The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. Leading the news this Friday, five armed Soviets surrendered in Israel, where they landed in a commandeered airliner with a hostage crew. The military shuttle Atlantis was launched smoothly into orbit, reportedly to deploy a spy satellite, the unemployment rate rose slightly in November. We'll have details in our News Summary in a moment. Judy Woodruff is in Washington tonight. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: After the News Summary, we look first tonight at the Iran-Contra case against Lt. Col. Oliver North and the arguments over whether and how it should go to trial. Joining us are Reporter Nina Totenberg, Author Scott Armstrong, and former CIA Official George Carver. Next, a report on an unusual new technique for scientific research using mice that may one day save human lives, and finally, a rebroadcast of our Thanksgiving Day interview with British Artist Margaret Mee who died in a car accident two nights ago. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: Five Soviet hijackers are under arrest in Israel tonight, where they landed in a commandeered airliner flown by a hostage crew. We have a report from Louise Bates of Worldwide Television News.

LOUISE BATES: The five hijackers gave themselves up shortly after the Aeroflot plane landed at Bengurian Airport. After brief negotiations, guns and money were also surrendered. A slightly bewildered crew member found himself the focus of media attention after the hijackers were led away. The four Russians and one Armenian were reported as having criminal backgrounds and were believed to have large amounts of money. They commandeered a school bus with 30 children on board, and then reportedly traded their hostages for the plane and about 2 million rubles in ransom. Though a fortune in Russia, the rubles can't be traded outside the country and are worthless. The Kremlin requested the hijackers be extradited immediately.

MR. MacNeil: Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin said the plane and crew would be returned to the Soviets but did not indicate whether the hijackers would be extradited. The Kremlin indicated today that the Soviets want to hold substantive talks with Ronald Reagan and George Bush when they meet in New York next week. Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Petrovsky told a Moscow news conference that Mikhail Gorbachev and his advisors intend to raise important, significant questions of real, political coordinated action by both sides over a wide range of problems. In Washington, National Security Adviser Colin Powell was asked by reporters whether the United States was prepared to deal with any new Soviet proposals.

LT. GEN. COLIN POWELL, National Security Adviser: I don't know that we have to ensure against a surprise. We have our agenda. It's a solid agenda. We have seen them try to turn a flank from time to time and if I can start to use my old lexicon, and soon to be my new lexicon, and I think we would be prepared to deal with any surprise that they might come up with, take it under advisement without feeling that we are under any pressure during a two, two and a half hour lunch period to necessarily respond in a substantive way to something that had not been anticipated.

MR. MacNeil: The Soviets and Chinese concluded talks in Moscow today by saying that a summit meeting could take place in the first half of next year. The talks were between Mikhail Gorbachev and Chin Chi Gin, the first Chinese Foreign Minister to visit Moscow in more than 30 years. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Michael Dukakis came to Washington today to meet with the man who defeated him in the election less than a month ago. President-elect Bush greeted Dukakis at the Vice President's residence and after a 35 minute meeting, the two men emerged, both claiming they had put the bitterness of the election behind them.

PRESIDENT-ELECT BUSH: He's been most pleasant and I'm very grateful to him for the spirit of this visit, and I happen to think that it's in the finest tradition of American politics.

GOV. MICHAEL DUKAKIS, (D) Massachusetts: I'm anxious to cooperate and to play a constructive role, and if he's prepared to focus in on some of these priorities that I campaigned on, at least to some extent he campaigned on during the campaign, I want to work with him. On the other hand, I don't want to see this budget balanced on the backs of people that don't have decent health care or housing or education, and I think I speak for all Democrats when I say that.

MR. MacNeil: The federal government has been ordered to pay for the clean up of one of its nuclear plants, a job that could cost about a billion dollars. It's the first time the federal government has been ordered to pay a state because of a hazardous waste pollution. The plant involved is in Fernald, just outside Cincinnati. It processes uranium used in nuclear weapons. Ohio sued the Department of Energy because the plant released radioactive materials into the air and water. A federal judge today signed a court order forcing the Department of Energy to pay for the clean- up.

MS. WOODRUFF: The space shuttle Atlantis and its five crew members ascended into orbit today on a secret military mission believed to involve the launching of a spy satellite. Yesterday's scheduled launch was postponed due to strong winds in the area. Today's countdown was delayed momentarily by the same weather concerns, but with 90 seconds remaining in the launch window, Atlantis blasted off from its pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

MR. MacNeil: The U.S. today began deporting some of the Cubans who came here on the Mariel boat lift in 1980. Five Cubans, all of whom were convicted of crimes in the U.S., were put on a plane for Havanna after the Supreme Court rejected an appeal by three of them to stay here. Fidele Castro let 125,000 Cubans take boats to the U.S. in 1980, but many of them had criminal records or were mentally ill. The U.S. plans to send back about 2500 more of the so-called "Marielitos", something which Castro only agreed to last year. That agreement sparked riots in an Atlanta and Louisiana prison where some of the Marielitos were being held.

MS. WOODRUFF: The nation's civilian unemployment rate crept up a little last month to 5.4 percent. This was despite a jump in the number of new jobs and despite a record percentage of the American population at work. Labor Department officials said the November hike in unemployment was due almost entirely to an unusually large increase in the number of people looking for jobs.

MR. MacNeil: The United Nations will hold its General Assembly session in Geneva instead of New York. This afternoon the assembly voted to accept an Arab proposal to move the session to allow Arafat, Yasser Arafat, to address the world body. The U.S. has denied the PLO Chairman a visa to enter this country. At the same time today, the United States announced that it will allow Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega to visit the United Nations on Monday, even though his visa application was filed too late for normal processing. During his stay, Ortega is expected to meet with Soviet Leader Gorbachev.

MS. WOODRUFF: The first woman to become Prime Minister of a modern Islamic nation was sworn into office today. Thirty-five year old Benazir Bhutto became Pakistan's head of government 11 years after her late father was ousted from power in a coup. We have a report from Jeremy Thompson of Independent Television News.

JEREMY THOMPSON: Amid the grandeur of the President's palace, Benazir Bhutto stepped into the spotlight of power. The new leader, dressed in the patriotic green of Pakistan, prepared to assume democratic control from the military man who'd dictated the nation's affairs for most of its 40 year history. Prayers from the Holy Karam for the first woman to lead a modern Moslem nation. Her mother and her husband Asif watched proudly as Benazir Bhutto was sworn in as the first democratically-elected Prime Minister since her father. After a decade of political struggle, imprisonment and exile during martial rule, the Bhuttos were back. This young, inexperienced woman was now in charge of a country full of problems. But clearly, she wasn't going to be rushed into change.

BENAZIR BHUTTO, Prime Minister, Pakistan: We have decided to work within the system. So we want to strike a balance between continuity and change. Whatevercan be done within that parameter, we will do.

MR. THOMPSON: Begum Bhutto was now the widow and the mother of Prime Minister.

BEGUM NUGRAT BHUTTO: I'm happy for her. She seemed so young, so vulnerable standing there.

MR. THOMPSON: Tonight though tough words from the new Prime Minister as she warned Pakistan that it was on the brink of bankruptcy and disaster.

MR. MacNeil: In Argentina today, military commanders near Buenos Aires were trying to put down an army mutiny. The insurrection occurred at one of the country's largest bases, which is now surrounded by loyal government troops. It is the fourth such incident in the past two days. The mutineers are reportedly demanding amnesty for former Junta members imprisoned for human rights crimes. The official Argentine news agency reported mortar and gunfire inside the base. Today's unrest came as Argentine's President, Raoul Alfonsine, was on a diplomatic visit to the United States.

MS. WOODRUFF: That wraps up our summary of the day's news. Just ahead on the Newshour, the case against Oliver North, using mice to do human immune system research and a remembrance of Artist Margaret Mee. FOCUS - CLASSIFIED CASE

MR. MacNeil: First tonight an updated look at the Iran-Contra trials. Federal District Judge Gerhard Gesal today rejected Oliver's North last remaining motions to drop charges brought against him, but the prosecution's major conspiracy indictments against the former White House aide could still be derailed, because the White House refuses to release certain classified documents. President Reagan said yesterday that the government will refuse to release those documents, because it would endanger national security. The President also ruled out the possibility of a pretrial pardon for North. He spoke at a picture taking session with President-elect Bush.

REPORTER: Mr. President, why are you blocking disclosure of some documents in the Oliver North case, sir?

PRESIDENT REAGAN: The things we're blocking are the things that duty requires we block. These are things that are national security secrets.

REPORTER: Is this a back door way to block a trial?

PRESIDENT REAGAN: No. This is something that from the very beginning we knew we would have to do.

REPORTER: Would you be at all upset if this prevented the prosecution of Oliver North?

PRESIDENT REAGAN: The law must take its course.

REPORTER: When you say the law's got to take its course, Mr. President, you mean you're still opposed to a pardon until the legal process plays out?

PRESIDENT REAGAN: Yes. From the very beginning, I've said that to consider a pardon would leave -- even if I did that -- would leave them under a shadow of guilt for the rest of their lives. I think we have to let the judicial process proceed.

MR. MacNeil: In a moment, we'll talk to two national security experts who see the issues in the case very differently, but we begin with some background from Nina Totenberg, Legal Correspondent for National Public Radio. Nina, could the issue of the classified documents, could the whole trial collapse over that issue?

NINA TOTENBERG, National Public Radio: It could and from the very beginning, this has been the major concern of the Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh. What we're talking about here are thousands and thousands of classified documents. The Reagan administration has de-classified about 3500 documents for use at the trial. Oliver North wants another 40,000 pages of documents and 90 tape recordings for his own defense. Now while there may be some room for negotiation about some matters, some things that he wants, the government has made very clear, and Independent Counsel Walsh has deferred to the government, that there are whole categories of classified information that cannot be made public in the national interest, and, therefore, if that were to happen, if the judge were to say, look, Oliver North needs (a), (b) and part of (c) for his defense, and those things were so sensitive that the government felt it could not make them public, then the charges involved with that evidence would have to be dropped. This is known in the profession, in the legal profession, as "graymail", which is a bit of a fancy expression for blackmail, which is the defendant says I need certain information for my defense --

MR. MacNeil: Knowing it can't be released.

MS. TOTENBERG: Knowing it can't be released -- and if I don't get it, you can't prosecute me, or if I do get it, you're going to be very embarrassed.

MR. MacNeil: Let's just discuss why Mr. North, now Mr. North wants these documents. His claim is that they will show that he was acting under orders in what he did. Is that putting it too simply?

MS. TOTENBERG: Well, yes and no. He claims that these things will show that he was authorized, but he also claims that, for example, he wants evidence involving many other intelligence operations that are not connected to the charges against him, and he hopes to show through that that there were other cowboy operations, that this operation was run no differently than other intelligence operations, that he was doing nothing out of the ordinary, he had no reason to believe he would get in trouble for it, that this was the modus operandi.

MR. MacNeil: In the atmosphere that surrounds any trial, all the things people talk about in the corridors, just describe that -- since Mr. Reagan has called North a hero, since he's said before now that he doesn't think he's guilty of anything, and Mr. Reagan also controls the release of those documents, what is the sort of feeling around -- is the trial and the preparation for the trial considered a charade?

MS. TOTENBERG: I don't think it's considered a charade. I think there's a good deal of ambivalent feeling going around in the corridors from reporters who are covering this trial and even from the prosecutors who are bringing the charges. There is obviously some sentiment that the President may simply be trying to protect his men. On the other hand, the heads of the agencies involved are unanimous about the kinds of material that they say cannot be made public, and there's no reason to think that, for example, William Webster, who's head of the CIA, is somehow in cahoots to protect Oliver North. Most of these people felt very betrayed in fact by what North and Poindexter did, and they'll tell you that publicly as well as privately. I think you know, in order to put this in some context, you have to understand what this kind of a prosecution is like. Any prosecution involving a lot of classified documents is a tricky business and normally, what happens is that the various people in government, the prosecutors in the Justice Department, and the CIA and all those folks, they end up in a room, they lock the door, and as one of them put it to me, "We bleed each other until somebody's finally left standing," and they make a decision on what can and cannot be released and whether a prosecution can go forward. This time, one of the players is a special prosecutor, an independent counsel, who is investigating the President and his men. And it adds a whole new element into the equation.

MR. MacNeil: Does that mean that the normal procedure you've just outlined is not being followed in this case?

MS. TOTENBERG: It is being followed but there are suspicions about the good faith of some of the players involved that just simply don't exist normally. Normally when the secretary of hoo ha says you can't have document (a), nobody thinks that it's because he might be trying to protects somebody. Everybody knows it's just an honest difference of opinion about what must remain classified and what must not. In this case, there is always a little suspicion operating.

MR. MacNeil: How close are we to a trial? What has just to happen before a trial date can be announced?

MS. TOTENBERG: Well, this week and perhaps next and perhaps for even longer than that, Judge Gerhard Gesal, who is the Judge in charge of this case, is holding closed door hearings in which they are going over the government's, the prosecutor's documents. Many of those documents involve deletions to preserve national security and Oliver North has objected to almost every one of those deletions and the judge is deciding whether those deletions are legitimate or not or whether North is entitled to have made public the information in those deletions. The judge must also rule on Oliver North's request for those 40,000 pages of documents and 90 tape recordings. Once that is done, we will have a field of information that the government will either have to produce or not produce and we'll know whether or not some or all of the charges can go forward or none of them.

MR. MacNeil: Okay, Nina, thank you very much.

MS. TOTENBERG: Thank you, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Now to two differing views on the national security concerns at issue in the Iran-Contra trials. Scott Armstrong is Executive Director of the National Security Archive in Washington, and the Author of "The Chronology", the documented day by day account of the secret military assistance to Iran and the Contras, and George Carver, who spent 26 years with the CIA, retiring in 1979, after serving in several high agency posts, including Deputy Director for National Intelligence. He is now a Senior Fellow at the Washington-based Center For Strategic And International Studies.

MS. WOODRUFF: Scott Armstrong, let me begin with you. Just how vital are these documents that North and his attorneys are seeking, these 40,000 some odd pages of classified material?

SCOTT ARMSTRONG: How vital to the United States, or how vital to Oliver North?

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, how vital to his defense.

SCOTT ARMSTRONG, National Security Archive: Oliver North maintains that they're absolutely essential. I think his argument is that there's a seamless web of his activity that goes on into, as Nina referred to, a wide variety of cowboy activities and a wide variety of very legitimate counter intelligence activities that he was involved in. I think the prosecution's maintained, and it certainly came out in the Iran- Contra hearings, that there's a way to describe some of these activities without going into all the classifications. In terms of its relevance to the United States, some of what we're talking about are things that the public knows already, words like "Honduras, Israel, Saudi Arabia", these are some of the classified terms that can't be revealed. On the other hand, there are some very sensitive intelligence operations that are discussed. The questions is can he get a fair trial, leaving this information, not the documents, because the documents can still be shown, substitutions can be made for individual words, but can he get a fair hearing before a jury without this information.

MS. WOODRUFF: But on the material, itself, George Carver, how vital do you think it is to Oliver North's defense?

GEORGE CARVER, Center For Strategic And International Studies: Well, I haven't seen it, but really that's for him and for his counsel to decide. As many people tend to forget, Oliver North is entitled to the same presumption of innocence that everyone else is and he's entitled to the same vigorous defense by competence counsel that anyone else is before he's convicted. And I'm even more disturbed, because what he's being charged with by Walsh is not a violation of any statute but a conspiracy of deceitful interference. Now Walsh holds that that stands even if no statute was violated. To me, Judy, that isn't a criminal charge, that's a bill of attainder, which the constitution specifically forbids in Article I, Section 9.

MS. WOODRUFF: What specifically does that have to do with the documents?

MR. CARVER: It has to do with the documents that North in trying to defend himself against a very broad shotgun charge -- there's no statute he's charged with violating, there's no precise language that his lawyers can respond to -- has got to defend himself on all sides, and to do that, his lawyers I think are perfectly justified in saying that they need all the material that they can possibly get.

MS. WOODRUFF: Do you see it the same way, Scott Armstrong?

MR. ARMSTRONG: No. I don't. I think, as George points out, there are some broad charges. There's a broad conspiracy alleged here. But the conspiracy is specific. It has specific dates, places and times that things went forward. The prosecution has indicated they intend to present that case. Can North defend himself against it? I think he can as well as anyone can.

MS. WOODRUFF: George Carver, do you buy what Scott Armstrong was saying just a moment ago, that some of what's in here could be released in a truncated form, in a synopsized form I guess is what I'm saying?

MR. CARVER: Judy, it probably could, but there are two levels of concern here. One is what can be released, and particularly things having to do with the details of cooperation extended to us by other governments or other individuals. Then broadening that, if other governments or individuals around the world come to feel that if the U.S. tries to enlist their cooperation in something delicate, the fact of that cooperation is going to be surfaced two or three years hence in some great political circus in the United States. We aren't going to have people assisting us.

MS. WOODRUFF: What sort of cooperation are you talking about?

MR. CARVER: I'm talking about providing information; I'm talking about doing things in a covert operation; I'm talking about the sort of intelligence insistence without which we couldn't provide for the security in the common defense of the United States that the constitution requires the government to do.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, as Scott said, what this comes down to at some point is whether or not there can be a trial against Oliver North without some or all of this classified material. What do you think, Scott?

MR. ARMSTRONG: I think Judge Gesal started his way through this pretty well. Remember, he severed the cases. There originally were four defendants on trial that were to be tried together. He separated their cases out and decided to let the North case go through first. And I think that was with the thought in mind that there was a way to get to the bottom of these issues to determine what wouldbe relevant to North's defense. North's charge with lying to Congress, for example, the fact that he lied to Congress on a particular subject is a factual matter that can be presented to the jury. North may have a circumstantial defense and want to say, well, there were other people in the administration that knew that he was misinforming Congress. Does that make him authorized to lie to Congress? I think that's a matter which is a legal matter on which the judge has already ruled, that that is not an authorization --

MS. WOODRUFF: So you're saying there are some number of these charges that can go forward regardless of whether this material - -

MR. ARMSTRONG: My suspicion is that most of them can. They may eliminate one or two, but I think they'll be able to go forward and they'll be able to use substitutes. Now Judge Gesal has to, himself, consider this in private. He has to look at the documents and say, is there something here so essential to North's defense that he can't do without it. His determination is then subject to an appeal.

MS. WOODRUFF: George Carver, is there a case without some or most of this classified material?

MR. CARVER: Well, not having read it in detail, I don't know, but I think there is a genuine question of national interest. Is it in the national interest to keep Ollie North from presenting the defense he can present, or is it in the national interest to run the risk of jeopardizing sensitive intelligence sources and methods and calling into question future cooperation we may need? I see no purpose in continuing in the prosecution of Ollie North who is not accused of violating any statute that Congress ever passed.

MS. WOODRUFF: Scott Armstrong.

MR. ARMSTRONG: Well, I think North is, in fact, accused of violating a series of statutes and I think the indictment makes that quite clear. But there's a way to go forward with this, and the way to go forward with this I think is well established under the Classified Information Procedures Act, and I think that George would acknowledge that if the President wants to intervene, if the President wants to say, Oliver North shouldn't be on trial, I knew about this, I authorized him to do it, the President can say that. I think Congress made it fairly clear during the Iran-Contra Hearings that they would consider that to be the threshold for an impeachable act. It's late in the administration. He's not going to be impeached. If he wants to now acknowledge, if it's true that he did it, fine. Right now, he has said he didn't know.

MS. WOODRUFF: But you don't really think anything like that is going to happen?

MR. ARMSTRONG: I don't think it's likely and I think that the public has every right to find out whether or not Oliver North did what's alleged.

MS. WOODRUFF: George Carver.

MR. CARVER: Well, I think the President ought to take the steps necessary to preserve the powers of his office before he hands them over to his successor. And I regard a great deal of the Independent Prosecutor's actions as an unwarranted infringement on the rights of the executive, and one which I would hope any President of the United States would strongly oppose.

MS. WOODRUFF: Did the judge have to leave it up to the Reagan administration to determine how much of these documents could be made public?

MR. ARMSTRONG: The Classified Information Procedures Act does, in fact, say that the government has the final word on it. Now the judge, in a sense, makes the determination as to whether or not the information which the government said can't be used is relevant. The judge has that final determination and that's subject to other judicial review.

MR. CARVER: But he passes on relevance, not on the importance of the information.

MR. ARMSTRONG: Well, a right to pass on relevance is to some degree to pass on the importance of the information. I think what we have here -- I mean, George, do you really think it's going to hurt our national security for people to know what we already know, which is that Israel was cooperating with Oliver North? I mean, are there really that many issues --

MR. CARVER: I think the question of governmental cooperation and even more, Scott, you and I have had this argument many times before, and I'm never going to convert you, nor you me --

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, we may have a conversion here tonight. Don't totally rule out --

MR. CARVER: We, compromising individuals who have put their faith and trust in the ability of the United States to protect the fact of their cooperation, if you're going -- no newspaper could function if its sources -- or journalists could function if its sources knew that they were liable to be compromised whenever --

MR. ARMSTRONG: Absolutely right, but if I were on trial, I wouldn't blurt out the names of my sources. Do you expect Oliver North is going to blurt out all the secret information?

MR. CARVER: No, but I suspect that a great deal of the information that is involved does involve dealing with particular sources or how you deal with particular sources in a way that could compromise our ability to do that in the future, and I think that would not be in the national interest to have surface simply to hang Ollie North.

MS. WOODRUFF: Let me bring Nina Totenberg back into this. I'm going to put on the spot. What do you think Judge Gesal will do?

MS. TOTENBERG: You want me to get back in that courtroom? At the moment, I really think in the last analysis it isn't up to Judge Gesal. Judge Gesal is probably one of the two or three most experienced and most efficient trial judges in America, and he will sift through this material and he will decide boom, boom, boom, boom you got to have this, you don't got to have that, you got have this, you don't got to have that.

MS. WOODRUFF: Meaning North?

MS. TOTENBERG: North. And then it'll be up to President Reagan and his administration to pull the plug or not pull the plug. In the end, my suspicion is there will be some charges left. And, Mr. Carver, I'm afraid you're really wrong about this. Oliver North is charged with violating a good number of statutes. The first count, which is the broad conspiracy count, may not rely itself on a statute, but it relies on a 1924 Supreme Court decision that defines defrauding the government as not only just making money out something but defrauding the government of its lawful operations, of interfering with the lawful operations of the government.

MS. WOODRUFF: Do you want to respond to that, George Carver?

MR. CARVER: Well, I think that's a fairly tortured theory of law and basically what Walsh does argue is that North is guilty even though all relevant statutes and resolutions have been technically complied with. I find that a rather mind boggling legal theory to advance.

MS. TOTENBERG: There are 14 counts left standing, Mr. Carver, and I think probably 12 of them involve specific statutes.

MR. CARVER: And I would be very surprised, Nina, if you could document a single criminal statute that North has violated.

MS. TOTENBERG: Obstruction of justice.

MR. CARVER: If that's the charge and it stands, then I'm in error, but I find Walsh is -- this to me is an attempt to criminalize foreign policy differences and to resort to the courts to make a case that you cannot win at the ballot box and I regard that very unhealthy.

MS. TOTENBERG: The kinds of counts that I think no matter what are likely to remain standing are the counts involving obstruction of justice, lying to the Attorney General of the United States in his investigation, obstruction of Congress, those kinds of counts which go to the very heart of the criminal law.

MS. WOODRUFF: Even, this is even if many or all of these classified documents are not made available for North's defense?

MS. TOTENBERG: That's my guess at this point, but of course, I don't know what all the classified documents are that are being sought. And Mr. North has very able counsel that have -- and around the courthouse they are known as counsel who engaged in a scorched earth policy, and that is, they take no prisoners. They look for every avenue they can find. He's entitled to that kind of a defense and he's getting it. And Lord knows what's going to happen.

MR. ARMSTRONG: I join Nina with a very important point here about this is an attempt to see if there's been a criminalization of the foreign policy process. But it's not an attempt to see what the Independent Counsel is doing to criminalize the foreign policy process. It's a question of whether or not Oliver North became a criminal in the process of pursuing our foreign policy, and whether or not he violated laws that were well on the books, whether or not he violated perhaps the instructions of the President and other officials that supervise his activities.

MR. CARVER: Well, Scott, I just don't see it that way. One of the main things he's accused of is violating the "Boland Amendment", of which you know there were five, about whose interpretation there's a great deal of discussion and as there is a great deal of discussion about whether it applies to the Executive Office of the President or not. And this kind of slippery slope mish mash seems to me to be far more political than legal, and I regard this as basically a vendetta which it is not in the national interest to have pursued.

MS. WOODRUFF: What do you mean a vendetta?

MR. CARVER: I think that there is a dislike for the President's policy in Nicaragua, a dislike for what was done, understandable irritation at the way it was handled, and an attempt to haul somebody into court and hang the rascal.

MS. WOODRUFF: Are you saying Prosecutor Walsh is behind this?

MR. CARVER: I don't know what Prosecutor Walsh is, but he's got a very peculiar theory of the constitution on Congressional primacy in foreign affairs. His memorandum makes very bizarre reading, indeed, and I can't understand why he feels it necessary to say that somebody is guilty even if he hasn't violated any law, because that to me is a very odd argument for an officer of the court to make.

MS. WOODRUFF: Just quickly, Scott or Nina, what's the next shoe to drop for next? What do we look for next?

MS. TOTENBERG: The judge has to rule on these, this request for 40,000 documents. He's got to rule on that. I imagine he will. He says he wants to set a trial date for late January and --

MS. WOODRUFF: So we assume in the next few days maybe?

MS. TOTENBERG: In the next few weeks, certainly.

MR. ARMSTRONG: There's a procedure, by the way, if he eliminates a document, but he does feel that portions of it are relevant for the defense, that the government has one more cut at it, which is to come up with an alternative statement that is acceptable to him. Of course,the defense very likely will say it isn't acceptable to them.

MR. CARVER: But I think the line is drawn there. I don't think you can keep that ball bouncing forever, can you, Scott?

MR. ARMSTRONG: No. I think there's a line and I think we'll see where it's going to come out pretty soon.

MS. WOODRUFF: We'll be paying attention and I think you were right, George, no conversions tonight.

MR. CARVER: That's right.

MS. WOODRUFF: George Carver, Scott Armstrong, Nina Totenberg, thank you all for being with us. FOCUS - OF MICE AND MEN

MR. MacNeil: Next an unusual scientific achievement, recreating the complex human immune system in laboratory mice. This was accomplished recently by two California research teams working independently, one at the Medical Biology Institute in La Jolla, and the other at Stanford University in Palo Alto. The findings offer a new opportunity for advanced experiments on AIDS which attacks the human immune system. But the research involves human fetal tissue and is highly controversial. We have a report on the Stanford research from Spencer Michels of public station KQED, San Francisco.

SPENCER MICHELS: They don't look like it, but these mice are practically human. They react to human disease and viruses the way that people do. That's because they have a human immune system. They're the result of the latest experiments at Stanford Medical Center and represent a remarkable achievement that may revolutionize research into virus caused diseases. By implanting the human immune system into these laboratory mice, scientist can now study human infections in animals for the first time. Mike McCune is one of the leaders of the Stanford research team.

DR. MIKE McCUNE, Stanford Medical Center: We were very excited when it first looked as it if was working. That was over a year ago and we've spent a long period of time trying to prove to ourselves that that initial excitement was real. At this point in time we're convinced that it's working.

MR. MICHELS: The breakthrough could lead to new drugs and possibly vaccines for many immunological diseases. The research is particularly significant for the nearly million and a half people infected with AIDS, acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Some of them have been taking AZT, azetothymadine, one of the few highly experimental drugs available to AIDS patients.

DOCTOR TALKING TO AIDS PATIENT: Now we've reduced your AZT dose to one every four hours because --

MR. MICHELS: Because AIDS occurs only in people, there has been no way to test drugs like AZT except on human subjects, which can be dangerous. At least half of those who try AZT for example experience toxic side effects. Henry Chance has ARC, AIDS related complex, and took the drug DDC, didoxysidodine, as part of an experimental trial. Chance is a counselor at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in San Francisco. When he took DDC, he suffered painful nerve damage and was forced to take pain killers and use crutches.

HENRY CHANCE, ARC Patient: This is one of the reasons I think animal research is very important, the fact that the quality of a person's life who already has a probably terminal disease can be affected adversely by these drugs, as it happened to me, it took about three months out of my life, I figure, and I may not have that much time left.

MR. MICHELS: For decades, scientists have been looking for a way to test drugs for human diseases on a laboratory animal.

DR. MIKE McCUNE: The most straightforward, the most naive, the most simple idea was to put the human immune system into a mouse. We wanted to do that because HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, only infects human cells.

MR. MICHELS: Just five years ago, American scientists discovered a mutant strain of mice known as SCID mice. The acronym stands for the disease which they have, severe combined immuno deficiency. SCID mice have no immune system of their own. The researchers at Stanford noticed that SCID mice often die of pneumasistic pneumonia, the same disease which kills many AIDS patients.

DR. MIKE McCUNE: The choice of the SCID mouse was mostly a serendipitous one. When I noticed that relationship between pneumasistis and the SCID mouse, it seemed like it might be a good thing to try to put the human immune system into it.

MR. MICHELS: The scientists put certain cells from human fetuses into the immuno deficient mice. Fetal liver cells were injected directly into the blood stream and fetal thymus and lymph node cells were surgically implanted near the kidney. Because it lacks an immune system, the SCID mouse did not reject the human cells. Dr. Irving Weissman of Stanford Medical Center.

DR. IRVING WEISSMAN, Stanford Medical Center: Well, the animal, itself is genetically immuno deficient. That means it can't make an immune response. The disease it has is the same that that bubble boy in Texas had. The mouse is unable to reject the human organs because it can't make the lymphocytes which are the central cells in immune responses, the ones that recognize foreign tissues.

MR. MICHELS: The human fetal cells introduced into the mice multiplied and eventually duplicated the human blood and immune system in its entirety. The scientists have now infected the animals with the AIDS virus and hope to find out how the deadly virus works and how to stop it. While it may take years to come up with a vaccine, the researchers are more optimistic about finding effective new drugs for AIDS.

DR. IRVING WEISSMAN: If the virus does work and spread, as we think it will in these mice, drugs that are in the pipeline can be tested right now and hopefully, somebody, either rationally or by chance, will have found a drug or a set of drugs that can slow down the growth of the virus.

MR. MICHELS: The Stanford experiments will yield important new information about AIDS and a host of other viruses which occur only in people, including infectious mononucleosis, the Epstein- Barr virus, the human hepatitis virus, leukemia, and cervical carcinoma. And the research could go even farther, leading to what has been called a new way of doing human biology.

DR. IRVING WEISSMAN: I think it's going to be very important for the study of any genetically caused congenital disease wherein you can place the organ from the diseased fetus into an animal and study what goes wrong. That means that cystic fibrosis, Huntington's disease, juvenile onset diabetes, just to name a few, will be open for the first time to experimental analysis.

MR. MICHELS: But this experimentation is highly controversial because it requires organs from aborted human fetuses. It is the latest in fetal tissue research considered the boom area of medicine. Recently, fetal brain cells have been transplanted into the brains of victims of Parkinson's disease. Fetal pancreatic cells which produce insulin have been transplanted into diabetes patients. Fetal cells are used because they grow rapidly and they are much less likely to be rejected than adult cells. But these experiments alarm anti-abortion groups which strongly oppose the use of fetal organs. Last April, the Reagan administration faced a moratorium on federal funding of fetal tissue research. The issue has sparked a nationwide debate.

DR. IRVING WEISSMAN: You would have to ask what's going to happen to this material if it's not used for medical research. It's going to be put in formium bottles or it's going to be discarded. We think that if it is there, if we live in a society that makes that available, it's a tragedy not to try to use it for the good of man.

MR. MICHELS: Anti-abortion activists feel that such arguments will only pressure women into having more abortions.

DR. JOHN WILLKE, National Right to Life: If we give this a sheen, a sort of pseudo okay by being able to tell this woman who's under the tremendous pressure to abort, and tell her my dear, this isn't real life, it's only potential life, but if you give these organs, you'll give someone else real life, that's a very powerful argument.

MR. MICHELS: The desire to find new drugs and possibly vaccines for AIDS and other serious diseases has given the fetal tissue debate a new urgency. An advisory panel at the National Institutes of Health has recommended federal funding of fetal tissue research. But recently in a leaked Presidential memo, the Reagan administration has threatened to issue an executive order banning all such funding. At stake is the AIDS research. Medical Ethicist Lawrence Nelson.

LAWRENCE NELSON, Medical Ethicist: Since we have no cure right now and there is really no cure in sight, if the use of fetal tissue for immunological research could lead us to a way of coping or curing AIDS, that makes that research, of course, very compelling and very important.

DR. MIKE McCUNE: We're not encouraging abortion, we're not changing the way in which it's done. If our use of this tissue was, in fact, prevented, I don't think it would prevent abortions from occurring in the future. It would simply prevent this work from going on.

HENRY CHANCE, ARC Patient: The hope I think for all of us who are infected is that some day, you know, we'll have our insulin shot that will maintain us. I believe that that's possible. And I look forward to that day. Whether I'll see that day or not I think is moot, but there are people who will see it.

MR. MICHELS: As more experiments use fetal organs, the ethical controversy will persist. But for those suffering from AIDS and other life threatening illnesses, the debate is academic. For them, the Stanford Research holds out new promise and hope. FINALLY - INTERVIEW WITH MARGARET MEE

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight, we're going to rebroadcast an interview we carried last week with an extraordinary English woman named Margaret Mee. After the original broadcast on Thanksgiving Day, we were deluged with calls and letters. Then yesterday we learned that Mrs. Mee was killed on Wednesday night in a car accident in Britain. Under the circumstances, we thought many people would like to see the interview again. At 79 years old, Margaret Mee was of an age when most of us have long since retired, but not she. For 30 years, Mrs. Mee devoted her life to traveling up the Amazon River and its various tributaries. She would head up river in a small boat by herself, with just a local pilot for companionship, occasionally with a friend or two. Mrs. Mee was not simply a traveler and explorer of new places; she was a painter who tried to create a unique record of the rare species of flowers of the Amazon Basin before they disappear under the onslaught of man. Her work has been compared to some of the masters at painting from nature. A collection of those paintings and her diaries called "In Search of Flowers of the Amazon Forest" has just been published by Non-Such Expeditions. I talked with her last week when she visited New York.

MR. MacNeil: Mrs. Mee, how did you become interested in the Amazon? What got you interested in the Amazon flowers?

MARGARET MEE, Artist: Well, when I arrived in Brazil, I was very keen to go up tot he Amazon, but it was for some years I had to wait, because my sister was very seriously ill in San Paulo, and I had to stay there. Then I went up to Pera, which is really Amazonis, part of the Amazon, and started painting the plants there. I had seen wonderful plants on the Acero De Mas, as we call it, the Atlantic Forest, of which, you wouldn't believe it, less than 5 percent is left. At one time, it stretched all the way from South Brazil, all along the coast, to the Northeast Baia, now there's 5 percent left. In the days when I was there, it was much more, and I found magnificent flowers there, but when I went to Pera, I became completely, well, I fell completely in love with the flora of Amazonis.

MR. MacNeil: And you, you felt you had to go deeper and deeper to get more and more things that couldn't be seen anywhere else, was that it?

MRS. MEE: That's right, and I found some new plants there too which inspired me to carry on, look for others, and to record them.

MR. MacNeil: Were you looking for plants to discover that had never been found before, or was your intention to record plants that might soon be wiped out by civilization?

MRS. MEE: Both.

MR. MacNeil: Both.

MRS. MEE: For one thing, those which had never been discovered before will probably be wiped out first, of course, because they're rare and as you know, there are just these echo systems in Amazonis, where a certain plant can be found and perhaps it can be found nowhere else in the Amazon.

MR. MacNeil: What is it about the kind of flower in the Amazon Forests that attracts you, the artist, that you don't find in exotic flowers elsewhere?

MRS. MEE: Well, for one thing, they're extraordinarily aggressive, some of them. The bromalia, that's the pineapple family, have great thorns. In fact, they're extremely difficult to collect, as you can imagine. They have hosts of creatures living in them, including scorpions, poisonous spiders, ants, well, almost -- and even snakes in some cases. But of course, there are the others which are so beautiful, delicate color, orchids, for instance, the catlai vealacia, and the blue orchid, acacalus siana, which is absolutely a dream.

MR. MacNeil: Did it ever occur to you that it was a slightly unusual occupation for a delicately built lady to be going into the jungles of the Amazon, often either unaccompanied or very little accompanied among the Indian tribes and the wild fauna?

MRS. MEE: Well, I don't know. I'm not really so delicate perhaps as I look, if I do look delicate. But I have a great deal of resistance.

MR. MacNeil: I've read about some of the things that you've gone through with insects and snakes and the Indian tribes and some white people.

MRS. MEE: Yes. Well, the Indian tribes, I have no fear of the Indians, in fact, I've found them lovable, hospital, friendly people. I have had some pretty horrid adventures with white adventurers, the garamperos, the gold diggers.

MR. MacNeil: Describe some of those adventures, what happened.

MRS. MEE: Well, I was once in an Indian village, Tucano Indians, in Curi Curi, on the river, Curi Curi Ari, which is a tributary of the Rio Negro, the high reaches of the Rio Negro, and there I was collecting plants and painting, and one morning, the Indians had gone off in their canoes for their, to their plantations to work and they wouldn't be back till evening. And I heard an outboard motor poppling up the river, and in a few minutes, there were seven rough looking fellows coming up the path towards my hut. It was quite a long way from the so called port, which was a fallen tree, as far as I remember. They came and the big garampero who was leading them said, "Fancy finding a woman like you here. Where's your husband?" So, of course, I told the truth, because better tell the truth to roughians. And I said, "In San Paulo."

MR. MacNeil: Which is a thousand miles away or so.

MRS. MEE: Yes. Then he asked me what I've got for them. Whiskey? No. Puchasa -- that's the very intoxicating drink of Brazil -- no. I've come up here to work. Oh, alcohol? Yes, I have, but only for my cooking. Oh, what else have you got for us? I said, nothing. Oh, he said, but we'll be back again. So I thought, oh, my God, this is awful now. So I went into my hut, hid everything I had of value, and then loaded my revolver, which was a six barrel revolver, and thought, now they've gone, I must go into the forests, perhaps, which is the best thing to do? I peaked through the palia, the straw of the walls, and there I saw, there were three of them circling around my hut. So I thought this is no good, sat down on box, tucked my revolver underneath ready, and started to read a book, upsidedown I noticed, waiting. In about half an hour, I saw a shadow in the doorway. The big garampero was back and drunk. He comes in, but I stick my revolver into his stomach, and that gave him a shock, I can tell you. He backed out and I followed him. By this time, my fear was going, and there's an old Indian outside. He said, "Be careful, he's very drunk. I'll take him up the river." So this fellow said, "Didn't be unfriendly, shake hands." And then he sprang and tried to disarm me, but the old Indian pushed him off. They went. About half an hour later, the Indians came back, paddled back with reinforcements, one huge Indian bigger than I've ever seen, and I started to tell the story. They knew everything. After this, I was treated like a queen.

MR. MacNeil: So how many trips have you made up the Amazon, deep into the Amazon?

MRS. MEE: I've made 15, the last one in May to find the cactus which opens at night and fades forever at dawn.

MR. MacNeil: The so called "moon flower"?

MRS. MEE: That's right.

MR. MacNeil: How long had you been looking for that?

MRS. MEE: Since 1965.

MR. MacNeil: How did you know it existed?

MRS. MEE: Well, because I've seen it from time to time, never in flower, until May.

MR. MacNeil: Tell me about the feelings on finally finding one this last time at night coming into bloom so that you could witness that.

MRS. MEE: Well, I felt thrilled. I had to climb on top of the boat and with all my sketching materials and that and sit down in front of the bud, waiting for it to open. And it moved as it opened, you could see it opening. This was thrilling. And as it opened, a wonderful perfume came out to attract the moth, of course, it's a hawk moth, which pollenates it. There was a full moon looking through the branches of the tree, magnificent, and all the time the sound of the night birds.

MR. MacNeil: Aren't you worried about getting bitten by whatever poisonous insects or snakes or creatures there may be in the forest like that?

MRS. MEE: The insects are a nuisance, but I don't fear the birds and animals at all really. It's the semi-civilized human that I fear much more.

MR. MacNeil: I see.

MRS. MEE: They are the danger.

MR. MacNeil: Are you going back again?

MRS. MEE: Yes, definitely. I shall go back perhaps in the spring, next spring, I hope. That would be May, of course.

MR. MacNeil: What will be your goal this next trip?

MRS. MEE: Well, I have so many ideas about the Amazon. I want to go to the Rio Japura, but I also want to repeat this trip into Anavilianis, which is a wonderful area for plants and not destroyed, as it's a reserve. I'm rather frightened to go far afield, not frightened for my life or anything like that, oh no, but what I shall see, the horrible destruction which I have already seen on the Rio Negro. It was almost unrecognizable, a tragedy, that glorious river where I used to moor my boat to a great tree, eswatsia, coming into flower, to any great tree up there. I almost knew the trees as friends, individually. Not one of them is left. The mechanical saw has been up first, charcoal burners have burned the trees for charcoal to supply industry. They're using a tremendous number of the forest trees for charcoal burning to run industry. It's a very much cheaper way apparently than other means.

MR. MacNeil: What do you have yet to accomplish that you feel you haven't done? You've created a very large and significant record now of these flowers and your work has been compared with many of the great painters of flowers in the past. What have you yet to do? What leaves you unsatisfied?

MRS. MEE: Well, I have written up my diaries. They're in this book, of course. And I have done, as you say, quite a collection of Amazon plants, but there are still so many, so many to be recorded, and this has to be done before they're destroyed if it's humanly possible. Well, I shall need another six lives, which won't be granted, to do really enough to satisfy me. RECAP

MS. WOODRUFF: Turning now to a final look at the day's top stories, five Soviet hijackers were arrested when their plane landed in Israel, the space shuttle Atlantis was launched into orbit this morning after a weather delayed launch. The shuttle is carrying a military payload. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Judy. That's the Newshour for tonight. We'll be back on Monday night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.