome. The authorities accuse these guerrillas of stealing hundreds of weapons and tons of explosives from army depots, but there's little evidence of it. The weapons brought to the border today were homemade.

MS. WOODRUFF: In Yugoslavia today, police broke up a pro democracy demonstration in the province of Kosovo, which is populated mostly by Moslem Albanians. More than 10,000 of them held the demonstration in front of the local Communist Party headquarters. Police waited until nighttime to break up the protest with water canons, tear gas and clubs. Earlier this week, the Communist Party agreed to give up the monopoly on power it has held for the past 45 years.

MR. LEHRER: Back in this country the man in charge of cleaning up the savings & loan mess said today $50 billion may not be enough to do the job. FDIC Chairman William Seidman told a House hearing more thrift institutions may fail than originally expected. We'll have an interview with Mr. Seidman later in the program. Also today the Congressional Budget Office had some word on next year's federal budget. In a report to the Senate Budget Committee the CBO said $74 billion in savings must be found to meet deficit reduction targets. That is more than double the administration's estimate. Pres. Bush will submit his budget to Congress next Monday.

MS. WOODRUFF: Iran-Contra figure Richard Secord was sentenced to two years' probation today. The retired Air Force Major General pleaded guilty last November to lying to Congress about buying a $13,000 security fence for former Reagan White House aide Oliver North. Secord could have faced up to five years in prison, but Judge Aubrey Robinson said Secord had already suffered enough. Secord is the fifth person to be sentenced in the Iran-Contra affair. None were required to serve time in prison.

MR. LEHRER: Miami policeman William Lazano was sentenced to seven years in prison today. He was convicted last month for manslaughter in the shooting death of a black motorcyclist. His passenger also died in the resulting crash. The January 1989 incident spurred three nights of racial violence in the city. Lazano will remain free on bond while awaiting appeal.

MS. WOODRUFF: Japan sent a rocket to the moon today. It was its first such attempt. The unmanned spacecraft will orbit the moon, not actually land on it. Only two other nations have ever sent rockets on such a mission, the United States and the Soviet Union. The Japanese rocket was built by Nissan, the country's second largest car maker. That's it for the News Summary. Coming up on the Newshour, the crisis in Azerbaijan, the bail out of America's thrifts, and the pros and cons of estrogen therapy. FOCUS - AZERBAIJAN

MR. LEHRER: The Azerbaijan War is our lead story again tonight. Today Soviet forces fought Azerbaijani rebels at the port in Baku, Azerbaijan's capital city. News reports said the overall death toll now stands at more than 170. The fighting began a week ago between Azerbaijanis and Armenians with the Soviets in the middle. Pres. Bush was asked about the situation today at a morning White House news conference.

TERENCE HUNT, Associated Press: Mr. President, how serious a crisis is the nationalist rebellion in Azerbaijan for Pres. Gorbachev and what are the chances that he'll survive this test and the challenge from the Baltics?

PRES. BUSH: Well, I think the answer to your question unfolds every day. We don't really know and it is serious. Gorbachev has always indicated a desire to restrain for peaceful change inside the Soviet Union, and I refer to what he said on the Baltics, he's faced with an ethnic problem here and an internal problem of enormous dimensions. But I don't know, Terry, I can't make predictions about that, but I know that I hope that he not only survives but stays strong, because I think it is in our interest that perestroika succeed and go forward.

MR. HUNT: Could I just follow up on that? Do you think that he's gone too far in the crackdown in Baku?

PRES. BUSH: Any time you have a use of force and the loss of life, we are concerned, but I don't believe I can judge that question right now.

MR. LEHRER: We get three more perspectives on the situation now. They are those of Paul Gobel, former adviser to the State Department on Soviet nationalities issues, he's now a Deputy Director of Radio Liberty, Lt. Gen. William Odom, former Director of the National Security Agency, and a specialist in Soviet military and political issues, now retired he's Director of National Securities Studies for the Hudson Institute and an adjunct professor of political science at Yale University, Melor Sturua is a political columnist for the Soviet newspaper Izvestia, he's now on leave and is a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. Mr. Sturua, do you see an end in sight to this war?

MELOR STURUA, Soviet Journalist: Well, I don't see yet, but it seems to me the situation is very explosive in every meaning of this work, politically, ethnically, religiously, and in the direct sense of course, because the captains of the cargo ships, oil cargo ships, are threatening to destroy them, and the situation is quite explosive. It seems to me that one way to resolve this crisis in Azerbaijan is to start on the political settlement, because otherwise it will be impossible to find some solution which can be acceptable by Moscow, by the central government and by the popular front and Azerbaijani parliament.

MR. LEHRER: You don't believe that there is a military solution to this?

MR. STURUA: No. I don't think so.

MR. LEHRER: The Soviet troops cannot enforce --

MR. STURUA: They can enforce, but how long and why? What will they do in Azerbaijan, just pacify the people, no I think not. It seems to me the political solution is the most how to say it not visible, but the most productive solution.

MR. LEHRER: But Gen. Odom, the military solution, the military option is the one that's being used now, is that correct?

LT. GEN. WILLIAM ODOM, Former Director, National Security Agency: That seems to be the case as far as I know.

MR. LEHRER: Do you agree that it's not going to work?

LT. GEN. ODOM: I would state the same position a little differently. I would say that I think the military probably can stop the major fighting in a reasonably short period of time, but I think the two other components, one of which he's mentioned, the second is police capability to keep law and order after the major confrontation has somewhat subsided, and then I think the capabilities, the administrative efficiency of the Soviet structure there and the party, if they are adequate, then some sort of negotiation as he suggests for a political settlement might be the case, but given the breakdown of the party and the emergence of not only the national front but various parties within the national front suggest that it will be a very difficult and complex matter to negotiate any kind of settlement for.

MR. LEHRER: On the military thing first there are already reports that the leadership of the Soviet army, if not some of the troops, are very reluctant to fire on their own people. How big a problem is that going to be before this thing gets resolve?

LT. GEN. ODOM: Well, I think we'd have to know more about what the mix of forces are there. You can almost be assured, and I don't know the details, but you can be assured I think it would be some Ministry of Interior troops which would probably be much more reliable than recently mobilized army troops.

MR. LEHRER: Why is that?

LT. GEN. ODOM: Well, they've been trained for internal security purposes, and they would be more skilled at that and probably more disciplined at it. I would be terribly surprised if the Soviet army forces coming in there have a large number of Azerbaijanis in their ranks. I would expect --

MR. LEHRER: Or Armenians, right?

LT. GEN. ODOM: Right. Or Armenians. I would expect that the ethnic mix of the troops coming in is probably being given a certain amount of attention for the very reasons you suggested and then the local police and KGB, the role that they play. Now in Tbelisi, there was quite a breakdown between these organizations.

MR. LEHRER: In where? Where was that?

LT. GEN. ODOM: In Tbelisi, the capital of Georgia sometime ago when there was shooting there. Since that time the KGB and the army have cast the blame on one another and that's been an ongoing quarrel. So I think that raises questions about how careful and effective the coordination among these various law and order forces will be in Azerbaijan.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Goble, do you have a view of that?

PAUL GOBLE, Former State Department Adviser: Well, I would add two things. I think first it's very inappropriate to speak of solutions to the problem. It's much better to speak of managing a situation. And I would agree that a combination of methods are going to be necessary political, military, economic and so on, that we can't expect that there's going to be a one solution, that somehow we're going to wake up one day and a plan can be put in and that ends the problem forever. Rather we are going to manage our way through this problem.

MR. LEHRER: Why is that?

MR. GOBLE: The kinds of demands that are being made, there are competitive demands within Azerbaijan, there are other demands elsewhere in the Soviet Union that have to be considered in deciding what to do in Baku and elsewhere. If you do one thing in Baku, if you --

MR. LEHRER: Baku is the capital.

MR. GOBLE: Baku is the capital of Azerbaijan. If you make concessions to people who are armed and in the streets, you are sending a message to people that if you are armed and in the streets, we will make concessions to you. That is a very dangerous lesson to teach a multiethnic society. If you make the point that we will negotiate with the problems once people stop shooting, that is another kind of message you're sending to the periphery. Mr. Gorbachev has to be sensitive to that.

MR. LEHRER: Now what's wrong with that message? That's Mr. Sturua's idea that the military could hold it and then there could be a political negotiation.

MR. GOBLE: I think the military solution -- excuse me, I've fallen into my own trap -- my own words, excuse me -- I think the use of military force to end the major fighting, to reduce it to very very low intensity, shooting probably only in the countryside some days or weeks from now, at that point you can begin to negotiate with the groups on the ground. If you negotiate when they are shooting at you as it were, you are sending a very very dangerous message elsewhere, one that I think Mr. Gorbachev would be reluctant to do.

MR. LEHRER: Do you agree with that?

MR. STURUA: Well, it seems to me that we have to experience this. One is Afghanistan. Another one is the massacre in Tbelisi in April last year and that's why I think Moscow is so reluctant to rely heavily upon military solution. I must say that every casualty is at the same time casualty of perestroika and every blow is a blow to perestroika, and that's why I think we are looking for a political solution.

MR. LEHRER: What about the threat in Azerbaijan to secede from the Soviet Union, should that be taken seriously?

MR. GOBLE: I think there are many people who use that rhetoric and who may even believe it as a long-term goal. As an immediate goal, my feeling is that the balance of forces is not in Azerbaijan, is not for that, but what they're interested in is a radical kind of autonomy that when you are speaking in a highly charged environment, you use the most extreme expression you can. I think there are people in Azerbaijan who are actively interested in it, but to assume that that represents amajority opinion among the Azerbaijanis I think is wrong in the absence of other evidence.

MR. LEHRER: Do you have a view of that, General?

LT. GEN. ODOM: I think that the will to autonomy or separation is going to grow, particularly in the aftermath of the use of force. I think a lot of people who maybe would have held the view that Paul has will be changing their minds. I think the use of force has clearly radicalized the situation.

MR. LEHRER: It always does it, doesn't it?

LT. GEN. ODOM: It does indeed. Within the popular front, in the last month or two or three, we've seen several parties spring up which have much more radical views about the political future of Azerbaijan than had been the case six months ago.

MR. GOBLE: But if you're speaking of radicalization, there's another group to consider, and that is 60 million Soviet citizens live outside their home ethnic territory. That's one in five. That means that if the Soviet authorities do not intervene to protect minorities who are under threat, you are sending a very dangerous message to those people, that they are at risk, and that has the potential to radicalize a far larger body of opinion than would be the case just in Azerbaijan. There are no good choices and you simply have to choose among bad ones.

MR. STURUA: You speak about independence of Azerbaijan. It seems to me that upheaval of Azerbaijan is detrimental to their goal of independence and self-determination, because only a peaceful situation only under the rule of law can Azerbaijan achieve a real independence or be a real partner inside the Federation of the Soviet Union.

MR. LEHRER: Talking about difficult choices, Mikhail Gorbachev is the man who's having to make these choices, Gen. Odom. How's he doing so far and how much risk is he over this?

LT. GEN. ODOM: Well, I think long ago he crossed the rubicon of allowing the assertion of national centrifugal forces. In the case of the Baltics, we've seen that proceed in a fairly orderly proceed and I think it's proceeded thus far peacefully there because those countries are more ethnically distinct or rather homogeneous in the case of Lithuania, there are large numbers of Russians there, but they've organized themselves in a very clever and effective way and they've managed to develop a political dialogue with Moscow and keep the channels of conflict within political channels, and in the case of Azerbaijan I think the political organization and the development of what they really want has surged only in the last few months, and it is in a different political culture. It's an Islamic culture, it's one that's shot through with this hostility to Armenians and therefore, I think it will be much more difficult to bring it to any kind of negotiated solution. I think once Mr. Gorbachev made the kinds of concessions he did in the Baltic, one could expect that all of the other republics are going to ask this question. To put it in the simplest terms, a multinational empire in the late 20th century when nationalism is a very popular legitimacy principle for sovereignty throughout the world has a very difficult time explaining why non-Russian people should remain in that union.

MR. LEHRER: And set afire by Gorbachev, himself, in some ways, wouldn't you say?

LT. GEN. ODOM: Well, I think the whole business of glasnost, yes, and allowing the expression of heretofore repressed political opinions certainly is the catalyst for this political development.

MR. LEHRER: And yet in Azerbaijan he called out the troops which he has not done up till now.

MR. STURUA: Of course there is a difference. Moscow sent Mr. Gorbachev to the Baltic region and sent armed forces to the Caucasuses. There is a difference, but there is another point. I think that every republic especially which tries to be independent, which tries to get self-determination, must know one thing. When Mr. Gorbachev is in Moscow and he's the president of the Soviet Union, their chances to become independent are greater, where if something happens in Moscow because of this development in the Baltic republics or in Caucases, it will be also a great damage to Pres. Gorbachev and through his damage to their cause to get independence.

MR. LEHRER: Yes.

LT. GEN. ODOM: Could I respond to that? While I understand the logic of that point, it seems to me that the Soviet political leadership, perhaps Gorbachev himself, have been a little behind political developments in anticipating how vital and assertive these national forces would be. If he does not intend to turn things around from the direction he started them in perestroika, then it seems to me if he's going to handle these diverse situations, he's has to come up fairly quickly with a new notion of confederation or some other kind of relationship within the Soviet Union.

MR. LEHRER: An option between secession and the status quo.

LT. GEN. ODOM: Absolutely. And it seems to me that the political leadership has been somewhat hesitant to address that and to have as daring a concept in that regard as Gorbachev has had in some other areas.

MR. GOBLE: I think you have to add to that that different solutions for different portions of the non-Russian periphery are likely, the degree of political mobilization, the degree of demand for independence, the political will for independence is very different among different parts of the country, as Mr. Sturua's pointed out, the ways in which people are making these demands. The way the Balts are making the demands and the intensity of the demand for independence is such that it probably is true that the Baltic states cannot be held unless force is used at some point. Other parts of the Soviet periphery may be very happy with a confederal system and still others with a federal system not terribly different than one now. I think Mr. Gorbachev's challenge is that because the periphery is so diverse that anything he does one place may lead to demands elsewhere. And when you're trying to manage something where you're doing several different things in different parts of the country, the danger, of course, is that people will always read what is happening elsewhere as what should happen to them.

MR. LEHRER: Are his fellow leaders back in Moscow going to give him the freedom to manage the situation to use Mr. Goble's term?

MR. STURUA: It seems to me that he has a free hand because nowadays nobody can replace him and nobody dare to assume such a responsibility. I remember that Bucholv said, what can I wish to Mr. Gorbachev in the new year, the third and the fourth hand, because he has so many problems, his hands are full of problems, but I must say that at the very beginning of perestroika we under estimated the national question, we were mesmerized by our economic development, but it seems to me that we have a great experience how to tighten our belts but the experience how to deal with a national upheaval in Caucases or orderly up hill like in the Baltic region, well, here we have no experience and we have to pay our very great and I must say even criminal debt, because this kind of federation which is really just a unitary state was created by Stalin and he made a map of Caucases now a root of all these evils because he didn't accept the real national self determination, he was just proclaiming it.

LT. GEN. ODOM: I would like to make a point may I on the point you just made about Stalin creating this. Lenin actually gave the directives to Orgen Akisi back in 1920 in March to manage a coup in Baku and when there was resistance, the 11th Red army crossed the border the same day, so I don't think Stalin deserves all the blame for the creation of this multinational empire.

MR. STURUA: You remember afterwards the Georgian Bolsheviks and the Bolsheviks from Caucasus came to Lenin. They were complaining that Stalin had perverted all these ideas, but unfortunately Lenin was very gravely ill at that time and he couldn't defend Georgian Bolsheviks, plus he refused to do it and Stalin and Geresky, they did this very dangerous thing.

MR. LEHRER: Gentlemen, on that note of history, we'll leave it. Thank you all three very much for being with us.

MS. WOODRUFF: Still ahead on the Newshour, the rising cost of bailing out the Savings & Loans and a look at the dilemma posed by estrogen therapy. FOCUS - SAVINGS & LOSS

MS. WOODRUFF: Next tonight we look at the United States Government and the biggest real estate sale in this country's history. The Government got in to the real estate business inadvertently after seizing billions of dollars of property from insolvent savings and loans while the S&L clean up continues the Government also faces the enormous task of getting ride of all that property. In a moment we will talk to the man in charge of that effort but first a background report from Betty Ann Bowser of Public Station KUHT in Houston.

MS. BOWSER: Never before has the Federal Government had to unload such an improbable collection of property. Fancy cars, antiques, paintings, intricate works of art and just plain junk. Even though it doesn't run anymore somebody paid more than $10,000 last summer for this 1957 Bently. It once belonged to the President of a Savings and Loan Association that went broke and now is under Government control. For months now the Government has been trying to sell off the assets of insolvent S&Ls while more thrifts each month continue to go broke. The Resolution Trust Corporation was established by Congress and given the arduous task of liquidating the property of insolvent S&Ls. It constitutes the formation of one of the largest Government Bureaucracies ever. The Dallas Regional Office alone is hiring nearly 1000 people setting up shop in a Downtown office building. Getting organized to sell of billions of dollars in assets in just the Texas, Oklahoma area. Carmen Sullivan is RTC Regional Director.

MS. SULLIVAN: We are up to just under 400 employees right now. We have added probably another 30 thrifts to the conservatorship program, we've closed 8 thrifts in the Region. We are getting close to finalizing arrangements for offices in Houston and San Antonio and things are moving along reasonably well.

MS. BOWSER: These four volumes represent RTCs first compilation of real estate holdings that will be sold off. More than 30,000 properties nationwide. More than half of them are in Texas where the real estate market is still reeling from the economic hard times of the 1980s. Like the other assets of the failed S&Ls the real estate holdings are a mishmash, office and apartment buildings, shopping centers and residential properties. As the Texas Association of Realtors met last week in Austin the RTC was utmost in the minds of conventioneers. Many worry that the Government will dump vast numbers of houses all at once on a residential market that is already depressed. Doyle Krieger is President of the Texas Association of Realtors.

MR. KRIEGER: We think that it would be improper to dump as I use that word dump to place all these houses on the market at one time. I think that what that would do is just really devastate the market because the investors are going to come here and invest in these properties at the very lowest dollar and they are going to keep forcing those prices down.

MS. SULLIVAN: Well we don't think that we are going to dump assets. We think that this is a long term work out. We have a number of assets already on the market and I am sure that you know that in Houston for example things are looking good in some areas and I think that Dallas is coming along. I just don't believe that these fears have any basis in fact.

MS. BOWSER: RTC Officials say a proposed regulation will require properties like these to be sold at 95 percent of appraised value which they claim will prevent dumping. Sam Pierce is an S&L Industry consultant. His research shows accurate appraisals could take so much time that while they are being done the value of RTC real estate could be driven down and he says in a volatile Texas market it is hard to figure out what properties are really worth.

MR. PIERCE: Appraisal processes is not as precise a process as every one assumes that it is. It is still to a significant degree an art form. You are going to have to make guesses about what is going to happen to real estate. Unfortunately because the RTC controls so much real estate particularly in the Southwest United States imprudent activity on their part could further depress the value. So it is any bodies guess as to what value really is particularly in a market that is not terribly active and that is the big problem that we have in Texas right now is that there is a lack activity to establish a real market.

MS. BOWSER: This is the little town of Liberty about 50 miles northeast of Houston. Every S&L here and in the surrounding county is under Government control. Realtors here aren't worried about Government regulations or dumping. They wonder how they are going to sell property that has fallen under disrepair under Government ownership. Bud Lee has been selling real estate for 21 years.

MR. LEE: Yes they are going to be difficult to sell unless the S&Ls are willing to suffer a greater loss by making the necessary repairs.

MS. BOWSER: Lee showed us two houses in Liberty that he says could sell at the top of the market with a few repairs but current RTC policy is to sell most properties as is. Consultant Pierce says one of the RTC's biggest problems is the inventory itself.

MR. PIERCE: If you look at what those assets really are. They are not the $300,000 homes, they are not the $100,000 homes they are not the homes that a lot of people want to buy. They are $40,000 homes, they are $25,000 homes if you can believe there are such things. They don't appeal to some of the people who are most concerned about being disadvantaged.

MS. SULLIVAN: I think the inventory has been portrayed as being full of dogs and I don't think that it is. I think there are some very fine high quality properties in there. I think there are some properties in good condition and others in fair and yes there are dogs.

MS. BOWSER: By the end of the year the RTC will have at least another 100 S&Ls under its control. Meanwhile the bailout is costing tax payers one billion dollars a month. Because the price tag is so high one of the first orders of business for this new session of the Congress is to hold hearings on the RTC. The hearings got underway this week.

REP. GONZALES: This hearing is a good chance for us to deliver a report card. The way I see it the Administration deserves a C. lately they have spent more time posturing for more money than on spending the money that they have.

REP. SCHUMER: I think the number one question facing us is why have so few thrifts, these brain dead thrifts been let to live for so long. I think that a number of factors contributed to the delay. There has been a delay in appointing key personnel. And there has been a lack of a coherent strategy, a gross underestimation of the scope, severity and costliness of the crisis. To the outside observer it would seem that the RTC's watch word has been don't just stand there do nothing.

MS. WOODRUFF: William Seidman is Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Resolution Trust Corporation. He told Congress today that the 50 billion dollars set aside by the Government to bailout the failed Savings and loans may not be enough to clean up the industry. Mr. Seidman thank you for being with us.

MR. SEIDMAN: Nice to be with you Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: If 50 billion isn't enough how much is it going to take?

MR. SEIDMAN: Well no one can say at this time. We have to know how many of these institutions we will end up taking over and at this time we don't have a good estimate of that but it will probably be 200 more. If it is then the 50 billion will not be enough.

MS. WOODRUFF: If it were 200 more how much money are we talking about?

MR. SEIDMAN: Well we can 't tell that yet. It depends on what 200, how many assets they have in it. What the values are at that time. what the loses are. roughly we have felt that we would lose something like 20 percent on the value of the assets that we get in a total thrift. So until we really know how many we are going to take over there is no way to put a number on it.

MS. WOODRUFF: Why is it going to cost so much more than we were originally told?

MR. SEIDMAN: Well I think the reason is that we have found that there are more thrifts that are in trouble. We've set strict standards for thrifts now in terms of having capital, of having owners money in them and the thrifts have been conditions than we had originally estimated and finally we have weakening real estate markets in many areas of the country. So everything has gone the wrong way for us in terms of the cost.

MS. WOODRUFF: Where is the money going to come from? If there more money that has to be paid are we talking about going back to the Congress again, from the taxpayers?

MR. SEIDMAN: There is no other place to get the money except from the tax payer if the cost of filling the hole, as we call it, that is making up the loses is more than the amount originally estimated.

MS. WOODRUFF: Do you think that Congress is willing to put up this money?

MR. SEIDMAN: Well I just spent the morning with them and I'd say they are very unwilling to put up the money at the moment and I don't blame them. It is a very expensive bill but the money is being used to make good on deposits. So they have to decide whether they are going to make good on the insurance that they have given to depositors and they have said that they will.

MS. WOODRUFF: And that is something that will happen you are saying? Has to happen?

MR. SEIDMAN: Yes it is something that has to happen unfortunately.

MS. WOODRUFF: Because it is a commitment that has been made to the people who put money in these institutions.

MR. SEIDMAN: That is correct.

MS. WOODRUFF: We talked today, Mr. Seidman with an economist who used to be with the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. He is going to be testifying before the House Banking Committee tomorrow his name is Dan Brumbaugh and said, and he said he is going to tell the Committee this tomorrow, that those of you who are running the Resolution Trust Corporation, these are his terms, his words understating this problem. That you have know all along that it is going to be much bigger but that you haven't been straight foreword about it. How do respond to that?

MR. SEIDMAN: Well I gave the Congress today all the information that we had. We have a list of thrifts that we thought were likely to fail that the office of thrift supervision has given us. There is something between 225 and 265 of those. There is another almost 300 that are in difficulty and therefore might fail although the Thrift Office doesn't think they will. We gave them all the loss figures that we had so that we know what the loss experience is and you can really make your own estimate but no one can make a real estimate until we know how many of those that appear be in trouble will actually have to be liquidated.

MS. WOODRUFF: Why are more of them in trouble? I guess I am sounding like I am repeating an earlier question but just to pick up on your answer to the earlier question why are more of them in trouble than you originally thought?

MR. SEIDMAN: Well there are more in trouble because we've had weak markets and because they were in worse condition then we thought they were.

MS. WOODRUFF: What do you mean weak markets? What do you mean by that?

MR. SEIDMAN: Weak real estate markets and that of course hurts thrifts but beyond that these thrifts were simply in worse condition than we believed. The reports, the call reports that they mailed in didn't really reveal how much difficulty they were in. So we when we got into them and when we applied the new standards passed by the Congress there are more than we had originally thought.

MS. WOODRUFF: When you say they were in more difficulty you mean they did not have as much as on hand available to them as they indicated they did. Is that it?

MR. SEIDMAN: Their assets were worth less than they would have appeared to be in their reports.

MS. WOODRUFF: Let's talk about that report we just saw from Betty Ann Bowser and that final comment by Congressman Schumer, I think, he said the motto of the Resolution Trust Corporation should be don't just stand there do nothing. How do you respond to that?

MR. SEIDMAN: Well with all due respect to the Congressman I don't think that is what is taking place. We are setting up an operation which is the largest depository institution in the Country. We are gearing up to handle hundreds of thousands of pieces of property. We are gearing up for 80 law suits to get the property in shape to sell in terms of the titles and ownership. It is a tremendous job and it takes some time and we have a somewhat awkward structure in that we have to deal both with an oversight board and an RTC Board which may be perfectly appropriate but it takes more time.

MS. WOODRUFF: How much property has actually been sold?

MR. SEIDMAN: Well we've been selling property out of the conservatorship but that has not been real estate but it has been easily salable securitized mortgages and so forth.

MS. WOODRUFF: Are the problems that you saw Betty Ann Bowser describe in that report in Texas does that square with how you see the difficulties facing you?

MR. SEIDMAN: I thought that it was a good report. We face all of those difficulties. We don't think that is going to prevent us from doing the job but we certainly have the problem of properties that are going into disrepair and need to be dealt with and we have very soft markets and very large inventories. Now with all due respect, to some extent people would like to shoot the messenger who has arrived to tell people that this is the state of the situation. But the cause of all this is the failure to properly supervise S&Ls 4 or 5 years ago and allow them to get into the financial shape that they are in.

MS. WOODRUFF: As you know and this was pointed out in the report. You are supposed to be selling this property off as quickly as possible them you hear the concerns of the real estate and the banking interests that they don't want it dumped on the market when prices are depressed. How do you get around that?

MR. SEIDMAN: Well I respond to that that this job of running the RTC is probably the most thankless job in America. If you want to be unpopular this is the job to take and it is very clear that any body who has it very long is going to have very few supporters.

MS. WOODRUFF: What does that mean? Are you trying to tell us something?

MR. SEIDMAN: NO I am just trying to say-- I prophesied that a year ago and my prophecies on the size of the problem haven't been very good but my prophecies on how this job was going to go has been excellent.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well when it comes down to should we sell it now even if it is at a lower price or should we wait for the price of the property to go up, I mean, where does the RTC come down on this?

MR. SEIDMAN: Well the RTC gets it guidance from the oversight board. The oversight board has said that we should not try to hold property for future higher prices. That we should try to sell it at today's prices and not try to out guess the market. So that is what we are going to do. On the other hand we can not sell below 95 percent of appraised value in most of these areas so we will be caught between those two instructions and try to do the best we can to try sell property but not dump.

MS. WOODRUFF: There was a report today about yesterday's sale by the Government of bonds that are going to be used to finance the bailout that say essentially the auction did not go well. With out getting in to the details of that are you concerned about that?

MR. SEIDMAN: Well that really is not in the area that I am responsible for and I think that it was more the result of the way that people were thinking about interest rates than it was the result of anything having to do with the RTC.

MS. WOODRUFF: Mr. Seidman what is your message to viewers out there who are sort of shaking their heads and saying my gosh I was hoping that we heard the end of this S&L problem but there seems to be no end. What do you say to those people?

MR. SEIDMAN: Well there is an end to the problem. I would tell them that, you know, that it is always darkest before the dawn and there is a silver lining. There are a lot of bargains out there that people are going to buy so while some people are going to be hurt there are people who should find some advantages for themselves.

MS. WOODRUFF: So they should get their checkbooks ready?

MR. SEIDMAN: Order our book. $50 and you get that big book that you showed and tell you all the properties for sale.

MS. WOODRUFF: Alright William Seidman we thank you for being with us. FOCUS - ESTROGEN DILEMMA

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight a story about dilemmas, those facing many women when they reach the age of menopause. The issue is deciding whether the benefits of helpful drugs outweigh the risks. Charlayne Hunter-Gault has our report.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: It could be said that Monica Stuart Yandow is in the prime of her professional life. She runs her own children's talent agency in New York City, her general health is good, but Monica Stuart Yandow is also experiencing the change of life or menopause, and that has made a big difference in her life. Following some surgery, Ms. Stuart Yandow went into menopause prematurely. And that's when the trouble started, hot flashes.

MONICA STUART YANDOW: I had as many as 40 in a day, and you're waking up all night with a wet pillow and your hair all wet and changing your nightgown, and having to change your clothes three times a day.

MS. O'WYATT: I have hot flashes every thirty to forty minutes and I've been having them for about 10 years.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Lois O'Wyatt works for a New York City bank. She too knows the unpleasant side of menopause.

LOIS O'WYATT: There are days if it gets 90 or the humidity gets very high one may need to change clothes in-between, it depends. Also what you wear, I don't wear synthetics because I feel that I'm going to roast to death, so I try silks, cottons, that kind of thing which always wrinkle. Whatever, you always, you never feel right. You feel greasy, you feel wrinkled, that kind of thing.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Dr. Fredi Kronenberg is studying the causes of hot flashes and how they can be treated. She's a physiologist at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons.

FREDI KRONENBERG, Physiologist: You know a lot of women are working today and I have a lot of women come to me. One woman here in New York City is showing high price apartments. She said, when I'm showing a $2 million apartment, and all of a sudden, I break out in a sweat, my face turns red, you know, the people turn to me and say, what are you hiding? And another woman who is a musician, plays the piano, she says in the middle of a concert, she'll have a hot flash and her hands get wet and her fingers slip on the keys, so it has major impact on people's lives.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: There are some 40 million women in America today who are at or near the middle age years. As they approach menopause, experts say that 75 percent of them will experience varying degrees of menopausal symptoms. Menopause comes about when the ovaries stop producing the hormone estrogen. This can result in problems like hot flashes, vaginal dryness, hair loss, or more severe problems like osteoporosis or heart disease, the number 1 killer of older women. Many women go through this stage of life experiencing no symptoms at all. Others, like Ms. Stuart Yandow and Ms. O'Wyatt can be traumatized by it. To relieve the symptoms of menopause, doctors place women on hormone therapy drugs like Premarin. Prepared in a laboratory, it replaces the estrogen lost to the aging process. Studies have also shown that on a long-term basis, it's a preventive against osteoporosis or bone loss, stroke, and heart attacks. Dr. Shelley Kolton is Monica Stuart Yandow's doctor.

DR. SHELLEY KOLTON, Gynecologist: Anybody I start on estrogen I tell them that the recommendation as of right now is that they stay on it for certainly the next 10 or more years and that we continue to look at data as it comes in.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Not just to get them through the short-term hot flashes?

DR. KOLTON: No, because the data on osteoporosis is clear that as soon as you stop the estrogen your bone loss will catch up to wherever it was going to be if you never took the estrogen, so that benefit is undone.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But that's where the latest worry and confusions start, because on a long-term basis estrogen can cause problems as well. In the seventies, estrogen was shown to cause uterine cancer, but doctors countered that side effect by combining estrogen with another female hormone, progestin. But now an article in the New England Journal of Medicine has raised the estrogen cancer worry again. The article reported the findings of a Swedish study linking long-term use of estrogen with a 70 percent increase in the risk of breast cancer. Further, the study reported one other disturbing fact. The addition of progestin offered no protection against the development of breast cancer. In short, progestin didn't protect against breast cancer the way it protected against uterine cancer. These findings spread confusion and panic among women on hormone therapy and evoked sharp criticism from doctors. But Dr. Robert Hoover of the National Cancer Institute who worked on the study defended it.

DR. ROBERT HOOVER, National Cancer Institute: The finding is pretty solid not only because of the quality of the study, itself, but the fact that it sort of confirms a whole series of studies which have been done in the last 10 years which have found very similar estimates of risk for long-term users of estrogen as replacement therapy.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Wulf Utian is a medical professor at Case Western University specializing in the study of menopause.

DR. WULF UTIAN, Gynecologist: If you look selectively or specifically at the Swedish study, it's riddled with a lot of deficiencies. For example, the kind of estrogens they were using, different generally speaking to the kinds of estrogens we use in the states.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But Dr. Hoover argues that it doesn't matter what type of estrogen you take.

DR. HOOVER: Everything we know says that the ovarian hormones are involved in a positive manner with risk of breast cancer, and these are all findings that aren't contested. These are all well established risk factors for breast cancer. Is it totally stunning and surprising then that when we take a woman whose own ovarian hormones have declined and stopped and replace them that we should get a similar finding?

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Where do you come down on estrogen therapy? Are you in favor of exercising more caution, or do you think more women should be taking it or just what?

DR. UTIAN: There are about 15 percent of the United States population of women over the age of 50 or over the age of menopause that are currently taking some form of estrogen replacement. I think from a clinical perspective probably half of women would be justified in taking it. So I think just looking at those numbers, you can see that there are still a number of women who are not having replacement who should.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But critics in the medical field argue that doctors are routinely over prescribing estrogen and not looking at alternatives. Cynthia Pearson of the National Women's Health Network.

CYNTHIA PEARSON, National Women's Health Network: We all know that because of malpractice issues and other reasons, the obstetrician-gynecologist community is slowly sliding into being more of a gynecologist community. They're getting out of obstetrics more in certain regions of the country and what's left? Hysterectomies and estrogen replacement therapy. If you put a woman on estrogen replacement therapy or combined hormone replacement therapy, you need to see her at least once a year for the rest of her life. Some doctors say even more often. You've got a secure base of income coming in.

DR. KOLTON: I don't think that there's any validity to that really. I don't think that there's any maliciousness or irresponsibility in prescribing hormones that have been blessed by the American College of OB/GYN. I think that they're making the best decisions they can make given the data that's available.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But lack of data is part of the problem according to researcher Kronenberg.

FREDI KRONENBERG: The primary research has been done with estrogen because it's the most obvious contender for effectiveness and it is effective, and there's not been a lot of work looking at alternatives and we can probably count on one hand the number of people doing basic research into the physiology of hot flashes to try to understand what is it that's causing them so one, we can understand why it is the medications that work do work and to look for different alternatives for women who cannot take estrogen, of which there are many, or who don't want to. It would be nice to have some alternatives for people to choose from.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Meanwhile, women like Lois O'Wyatt are having difficulty assessing the risks and benefits.

MS. O'WYATT: Maybe three years ago I thought, well, I think I'll go on it. At the same time a friend of mine was in the hospital, she had just had a breast removed, and I went to see her, and I said, you know, I'm thinking of going on estrogen. She said, don't do it. She said, I have a history of cancer in my family, her mother had had a radical mastectomy, and she said her doctor told her that estrogen would help her with breast cancer, so she had been on it. She had already had one breast removed. She later had a second breast removed, and then she just died last weekend. Now she even said, I honestly don't know if my taking estrogen made it this bad, but she said just don't do it.

MS. STUART YANDOW: If I have a choice to make, I will stay on the estrogen. There isn't anything else to do. Women are always between a rock and a hard place. It's a difference between getting hid by a truck or a bus.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: As the debate rages, both sides agree that women are not being fully informed.

DR. KOLTON: Women are not being educated enough about the choices that they're being given, that they are still being treated paternalistically, that they're being given drugs without being informed.

DR. HOOVER: Coopting the women into our processes of discussing risks and benefits needs to go on.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Meanwhile, experts predict that by the year 2000 the number of women who will be of an age to weigh those risks will grow by 32 percent, far more than those of reproductive age. With numbers like that on their side, it's possible that women may get the answers tomorrow that they have just begun to demand today. RECAP

MS. WOODRUFF: Once again, the major stories of this Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to override Pres. Bush's veto of a bill protecting Chinese students in the U.S. The Senate is expected to vote on the measure tomorrow. The President said he hoped Soviet Leader Gorbachev survives the crisis in Azerbaijan. And former Air Force Gen. Richard Secord was given two years probation for his role in the Iran-Contra affair. Good night, Jim.

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