The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, the uproar over sharing public broadcasting's donor lists: Terence Smith has excerpts from today's House hearing; and a debate between Congressmen Oxley and Markey; a key researcher tells about finding a new treatment for heart failure in an old medicine; and Tom Bearden has a set-up report, and Elizabeth Farnsworth runs a discussion about the 30th anniversary of the first walk on the Moon. It all follows our summary of the news this Tuesday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Divers searched again today for the missing plane of john F. Kennedy, Jr.. They were about four miles off the West Coast of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. They were to examine 15 new sonar-targeted sites 80 feet below the surface. Only small pieces of floating debris have been recovered so far. The bodies of Kennedy, his wife Carolyn, and her sister, Lauren Bessette, have not been found. National Transportation Safety Board officials spoke about what they believed happened in the last minutes of the flight.

ROBERT PEARSE, NTSB: The airplane started to descend at about 700 feet per minute on a heading of about 100 degrees magnetic. And the air speed readout, according to the computer, was 160 knots. The descent continued for about five minutes to 2,300 feet when the airplane was about 20 miles from the airport. The airplane started to turn to the right and climbed back to 2,600 feet. It remained at that altitude for about one minute on a southeasterly heading. Thirty seconds into the maneuver, the airplane started a turn to the right and descended at a rapid rate of descent. The rate of descent may have been greater than 5,000 feet per minute.

JIM LEHRER: The legacies of Kennedy's father were commemorated at two Washington events. President Clinton revived President Kennedy's call to action 36 years ago, when he urged the nation's lawyers to assist blacks in the South fighting for equal rights. Mr. Clinton said the legal profession was obligated to diversify and to help the disadvantaged.

He spoke in the White House East Room.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: We will know we have succeeded if more lawyers begin to make community service a vital part of their practice. We will know we will have succeeded when we have more businesses, more heath clinics, more affordable housing in places once bypassed by hope and opportunity. We'll know we will have succeeded when our law schools, our bar associations and our law firms not only represent all Americans but look like all America.

JIM LEHRER: Vice President Gore observed the other legacy of President Kennedy: His vow to put a man on the Moon. Today was the 30th anniversary of the first Moon landing. "Apollo 11" astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins were honored at the Air and Space Museum in Washington. Gore presented them with the Langley Gold Medal for Aviation. We'll have more on the lunar landing later in the program tonight. At Cape Canaveral, Florida, the launch of Space Shuttle "Columbia" was scrubbed just seconds before its 12:30 AM liftoff. A dangerous buildup of hydrogen gas was detected by computers, but NASA officials said later the reading was wrong. They said they would try again on Thursday. The mission is the first to be commanded by a woman. PBS will urge its stations not to share contributor lists with political groups. That was the testimony today of PBS President Ervin Duggan. He spoke to a House panel looking into the list-sharing with the Democratic Party, as well as some conservative and Republican-leaning groups. Republicans demanded a review of PBS funding. Public Broadcasting receives about $250 million a year in federal funds. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. The trade gap widened to an all-time high in May, the Commerce Department reported today. The deficit was $21.3 billion, up nearly 15 percent from April. Foreign oil prices were the highest they've been since late '97. And exports of goods such as civilian aircraft and cars lagged. On Wall Street today, the NASDAQ Index fell. It lost 98 points, or more than 3 percent, to close at 2732. And the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 191 points, or 1.7 percent, at 10,996. On Northern Ireland today, U.S. Mediator George Mitchell met in London with Prime Minister Blair and Irish Prime Minister Ahern. They said they were searching for ways to restart the peace process, which broke down last week. Mitchell said this of the main Protestant and Catholic groups.

GEORGE MITCHELL: Well, I hope very much that they and all of the parties will see the importance of moving this process forward, see the risk of not doing so and come together soon. I said earlier that I like it in my other people of Ireland, of Northern Ireland. I also liked it in my other political leaders of Northern Ireland. I believe them to be men and women of courage acting in very difficult circumstances, and I hope that I can help play some role in enabling them to come together.

JIM LEHRER: Mitchell was to meet later with David Trimble, head of the largest Protestant Party and then go to Belfast, where he will speak with other political leaders. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the PBS lists story, a new treatment for heart failure, and the Moon anniversary.

FOCUS - NEW HOPE

JIM LEHRER: The new hope for those with severe heart failure. It comes from a study with results so dramatic they were published early on the Internet by the "New England Journal of Medicine." The study showed a long-established drug, Aldactone, can cut death rates by 30 percent over a two-year period. Dr. Bertram Pitt is lead author of that study. He is a cardiologist at the University of Michigan Medical Center.

Dr. Pitt, welcome.

DR. BERTRAM PITT, University of Michigan Medical Center: Good evening.

JIM LEHRER: First, let's begin with some basics here. Tell us what heart failure is in the simplest terms.

DR. BERTRAM PITT: Heart failure is an inability of the heart to pump blood or meet the needs of the body. And often when that heart can't do that, fluid builds up in the heart and goes out into the lungs and the patient suffers from shortness of breath and may often have swelling of the legs and their exercise is very limited.

JIM LEHRER: And is heart failure considered a disease with a specific cause?

DR. BERTRAM PITT: There are many causes. It may be an old heart attack; it maybe high blood pressure; it may be a virus or a valvular disease, or sometimes we just don't have the answer.

JIM LEHRER: Heart failure then is more of an end result than it is a disease in and of itself, is that correct?

DR. BERTRAM PITT: Exactly right.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. Now, does it affect people of all ages or only the elderly or what can you tell us about that?

DR. BERTRAM PITT: It affects people of all ages but particularly the elderly because they've often had high blood pressure or suffered heart attack. So, as we have an increasingly elderly population, we're going to see more and more people suffer from heart failure.

JIM LEHRER: Well, now, as we speak now, what is the standard treatment for heart failure?

DR. BERTRAM PITT: Over the last decade the standard treatment has been the use of a drug called an ace inhibitor and a diuretic and very old -- digoxen.

JIM LEHRER: What has been their success rate?

DR. BERTRAM PITT: Well, the ace inhibitors have been very successful in reducing mortality but even with the standard therapy, the ace inhibitors, the diuretics, and digoxen, people with severe heart failure still have a very high death rate. For instance, in our study, patients with severe heart failure, 20 percent of them died each year. So that's worse than many cancers. So this a very serious and often, often, a very debilitating disease.

JIM LEHRER: All right. So, then you all started your study with Aldactone. First, tell us what Aldactone is.

DR. BERTRAM PITT: Aldactone is a drug that blocks one of the hormones in the body called aldosterone.

JIM LEHRER: And that is important for what reason?

DR. BERTRAM PITT: Well, aldosterone is a hormone that normally is present to preserve fluid in the body and to repair the body. But in heart failure it causes a lot of very bad things that sort of lead to more shortness of breath, it causes more fluid retention, it stiffens the heart and the great vessels. It damages the vessels and it predisposes to sudden death.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. Now, Aldactone has been around a while, right?

DR. BERTRAM PITT: It's been around for over 30 years.

JIM LEHRER: And it's been used to treat what, cirrhosis of the liver and things like that, right?

DR. BERTRAM PITT: It has been used for cirrhosis of the liver, and it was used for heart failure many years ago but over the last decade, most doctors felt that when they used this new class of drug, ace inhibitors, they didn't really need Aldactone because they felt that the ace inhibitors also blocked this hormone, aldosterone. But that turns out not to be true. The ace inhibitors do it for a short period of time but after several months, the aldosterone levels rise way above normal and begin to exert all their bad effects.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. So, when did you start your new study with Aldactone, and why did you start it? What caused you I think, my goodness, hey, let's go back to Aldactone and try it on heart failure patients?

DR. BERTRAM PITT: Well, there were observations many years ago by an investigator in Belgium actually in patients with heart failure who was using one of the ace inhibitors in patients and found that despite the fact they gave very good doses of the ace inhibitor, that the aldosterone levels were rising. And they didn't get rid of aldosterone. And that was a clue to us that we needed to do something else. We had done a lot of the studies with ace inhibitors and we saw that although we had good benefits, still people were dying, still people had recurrent heart failure and were hospitalized.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Now, how many people were involved in your study?

DR. BERTRAM PITT: We had a little over 1,600 patients with severe heart failure studied in many countries around the world.

JIM LEHRER: And what are the results?

DR. BERTRAM PITT: Well, the results are pretty dramatic. On top of standard therapy, the patients who got this drug, Aldactone, had an improvement in survival by 30 percent, and they had a reduction in their incidence of hospitalization for heart failure of 36 percent. And they said they felt better and less people said they felt worse. So this was a pretty dramatic and pretty uniform finding.

JIM LEHRER: Over what period of time did you run this study?

DR. BERTRAM PITT: The mean follow-up of these patients was about two years. Actually, we had planned to go further almost about another year and a half, but last August the trial was prematurely stopped because the patients were felt to be at great risk by continuing them on standard therapy.

JIM LEHRER: So you decided we've got the results that are so good so let's stop it and get on with it?

DR. BERTRAM PITT: Yes. There was an independent group of physicians who were monitoring the study who were unblinded to the results. I was blinded at the time.

JIM LEHRER: What does that mean?

DR. BERTRAM PITT: I couldn't tell who was getting the drug and who was getting a placebo. But there was a group of people around the world who were watching, and they knew exactly what was happening. And they felt that it would be unethical to go on and expose patients to great risk without receiving this drug.

JIM LEHRER: You mean the people who were taking the placebo were the ones who were going to be at risk because you'd go ahead and give them the medicine now -

DR. BERTRAM PITT: Absolutely. They felt we shouldn't keep using the standard therapy. We should add Aldactone to the standard therapy.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Now, is this something that can this be done tomorrow by any doctor in the world?

DR. BERTRAM PITT: Absolutely, because this drug has been around, it's available, and it's very inexpensive throughout the world.

JIM LEHRER: Like what?

DR. BERTRAM PITT: Well, it costs pennies a day. It varies obviously. It's made by Surrell Pharmaceuticals but there are many copies around the world, and I think it costs probably about a dime a day or something like that.

JIM LEHRER: This must be awfully exciting for you?

DR. BERTRAM PITT: It is. It's been very exciting because most of our colleagues really didn't believe that this would be effective. And if you look at most of the studies of heart failure, maybe about 1 percent of patients were really receiving this drug. So this is going to have a major impact around the world. And you probably know that in the elderly at least, that heart failure is the most common form of hospitalization and the most expensive. So the ability to reduce hospitalization should have a major impact on health care expenditures throughout the world.

JIM LEHRER: Give as you feel for how many people we're talking about here in the United States.

DR. BERTRAM PITT: Well, there are probably about four million to five million people who have heart failure in the United States. And, of those, I would say probably about a quarter have severe heart failure. So that's the group that we're particularly focused on with this study.

JIM LEHRER: And if this study holds true with the practical application for all these people, that means that 30 percent of them are going to live a lot longer.

DR. BERTRAM PITT: Exactly right.

JIM LEHRER: How many people were in your team who did all of this?

DR. BERTRAM PITT: Well, there are several hundred investigators around the world who cooperated and it was in Europe, the United States, South America, Japan. So this was really a worldwide study.

JIM LEHRER: Well, Dr. Pitt, congratulations to you and to all of them.

DR. BERTRAM PITT: Thank you very much.

JIM LEHRER: Thank you for being with us.

FOCUS - ONE GIANT LEAP

JIM LEHRER: And now the 30th anniversary of the Apollo Moon shot. Tom Bearden begins.

SPOKESMAN: 50 Seconds. Lights on. Forward, forward. Picking up some dust.

TOM BEARDEN: It went right down to the wire. The computer had the lunar module headed straight for a boulder field. Mission Commander Neil Armstrong had to take manual control, and they were running out of fuel. Controllers in Houston were on the edge of their seats.

SPOKESMAN: Contact light, okay, engine stop.

SPOKESMAN: We copy you down, "Eagle."

TOM BEARDEN: Finally, the lunar module settled on the surface.

SPOKESMAN: Houston, tranquility base Here. The "Eagle" has landed.

TOM BEARDEN: And so ended the race to the Moon between the United States and the Soviet Union. It began in 1957, when Americans awoke to the news the Russians had launched sputnik, the first manmade object to achieve orbit. [Beeping] Sputnik shattered the nation's comfortable myth of technical superiority, and the Russians went on to achieve many notable firsts in space: The first man to orbit the planet, and the first woman. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy set America's goal.

PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY: I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal before this decade is out of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.

TOM BEARDEN: It was more ambitious than many Americans realized. At the time, U.S. astronauts had spent a mere 15 1/2 minutes in space.

SPOKESMAN: 40 seconds away from the "Apollo 11" liftoff.

TOM BEARDEN: Just eight years later, a million people gathered in Florida to witness the launch of "Apollo 11." Hundreds of millions more watched on television.

SPOKESMAN: Ten, nine -- ignition sequence started. Six -

TOM BEARDEN: At 9:32 AM, the enormous Saturn Five main booster ignited, hurling Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin into Earth orbit.

SPOKESMAN: Roger, 11. We'll pass that on. And it certainly looks like you're

well on your way now.

TOM BEARDEN: Three hours later, command module "Columbia" extracted and docked with lunar module "Eagle," and began the 240,000-mile journey to the Moon. They reached lunar orbit three days later. "Eagle" separated from "Columbia" and descended to the surface. As nearly the entire planet watched, Armstrong became the first member of the human race to touch another world.

SPOKESMAN: That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

TOM BEARDEN: Armstrong and Aldrin tested their balance in the moon's reduced gravity, collected samples of lunar rocks and dust, and planted an American flag.

SPOKESMAN: They're setting up the flag now. I guess you're about the only person around that doesn't have TV coverage of the scene.

SPOKESMAN: That's all right. I don't mind a bit.

SPOKESMAN: Ah, jeez, that's great. Is the lighting halfway decent?

SPOKESMAN: Yes, indeed. They've got the flag up now. You can see the stars and

stripes now on the lunar surface.

SPOKESMAN: Beautiful, just beautiful.

BUZZ ALDRIN, Astronaut, Apollo II: I certainly felt that the American flag is what belonged there. It's a characteristic of previous explorations, to plant a symbol upon arriving at a new shore. And it indeed was a philosophical moment of achievement. It was also a technical challenge, as we found that the flag didn't exactly perform as we put it together. It didn't stick in the ground exactly the way we thought it would. There was no breeze to wave it, so we had to artificially create a little breeze.

ASTRONAUT: Go ahead, Mr. President, this is Houston, out.

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: Hello, Neil and Buzz.

TOM BEARDEN: From Earth, a jubilant President Richard Nixon gave the crew congratulations from an exultant nation.

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: Because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of man's world. And as you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquility, it

inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to Earth. For one priceless moment in the whole history of man, all the people on this Earth are truly

one, one in their pride of what you have done and one in our prayers that you will return

safely to Earth.

TOM BEARDEN: The astronauts spent a little more than two hours outside the lunar module on the surface of the Moon. The next day, "Eagle" lifted off and docked with "Columbia." After transferring the crew and lunar samples to the command module, "Eagle" was jettisoned, eventually to crash on the Moon.

SPOKESMAN: A thousand feet high, eighty feet per second vertical rise. Apollo 11, Houston, to arrive standing by. Over.

TOM BEARDEN: "Columbia" splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24th. [Band playing] The returning astronauts got a hero's welcome, complete with a ticker tape parade. There were five more lunar missions, the last one in December 1972. In all, 12 Americans walked on the surface of the moon. [Cheers] In a rare press conference last Friday, Armstrong appeared with three other astronauts who walked on the Moon, including Aldrin. He reflected on the meaning of his journey 30 years ago.

BUZZ ALDRIN: The important achievement of "Apollo" was a demonstration that humanity is not forever chained to this planet, and our visions go rather further than that and our opportunities are unlimited.

SPOKESMAN: "Columbia", "Columbia", this is Houston. Over.

TOM BEARDEN: The astronauts said there were compelling reasons to go back to the Moon and on to Mars and the other planets.

JIM LEHRER: Some perspective now in a discussion taped yesterday by Elizabeth Farnsworth in San Francisco.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: For more on the Apollo Moon Landing we turn to NewsHour regulars Presidential Historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Michael Beschloss and Journalist and Author Haynes Johnson. Joining them are former astronaut Mae Jemison, who was with NASA from 1987 to 1993; she was on the "Endeavour" shuttle mission in 1992 and now teaches environmental studies at Dartmouth University; and Andrew Chaiken, a contributing editor of "Popular Science" and author of "A Man on the Moon." Thank you for being with us.

Haynes Johnson, as you look back on those events with 30 years' hindsight, what is most memorable and significant for you?

HAYNES JOHNSON: I'll never forget being down at the Cape when they left for the Moon. I used to go down and cover those shots as they'd take off. And this was different from all of them, not only because it was going to the Moon, but the sense of the crowds. I remember staying up all night walking along the beaches in Florida, and the place was swarming with people. I mean, exultation, the excitement -- nobody knew what was going to happen, but they knew they were part of something that possibly was going to be history if it worked out all right, and everybody felt good about it, but that sense of something that no one had ever experienced before was electric. And, remember, too, it came at a terrible time in our history against the backdrop of a lot of failures; the assassinations of two Presidents, Martin Luther King, Vietnam, racial riots, a sense America wasn't doing well. And all of a sudden we're about to go off to the Moon. And I remember one last thing; my father was born in 1904, and he told me after it was over, he said, I never thought I would live in the century, that I was born two years before the Wright Brothers took off from Kitty Hawk, and we've seen all these things, can you imagine we're actually going to the Moon? So I think there was an enormous sense of excitement and a sense of sharing.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Doris, what stands out as most memorable for you?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Well, I think Haynes is right, that it came as the culmination of an over-decade-long race in space with the Soviet Union, and it's important to remember that it was part of the Cold War and that when Sputnik first went up in 1957, there was this theory that our system wasn't capable of producing this great collective action as the space race required, that maybe our educational system wasn't up to part, that a dictatorship was better than a democracy. And here finally we won the race with this incredible shot to the Moon. I happened to be in Texas at the ranch with President Johnson, and he'd been an integral part of this. He was in the Senate at the time of Sputnik. He was responsible for the NASA Act in '58, the National Aeronautics & Space Act. He had been the Vice President in charge of space, so he set up this whole picnic table that we were going to watch the whole night of television, but then they didn't mention him on the air. I remember, he was so mad. He thought, I was part of all this, and meanwhile, it's all Kennedy, and now it's Nixon, so he then turned the television off. But I did get to see the space shot, nonetheless, and the Moon walk.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Dr. Jemison, this seems to be one of these events where everybody remembers where they were. Where were you?

MAE JEMISON: I was at home. I was just going on 12 years old. But I recollect it a little bit differently. You know, I know that for adults perhaps and those in the political arena that it was all about the space race with the Soviet Union. But as a child growing up during the space era, for me, it was really about expanding our boundaries. I had always assumed that we'd go into space. So, this, for me, was a very natural step. And I was looking forward to more. So it has a little bit different meaning, I think, depending on where you were sitting. I knew that, yes, we wanted to beat the Russians, but at the same time, for me it was just we had accomplished something, not just we as Americans but we as a species as humans, that we were expanding our presence. So it's very hopeful to me.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Did it play a role, that event in itself, in your wanting to be an astronaut?

MAE JEMISON: Well, I was always interested in the space program, and I had always wanted to go into space. I'd sort of play a little equivocation here and say that it wasn't whether I wanted to be an astronaut or not; I just wanted to go up there. I thought it was part of our human destiny, so it was something that I watched, but back when I was five years old, I always assumed I was going to go.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Michael Beschloss, expand on something that both Haynes and Doris have touched on, the fact that Americans could use some good news at that time. Remind us what was happening.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Well, that was at the end of the 1960's, the summer of 1969 was Richard Nixon's first summer as President. He was beginning to pull troops out of Vietnam, but very slowly, Americans were very angry about the fact that he was extending that war, as he was to do for about four years. There were anti-war protests all over the country. The Woodstock Music and Art Festival was only a couple of days really before the Moon landing. That was a celebration but it also gave you a little bit of a sense of the counterculture. This was a society that was coming apart and for at least a moment when Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon, here we were in the middle of an exhilarating national experience, in which we were all united. We thought it was a wonderful thing; it was almost like landing on Normandy on D-Day, or building the interstate highway system in the 1950's. I was out in Illinois. I was 13 years old, and I got caught up in the space mania too. Pan Am, when there still was a Pan American Airways, had little kids write in for reservations on the first commercial flight to the Moon, and they'd send you a little card, which I still have, and I've Reservation-something-like-1648, and I thought this was something that was just very normal, Americans to do these things, and we'd have these experiences again. The sad thing is that over the last 30 years we Americans have had very few experiences of that kind that we all agree on and that bring us together.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Andrew Chaiken, was it a unique historical moment in that the development of technology, politics, and also the economy came together to make this possible?

ANDREW CHAIKEN: Yes, it really was. I mean, looking back on it, I cannot escape the feeling that Apollo happened at a unique moment, and that it really was a historical fluke. I mean, if you think about it, the reason we went to the Moon, even though I agree with Mae Jemison that it had the impact as a milestone not only for this country but for the human species, the real reason we went to the Moon was to beat the Soviets, and at that time in the early 60's Kennedy was motivated by the perceived threat to the country from the Soviet advances in space; the economy was strong, so we could pay for something like a Moon landing, although there was a lot of political opposition to it; and the technology was just becoming available. I mean, if Kennedy had tried to do this, or if Eisenhower had tried to do this, which he was not inclined to do, even a few years earlier, we wouldn't have been ready. When I look back on this now and - by the way - it's not just Apollo XI - there were five more landings, and they did amazing things on each one of those missions -- in fact, by the time the program ended, they were driving a battery-powered car across the Moon and onto the sides of lunar mountains, and picking up rocks as old as the solar system itself, so it really was a mini age of lunar exploration. But I'm really struck by how strange it is to be looking back on something like going to the Moon as a thing of the past. It's almost - I like what Gene Sirnin said, who was the last man to walk on the Moon - and he said it's almost as if Kennedy seized a decade out of the 21st century and spliced it into the 1960's, it was almost like this taste of the future that we got, and then we said goodbye, and stopped doing it.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: I want to come back tothat, but just very briefly, Mr. Chaiken, give us a sense of the size of this undertaking. How many people did it take, engineers and all the rest, to get those people on the Moon?

ANDREW CHAIKEN: Well, it was clearly the largest effort certainly in peacetime in human history -- four hundred thousand people around the country working for the better part of a decade just to accomplish that first landing -- teams at NASA at universities in the military, at government contractors, and you know, I experienced these missions as a kid just like Mae Jemison did, sitting in front of the TV, and that was one experience of it, and then when I wrote "A Man on the Moon," I spent eight years talking to the astronauts and many of the other people who worked with them. And I have to tell you that even now -- and I keep meeting people from other phases of the program -- I still can't comprehend Apollo. It is just such a vast undertaking. And to me that is really the impact of it, is that it stands as probably the quintessential story of human cooperation and ingenuity -- the fact that people were able to band together and to accomplish something not only to accomplish something that seemed like science fiction but to do it with a deadline, and it was a truly remarkable period in our history.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Dr. Jemison, comment on that, yes, and also tell us about what was achieved scientifically, bringing those -- the species of rocks and dust back -- what was achieved?

MAE JEMISON: Well, I'd like to go back and just tie in a piece of what happened during the 60's even though many people look at the 60's as a time of the country falling apart. I think growing up that it was a very hopeful time, that we were looking at experimenting and expanding; we were talking about including more people. So really going to the Moon was part of that expansion for me, and so I look at it a little differently. What did we accomplish? Well, we brought back Moon rocks. It's not just, ooh, we can get to hold onto them. But you get to understand some of the geology of the formation of the solar system, other planets. What does that mean to us? Would we have an opportunity to go there and establish a lunar base? Could we live there? On top of that, there were a series of just scientific technological achievements that were necessary. You needed to be able to monitor people from a distance. You also had to have the capability to do docking, new navigation techniques, new materials. So there was an extraordinary amount of science that occurred. And one of the other things that was very exciting is the fact that as we went to the Moon, as we built this research, this technological feat -- it also pumped up the rest of the U.S. science research base so that other achievements were made in other areas, as well as the whole idea of the importance of science and science literacy, that we need to make sure that this happens for our students.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Yes, go ahead.

ANDREW CHAIKEN: Elizabeth, I just want to jump in and say that, you know, even though we're looking back on this and even though we have not been back to the Moon, I want to echo what Mae just said, which is that, you know, Apollo really was the opening act in a story --

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Yes. And I want you to look forward now for me, because we don't have a lot of time --

ANDREW CHAIKEN: That's right.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: -- and tell me what happened and what's happening now.

ANDREW CHAIKEN: Well, I mean, Apollo was just the beginning, and basically we can look ahead to the next century and say with confidence that human beings will walk on other planets, it's part of our make-up as human beings, and, in fact, in the next millennium I would say it's likely that we'll even go to other stars, and Apollo will always be seen as the beginning of that endless story which will go on as long as we have the ability to build machines and venture out into the universe, and we're lucky to be alive when it all started.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Doris Kearns Goodwin -- sorry -- there was another aspect to this, the fact that we saw Earth from space. Talk about that.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Well, I'm sure that's true. There was a sense of humility and a sense of how small we are in this large universe that I think when you saw those pictures coming back, we saw ourselves from another vantage point, but I think the most important lesson of Apollo is not simply scientific, not simply the space race, but it shows what happens when a democracy mobilizes collective effort and will and has spacious goals and puts its mind to the task. We obviously saw that in World War II when we did this incredible production enterprise that allowed us to beat the axis power. We saw it with the Moon race, and sadly we don't see it in the same way today, and I think if we remember Apollo, we should remember not simply the scientific achievement, but what it means when we're willing to work hard to put the resources and to collectively achieve something. We have poverty in this country; we have income distribution problems; we have educational problems. We could do it again, and if we remember that, then we've remembered something important about Apollo.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Do you also -- do you agree that's the main legacy, Haynes?

HAYNES JOHNSON: I think it was a human story that transcends everything else, and I think Doris is right about the cooperation and certainly right about the science and technological achievements of the 20th century that were going on simultaneously when America was falling apart -- we were doing the best and the worst times, and out of this came quite a remarkable achievement but it's a human story which we can all share.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Michael Beschloss, do you think that --

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Doris and Haynes are absolutely right, but one thing it also shows is that when a leader asks for something, he should really argue for it on the right terms. John Kennedy made the point that we need to go to the Moon fast by 1970 to win the Cold War. The Moon landing really didn't have much to do with the Cold War at all. In retrospect, it had almost nothing to do with our winning the Cold War, and the problem with that was the second we landed on the Moon, people said, all right, we've done it, now it's not necessary, and that is one reason why the space program has been largely in the dumpster for the last 30 years.

ANDREW CHAIKEN: Do I have time to make one more comment?

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Yes. Actually let me ask Mae Jemison about that. Do you agree that that's why the space program hasn't been as active recently?

MAE JEMISON: I think that there is a whole problem with we've been there, we've done that, and so actually there were three more missions that were set to go, and the equipment was already built, so yes, we did very much have that syndrome. At the same time, I think that it is this whole idea of why are we going into space to help people to understand why do we want to continue and also inclusiveness, who do we include in exploration, who do we see as our -- as our leaders, as our science, our military, our political leaders, and so part of the reason, I think, the space program is lagging a bit is because we haven't had that scientific leadership; we haven't had that push, and sometimes people haven't seen the space program as inclusive, and so I'm real thrilled that tonight Eileen Collins is going to be launching as a commander.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The first woman to command a shuttle, right, a shuttle flight?

MAE JEMISON: Exactly. And I would be derelict if I didn't say that what we have to do now is to look forward and to figure out what are we going to do, how do we maintain this impetus, how do we make sure that we are including as many people as possible, using all of our talent, as space has fundamentally changed our lives, not just our perspective, but what we expect to be able to monitor, to be able to understand our own planet, ourselves, and communicate with one another.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Andrew Chaiken, you get the last word.

ANDREW CHAIKEN: Well, I want to say, you know, Kennedy did say one other speech that I remember, which is that we choose to go to the Moon -- he said, we choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things not because they're easy but because they're hard; and I think Kennedy understood that space exploration was good for us because it's good for societies to do hard things.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Thank you all very much for being with us.

ANDREW CHAIKEN: Thank you.

HAYNES JOHNSON: Thank you.

MAE JAMISON: Thank you.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Thank you.

FOCUS - FUNDING PBS

JIM LEHRER: And, finally tonight, our media correspondent Terence Smith has the PBS story.

[BARNEY SHOW SEGMENT]

TERENCE SMITH: Earlier this year, the mother of a four-year-old Barney fan said Boston Public Television Station WGBH a $40 contribution in her son's name. Shortly thereafter, her son received a fund-raising letter, not from WGBH, but from the Democratic National Committee. Mystified, the mother inquired with the station and found that WGBH had been swapping donor lists with the Democratic National Committee-- not once, but repeatedly, some 32,000 names over the course of several years. When the news broke, further inquiries revealed that stations in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and WETA in Washington, a co-producer of the NewsHour, have engaged in similar list-swapping. Donor lists have been provided to Republican organizations as well, including the 1996 Robert Dole Presidential Campaign.

SPOKESMAN: The subcommittee will please come to order.

TERENCE SMITH: Today, the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications held an emergency hearing regarding these so-called list swaps. Republican Chairman Billy Tauzin of Louisiana opened the hearing with harsh words for PBS.

REP. W. J. "BILLY" TAUZIN: A publicly supported entity should think for a moment that it has the right to trade private information about the citizens of this country who deem to support it with any third party for commercial benefit is outrageous -- should be outlawed if it is not yet, and will be outlawed if we have the chance to do so in legislation this year. Secondly, trading that information with a political party, with a public broadcast station cozying up to any political party, any of the political parties in America is outrageous. The idea that public funds spent at a public broadcast station should inure to the benefit of any one of the political parties of our country is outrageous. It threatens the integrity of public broadcasting, it further deepens the suspicion that many people have had about public broadcasting, and it damages the efforts being made in Washington, D.C. and across America to build public support.

TERENCE SMITH: Almost all committee members in attendance echoed the chairman's disappointment with the PBS member stations.

REP. THOMAS SAWYER: Thank you for having this hearing. I think we all come here with a measure of discomfort over the specifics that bring us here today. And the notion that broadcasters would sell donor lists to any third party brings deep dismay at the fact that my donation would be available as a matter of what I would never have suspected to be public record.

TERENCE SMITH: Among the committee's first panel of witnesses was Robert Coonrod, president and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

ROBERT COONROD: Mr. Chairman the information I'm going to give you is not comprehensive but it is accurate. It will take us time to develop the comprehensive information, and our inspector general will be assisting in that process and we will be able to provide a comprehensive report on the practices in the near future. But based on what we know today, approximately 50 public television stations out of 353 public television station, that's about 15 percent, exchange lists with other non-profit organizations. Almost all of that them do at that by the use of list brokers or intermediaries. Now, 30 stations have rented lists from political organizations. Fewer than 30 also appear to have exchanged member lists with political entities of either or both parties. By exchange we mean they have made their donor names available in return. We do not condone the buying, selling or trading of lists with partisan political campaigns or committees. Under the CPB procedures, the inspector general will -- has been informed of these reports, the reports that we have, and we will cooperate fully with whatever factual review the inspector general undertakes and we will cooperate with whatever recommendations he makes.

REP. CHRISTOPHER COX: Mr. Coonrod, what action have you taken against the stations?

ROBERT COONROD: Unless the stations have violated some law or regulation, there won't be any sanctions.

REP. CHRISTOPHER COX: You would not have any repercussions, no sanctions, unless there were a proven violation of law?

ROBERT COONROD: I think that what -- I think if a station makes its donor list available to a political party, that is wrong. However, it is not illegal.

REP. CHRISTOPHER COX: You can't state that categorically, can you?

ROBERT COONROD: I can't state what categorically?

REP. CHRISTOPHER COX: That sharing your list with a political party is not illegal?

ROBERT COONROD: I'm not an attorney nor an expert in the I.R.S. code. But there are ways that can be done in which it is entirely legal.

TERENCE SMITH: Ervin Duggan is president and CEO of the Public Broadcasting Service.

ERVIN DUGGAN: Many stations have policies against such practices. Clearly, however, these policies need better auditing, they need strong enforcement and they need to be universal. We need to have a universal ethic throughout our system. Fortunately, our stations are now acutely aware of this issue, and they are taking steps even as we meet to address it quickly and forthrightly. In light of these recent developments, PBS's development office and our development advisory committee made up of station leaders in the development field are issuing an advisory this week strongly urging our member stations to establish policies strictly prohibiting the exchange or rental of lists to partisan political campaigns,committees or groups. And I would like to echo what my colleague, Bob Coonrod, has just said: That we are very much in favor as members of the committee are in favor of strict privacy policies that prevent unauthorized use of member or donor names of an absolute prohibition against the partisan use of lists or names, and I personally am very much attracted to Congressman Stearns' suggestion of a distinguished group who could do a review of current practices and make strong recommendations about what the ethics should be. We, of course, will be leading an effort of that sort within our enterprise but I think it would help restore trust to have the kind of independent review that Congressman Stearns spoke of.

TERENCE SMITH: Before dismissing the panel, Chairman Tauzin recommended the Corporation for Public Broadcasting provide the committee with weekly reports on its internal investigation of the list swapping. That probe is expected to take at least 30 days.

Jim.

JIM LEHRER: We had hoped to bring you a debate on PBS spending with two of the congressmen who were present at today's hearing, but they are unable to join us due to votes on unrelated matters now going on on the House floor. We'll come back to this debate on a later date.

FOCUS - MULTIMEDIA

JIM LEHRER: Instead, how a new high-tech industry is changing one American city. Spencer Michels reports.

SPENCER MICHELS: In a converted factory in a once blue collar neighborhood in San Francisco, a young puppeteer donned a costume of wires and sensors that linked him to a computer. He works for a four-year-old company called Protozoa. The firm's unique product is a motion capture, computerized system, a kind of performance animation that gives life to a digital cartoon figure whose movements are controlled by the dancing puppeteer. Just down the hall, a production team from the BBC uses Protozoa's high-tech equipment to create a children's television show. These sophisticated technologies plus new approaches to the Internet are examples of what is called multi-media, a revolution that is bringing great and controversial change to San Francisco. New companies and their highly skilled employees are moving into old industrial neighborhoods, raising rents and changing the culture and look of the city. Protozoa is renting space in a building that was abandoned a decade ago by the company that made Best Foods and Hellmann's Mayonnaise. Because the building was too expensive to modernize, the plant was closed and 120 workers let go.

JOE ARZAC, Former Best Foods Employee: That's the cafeteria right up there. Right here used to be the dump station.

SPENCER MICHELS: Joe and Lygia Arzac met and then married when they both worked at Best Foods. He started in 1963 making $2.12 an hour, a little below what high-tech workers in the building make today.

JOE ARZAC: I started here when I was 19 years old. After six months they moved me up to the fourth floor where the processing was, more money also, you know.

SPENCER MICHELS: Were you satisfied in those days?

JOE ARZAC: I was very happy to get that.

LYGIA ARZAC, Former Best Foods Employee: The first woman to have a men's job in here, and that was doing the forklift. I also mixed tartar sauce, mayonnaise. You name it. I did it from the basement to the fourth floor.

SPENCER MICHELS: Like the factory building across the street, which has not yet been renovated, the old mayonnaise plant decayed. Developers Rick Kaufman and Curtis Eisenburger bought the building and they talked about it in a new cafe on the ground floor.

RICK KAUFMAN,VP, Maripose Management Company: In 1995, if you had seen this building in that original time, there were thousands of dead pigeons, the building was a health hazard. It was seismically unsafe.

CURTIS EISENBERGER, President, Maripose Management Company: This was considered a dangerous area. It wasn't a place that you came at night. When we came here, we saw a vision and we saw an opportunity. We had an inkling of the burgeoning of the multi-media industry in San Francisco.

SPENCER MICHELS: They weren't the only ones. Throughout the industrial southern portion of the city, historic buildings have been snapped up for conversion to make space for tiny startups as well as larger companies capitalizing on the Internet. Look Smart, a company that categorizes and reviews Internet sites, was attracted to San Francisco because other multi-media firms had already started moving here. They had come because prices in old converted buildings were affordable because Silicon Valley, home of high-tech, was just an hour away -- and because prospective employees found the city, its culture and its tolerance for diverse lifestyles attractive. CEO Evan Thornly and his wife Tracy Elery moved Look Smart here from here from Australia.

EVAN THORNLY: We're an Internet business. In the Internet world this is the center of the universe, and so we have to be here. This industry is about deals. Deals get done here. So we moved the company over here.

SPENCER MICHELS: Multi-media or interactive media, as it's sometimes called, uses both designers and engineers. It merges information technology, graphic arts, video, sound and print into products including video laden Internet web pages and computer animation. San Francisco's multi-media related employment now around 30,000 jumped 70 percent in two years and is climbing rapidly. In the city alone, it's a $2.2 billion industry. Macromedia, a veteran company that began in 1992, is one of the biggest and the oldest firms with 550 employees, most of them here.

NORMAN MEYROWTIZ, President of Products, Macromedia: It has audio, it has animations.

SPENCER MICHELS: Norm Meyrowitz, president of products for Macromedia, demonstrated how his firm's software products enliven web sites like this one from Volkswagen.

NORMAN MEYROWITZ: So, let's say I'm really interested in what this looks like. I've only seen a view from the front. I can actually see a view from the side. Well, often when you see car brochures, you see a car in one color and you have paint swatches, I want to see what the car looks like in yellow; I want to see what it looks like in red; I want to see what it looks like in green; I want to see what it looks like in silver.

SPENCER MICHELS: The people who build and market Macromedia's products are often young, well educated, well paid and sometimes a little off the wall, a culture encouraged in this industry and well tolerated by the city. 28-year-old marketing manager Kevin Ellis.

KEVIN ELLIS: It's young, it's energetic. People like to have fun. They like to work hard but they like to play hard, too.

SPENCER MICHELS: How hard to you have to work?

KEVIN ELLIS: You have to work pretty hard, but it's actually enjoyable. I work somewhere between 50 and 65 hours on a normal week.

SPENCER MICHELS: More than in many industries, multi-media workers who spend hours staring at computer screens hang out with each other at company-organized functions and at neighborhood spots. One favorite is South Park, a grassy, urban enclave in what has become known as Multimedia Gulch. Here workers can exchange ideas and even recruit each other. The park itself like the city has been transformed by the new industry, according to Mark Wolfe, who has a PhD candidate in city planning has written about the area.

MARK WOLFE, Graduate Student, UC Berkeley: It was basically a slum, median incomes of its residents were well below the city's median. Property values and rents were well below the city median and over the course of I would say 1985 to about 1995, the entire neighborhood did a complete 180. And it is now one of the city's most expensive neighborhoods to live. It's one of the city's most expensive neighborhoods to rent office space in. It's one of the city's most trendy neighborhoods in terms of restaurants, bars, nightclubs, things like that. And I would say that the engine of this transformation is the multimedia industry.

SPENCER MICHELS: Some people say that while multimedia has brought jobs to the city, it has also displaced residents and more traditional small businesses in Multimedia Gulch. Amelita Pascual is director of the South of Market Foundation which represents those interests.

AMELITA PASCUAL: We support small businesses so that they can create jobs for low-income residents.

SPENCER MICHELS: But according to Pascual, high-tech success has forced low-tech to move.

AMELITA PASCUAL: They have had to leave because they can no longer afford the rents. We did a study two years ago and rents have gone up by 63 percent. And I'm sure it's more than that now.

SPENCER MICHELS: When companies move, less skilled workers lose jobs. Individuals and families in once moderately priced neighborhoods have seen their rents skyrocket. In one district, hundreds of posters mysteriously started appearing calling for vandalism against upscale restaurants and vehicles. Mark Wolfe says the rent increases have triggered great concern that San Francisco is gentrifying and losing its low-income residents.

MARK WOLFE: What it is doing is transforming the social and economic and demographic flavor of those neighborhoods radically. The city's housing market right now I think is the most prohibitively expensive of any city in the United States.

SPENCER MICHELS: For San Francisco, a major challenge now is to train workers who may have been displaced by high-tech to participate in the multimedia boom. In the renovated mayonnaise plant, the Bay Area Video Coalition with grant from government and private companies is teaching new media, computers, graphic, programming to hundreds of young people -- among them, the daughter of former factory worker Lygia Arzac who want to join the multimedia revolution. It's a force that is transforming this city and causing other cities with unproductive neighborhoods to wonder if they, too, could join the party.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the other major story of this Tuesday: Divers searched the ocean floor off Martha's Vineyard, but have not yet found the missing plane carrying John F. Kennedy, Jr., his wife, Carolyn, and her sister. We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.