The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

INTRO

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. There were several major news developments today. A judge ordered the attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor in the Carter briefing papers case. The newlywed Americans were reportedly freed by their kidnappers in Sri Lanka. The Supreme Court cleared the way for Unification Church head Reverend Moon to go to prison, and President Reagan and Congress began the count-down to another big decision on the MX missile. Robert MacNeil is away tonight; Charlayne Hunter-Gault is in New York. Charlayne?

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: We'll go into detail on four major stories in the news tonight. On the MX, we'll move to the next battlefield, the Democratic side of the House of Representatives. We'll also look at the Democratic candidates' dead-heat finish for a big hispanic endorsement. We'll find out what's behind Judge Harold Green's call for a special prosecutor in the Carter briefing papers affair, and we'll examine the controversy over whether it's safe to release bacteria into the air that's been genetically altered by human hands.

LEHRER: Three months ago the Reagan Justice Department concluded there was no credible evidence a crime had been committed in the Carter briefing papers case, and thus no need for a special prosecutor to look into it. Well, today a federal district judge in Washington overruled both the conclusion and the decision, ordering Attorney General William French Smith to appoint a prosecutor in seven days.Judge Harold Green said, in a written order, "There is unrebutted evidence that in 1980 Carter campaign documents were stolen, that the came into the possession of Reagan campaign officials, and that some of those officials, now in high government positions later made contradictory statements about them." Differing versions did come from White House Chief of Staff James Baker and CIA Director William Casey. The names of Budget Director David Stockman and presidential counselor and Attorney General-designate Ed Messe also surfaced in the prior investigations and disclosures. Today's decision came when a civil suit filed by a university law professor and, to understate it considerably, reopens, in a presidential election year, a story many Republicans had hoped was behind them. Judy Woodruff, with National Public Radio correspondent. Nina Totenberg, will have more on it all later in the program. Charlayne? MX: Battle over the "Peacekeeper"

HUNTER-GAULT: President Reagan launched a strong counter-offensive today to save the MX missile from annihilation by the House of Representatives. At a hastily called news conference the President declared that "There is no more compelling priority on my agenda than production of the 10-warhead nuclear missile." The President charged that scrapping the weapon would seriously threaten the future of arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union.

Pres. RONALD REAGAN: We cannot afford to delay any longer without "Peacekeeper," the MX, the incentive for the Soviets to return to the negotiating table is greatly reduced. The Soviets hope that once again our modernization efforts will be curtailed. To falter now would only encourage the Soviet Union to ignore our arms control efforts. For our own security and the cause of world peace we must support the bipartisan national program that we approved last year.

LEHRER: If there was a target audience for Mr. Reagan's MX words today it was mostly the Democrats in the House of Representatives, where a vote is coming this week. House Speaker Thomas O'Neill said over the weekend the votes were there to kill it this time. He and other anti-Mx'ers having failed on previous occasions in close votes. Since most Republicans in the House favor the MX, the struggle is among and between the majority Democrats, and the leaders of the two camps are with us tonight, Congressman Joseph Addabbo of New York, chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, who is against it, and Congressman Les Aspin of Wisconsin, a member of the House Armed Services Committee and sponsor of the compromise plan aimed at funding some MX missiles now. First to you, Congressman Addabbo. Six months ago you lost by nine votes. What's changed?

JOSEPH ADDABBO: What has changed, I believe, is that the administration's move to -- for arms control has completely faltered. One of the basis for the votes that they received was the fact that are moving, or supposedly moving ahead very strongly in arms control. And now we hear their chief adviser, Mr. Rowney, say that arms control is no longer the centerpiece of foreign affairs, and we see the breakdown in the talks in last December and November. So there has been the complete negation of discussions and arms controls. So I believe with that failing of the administration trying to move ahead in arms control, we have a very good chance of finally killing this wasteful weapon, the MX.

LEHRER: Congressman Aspin, do you agree with that analysis of what's happened in six months?

LES ASPIN: No, I think that it has never really been given a fair shot at being the leverage that's important in the arms control negotiation. It was put on the table last October, but then the Soviets walked out of the talks. They walked out for reasons having nothing to do with the MX or with the START negotiations. They walked out because of the INF negotiations. So I would contend that it has not really been given a chance as a lever or as a bargaining chip and that, unless we're totally pessimistic and think they'll never come back again that it's still part of the package. It's still an important incentive for the Soviets to negotiate.

LEHRER: What's wrong with that thesis, Congressman Addabbo?

Rep. ADDABBO: Well, except this, that I believe the Russians painted themselves into a corner when they talked out of the talks in November on the basing the Pershing II. And if we show some movement forward by stopping the production -- we're not stopping the R&D. We can continue the R&D if you want to negotiating point to show that our resolve to meet an enemy if they refuse to negotiate, but to show that we are ready to discuss arms control and seriously talk about arms control, we can stop this wasteless -- waste of money -- a $22-billion program, which we cannot afford.

LEHRER: But what would you say to Mr. Reagan's point, the point that he made today, which is essentially that why should the Soviets be rewarded for having walked out of the arms talks?

Rep. ADDABBO: We are not rewarding them with anything. What we're saying to them, first of all, first of all, looking at our own defense, looking at our own, the MX adds nothing to our national defense. As a matter of fact, it detracts from our national defense by placing $22 billion in a weapon which, again, is a first-strike weapon which we say do not have first-strike weapons. So why place $22 billion, waste this money which is so sorely needed, number one, in our domestic programs, but also in our defense programs because Les knows that in their Armed Services bill, in order to try and make reductions they had to stretch out programs, important -- actually very important programs, which are very necessary to our national defense.

LEHRER: Is that what Les knows, Congressman?

Rep. ASPIN: I think that what we ought to do is pass an amendment that a number of other people and I have been working on, which is to take the number of missiles to 15 and make the development of those missiles contingent upon what the Soviet Union does.

LEHRER: Now, how could you do that?

Rep. ASPIN: You just fence the money for six months, which would be from October 'til April of next year -- from this October 'til next April -- fence the money and say, if the Soviets come back to bargaining table by April 1st, we don't build the missiles. If they're not back to the bargaining table by April 15th, we release the money and build the 15 missiles.

LEHRER: What message does that send to the Soviet Union?

Rep. ASPIN: Well, it sends the message to come back to the bargaining table. The trouble with the amendment --

LEHRER: In other words, if you don't want the MX missile --

Rep. ASPIN: Come back to the bargaining table --

LEHRER: -- come back to the bargaining table.

Rep. ASPIN: The trouble with the zero-MX missiles amendment is that it rewards them for not being at the bargaining table. We're giving them zero for not coming to the bargaining table. This one says there is zero missiles only if you do come to the bargaining table.

LEHRER: That makes sense, doesn't it, Congressman Addabbo?

Rep. ADDABBO: No, it doesn't because we have already in the '83 appropriation bill money for 21 missiles which they're just starting to build, missiles which will go into a silo, making them very vulnerable. And so you have that 21 as your bargain -- there's no reason to spend necessary dollars -- necessary dollars for other purposes on this bargaining chip. You have 21 missiles which were approved in the '83 appropriation bill, you have $6 billion in R&D.

LEHRER: What about the box -- the fense theory, The Aspin fence theory?

Rep. ADDABBO: You are appropriating money -- you just take that money out of the budget altogether because, again, you have that 21 missiles. Again those 20 -- even those 21 missiles shouldn't be built because you are creating an escalation. When you place 21 MX missiles in vulnerable silos -- everyone admits they are vulnerable -- in vulnerable silos, not having tested -- you put them in a silo where they barely have room -- you can't even work on them when they're in the silo. They are the most dangerous thing you could have. All they do is escalate the possibility of nuclear mistake. And nuclear mistake means world destruction.

LEHRER: Congressman Aspin, let's talk the politics of this for a moment. Mr. Reagan's decision to hold a news conference today -- obviously he's going full-court press on this.

Rep. ASPIN: Yeah. He's going still for his program, which was 40 missiles originally, cut down to 30 by the Armed Services Committee.

LEHRER: But he's talking about a bipartisan -- he's talking about your plan, isn't it?

Rep. ASPIN: Well, he isn't yet. He isn't yet. I think he's going to come around to thinking that this is about the best he can do, but so far he's still talking in terms of getting some missiles without the fence, without the incentive to the Soviets, just trying to get the money. That's his first option, his first preference.

LEHRER: Well, his clout that he seems to come up with when he needs it the most, as he did last week just on the El Salvador vote. Are you anticipating that could happen again, despite what Congressman Addabbo says, despite what the Speaker said?

Rep. ASPIN: I don't think the votes are there for 30 or 40 missiles, and Joe -- would have to ask Joe his opinion. I would guess that if the choice is 30 missiles or zero, which is the committee bill plus the major amendment that's out there, it's going to be zero. I'm looking for something that is a little different --

LEHRER: Like what? Ten or 15?

Rep. ASPIN: Fifteen, but fencing the money. I mean, the fence is the most important part, which brings an incentive to bring the Soviets back to the table as opposed to no incentive for them at all.

LEHRER: All right, Congressman Addabbo, first question, do you agree that it's 30 or zero, if that's what the vote ends up being?

Rep. ADDABBO: Yes, I believe that's what we hope for. We hope to be able to zero the production funds in the '85 authorizations and if we don't do it there, hopefully we'll do it in my appropriation bill.

LEHRER: Okay, and you agree you'd win it if it gets to a 30 or zero choice, right?

Rep. ADDABBO: That' it.

LEHRER: Okay. Let's say it goes to the Aspin choice, which is 15 with a fence around it. With the President going full-blast, it's Aspin and Reagan walking hand in hand, full-blast -- what do you think? You got problems?

Rep. ADDABBO: Well, whenever the President is walking hand-in-hand with Aspin I always have problems because it's proven before that the White House has very great bargaining chips, as it's proven before, between barbecues and offers and everything else. We don't have that. All we do is have a just cause in stopping the wasteful spending for this missile, and the only way you do it is by zeroing the procurement funds in the '85 authorization. If not there, then definitely the '85 appropriation.

LEHRER: Congressman Aspin, as you know, it is no secret, that since you have been one of the leaders in this MX thing, many people have said, you know, what is Les Aspin, a Democrat, doing in this kind of role? Are you still as comfortable in the role as you were six months go or last year?

Rep. ASPIN: Yeah, I'd be less comfortable if we'd have given it a real try and it hadn't worked. I still don't think we've given it a try, so I want to keep the program alive. I think there's a lot of good reasons not to build 30 MXs this year, but I think there's some pretty strong reasons, given what's going on in the Olympics, their walking out of the talks, not to go to zero.

LEHRER: What's the schedule on the vote now?Tomorrow? Wednesday?

Rep. ASPIN: Wednesday. Wednesday is the vote.

LEHRER: Is that when it's going to come to, you think, Congressman Addabbo?

Rep. ADDABBO: It should be either Wednesday or Thursday, probably Wednesday. You know, what bothers me, Les, you're talking about the fencing, but everything we have done before in the Congress and improving the MX when we're supposedly moving towards arms control, we've actually seen the administration's position anti-arms control almost hardening. We see possible discussion of violation of SALT II, we see this discussion of the Star Wars $25-billion which would again violate treaties. So with the mood of the Congress, even by fencing it, I think that would give them greater impetus to move forward and escalate rather than de-escalate the strategic arms race.

LEHRER: You just see it very differently, right?

Rep. ASPIN: I do see it differently, although I agree with Joe Addabbo that the administration's rhetoric on arms control very often leaves a lot to be desired.

LEHRER: Well, both of you congressmen, thank you very much. Charlayne?

HUNTER-GAULT: Continuing on the missile front, the Soviet Union today announced that it was stationing additional missiles in Eastern Europe in response to NATO missiles being deployed in Western Europe.The Soviet news agency Tass did not say how many or what kind of weapons would be deployed, but it did hint at the possibility that future deployments in nuclear pact countries would be made in order to maintain the balance of forces and to neutralize the threat posed by American deployments. It was the first U.S. missile deployment in Europe last year that led to the Soviet pullout of the arms control talks in Geneva. Meanwhile, back in the United States, a man who pleaded guilty last December to selling U.S. missile secrets to communist agents was sentenced to life in prison today. A California district judge branded James Durwood Harper, Jr. a traitor "who never expressed his regrets for his crimes." The judge, Samuel Conti, said he would recommend that Harper, 49, never be paroled. Jim?

LEHRER: In case anybody missed it the first time, the Soviets had a news conference today to say they were boycotting the summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and the head of the Soviet Olympic Committee said the decision was irrevocable. He charged the U.S. had been planning to use chemicals to get Soviet athletes to defect, and said the U.S. had said no at a joint April 27th planning meeting to what the Soviets wanted at Los Angeles. U.S. officials later denied today they denied any requests on April the 27th, because the Soviets hadn't made any. President Reagan also had a few words on the Soviet boycott today at his informal news conference.

Pres. REAGAN: The reasons they have given are absolutely false, and we're been able to prove it. The reasons that there might not be sufficient security for their visitors, their athletes and so forth, and we were able to prove no one in the history of the Olympics has ever done as much as we're doing to insure that.

REPORTER: Would you consider taking some action to intervene?

Pres. REAGAN: I don't think there's any action that I could take that would be proving. I would naturally -- I would do anything if I thought it could have a result, and I have encouraged citizens' groups and our people to do this. It is not a government relation problem.

LEHRER: Of course, without the Soviets and their friends there will still be an Olympics, and Mr. Reagan did his part today in getting the Olympic flame on its way to Los Angeles. The Olympic organizers have set up a coast-to-coast relay run to bring the flame from New York to L.A., raising publicity and money for local charities along the way.

[voice-over] Today was Washington, D.C.'s day, and outside the White House former Olympic gymnast Kurt Thomas brought the flame to President Reagan.

Pres. REAGAN: The Olympics were started more than 2,000 years ago to hopefully offer a substitute to the constant warfare between the city states of Greece. They were revived on an international basis nearly a century ago, and again the goal was peace and understanding. Let us keep that Olympic tradition alive in Los Angeles and resolve that the Olympic flame will burn ever brighter.

LEHRER: Mr. Reagan then watched as the torch went to Charlotte Ransom, a handicapped athlete. By the time the torch gets to Los Angeles on July 28th, some 4,000 athletes will have touched and carried it over 9,000 miles.Charlayne?

HUNTER-GAULT: There is good news and bad news about that American couple kidnapped by guerrilla fighters in Sri Lanka. Stanley and Mary Allen were reportedly set free but may be lost in the jungle. The Sri Lankan government said that it was convinced that the Allens had been liberated after an appeal by Prime Minister Indira Ghandi of India, which is on friendly terms with the leaders of the Tamil Independence Movement, the group claiming responsibility for the kidnapping. But the Allens failed to appear, and the Sri Lankan government sent soldiers to search for them in an area covered with thick jungle, which is inhabited by elephants and leopards.

Meanwhile, in the Philippines, candidates opposed to President Ferdinand Marcos' government were leading today in early returns from the parliamentary elections held yesterday. Supporters of the government had been expected to win easily, but unofficial returns showed the opposition leading by 12 seats to four in Manila and tied at 24 to 24 in the provinces. There are 183 seats to be filled.

It was all bad news for the Reverend Sun Myung Moon today after the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal on his income tax-evasion conviction. The United States attorney for the Southern District then ordered Moon to start serving his 18-month jail term on June 18th. Moon was found guilty of evading $162,000 in taxes on income from a bank account and an importing business. His attorneys argued that he held funds belonging to the Unification Church in his own name, and that he was prosecuted because of widespread hostility toward the church. Today several other religions leaders saw a dangerous precedent in the Moon case. One of them was the Reverend Joseph Lowery, president of the Atlanta-based Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He spoke to reporters in Washington.

Rev. JOSEPH LOWERY, Southern Christian Leadership Conference: We must not foolishly think that any shade or position on the liberal-conservative spectrum can be unaffected by the implications of this case. Ministers of the broadest theological and social diversity, including a Joseph Lowery on one hand or a Jerry Falwell on the other can be adversely impacted by this case. I am particularly concerned that smaller churches -- black and brown and other minority -- in which the minister may be the only full-time professional to administer funds and programs may be especially vulnerable to prosecution and persecutions under the implications of this case. We must organize to oppose and prevent any attempt on the part of government to utilize the implication of this case to penalize religious leaders whom government may consider controversial or antipathetic toward its policies.

HUNTER-GAULT: In New York the President of the Unification Church declared that today was a day of shame for America. Dr. Mose Durst said, "For the first time in it's history this country has chosen to imprison a worldwide religious leader for his beliefs." Jim?

LEHRER: President Reagan today became the latest official of his administration to play "blame the Fed for high interest rates, yes, no, maybe so." The game began last week after the nation's largest banks raised their prime lending rate to 12.5%. Some White House officials, led by Treasury Secretary Donald Regan, said Federal Reserve Board policies were responsible. But the President's chief economist, Martin Feldstein, said no, it wasn't. Regan first came back and said, oh, yes it was; then yesterday he began backtracking a bit, saying the Fed was only partly responsible. Mr. Reagan was asked for his opinion at that impromptu news conference today.

Pres. REAGAN: We want the money supply to be increased at a range that is commensurate with the increase in the growth in the economy and that will thus make possible the continued growth of the economy without a return to inflation. So therefore we want no great big upsurges, nor do we want any string-tightening down to the point that there's not enough money supply in the economy. Now, I have to say also on behalf of the Fed we must recognize these tools are not all that accurate that they have to work with. It is possible for there to be, for limited times, an inadvertent upsurge or an inadvertent decline that the Fed doesn't have anything to do with. They do as well as they can in trying to keep this projected growth.

REPORTER: Were you backing off of the criticism by Secretary Regan?

Pres. REAGAN: No, I think that that was what Secretary Regan was also trying to say.

HUNTER-GAULT: Still ahead in the NewsHour, the hot weekend battle among the Democratic candidates for a major hispanic endorsement, a look at what's behind a district judge's order for a special prosecutor in the Carter briefing papers case, and the debate over whether releasing genetically altered bacteria into the air will do more harm than good.

[Video postcard -- Ocoee, Tennessee] The Hispanic Vote

LEHRER: California and its large hispanic vote continued to hold the attention today of Walter Mondale and Jesse Jackson, while Gary Hart was off campaigning in Nebraska, a scene tomorrow of a Democratic presidential primary, one Hart is favored to win. The other primary vote tomorrow is in Oregon, where the polls say Hart is also ahead. But it was the June 5th event in California that held Jackson and Mondale, who yesterday with Hart fought the endorsement of an influential Mexican-American political association meeting in San Jose. Mondale won the endorsement by 1%, or just four votes over Jackson. It was a meeting of heat and noise, primarily because the supporters of President Reagan also wanted to be heard. Spencer Michels of public station KQED reports.

SPENCER MICHELS, KQED [voice-over]: The fireworks at the Mexican-American Political Association convention came before the balloting began and after the three Democrats had left. Backers of President Reagan tried to address the crowd. Republicans have been trying to make inroads in the hispanic vote for several years. Reagan has received some latino support, and wanted more here. But at this gathering many of those attending would have none of it.

MAPA SPEAKER: How can you let a representative of the Reagan administration, an advocate for Reagan, who is killing our people in Central America -- how can you even let him in the hall?

MICHELS [voice-over]: Convention officials first ruled that the Reagan backers could speak even though Reagan was not personally in attendance. But the crowd was adamantlyanti-Reagan, and the Republicans ultimately were not given the platform.

STEVEN DIAZ, MAPA Reagan supporter: There are no human rights in MAPA. MAPA is not a bipartisan organization. MAPA is not anything except a limited specialinterest caucus of Fernando Chavez and his cronies for their own personal advancement within the Democratic Party.

MICHELS: Reagan supporters claim the endorsement of this convention means nothing since they were excluded from participation. But the supporters of Hart, Mondale and Jackson obviously feel otherwise. They spent hours and hours fighting for the endorsement.

[voice-over] The political maneuvering before the convention had been fierce. All the Democrats considered the MAPA endorsement important enough to warrant a personal appearance. So it was before a spirited and divided hispanic audience that the first major event of the important California primary campaign took place. Mondale had lined up many of the state's latino leaders and convention delegates in advance, though Jackson forces tried to shout them down. Both Mondale and Jackson camps brought supporters to the convention, many of them farmworkers bussed in by Mondale. Jackson, who is spending several days campaigning in California three weeks before the June 5th primary, tried to bring these hispanics into his rainbow coalition. Hart had not organized his forces as well as the others, though he did try to get votes from farmworkers outside. But competing with his rivals here proved fruitless. When the ballots were counted, Mondale squeeked out the endorsement of California's Mexican-American Political Association with 46%, just one point ahead of Jackson, with 45. Hart trailed badly with just 8%. In the heated and competitive atmosphere, the principal question after the vote was this: could the vociferous cheers for the individual candidates translate into equally enthusiastic support for the eventual Democratic nominee? '80 Campaign Probe

LEHRER: That's Spencer Michels of KQED reporting. Hispanic supporters of Jackson said late today they may ask for a vote recount on grounds improper voting instructions may have been given. And, speaking of recounts, we return now to the decision today by a federal judge on the Carter briefing papers case. They judge ordered Attorney General William French Smith to appoint a special prosecutor to pursue the case. Judge Harold Green rejected Justice Department claims there was no credible evidence a crime had been committed and that no special prosecutor was warranted. Various Reagan administration officials linked to the briefing paper episode would probably also like a recount, but the only voter today was Judge Green. As promised earlier, Judy Woodruff and Nina Totenberg are here with more.Judy?

JUDY WOODRUFF: Jim, the ruling some three months after the Reagan Justice Department said that its own investigation of the so-called Debategate affair didn't come up with sufficient evidence to appoint an ouside prosecutor. Judge Green rejected that argument and ordered Smith to apply to a federal court for a special prosecutor within seven days.Some of the documents in question include material that had been prepared for Mr. Carter for his debate during the campaign with Mr. Reagan. Top Reagan officials, including White House Chief of Staff James Baker and CIA Director William Casey have been linked to the papers in one way or another. The Justice Department had no comment on the case today, but John Banzhaf, who is the George Washington University law professor who brought the suit that led to today's ruling, said that he expected the department would immediately file on appeal. Here to talk about the ruling and its future implications is Nina Totenberg, correspondent for National Public Radio, who covers the Justice Department. First of all, Nina, what exactly does this ruling say?

NINA TOTENBERG: Well, what the judge has done has been to say to the say to the attorney general within seven days you go over to that special court which appoints special prosecutors, and you request the appointment of a special prosecutor. That's what he did, and he refused to stay his order. The Justice Department asked for a postponement; he wouldn't postpone it.

WOODRUFF: But isn't the Justice Department supposed to be in the business of deciding who and if there will be special prosecutors?

Ms. TOTENBERG: No.

WOODRUFF: What is a federal judge doing telling the Justice Department what to do?

Ms. TOTENBERG: Under the Ethics in Government Act, which is the act that I seem to be here discussing every time I come on this program, the Ethics in Government Act, passed in the wake of Watergate, says that if there is a charge, an accusation, an allegation involving any one of a large number of high administration officials, the Justice Department must complete a 90-day preliminary inquiry. And after that point it must decide whether to request a special prosecutor or not. Now, the criteria for the requesting of a special prosecutor are that if there is any credible evidence at all that can be pursued, the special prosecutor should be requested. Now, the attorney general didn't follow that act at all. He took eight months to investigate; he never made any report at all to the special court saying, "We are or we are not requesting a special prosecutor." He simply issued a three-page report saying "The case is closed, there are no grounds for criminal prosecution, good bye."

WOODRUFF: What's the explanation for that? Why didn't they recommend a prosecutor?

Ms. TOTENBERG: They said that they had done an adequate investigation, that they'd interviewed 220 people, gone over thousands of documents, and although they couldn't say how the briefing material got from the Carter campaign to the Reagan campaign, and they didn't know who did it, there still was no evidence of a crime.

WOODRUFF: So the judge is saying, "By golly, there was enough evidence there and you should have appointed a spcial prosecutor."

Ms. TOTENBERG: Well, these lawyers, these two lawyers -- Professor Banzhaf is one of them -- went to court, took the Justice Department to court. And the judge heard the case and he said, "There is evidence to pursue, and you did not submit a report to the special three-judge court, and you did not complete a 90-day investigation, and now you have to request the appointment of a special prosecutor."

WOODRUFF: All right, what happens now? Does Justice now have to appoint the special prosecutor?

Ms. TOTENBERG: Justice probably will appeal. It will probably ask for a stay from a higher court. It has a fairly heavy burden to meet. It must first show that there will be irreparable harm to it if it doesn't get the stay. It must show it will probably succeed. It has a substantial chance of succeeding on the merits. One wonders whether they could really prevail under that criteria, and therefore I think it's questionable whether they'll get a stay. Assuming they didn't get a stay, they will have to, within seven days, request from that three-judge court which appointed a special prosecutor in the Meese case -- they will have to say please appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Debategate charges.

WOODRUFF: So now what time frame are we talking about. I mean, assuming they appeal and they go to the limit on this and nothing is assigned?

Ms. TOTENBERG: If they don't get a stay they've only got seven days. If they get a stay, who knows?

WOODRUFF: It could go on --

Ms. TOTENBERG: It could go on for a long time.

WOODRUFF: What is the connection between all of this and the special prosecutor who is investigating Edwin Meese, the attorney general-designate?

Ms. TOTENBERG: Well, the special prosecutor investigating Edwin Meese -- a segment of that investigation is the Debategate question and whether Meese testified truthfully when he said that he knew nothing about those documents and how those -- whether he had any relationship at all to the transferral of those documents from the Carter campaign to the Reagan campaign and what his knowledge of it was. Now, presumably, the special prosecutor in the Meese case could have his jurisdiction simple expanded to encompass the entire Debategate issue, or perhaps they'd want to take that part away from him and give it to a new special prosecutor. There are a whole bunch of variables that we could see, but certainly if there is another special prosecutor I think we can presume there'll be some political ramifications.

WOODRUFF: And what are the political ramifications? I mean, we're talking about some very high-ranking people in the Reagan administration.

Ms. TOTENBERG: We're talking about very high-ranking people.We're talking about an election year -- six months or so to an election -- and we're talking about all of this at a time when the Democrats are trying to raise the sleaze factor, as they like to call it, to the high-water mark of being a big issue in the campaign -- something they've been only moderatly successful -- perhaps even less than moderately successful in doing so far.

WOODRUFF: All right, one of the issues that came up back when -- last summer when all this first arose, was this contradiction between Jim Baker, the White House chief of staff, who said that he was given papers from Bill Casey, the CIA director. Casey in turn said that he had never seen any papers, and he'd certainly never given them to Mr. Baker. Has that contradiction been worked out?

Ms. TOTENBERG: No. In fact, the FBI, when it investigated this whole business for the Justice Department, the three-page Justice Department report said that because of the "professed lack of memory" of key administration officials they could not resolve these kinds of conflicts. Well, I suspect the judge -- that was one of the things that was persuasive to Judge Green, that he's not too pleased with a "professed lack of memory."

WOODRUFF: What do you really think the potential political damage is in this for the President?

Ms. TOTENBERG: I still think none of it touches him. As difficult as that may be for Democrats to believe, he has proven so far that he is, as Pat Schroeder puts it -- Congress-woman Pat Schroeder -- something of a Teflon candidate, meaning nothing sticks to him. And historically we see that unless you can somehow tag this to the President himself it doesn't rise to the kind of campaign issue that works in an election.

WOODRUFF: But that may not be the case for some of his high lieutenants, right?

Ms. TOTENBERG: No. But whether it will work against Reagan himself is something else, and he's the one that's going to be elected or un-elected by the American people.

WOODRUFF: Thank you, Nina Totenberg, for being with us.

Ms. TOTENBERG: Thank you, Judy.

WOODRUFF: Charlayne? Mutant Microbes

HUNTER-GAULT: Any day now a federal district judge in Washington is expected to rule on a history-making experiment, the first deliberate release of genetically altered organisms into the environment.Environmentalists took the case to court, arguing that the experiment not only could wreak havoc on the environment, but that it could also endanger human health.

[voice-over] The experiment at the heart of this controversy is a plan by scientists at the University of California at Berkeley to uncork a new form of bacteria created in the lab. The scientists hope this new bacteria will make plants more frost-resistant.If it works, they say, it could be a tremendous boon to agriculture. Dr. Stephen Lindow is heading the project.

STEPHEN LINDOW, University of California: Most of our important agricultural plants are very frost-sensitive -- corn, beans, deciduous fruit crops such as pears, apples, cherries; many subtropical crops such as citrus and avocado cannot tolerate ice formation, and therefore are very frost-sensitive. Expected losses on an average yearly basis worldwide are approximately three to 14 billion dollars.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: The plan for averting these losses involves bacteria -- bacteria that in their natural state help ice form on plants. Here Dr. Lindow demonstrates how they work by placing a drop of the bacteria into a test tube of water.

Dr. LINDOW: See, ice immediately formed in the water as soon as the catalyst, the bacterium, was added to the super-cooled water.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: Through genetic engineering Lindow and his colleagues took the bacteria and snipped out a key gene. Now, in altered form, the bacteria can actually prevent ice from forming at temperatures as low as 23 degrees fahrenheit. The scientists want to spray these altered bacteria on a remote potato patch in northern California to see if they can help plants withstand frost. Lindow says there's no danger the genetically engineered bugs will escape their test patch and cause harm.

Dr. LINDOW: We feel that there is absolutely no hazard to these experiments. They are supported by all of our colleagues, who are also very auxious to see the results of this type of experiment and feel that there is no acientific reason to delay these experiments any further.

LEHRER: Those comments from Professor Lindow were taped by the University of California public relations department. His attorneys have advised against his talking to reporters until the lawsuit is resolved. That legal effort to stop the Lindow experiment is being led by Jeremy Rifkin, an environment activist. Mr. Rifkin, why is this unsafe?

JEREMY RIFKIN: Well, I think there is two issues here. One is the experiment itself and secondly is the review process that led to the experiment being authorized.

LEHRER: Well, let's take it one at a time. Why is this unsafe?

Mr. RIFKIN: We have a problem here that the bacteria that Dr. Lindow is working with is ubiquitous. It's found all over the temperate regions of the world, and it plays a dramatic role in the development of frost, and we believe affects worldwide climatology and precipitation patterns. If his new altered bacteria, Ice Minus, were to develop a niche and be viable and be competitive, it could edge out the original bacteria and could irreversibly affect worldwide climate and precipitation patterns over a long, long period of time.

LEHRER: Just this small amount that he's going to put in a potato patch?

Mr. RIFKIN: Oh, I think we have to understand that we can't use our chemical thinking in dealing with biological products. With biological products we have to appreciate the fact that bacteria is alive, it grows, it reproduces, and you cannot recall it back to the laboratory once it's out in the environment. The question is not how much is put out into the environment, but whether it can be viable, develop a niche and be more competitive than its original counterpart.

LEHRER: All right, now, as Professor Lindow said in that tape that his colleagues support it, the National Institutes of Health have said it's all right. What do you know that they don't know?

Mr. RIFKIN: We have brought together many prominent scientists from all over the country in the field of entymology, population genetics, plant pathology, ecology, and they have some serious questions. One major question that has never been raised by the National Institute of Health is this: we have reason to believe, and of course Dr. Lindow pointed this out himself, that this original bacteria in nature has developed over millions of years, it promotes a whole range of relationships in the natural environment, and it happens to be enhancive or promotes, if you will, frost-resistant crops, frost-resistant plants and insects. If the Ice Minus is put out in large areas -- for example, for commercial purposes -- we could find that the natural plant life in these regions, and insect life, will be harmed at the expense of tropical insects becoming more viable in their ability to move north and take over these habitats. This could have dislocation problems that would be absolutely unparalleled, and these are serious questions. These questions were not even asked at the National Institutes of Health.

LEHRER: That's your second point, about the review process, right?

Mr. RIFKIN: The review process is key to this. And we have to remember that our case is against the National Institute of Health. We are charging that they did not do an environmental assessment or impact study for this whole range of experiments, including Dr. Lindow's. Secondly, we are charging that the review committee at the National Institute of Health did not have the appropriate scientific experts to judge the risk of this particular experiment. There were no ecologists, no entymologists, no population geneticists. The environmental scientists were completely missing from the review committee, and they would be the ones qualified to ask the important questions of how this bacteria might relate in the environment. And third, and most important, as congressional hearings have demonstrated, no protocols, no formal scientific procedures have yet been established to judge the risk of this type of experiment, and it might be a year or two, according to EPA officials, before we could even get to the protocol stage.

LEHRER: So you're saying you don't really know what the risk is, but you say nobody knows at this point. Is that right?

Mr. RIFKIN: I think that's fair to say that, and what we need is more careful scrutiny. We need oversight. We need to be able to have a review process that has built-in formal protocols so that we can judge the risk of this experiment before we go ahead.

LEHRER: As a matter of principle, are you against this of any kind, whether it's to a small experiment in a potato patch or whatever?

Mr. RIFKIN: The Lindow experiment?

LEHRER: Anything like this. In other words, taking a genetically altered bacteria and putting it out into the air.

Mr. RIFKIN: Let me say this. I think that there are tremendous commercial benefits to this technology in every field. I don't for a minute discount that situation or condition. If you're asking, will the long-range benefits exceed the long-range harm, I don't think we've done the careful study yet. I don't think we've had the foresight put into place to really judge that. I don't want us to run the same risk we did with the petrochemical revolution, where we went ahead without any foresight, without any scrutiny, and now our children are paying the legacy by having to deal with all the waste that we developed as a result of our hasty movement into that technology.

LEHRER: Thank you. Charlayne?

HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Rifkin's views are strongly opposed by many scientists, including Dr. Bernard Davis, a professor at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Davis joins us tonight from public station WGBH in Boston. Dr. Davis, who safe do you think the experiment is?

BERNARD DAVIS: Well, I think that Mr. Rifkin, in his general attack on all aspects of genetic engineering, which goes back for many years, couldn't possibly have picked a worse example than this. First of all, mutations are occuring in bacteria in nature all the time, and the kind of mutation that is being dealt with in this particular case is a very simple one. It's cutting out a little piece of DNA, something that we know is happening in this organism all the time. The only reason it was done in the lab this way is to understand more precisely what's going on in this particular strain and to make sure that the change is a stable one.Secondly, the change is one that decreases the ability of the plant -- of the bacterium to cause harm for the plant. This bacterium, as it's found in nature, could be considered a sort of pathogen; that is, a disease-producing organism, not at normal temperatures, but at freezing temperatures its presence causes the plant to be harmed, and in its absence the plant would not be harmed. There wouldn't be ice crystals. So anything that prevents that from happening is actually decreasing its pathogenicity. In a sense then one might say that the altered organism that Lindow is talking about is sort of analogous to a vaccine in a higher organism, the kind of thing we use in human beings, where we take a disease-producing organism and alter it in such a way that it's lost the capacity to produce disease, but will still produce protection.

HUNTER-GAULT: So what you're saying, in effect, is that as far as you're concerned the organism is completely safe, that there are not going to be these -- there isn't even the possibility with these organisms of the ecological disruptions and so on that he articulated when talking with Jim?

Dr. DAVIS: Well, when you say there isn't any possibility, scientists don't like to talk in absolutes, and what was wrong with the recombinant DNA debate of a few years ago, when people feared epidemics, was that the whole debate was framed in terms of the wrong question: "Can you, Mr. Scientist, prove that the following scenario couldn't happen?" Now, scientists don't like to answer that kind of question. Rather, one deals with the question, is there a reasonable probability that this could happen? Now, I would say there's no reasonable probability nor basis for action in the scenario that Mr. Rifkin portrays. Now --

HUNTER-GAULT: Excuse me, what about the point he made that this particular kind of experiment was not subjected to a proper kind of review with the proper kind of experts, that there were no impact studies made and so on? And so the questions that should have been raised -- the assessment of risk and so on -- just have not been raised.

Dr. DAVIS: Well, the need for assessing risk depends upon some reason to believe that there is a risk to be assessed. I've already given two reasons why I don't see any risk in this experiment, and I can give a couple more. The most important is that what one really worries about in releasing organisms is not whether the actual cells released will cause damage. He's perfectly correct in saying that. It's whether they can spread. Now, it's very easy for him to invoke words and say, "Well, perhaps these organisms, if they find some niche, they can cause unparalleled catastrophes." Those are nice apocalyptic statements and they get a lot of attention, but there has to be some reason to think that this organism is going to find a niche now in practice. The organisms already present in nature have been adapted through millions of years of evolution to the circumstances they find themselves in. And when we in the laboratory change an organism, there's every reason to believe that it's going to decrease rather than increase the adaptiveness to that environment.

HUNTER-GAULT: Thank you, Doctor. Let me just bring Mr. Rifkin in on this and ask him, is this some kind of hysterical conclusion you've reached not based on anything that's sufficient to warrant it?

Mr. RIFKIN: Well, I think what we have to understand here is that whenever you introduce a new modified organism into an environment that it was not biologically designed for, there's always a small chance of something going wrong. If something does go wrong, however, the event can be enormous, irrversible and catastrophic. We've seen the results of gypsy moth, Dutch elm disease, couzoo weed and Mediterranean fruit fly. In congressional hearings the witnesses that appeared last June said that when you're dealing with genetically modified organisms you're dealing with an analogous situation.

HUNTER-GAULT: But what about Dr. Davis' point that these kinds of simple mutations are being done all the time and that basically, while you can't go 100%, there is evidence to believe that what you're talking about wouldn't happen.

Mr. RIFKIN: I'm very glad that Dr. Davis raised this. It shows exactly why we did not have the appropriate experts on this committee to ask the correct questions. You see, the review committee at the NIH only asked the question, would this particular bacteria be toxic if it was put into the environment? Well, an ecologist would ask a quite different question -- not only whether the bacteria would be toxic, but how might this new bacteria so change the balance of relationships in nature as to create an entire new condition which could imbalance millions of years of evolutionary development. For example, starlings introduced into this country were not toxic, nor are gypsy moths or Mediterranean fruit flies, but they certainly cause tremendous dislocations to this eco-system.

HUNTER-GAULT: Dr. Davis, how do you respond to that?

Dr. DAVIS: Well, I'd like to have to go back to Mr. Rifkin's statement about the model provided by all these organisms like gypsy moth and sparrow -- starlings, etc. that have indeed become pests as they've been moved into new ecological situations. That model has been the strongest argument for danger in producing -- in releasing bacteria in this way. I think it's a very poor model for the following reason. The examples of the real pests we've seen -- and one could add rabbits in Australia -- this example arises when you take two continents that have been separated for hundreds of millions of years and that have each evolved a set of plants and animals adapted to each other in forming some balanced ecology. If you now take an organism from one of these continents and put it on another, it will find a climate that will permit it to proliferate and it will not have the balancing forces present that it had in the original product of evolution on its natural continent. And that will cause an outburst of overgrowth that we call being a pest. That's very hard for me to compare with taking a bacterium that exists on plants here in California, taking out a harmful gene from it, releasing it on the same plants and then saying, as Mr. Rifkin does, God knows what kinds of horrible catastrophes might arise?

HUNTER-GAULT: Well, why is that so hard for you?

Dr. DAVIS: Well, because I think that the two situations are not analogous. The pests that provide a model are pests that are well-adapted to a certain climate. On another continent they will find the same kind of climate and be adapted again.

Mr. RIFKIN: Well, let me -- may I break in at this point? I think there's an interesting assumption that Dr. Davis has made. The point is this, you can't have it both ways. Industry is promoting this particular bacteria as something that'll save billions of dollars of frost damage because we'll have a bacteria that can protect the plants. What I'm suggesting is that if you introduce on a massive scale for agriculture an Ice Minus bacteria that has the potential of protecting our crops against frost damage, it will also prove detrimental to those frost resistant plants and insects that have developed with the original bacteria over millions of years. One doesn't need to be a molecular biologist to understand that. One can just take basic ecology and understand that change in relationship and what it portends for the North American ecosystem.

HUNTER-GAULT: That's not right, Dr. Davis?

Dr. DAVIS: No. I think that the words with which Mr. Rifkin connects nucleating ice formation, or frost, and frost resistance built into the genes of a plant have no scientific basis whatsoever. These are just words he's throwing together.

HUNTER-GAULT: Are those just words, Mr. Rifkin, or do you have some scientific thing to back up what you're saying?

Mr. RIFKIN: Absolutely. In fact, I'm not sure if Dr. Davis has seen our legal briefs, but we have brought together distinguished scientists from all over the United States in various fields relating to environmental sciences who are very concerned about the Lindow experiment, who think that it is not a trifle, that it is something that poses some potential problems, and scientists who believe that we have not developed the protocols to even judge this experiment. I think we have to broaden this for a minute and understand that we're at the beginning of the biotechnical age, and at the beginning we need to have in place protocols, formal procedures, environmental assessment studies, the appropriate expertise on the review committees. We shouldn't be rushing into this pellmell without any of these procedures.

HUNTER-GAULT: I take your point. Let me get Dr. Davis to respond to that. What is the rush? Why not wait until some of these governmental safeguards have been put into place? I mean, isn't the possibility of any of this that he is describing so great that it would be worth the wait?

Dr. DAVIS: I don't think there's any rush at all. I think that some scientists who are very responsible and understand the field have gone ahead and planned a good experiment, and that Mr. Rifkin has not outlined any specific reasonable set of experiments that will answer these questions --

HUNTER-GAULT: Well, let me ask you this question briefly --

Dr. DAVIS: Sorry, I must say the question he is raising is not to be answered by one specific experiment. It has to be answered by evolutionary principles, which he just doesn't accept.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right, let me ask you this finally. What do you think would be lost if these genetic experiments were blocked by the courts, as Mr. Rifkin and his group is asking?

Dr. DAVIS: If these experiments are blocked by the courts, we set a terrible precedent in which a person with extremely poor credentials, who has a long history of a demagogic approach to other aspects of genetic engineering, who tried to stop recombinant DNA research some years ago -- that he thought was going to cause terrible epidemics in man, who would have prevented the whole development of the industries that are now producing valuable products -- hormones, antibodies, vaccines -- for us, valuable advances in cancer. He would have stopped all of that. And if you look in his book, Alginey, you'll see that he's against all tampering with nature.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right --

Dr. DAVIS: It's literally a weird emotional attitude toward nature which is not a rational basis for public policy.

HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Rifkin, in a word, do you think you're going to win?

Mr. RIFKIN: Well, I hope the United States wins on this, and I think the way we can win is to be careful to apply some scrutiny and allow the appropriate procedures to be put in place so that 10 years down the line we don't regret having hastily moved into this without at least taking a look at all the potential problems and implications.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right, thank you, Dr. Davis in Boston, for being with us and Mr. Rifkin in Washington. Jim?

LEHRER: Again before we go the major stories of ths Monday. A federal judge in Washington ordered the attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor in the Carter briefing papers case. The judge rejected an earlier Justice Department position that no crime had been committed in getting 1980 Carter campaign documents into the Reagan campaign by person or persons unknown.

Also, the newlywed Americans have reportedly been freed by kidnappers in Sri Lanka, but they have yet to be found.

Reverend Moon of the Unification Church may be headed to prison soon on an income-tax conviction.

And President Reagan said getting funding for the MX missile was number one on his agenda right now.

Charlayne? Still Life

HUNTER-GAULT: Finally tonight, pictures from Hollywood taken from the 1940s to the 1970s. It's a strange chronicle of postwar American life as Hollywood wanted us to believe it was. Some are scenes from movies, like eerie frozen moments in time. Others are publicity shots purporting to show the stars in their private lives. Actress Diane Keaton and photographer-dealer Marvin Heiferman assembled the photos in a book which is really an album they call Still Life. Keaton says the photographs are a kind of Hollywood taxidermy -- nothing at all remotely resembling life. The book has also been developed into a museum exhibition. We caught up with it and co-author Marvin Heiferman recently at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington.

BING CROSBY [singing]: "You ought to be in pictures./You're wonderful to see./You ought tobe in pictures,/oh, what a hit you would be."

MARVIN HEIFERMAN, editor, Still Life: We were very interested in finding photographs that showed what America looked like to the people who made the movies, what they were trying to show us about ourselves and this period. And we realized, in looking through these, that as we had grown up on movies and on the media and on photography, that we had taken lots of cues from this kind of material, that you looked at how people dressed and how people stood and, in the movies you got to watch, how people behaved.

[voice-over] There are a number of photographs in the show that portray movie stars just as normal people, like you or me. For example, we have Betty Hutton and her husband at home shown in what we guess is a den or finished basement of their house, supposedly eating a meal, sitting at separate TV tables with no TV, having places set before them with no food on the plates and toasting each other with some kind of red liquid that we don't know what it is. And I guess this is the happy married couple at home.

This photograph shows Ronald Reagan and his first wife, Jane Wyman, at home in 1947. And it appears as if they're high above the Hollywood Hills. You can see the air of Los Angeles accurately depicted as being kind of blue and fuzzy behind them. And they were supposed to be quite relaxed, I guess having just gone for a swim. But in looking at this picture, as in looking at all of them, you realize that in fact they're posing, that they're not really relaxed, that they're holding their breath.

The photograph of "Parrish" with Connie Stevens and Troy Donahue is one of my favorites in the exhibition because it seems to combine a lot of these elements of the show. The story allowed Connie Stevens, who was a poor girl, to bring the rich boy home to meet her family, and they walk in on a tableau scene that shows her family surrounding a formica table staring at the television, and the glow of the television glances off Grandma's beer bottle, and the formica table and even the flamingo pictures in the back. And it's one of the strangest pictures and kind of prefigures the role of television in American life in this movie still.

On certain photographs you realize that with as much care as they took to make thes pictures that the technicians and makeup people themselves made mistakes. There is a photograph of Jane Russell lying on a bed, and if you look at her sexily sprawled across this bed but stare at it for a long enough time, you realize that she's got a bandaid on her big toe, which kind of tones down the effect of the picture, ultimately.

The Lassie photograph was selected because it was the real glamour picture in the bunches that we went through. Here is Lassie in her last feature film in 1949 looking like the American movie star standing on a mound of fake astroturf with a wonderful American sunset behind her looking calm and collected, with just a very thin line of drool coming out of her mouth.

To see all those details, to be able to spend the time and look at them, makes you realize how much an ideal you believed in and how little we pay attention to the details of it and to the construction of an ideal. This is like a look behind the scenes in a certain kind of way. It's seeing the construct of the American dream.

SINGERS: "My star of stars./My star of stars./My star of stars.

HUNTER-GAULT: The museum exhibition is now at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston through June 15th. The book Still Life is published by Calloway Editions. Good night, Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Charlayne. And we'll see you tomorrow night. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.