where's STDOUT?

Procmailers:

I am trying to include some informative text with bounces.
As I understand, procmail's STDOUT is pointed to sendmail,
and whatever sendmail sees there, gets included in the bounce
upon returned a proper exit code (from EX_foo). I've verified
this.

I have seen a number of posts dating back to something like 
1996 where I saw a number of examples on how to accomplish this
in procmail, which is our local delivery agent. It is not 
working :-(

As a test, I have the following procmailrc file, which, as 
I understand it, should echo "foo" in STDOUT, echo whatver
I'm feeding via prodmail's STDIN, and the exit (roughly the
behavior I need under sendmail):

  SHELL=/bin/sh
  LOGFILE=/var/log/procmail.log
  VERBOSE=yes
  PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin
  DROPPRIVS=yes

  :0
  {
        :0 f
        | echo "foo"

        :0
        |

        :0
        {
         EXITCODE=69
         HOST=foobar
        }
  }

I have a file, /tmp/message, that looks like this:

  THIS IS A DUMMY FILE

And the I run this from the command line (as root):

  procmail -d gerir < /tmp/message

root(_at_)blah:~# procmail -d gerir < /tmp/message
> From root  Mon Mar  8 13:01:45 1999
THIS IS A DUMMY FILE
root(_at_)blah:~# 

I see the contents of /tmp/message, but whwre did "foo" go?

> From the logfile:
procmail: [8769] Mon Mar  8 13:01:45 1999
procmail: Assigning "PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin"
procmail: Assigning "DROPPRIVS=yes"
procmail: Assuming identity of the recipient, VERBOSE=off
procmail: Error while writing to "echo"
procmail: Rescue of unfiltered data succeeded
> From root  Mon Mar  8 13:01:45 1999
  Folder: |                                                                  58

I see the "error while writing to echo" but I'm at a loss here.

I followed the directions in 

http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/procmail/1996-01/msg00143.html

to create the recipe: An excerpt:

> > > Stderr is unreachable after an assignment to LOGFILE (unless you clone
> > > procmail before that).
> > > However, stdout is still available.  And, as it happens, sendmail treats
> > > stdout and stderr the same.  Anything that comes out of stdout is put
> > > in the bounce message as well.
> > > Use a recipe like:
> > >        :0
> > >        |
> > > > To dump the current message to stdout.
> > > > To get intermediate texts out without destroying the message in the
> > > > procmail buffer use:
> > > >
> > > >       :0 c
> > > >        {
> > > >                :0 f
> > > >                | echo "Some text you want in the response"
> > > >
> > > >                :0
> > > >                |
> > > >        }
> > > > -- 
> > > > Sincerely,                                                          
> > > > srb(_at_)cuci(_dot_)nl
> > > >           Stephen R. van den Berg (AKA BuGless).

Not being a particularly good C programmer, I can get much from
the code (apologies).

Has this disposition for STDOUT changed? I've tried this with 3.11pre7
and 3.12.

Thanks much.

Gerir