The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

Intro

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. In the headlines this Thursday, at least 18 people died as the violence continued in South Africa. A hurricane is headed toward the Gulf Coast between Florida and Louisiana. And there were even more developments in the never-ending German spy scandal. We will have the details in our summary of the news of the day in a moment. Robin?

ROBERT MacNEIL: We focus on four stories on tonight's NewsHour. South Africa: we examine the growing economic crisis. We have an inside look at, and a critique of, new safety measures in Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear plant. FAA boss Donald Engen is here to address new questions about airline safety. And we look at the new identity of a tribe of Indians in Maine.News Summary

MacNEIL: There was more rioting today in the Cape Town area of South Africa in the wake of yesterday's battles, when police broke up mass demonstrations against apartheid. Police said the death toll from the two days of disturbances stood at 18, most of them killed by police gunfire. The white city council of Cape Town appealed for police restraint. John Sonnenberg, a white member of the Cape Province governing council, said there was a disgraceful display of brutality against demonstrators. The government banned journalists from entering some townships. South African state radio criticized Western media for reinforcing the impression that the whole country is in chaos. Much of the conflict is between security forces and teenagers, as James Robbins of the BBC reports.

JAMES ROBBINS, BBC [voice-over]: Police fired and hurled a succession of tear gas canisters into the grounds of this school in Mitchell's Plain outside Cape Town. These scenes were repeated at other schools in the area, with reports of shotguns being fired outside one primary school. The police were preparing the way for the storming of classrooms, to break up a meeting of teenage pupils protesting at the ban on COSAS, the dominant school organization for nonwhites. The police action follows months of school boycotts by children, actions blamed principally on COSAS. As the tear gas took effect, police ran into classrooms, driving children out with whips. Many of the teenagers had been overcome by the effects of the gas, and some were hysterical. A teacher was among those who collapsed in a whole series of operations to stamp out an organization which has grown rapidly in the past six years. On the streets the people then vented their anger on the police and on private property. Quickly the pupils' anger turned to general lawlessness and destruction. The government has often accused COSAS of encouraging violence among the young. Certainly it has been a major force in the unrest of the 12 months.

MacNEIL: South African business leaders, white and black, called on the government today to end the state of emergency and start talks with black leaders. The country's four major business groups said the government must negotiate evenhandedly with accepted black leaders, including some now in detention. The governor of the South African Reserve Bank, Dr. Gerhard de Kock, flew to London for emergency talks on South Africa's debt problems. South Africa is scheduled to repay more than $12 billion over the next year. American and other Western banks are reported to be refusing to roll over loans to South Africa or issue new credit. Dr. de Kock will fly to Washington tomorrow to meet Federal Reserve Board chairman Paul Volcker. Jim?

LEHRER: A hurricane named Elena threatens a large section of the Gulf Coast tonight. Forecasters say it is expected to hit land tomorrow morning somewhere between Pensacola, Florida, and Morgan City, Louisiana, with winds as high as 100 miles an hour. The cities of New Orleans and Mobile are on the potential hit list, along with hundreds of other smaller cities and towns. These spectacular pictures of Elena were taken early in the day by astronauts aboard the orbiting space shuttle Discovery.

It was a good day all the way around for Discovery and its crew. A third communications satellite was successfully launched, and preparations were made to go after a similar satellite Saturday which is stranded and disabled. That repair mission is designed to fix, among other things, the satellite's antenna, which, as these pictures show, was deployed as planned on the satellite launch today.

ASSISTANT: It's starting up now.

MISSION CONTROL: Roger, we can see that very clearly.

MacNEIL: An international air travelers' group said today that the confidence of air travelers had been shaken by recent disasters and called for immediate increased attention to passenger safety. Hans Krakauer, vice president of the International Airline Passengers Association, which claims 100,000 regular air travelers as members, called a news conference in Amsterdam. He said 80 of this year's 1,650 aviation deaths could have been prevented by stricter safety measures. For one, the organization is demanding routine checks of major aircraft components every 30,000 flying hours or 6,500 landings, almost twice as often as current checks.

In this country the Federal Aviation Administration issued its expected order to U.S. airlines to check Pratt & Whitney engines of the type that exploded in a British airliner last week. The death toll in the resulting fire rose to 55 today when one of the survivors died from his injuries.

In another airline matter, U.S. Customs officials in Miami have fined Eastern Airlines almost $1.4 million after finding 1,700 pounds of cocaine aboard Eastern planes. The drugs, with a street value of $430 million, were discovered in air conditioning compartments of two Eastern flights to Miami from Colombia.

LEHRER: Another artificial heart was implanted today. The operation was performed at the University of Arizona Hospital in Phoenix on a 25-year-old Phoenix man named Michael Drummond. A hospital spokesman said Drummond had a diseased heart, but declined to identify him further. The implanted device is a Jarvik-7, the same one used first in Utah and most recently at the Humana Hospital in Louisville. Dr. Jack Copeland, who performed the Arizona operation, has said he would use an artificial heart only as a bridge until a human donor could be found.

MacNEIL: The Greenpeace antinuclear group today retained a top Washington lawyer and said it will take the French government to court over the sinking of its ship, the Rainbow Warrior, in New Zealand. The lawyer is Lloyd Cutler, White House counsel in the Carter years, who agreed to serve without a fee.

West Germany said today that a senior East German diplomat has defected, and newspapers said he was a spy working for West Germany and Argentina. The newspaper said he was forced to flee because he might have been exposed by the West German counterintelligence chief, who defected to East Germany last week. As Germany remained convulsed by its biggest spy scandal ever, a NATO official said today that classified military information of the alliance had not been endangered.

LEHRER: And finally, a federal judge was indicted today in Mississippi on charges of perjury and accepting an illegal gift. The judge is Walter Nixon, chief judge for the Southern district of Mississippi in Hattiesburg. A special federal grand jury charged Nixon accepted interests in three oil and gas wells from the father of a young man charged with a drug offense and then lied about it in grand jury testimony later. Nixon is only the third federal judge in history to be charged with crimes related to his judicial duties.

MacNEIL: That's tonight's news summary. Coming up, a special view of new safety features inside Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear plant, a newsmaker interview on airline safety with FAA boss Donald Engen, a report on new life for an ancient Indian tribe in Maine, and a look at South Africa's deepening economic crisis. Three Mile Island: Ready to Restart?

MacNEIL: Someone at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania has been standing by almost minute by minute this week to restart America's most controversial power plant. The plant's been shut down since 1979, after the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history. On Tuesday, a federal appeals court in Philadelphia seemed to say the plant could reopen. But in a last-ditch effort today, the state of Pennsylvania, which is battling to prevent reopening, got the same court to say it couldn't reopen unless there were further appeals of Tuesday's ruling. Local activists continue to argue that the plant is unsafe. The operator, General Public Utilities, claims it is safe. To find out what's behind that claim, correspondent Tom Bearden recently toured the plant with utility officials.

TOM BEARDEN [voice-over]: Reactor number one wasn't operating when unit two suffered a partial core meltdown in 1979; it was being refueled. GPU Nuclear has spent $95 million to correct the problems revealed by the Unit Two accident. Most of the money was spent here, in the control room, for new safety and monitoring systems, and for increased training for reactor operators. Some of the improvements are as simple as direct-line telephones. Ron Toole is the operations director.

RON TOOLE, operations director: At the time of the accident we did not have the dedicated phone system, and we did not have dedicated lines to communicate with the local communities and the state and the NRC. At the time of the accident the phone system in the Harrisburg area was burdened, and we had a difficult time communicating, to talk to anyone specifically.

BEARDEN: It was overloaded by public calls?

Mr. TOOLE: That's correct. Today we would be able to communicate effectively with the correct parties, and delivering of the information would be a significant help in making the public aware of what is going on in the plant.

BEARDEN: Thisis the control room for the crippled Unit Two reactor. GPU says the people working here were overwhelmed with information, that they were unable to rapidly determine what problems were most serious and should be dealt with first. A new computer-based priority system has been installed to make it easier for operators to know what problems to address.

Mr. TOOLE: If you look up above, attached to the ceiling you'll see annunciator panels. At the time of the accident, each window that was up there that represents an alarm would have come in and looked to the operator to be the same thing, a white light with wording on it. Today we have the capability of distinguishing some of the higher priorities from the lower priorities. You can see a couple that are red -- those are a higher priority. The next priority would be the blue. The computer itself has the ability to generate the higher-level priorities in different colors and first on the alarm CRT. So it has been a process of trying to deliver the correct information to the control room operator in a usable form so that it doesn't make it appear too complex.

BEARDEN [voice-over]: Toole says other control systems have been more clearly marked to avoid confusion under stress.

Mr. TOOLE: This border line and this tag make that stand out and make it such that the operator should have less of an opportunity to misinterpret which switch goes with what, and will get the correct controls to operate.

BEARDEN [voice-over]: The key failure in unit two occurred when a valve failed to close in the reactor pressurization system. Called the PORV, or power-operated relief valve, it allowed cooling water to escape from the reactor vessel, uncovering the nuclear core and leading to the partial meltdown. There was no device to show the valve had remained open. Unit One now has several systems to make sure that kind of accident doesn't happen again.

Mr. TOOLE: In both cases we would now have emergency feedwater flow that they could see and they would see the PORV was open.

BEARDEN [voice-over]: In addition, the number of operators on duty during a given shift has been doubled, and a graduate engineer is in the control room at all times.

[on camera] GPU Nuclear says the accident at Unit Two was as much a human failure as it was mechanical. Operators have been taught how to deal with dozens of different kinds of accidents, but the failure that actually occurred wasn't one of them. The company is spending $19 million a year in a revised training program designed to teach operators how to deal with symptoms as opposed to memorizing accident scenarios.

[voice-over] Some 55 instructors now conduct continuous retraining classes for all control-room operators. Before the accident there were seven instructors and retraining was not routine. They use this simulator to teach operators how to respond to problems quickly under realistic conditions. And they're building a new structure that will house a multimillion-dollar full-scale operating simulator of the entire control room. Tom Goodlavage has been at Three Mile Island since construction began in the early '70s. He believes he and his fellow workers can run Unit One safely.

TOM GOODLAVAGE, reactor operator: I feel completely confident. I of course operated the plant before all these changes were made, and I felt confident then. And with all the changes we had, like many of our procedures now are based on symptoms versus actual events, that sort of approach seems to make handling some sort of abnormal incident even more clearcut as to what you're supposed to do and even easier for an operator.

BEARDEN [voice-over]: GPU officials say morale is high, that workers are anxious to be part of a functioning plant after five years of working without producing any electricity. Former Navy nuclear submarine Commander Hank Hukill is vice president and director of Unit One. He's aware the opposition doesn't trust GPU Nuclear, but he says the proof is in the performance.

HANK HUKILL, TMI-1 director: They've got to learn that myself and my people and the people above me are honest and open with them, and that there's nothing we ever try and hide from them or keep from them, and that they have a faith and trust in that whatever happens out here that would be of interest to them, we're going to tell them.

BEARDEN [voice-over]: But opponents aren't prepared to give Hukill a chance to prove his point. They don't think GPU has done enough to guarantee community safety. They want TMI-1 to stay closed.

MacNEIL: And now we have the other side of the argument. Some of the strongest opposition to restarting Three Mile Island comes from the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington. One member, nuclear safety engineer Robert Pollard, a former NRC commissioner, told Tom Bearden why he thinks the Unit One reactor is not safe.

ROBERT POLLARD, Union of Concerned Scientists: I think the basic reason is the company has set restart as its first priority rather than making the plant safe. Despite the passage of six years the plant still is plagued with a number of safety problems involving the equipment as well as the management.

BEARDEN: The human engineering fixes and the hardware fixes that they instituted are not sufficient?

Mr. POLLARD: They're not sufficient. For example, although the training has been changed to have the operators respond to symptoms, the NRC is asking for more money in its research budget to understand how the plant will behave during an accident, to make sure that the operators won't take the wrong action and make an accident worse. So the training has been changed, but I can't say for sure it's been improved.

BEARDEN: What about all that new safety equipment the company says they've installed?

Mr. POLLARD: They certainly have installed a lot of new equipment, but the company asked the NRC to be allowed to operate the plant with much of this new equipment inoperable, and the NRC said okay. And this involves the new things to tell whether the PORV is open or closed, new meters to tell how close they are to boiling, new vents to try and get rid of gases that trapped the coolant during the accident. So a lot of new equipment is there, but they are allowed to run the plant with that new equipment inoperable.

BEARDEN: Is it operable now?

Mr. POLLARD: It's supposed to be, but if it were to fail they would still be allowed to operate the plant.

BEARDEN: What about the new communications system?

Mr. POLLARD: Well, they've substantially improved the communication in terms of telling the public about an accident that has occurred. I wish they had devoted as much attention to trying to prevent an accident from occurring.

BEARDEN: They say they have devoted that kind of attention.

Mr. POLLARD: They have, but if you look at the record, this company in six years, they still have a vital cooling system which doesn't meet basic safety requirements; they still have instrumentation which is either inaccurate or unreliable to measure the water level in the reactor, to measure cooling water flow, to measure how close they are to boiling. Yes, there's a lot of new equipment there, but it's not very reliable.

BEARDEN: If all of that is true, why did the NRC recommend TMI-1 be allowed to restart?

Mr. POLLARD: I think the NRC itself does not put safety as its first priority. The NRC was getting a lot of political pressure, but from politicians outside the state of Pennsylvania, to let this plant operate, and I think NRThey don't want to face up to the fact that this company has done, in my view, almost everything it could to prove it's not fit to operate a nuclear power plant except admit it. Their much-enhanced public relations department is perhaps the single most improvement since the accident. Their actions, however, are in direct contradiction to their slogans. Safety is not their first priority, as demonstrated by what they've failed to do to improve the safety at Three Mile Island.

LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour, a look at the new economic storms hitting politically troubled South Africa, a newsmaker interview with FAA chief Donald Engen, and a report on what an Indian tribe did with all the money it got for its long-lost land. South Africa: Deepening Troubles

LEHRER: The South Africa story is there every day, and today it was there with more violence, with 18 more deaths recorded, and with more talk of economic crisis, with efforts to reschedule the country's foreign debts. Both tracks of the story stand to worsen when the weekend comes and South Africa's largest black miners' union strikes five gold mines and two coal mines. That is what we look at now in this report by Peter Snow of the BBC.

PETER SNOW, BBC [voice-over]: There's no doubt of the potential muscle of South Africa's National Union of Mineworkers. The NUM is only three years old but growing fast. And the man who leads this swelling industrial force is Cyril Ramaphosa, general secretary of the NUM. He's widely respected among blacks and whites. From 4,000 members the year before last he now claims 85,000 paid-up members today. And if it does come to a widespread national strike, Mr. Ramaphosa is confident that he can count on most of South Africa's half-million black miners to support him.

CYRIL RAMAPHOSA, general secretary, South African NUM: We are confident that we will get a large number of workers. We've calculated it up to 400,000 who will go out on strike, and there are quite a number of precedents to go on. This past few months whenever a strike occurred on any NUM mine, even when we had like 500 members, the entire workforce stopped work.

SNOW [voice-over]: The mine at Albreit Foreitzig(?) -- it means "happy outcome" -- is one of the most productive in South Africa. It cuts deep into the rich seam of gold that stretches across the Transvaal and makes a profit of a million pounds a month. The amount of predominantly manual labor in gold mining make it one of the most labor-intensive industries in the world. Of the miners here, 1,300 are white, but the vast majority, 11,500, are black. Without the blacks the mines will cease production. But there are powerful pressures on the blacks to resist any call for a national strike. Most of South Africa's black mineworkers come from foreign countries like Mozambique and Malawi or distant black homelands. They live in hostels, largely isolated from the world outside. And they've already achieved pay rises comfortably ahead of inflation. The strength of the union here is hard to gauge. It claims only 2,400 members out of the 11,500 black miners in this mine. The management hold the keys to the union office, and though they open it up on request, the union hardly ever use it. We were constantly accompanied by management on our tour of the mine, and I could get none of the miners to admit even being a union member, let alone any enthusiasm for a strike.

[interviewing] Are any of them union members, could you ask them? Any of them union members?

[voice-over] Black union officials in Johannesburg told us afterwards their members would naturally have kept quiet in a situation like this. But management is confident that if the strike call comes, the workforce will be divided.

GORDON MOSENTHAL, managing director, Barlow Rand Mines: There are a number of people who would encourage a strike and would be willing to go on strike fairly militantly, and I think there are a large number of people who would be terribly disappointed if they were called upon to strike and wouldn't want to strike. I suppose this is analogous to the situation you had in the UK where I don't think there was widespread support for the National Union of Mineworkers under Scargill for, you know, the strike he called, and yet he managed to get most of the people out.

SNOW [voice-over]: Even the threat of a strike causes deep unease. The prosperity of great cities like Johannesburg and prospects for South Africa's ailing economy are still rooted in gold. Any lasting disruption in these mines could prove disastrous.

HAROLD PARKENDORF, editor, Die Vaderland: It would have a serious effect, but not on the mines itself. I think it would be the psychological effect which is worse, because I have little doubt that if there is a serious strike, a strike which would last for days and weeks, there will be some violence in the mines. And the government is extremely sensitive at the moment about this sort of thing; it would be very bad for our standing internationally if what is seen as the major prop of the ecomomy is struck by an organized union and there is a violent response by the state.

SNOW [voice-over]: But in South Africa, an industrial dispute is inseparable from politics. On May Day this year, the South African government betrayed its nervousness of the newly legalized black trade unions by breaking up a trade union demonstration and arresting several people. And if this strike does spread, the miners' leader has no doubt that it will be about politics too.

Mr. RAMAPHOSA: This strike is more than just for wages. It is for the system in the country, apartheid, as it manifests itself through laws such as job reservation.

SNOW [voice-over]: Job reservation still exists in South Africa only in the mining industry. Blacks are paid the same as whites for the same work, but there is some work that these young trainees at Blayfor Mines training center are barred from doing by law. They cannot, however qualified they become, be awarded the privilege of a blasting certificate that would open up the top grades of mining jobs to them. Even South Africa's present government wants to end job reservation, but the white union leader, the one who represents the top-grade men, is fighting a determined last-ditch battle for job reservation.

ARRI PAULUS, white mineworkers' union: We believe in separate development. We are prepared to create separate, independent countries for the blacks, where they can govern themselves. If there is mining activities going on in that country they can do work of a miner. We are even prepared to train them to become miners. But we feel, in white South Africa, we want to reserve that work for the whites.

SNOW: And do you think that's fair?

Mr. PAULUS: Oh, yes, Ithink that is fair, because it's our country; if you're in Rome you do what the Romans do, and you must protect the work for your people.

SNOW [voice-over]: Today's decision to go only for a limited strike means the black miners have put political issues like job reservation to one side for the moment. The fight is now on for cash. But if the strike now spreads, it cannot be long before it becomes a political struggle again.

[interviewing] Do you see yourselves in some way as the standard bearers -- I mean, the vanguard of the attempt to advance black political rights in this country in some way?

Mr. RAMAPHOSA: We are a very modest union and can never really try to put ourselves in such a high position. But we believe that whatever action we take will have a great bearing on what is taking place in the country. It will advance the struggle of the oppressed people in this country.

SNOW: And you wouldn't mind to see the country getting into even worse chaos than it is at the moment?

Mr. RAMAPHOSA: It's not a question of whether we mind or not. It's a question of what has to be done. Black people in this country have been pushed too far, and this is the time that we have to seize.

MacNEIL: That report was by Peter Snow of the BBC. The threatened mineworkers' strike is only one of a number of economic blows that have hit South Africa's economy this past week. So-called capital flight, money leaving South Africa, forced the government to close its financial markets. Pretoria is now talking about rescheduling payments to foreign banks. We get more on the economic problems facing South Africa from Andrew Hilton, editor of "International Reports," an economic advisory service published by The Financial Times of London.

Mr. Hilton, is this very serious news for the government on the South African economy, that this union will start striking the mines this weekend?

ANDREW HILTON: I think the gentleman who said that it was more important psychologically than economically is correct. It's another blow that the miners should go on strike, and it will be perceived as such by the international community. Whether in fact it's economically important is I think much more problematic. It's interesting that the miners are going on strike for limited cash demands and not necessarily for a wider political issue.

MacNEIL: And the other thing we reported this evening, that four leading business groups -- the sort of various chambers of commerce, white and black -- had appealed to the government today to end the state of emergency, start evenhanded negotiations with black leaders, even in -- some of those who might be detained at the moment. What does that tell you about the amount of apprehension in the business community about all this, and how serious is that?

Mr. HILTON: I think it's very serious. There is a tremendous amount of apprehension in the business community at the present time, and I think it's obviously much more significant that it's the white trade -- the white chambers of commerce which are now supporting some opening of the dialogue. I think there are certain statistics which show this. House prices have fallen precipitously in Johannesburg at the present time. Office space is going begging. Things are really quite serious down there now.

MacNEIL: Now, the latest development. What is it -- what message are Western banks, including Americans, actually telling the South Africans? There was a report which we carried yesterday that they were demanding immediate repayment. Today the report seems to be that they're refusing to roll over or reschedule them. What are they telling them?

Mr. HILTON: Well, the banks are saying that they're taking a decision not to roll over existing trade lines, primarily for economic considerations; that somehow the economy of South Africa is not as strong as it was, and that we as bankers, as prudent bankers can't afford to be exposed there. I think that that's disingenuous in the extreme. I think that American banks in particular, but also to a lesser extent European banks, find themselves facing tremendous political pressure at home to withdraw from South Africa, or at the very best, to show that they are actually reducing their exposure there. This is very hard for them to cope with, this pressure --

MacNEIL: How do they feel that pressure?

Mr. HILTON: The pressure manifests itself in a number of different ways. The cities of Pittsburgh, Washington, I think Seattle also, have mandated that they will not hold accounts with banks which do business in South Africa. New York itself has been talking along these same lines. Many pension funds are now talking the same kind of pressure being placed on South Africa. And this is big money that's talking here.

MacNEIL: Now, the governor of the South African bank, Dr. de Kock, is in London today, he's coming to Washington tomorrow. What is he asking for and what's he likely to be told?

Mr. HILTON: Well, what he's asking for is that the central bank should first of all put pressure on the commercial banks to, indeed, to roll over the lines when they fall due. Whether he will get that I don't know. If he doesn't get that, he's also asking that the central banks should engage in kind of swap arrangements with the reserve bank in South Africa, which would enable the South Africans somehow to have a breathing space, to be able perhaps to meet the demands for foreign exchange from domestic borrowers who are suddenly being compelled to repay their loans.

MacNEIL: Do you have a feeling of what answer he's likely to get on that from Paul Volcker?

Mr. HILTON: From Paul Volcker I would think great embarrassment. I'm a little surprised that Paul Volcker is prepared to see him. In Europe he may get a more sympathetic -- he may have got a more sympathetic hearing from Robin Lee Pemberton of the Bank of England. He's unlikely to get a very sympathetic hearing from the French. He may get a fairly sympathetic hearing from the Germans and the Swiss, who really have quite a lot of money outstanding there.

MacNEIL: Now, taking all this together, all the various pressures and evidence of economic crisis that we've talked about the last few days, how bad is it and how near is the situation to force the South African government to say, "Hey, we've really got to do something," do you think?

Mr. HILTON: Well, the irony is that the South African economy, in terms of its fundamentals, is in rather better shape than it was, say, six months ago. This year it's going to run a current account surplus, perhaps of somewhere around five billion rand.

MacNEIL: You mean a budget surplus?

Mr. HILTON: A current account surplus on its external trade.

MacNEIL: Oh, a trade surplus.

Mr. HILTON: Well, yes, more or less. Last year it ran a deficit, and indeed for the last two or three years it's run a deficit. It will also be a net food exporter this year, which is important to the South Africans because they perceive themselves as the granary of southern Africa. So the economy is actually not in bad shape. Inflation is around 16 and that's a problem, but it isn't really terribly important that the economyin terms of its fundamentals is in better shape. What is important is that international confidence is going.

MacNEIL: Now, how rapidly could that begin, that lack of confidence, begin to escalate and have an effect, do you think?

Mr. HILTON: I think it's already having an effect. There undoubtedly has been very serious capital flight over the last few months. Obviously we don't really have figures on it, but the reserve bank's liquid reserves are very, very low at the present time. One hears all sorts of stories of people bringing money out. The rand at the present time is selling in London and New York at a discount of about 20 to 30 percent from the rate at which it closed last week. This is quite important, and as I say, property values in Johannesburg have slumped. Everybody really in Johannesburg who has an option, and that includes an awful lot of South Africans who have dual citizenship or who have rights to move abroad, is thinking about going.

MacNEIL: Well, Mr. Hilton, thank you for joining us.

Mr. HILTON: Thank you very much. Air Safety

LEHRER: The New York Times put them all together in its lead editorial this morning under the headline "Fear of Flying." "An Air-India 747 explodes, killing 329. A Delta plane goes down in [TEXT OMITTED FROM SOURCE] lines 747. A British Air Tours 737 burns, killing 54. Samantha Smith dies in a commuter air crash." The Times had an opinion point to make about wind shear, the apparent cause of the Dallas crash, and the federal government's role in doing something about it. But the editorial reinforced the general questioning that is going on about what all of the recent air tragedies mean or don't mean, questions that eventually come around to Donald Engen for answers. Mr. Engen is the administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, the U.S. government agency responsible for air safety, and he is with us now for a newsmaker interview.

First, Mr. Engen, in a general way. What do you see as the connection, if any, among all of these recent air crashes?

DONALD ENGEN: If you look at every accident throughout the world, although my purview is within the United States, of course -- but we look at every accident throughout the world, and as I see these recent tragic accidents, and they are tragic, really, I see no common thread between any single -- any two of the accidents that have occurred.

LEHRER: Well, there have been 15 in the last eight months, 15 since the -- eight months of 1985 -- 15 major accidents, 1,400 died. If there is no connection, then what has happened, what is going on?

Mr. ENGEN: Well, I think that what we have is a series of events, very unfortunate events, that have come together and have created the accidents. We see more people flying today in airplanes, more people per airplane. And when a large airplane goes down, it is indeed a tragedy. You don't see more accidents, necessarily, than we've seen over the past, although we are at the current level today that we were for the year 1984. But the --

LEHRER: In terms of number of accidents.

Mr. ENGEN: In terms of the numbers of accidents. But what has happened is that there've been large airplanes going down in foreign countries, and that's where the big toll has been.

LEHRER: Yes, but they've been American airplanes in every case.

Mr. ENGEN: Yes, but operated -- and owned and operated and maintained by those countries in which they're certificated. Now, once that occurs, you see, the FAA, while always interested in every aircraft, and to be sure -- we always make sure that everyone has the proper word on airplanes and they understand what is wrong or what could be wrong, the responsibility lies with that host nation.

LEHRER: Sure. Well, let's be specific. Let's talk about the 737. That was the Boeing plane that burned in Manchester, England.

Mr. ENGEN: Yes.

LEHRER: The FAA has -- you have just issued an order relating to inspecting the Pratt-Whitney engine. Tell me what that's all about.

Mr. ENGEN: Yes. In working with the United Kingdom and my counterpart, John Dent, of the CAA there, the British have come up with the fact that the engines that they were dealing with had some specific things wrong with them.

LEHRER: Cracks, right?

Mr. ENGEN: Cracks. Essentially, cracks in six burner cans that they've discovered in other airplanes that they operate. They operate --

LEHRER: Burner cans, just tell me it's a part of the engine, right?

Mr. ENGEN: It's a part of the engine.

LEHRER: Okay, right.

Mr. ENGEN: It's the middle part of the engine. In any jet engine these burner cans are an instrument -- an integral part of the engine. And I think that what they've determined was that they have been operating the JT8D --

LEHRER: That's the --

Mr. ENGEN: That's the engine, to temperature limits that have finally begun to develop these cracks. In America we operate in a different way in that we have in-flight monitoring all the time by the major air carriers. Our major air carriers are sampling those engines on every flight at altitude; the information is translated to the ground and we're observing the engines and how they grow, and we don't have the cracks that the British have found.

LEHRER: How do you know we don't have the cracks?

Mr. ENGEN: We have investigated the airplanes. Each 7,500 hours or so you go into an engine and you look at it very carefully. The JT8D engine is perfectly safe to 18,000 hours, but as you go along you look at the engine to be sure that there's no growth on the turbine blades, that there are no cracks in the cans. And through these inspection processes we found that we don't have that problem. However, we did issue an air worthiness directive which will have everyone look in more close detail at these particular areas.

LEHRER: At every one of these engines?

Mr. ENGEN: No. We will not be looking at the engines that are part of our in-flight monitoring program. Those airlines that do subscribe to this and are sending back this maintenance data are perfectly capable of determining whether there's any abnormality in those burner cans without making an inspection. What we are going to do is we're going to take those airlines that don't have this program and we're going to examine those engines.

LEHRER: By coincidence I happened to be at an airport ticket counter today, and I heard people on all sides of me saying, "Is this a 737? Is this a 737?" What are you going to do about that, just the public perception of the 737 and the Pratt-Whitney engine right now?

Mr. ENGEN: Well, I would like to assure everyone that the engine and the air frame are indeed good. They truly are. They're being monitored and maintained. We don't have that problem here.

LEHRER: But I keep coming -- how do you know you don't have that -- how are you so sure you don't have that problem?

Mr. ENGEN: Because we've grown with the engines and we have -- we are inspecting them on a real-time basis, really. We know what the condition of those engines are. We have not found cracks such as those. Even so, we're going to continue to monitor in more detail than we have in the past.

LEHRER: Are you concerned -- in Great Britain one of the questions that's been raised is that not only as it relates to the 737 and these Pratt-Whitney engines, but to much of the air fleet worldwide now, is that it's getting older and older and older. What does the FAA have in place to make sure that older planes get a little better checked than others, or what's your system there?

Mr. ENGEN: All airplanes are designed to last for a service life, and as you go along you upgrade that air frame in order to comply with the federal air regulations. By upgrading those air frames you are maintaining the life of the airplane, you are keeping it up to the minute. And that's the way our maintenance is performed in the United States. It's a continuous thing. Parts of engines are replaced as we go along; parts of air frames are replaced as we go along. So the airplane is indeed safe. As you get to an older service life you find that perhaps something -- small things start going wrong, and then you replace the component parts more frequently. The age of an airplane is not a true criteria for safety because we have many airplanes flying in, certainly in general aviation today, that were designed and built in the 1920s and the 1930s, and they're flying today and they're very safe.

LEHRER: All right, the wind shear problem. This was the thing that The New York Times editorial that I mentioned in the beginning took you to task for. Essentially wind shear, of course, is the cause or apparent cause of the Delta crash in Dallas and of other crashes through the years -- the New Orleans crash a couple of years ago, etcetera. But the Times says that they question whether or not you, the FAA and the Reagan administration is really serious about expending the money it would take for this special radar that could prevent or alert people to the wind shear problem. What is the status of your seriousness about it?

Mr. ENGEN: If I could take a literary license and say I think that was an unfair hit I'd like to do so, because I would like to say that we have been investigating wind shear over the last several years. There is a three-agency effort to go to the next generation of weather radar -- the Department of Commerce, the Department of the Air Force and the FAA are cooperating together to bring along the next generation of weather radar. This is going to be the father, if you will, of the terminal Doppler weather radar. And when the Times said that in their editorial, they just didn't have their facts correct.

LEHRER: The Times said your three agencies were fighting over turf.

Mr. ENGEN: No, sir, that's just not so. I meet on a regular basis with my counterparts in the Air Force and in Commerce, and we do indeed have the weather radar coming along. In fact --

LEHRER: But is it coming along at a rapid enough pace? I mean, is it being slowed down because of bureaucracy and unwillingness to spend the money?

Mr. ENGEN: No, sir. No, we can't afford to do that. Literally, we cannot afford to do that. We have been bringing along the radar as rapidly as we have the technical capability to do so. Sperry and Raytheon are two very fine companies competing right now, today, and they will have on the air this winter, January, February, their respective sets of weather radar. From that will come a competition, and next summer we will pick the winning radar. We have put all the research and development money into that that time will allow. We have brought along the research and development. We have not procured yet, but even if I had the procurement money today I -- you know, it hasn't been developed to the point where I would want to spend a dollar on it. We must get ahead and complete our research and development.

LEHRER: As we reported at the top of the program in the news summary, an organization called the International Airline Passengers Association had a news conference in Amsterdam today and they said that of all these recent crashes, the 1,400 fatalities, 80 of them could have been prevented if safety measures at various government levels were stricter. Do you agree with that as a general premise?

Mr. ENGEN: Well, I think all air carriers must abide by regulations. And in the United States -- and I really must talk about the United States because that's my purview -- we do require that these regulations are followed. And when an air carrier does not follow them, they're fined. I have inspectors; in fact, some 25 of the FAA, 25 of my 45,000 employees are dedicated to certification and inspection, if you will, of our airliners and other aircraft. So we go out and we look and we do inspect on a real-time basis. We're very strict about our inspections. I wouldn't step into the shoes of other nations. I do know that you must inspect, though, and you must be very resolute in your judgment and you must be very fair and very firm in your inspections.

LEHRER: And you feel you are?

Mr. ENGEN: The FAA is indeed that way. I think you might ask a few air carriers. I think they would say that.

LEHRER: All right. Mr. Engen, thank you very much.

Mr. ENGEN: Thank you, sir. On the Money Path

MacNEIL: Finally tonight, an update on a story we first looked at eight years ago. Two small Indian tribes were then suing the state of Maine to reclaim 12 million acres of land, two thirds of the state. The tribes claimed the land had been taken from them in violation of ancient treaties, and in 1980 they won their suit. But instead of land the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes received money, $81 million. It was one of the largest per capita land settlements ever received by Indian tribes. Since then the Passamaquoddy and Penobscots have been investing their money in businesses and land and have become an important source of investment capital within the state. Earlier this month we returned to Maine to see how the Passamaquoddy tribe, located on two reservations in the northeastern corner of the state, were spending their $40 million share.

[voice-over] Two years ago the Dragon Cement plant in Thomaston, Maine, was on the verge of closing. Seventy workers were about to lose their jobs. Then a surprise purchaser appeared, bought the plant and saved the jobs. The story has the ring of an old-fashioned Western, but in this case it wasn't the cavalry to the rescue, it was the Passamaquoddy Indians of northern Maine. This spring the tribe bought another division of Dragon Cement, and the bankers who financed the deal helicoptered in to celebrate. It's a moment that tribal Governor John Stevens will savor for some time.

JOHN STEVENS, Governor, Indian township reservation: For me it was quite a lift because I never would have believed 10 years ago that we would be socializing with so many people like Controlled Resources in New England.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: It took the Passamaquoddy almost 20 years to gain such recognition. In the '60s and early '70s they were an impoverished and forgotten tribe, dependent on the state of Maine and a trickle of federal monies for their very survival. Their reservations were so poorly developed that many tribal members were forced to leave for lack of housing. Today much has changed. Thetribe is not only on the road to self-sufficiency, it is also an important deal maker and source of capital for business investment within the state.

Gov. STEVENS: We are not selfish people. We want to share our wealth; we want to help the communities around us if we can. And I don't want to impose my beliefs or anything on the community that we invest money in. We just want to help.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Credit for the tribe's financial turnaround goes largely to one man, Tom Tureen. Tureen was fresh out of law school in 1969 when he became the tribe's lawyer and filed suit to reclaim its land. The tribe's legal struggle began paying dividends even before the settlement. In 1976, for example, the tribe gained federal recognition for the first time.

TOM TUREEN, Passamaquoddy lawyer: The land claim had several objectives. One objective was to get the tribes federally recognized. The tribes in the east by and large, with a few exceptions, had simply been ignored by the federal government for 150 years. They were not eligible for the special services, nor were they considered to have the special status that other tribes had. And there are all sorts of programs that the Bureau of Indian Affairs operates that are very valuable in terms of economic development activities.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Monies available to federally recognized tribes were used for a number of construction projects. Two new health centers were built. Then a home for the elderly. Now there's a new road going in and two new schools are under construction. The Passamaquoddy finally won their lawsuit and that $40 million in 1980. They had seen other tribes squander large settlements and were determined it would not happen to them, one tribal leader especially.

Mr. TUREEN: Francis Nicholas put it most eloquently during the land claim. He said, "Look, this settlement is for 200 years' worth of things that were done wrong to our people. We can't do anything about the ones that have died. We can do something about the ones who haven't been born yet, and we don't have the right to spend this all on ourselves."

MacNEIL [voice-over]: To make sure their money was invested wisely, the tribe turned once again to Tureen. In 1983 he formed Tribal Assets Management and brought in Daniel Zilka, an experienced investment banker, to be its president. A third of the settlement money had already been put in trust. The tribe instructed Zilka and Tureen to use another third for the purchase of land, and the final third for long-term business investment. The tribe had previously bought a $2 million blueberry farm. Tureen and Zilka added the cement and concrete plants, and an AM!FM radio station. At the Passamaquoddy's Pleasant Point reservation, Governor Cliv Dore gets a new investment proposal just about every day.

Mr. TUREEN: The investment strategy, if it works well, provides money, provides capital, which the tribe can use to develop the reservation economy. Reservation economies generally speaking are pretty much starting from scratch, and it takes money to get them going. And if you have a facility outside, it's a source of funding for the reservation-based activity.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Wayne Newell, the tribe's representative to the Maine legislature, says the investments have also given the tribe a new vision of the future.

WAYNE NEWELL, Passamaquoddy representative, Maine legislature: There is a sense of hope, a sense of identity, we are the Passamaquoddy tribe, and that really has a nice ring to it now. It isn't from an apologetic sense anymore. Ithink our young are realizing it more than we are. We're so used here to negative thinking and negativism that it's pretty hard just to get over that just because some judge makes a ruling in our favor. But our kids are growing up with a better attitude, a more fresh attitude. More kids are staying in school; more kids are becoming aware that there's another life besides alcohol or walking around the reserve.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Attitudes may have changed, but opportunities are still limited. The new businesses the tribe owns are located some distance from the reservations and therefore provide few jobs. Tribal leaders estimate that 60 of the tribe are unemployed. Zilka and Tureen have been trying to attract industry to the reservations, but it's a difficult process. The reservations lie in a remote corner of the state, one on a bay just across from Canada, the other in a wooded location to the north, both far from any commercial centers. And the tribe's 2,200 members are largely unskilled. Up to now there's only been one new business venture on either reservation, a grocery store which employs 10 people. A sh processing plant partially financed by the tribe employs nine Indians, but only operates two or three days a week. The largest employer on the reservations is the tribal government. It would like to hire even more Indians, but they don't have the skills. Lack of training is a problem on and off the reservation.

CLIV DORE, Governor, Pleasant Point Reservation: You know, those opportunities are available today out in the cement company and the radio station and the blue berry operations. But we need to get our people trained to assume those positions. You know, it would be business suicide to go in there and just put someone in there that has no background.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: In dividing up their money, tribal leaders tried to strike a balance between long-term business investments, which would benefit the tribe as a whole, and the trust fund, which would help individuals. Last year the trust fund paid every Passamaquoddy $450 in interest. Some feel those payments should be a lot higher.

MITCHELL CLIFFORD: They should spend it on the people. Instead the money goes somewhere else, you know.

REPORTER: Where else does it go?

Mr. CLIFFORD: Well, they use it up on what you call -- it isn't going to the people, it's only going to the bills, you know. They're spending foolish bills, you know -- writing a big check out here, another big check there. It ain't going to the people, the poor people. It ain't right.

REPORTER: How do you feel about the purchase of the cement plant and the radio station and that sort of thing?

RAYMOND MOORE: It's no good. It doesn't do us anything at all. It doesn't do us not one bit at all.

REPORTER: You haven't seen any benefit from those purchases?

Mr. MOORE: I haven't seen it. I haven't seen it.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Tribal leaders are aware of the complaints. They say the revenues from the businesses are being used to pay off the purchase loans and other revenues for essential services. They ask for patience.

Gov. STEVENS: We are in the process of educating them and doing that takes time. Everything takes time. We didn't win this land case in one year or two years or three. It's taken half of my lifetime. Twenty-four years is a long time to be here, and it took that long for us to achieve some of the things that we dreamt of in the past.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: The settlement may not have provided the instant wealth that some expected, but it did provide something even more valuable: it gave the tribe rights. Today they have a much greater say in how their lands will be used. They set their own fishing, hunting and wildlife regulations. And they have legal jurisdiction over minor criminal offenses and internal tribal matters.

Gov. STEVENS: The lawsuit itself means a lot of things to us because of defining what is our role in this United States, what is the role of the Indians. I, as an individual who was born here and my ancestors were here before anybody else's, had no role at all and now there's some defined role that we play in the society as a whole. So that's more important to me than the money aspect. Money will be here and gone, but our rights will be probably printed up and be permanent, and hopefully that we'll live up to our responsibility.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: That desire to preserve what's really important was also what compelled the Passamaquoddy to reclaim their land, land which had sustained them for centuries. The Passamaquoddy believe it's the responsibility of each generation to care for the land and pass it on to future generations. Thanks to the settlement they now have the means to meet those obligations. They've earmarked the final third of their monies, $13 million, to buy back 150,000 acres.

Gov. STEVENS: Mother Earth has claimed some of us here. We have buried our own here. We have some connection, and basically that's what we believe in, that all things generated from earth should be replaced. And it's a whole cycle of life depends on earth, and if there's no earth then there's no future.

LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this day. Eighteen blacks died as the violence continued in South Africa. And a hurricane named Elena is due to hit the Gulf Coast in the morning somewhere between Pensacola, Florida, and Morgan City, Louisiana. Winds are expected to reach at least 100 miles an hour and residents in the area, including those in New Orleans and Mobile, have been warned to take cover.

Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: Good night, Jim. That's our NewsHour for tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.