Thursday, May 6, 1999
The University Daily Kansan
Section A·Page 7
Nation/World
Twister survivors sift through rubble
Damages estimates rise to $225 million death total reaches 43
OKLAHOMA CITY — When John and Sheryl Molsbee were allowed back to their brick-and-frame home yesterday, the roof was gone but Monday's macaroni dinner was still in a pot on the stove.
The Associated Press
"I it's worse than I thought," said John Molsbee, who wasn't home when massive twisters leveled 3,000 homes and killed 38 people in Oklahoma. Five people also were killed by tornadoes in Kansas.
"I told you it was," said his wife, who hid with the 19-year-old daughter, Kristy, under a blue flowered mattress in the master bedroom, then helped pull injured people from the wreckage left behind.
The Molsbees were among hundreds of people left homeless by the tornadoes who were allowed to return yesterday to assess the damage.
Shelters were made available throughout the area for short-term housing, while officials made long-term arrangements for the suddenly homeless.
"We're not talking tent cities," said Ben Frizzell of the state Office of Civil Emergency Management. "There is a disaster housing program through FEMA that will provide rental assistance for up to 18 months if needed. Some people may even use this to rent travel trailers to put on their property."
The American Red Cross also passed out vouchers for people to stay in motels until other provisions could be made. Churches distributed food and clothes.
Bucky Kilbourne, who was running a shelter at the Midwest City Community Center, said 220 people took refuge there Monday night, but the number had dwindled to 60 by yesterday. He said hearing the stories of the displaced was almost more than he could bear.
"Everything they hold dear,
things they need — from medicine
to books to personal belongings
— all gone," he said.
Officials said nearly 700 people
were injured in the deadliest tornado to hit Oklahoma since 1947. The damage estimate has been placed at more than $225 million. At least 1,500 businesses and homes in Kansas also were destroyed or heavily damaged in Monday's storms.
More twisters swarmed across parts of Texas and Arkansas Tuesday, killing one person.
All around Oklahoma City, cars
President Clinton has authorized emergency disaster declarations for Oklahoma and Kansas, paving the way for federal emergency funds for home and business owners. The Federal Emergency Management Agency had 300 staff members on hand to assist victims and officials.
— some with smashed windows — formed grim processions as those lucky enough to have survived passed through police and National Guard checkpoints to view what was left of their homes before curfews resumed at 8 p.m.
At the Oakcrest Church of Christ, Jean Clemence of Moore was walking around in a daze as her children gathered goods and
other non-perishables from a food pantry hastily set up in a Sunday school class.
She and her boyfriend had ordered a storm cellar back in November, but the man who was supposed to install it dug the hole and just left it. Clemence said she had asked for the down payment back, and the man promised to come back yesterday.
"He's six months too late," she said. "We're going to get our money back, I don't care. I think he owes us."
In the Molsbees neighborhood, Shirley and Bennie Johnson's house was serving as a restroom retreat.
"We've got running water. If you've got to go, then come on in," Shirley Johnson said. The house escaped with just shattered windows and cracked sheet rock. The 21 pictures of Southwestern art still hung in the living room.
Johnson held up real estate fliers on the kitchen counter.
"We had this house for sale," Johnson said. "A couple even checked it out Monday afternoon. Now, it's real cheap."
Clinton preaching humanity message
Officials rally troops, families
SPANGDALEH AIR BASE,
Germany — With an F-117
stealth fighter and two F-16s parked nearby, President Clinton rallied American military personnel yesterday entering the seventh week of a NATO air assault on Yugoslavia.
The Associated Press
Clinton:Reiterated NATO's mission -- defeat ethnic hatred
Clinton's visit, which was met by the sobering news that two crew members of a U.S. Apache helicopter were killed during a training exercise, came just days after three American POWs were freed. Defense Secretary William Cohen said the United States was prepared to release two captured Yugoslav soldiers.
"We must stand in Kosovo for the elemental principles of the common humanity of every breathing, living person in this continent," he said.
"I would expect that within a relatively short period of time we could see their release" — but not as a goodwill gesture to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, Cohen told reporters after Clinton's four hours of
Clinton, Cohen, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Gen. Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, addressed military personnel and their families at this base in southwestern Germany.
military briefings at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
Surveying the airplane hangar overflowing with members of the armed forces dressed in camouflage uniforms, and their children, Clinton reiterated that the NATO mission in Kosovo was to defeat ethnic hatred and intolerance.
"I know this is hard," he said.
"I know too many of these pilots are flying long hours with too little rest. I know the stress and anxiety must be unbearable."
He thanked American personnel for having helped end the war in Bosnia.
American armed forces are fighting to prevent world war in the future. Clinton said.
"If we don't want your successors to have to come to this continent and fight another bitter war, then we must stand in Kosovo for the elemental principles of the common humanity of every breathing, living person in this continent," he said.
In a press briefing after Clinton met with NATO, Secretary-General Javier Solana and allied commanders, Gen. Wesley Clark, NATO's supreme allied commander, said warplanes intensified strikes on Milosevic's ground forces.
Clinton also met with the three U.S.POWs freed last weekend by Milosevic in response to an appeal by the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
WASHINGTON — As early as 1966, managers at the Los Alamos nuclear lab wanted to examine the computer of a scientist suspected of espionage. But they were warned away by Justice Department lawyers who feared the search would taint information for use in court, the Senate was told yesterday.
When Wen Ho Lee's office computer was searched last month, it was found that more than 1,000 top-secret files of computer codes on nuclear weapons had been deleted after being improperly transferred from a highly secure computer system.
Computer experts reconstructed the files, government officials have said, but questions remain why the search was not conducted much earlier because Lee had been under suspicion of espionage since 1996.
The Associated Press
Questions regarding search remain in computer case
"An individual is suspected of being a spy with access to all of our warhead information ... and we did not get into his computer. This is total incompetence," Sen. Don Nickles, R-Oka., said yesterday.
Top-secret files found on spy suspect's PC
Lee, who has not been charged with any crime, was fired in March for alleged security violations and remains under investigation. He has denied through his lawyer any espionage. His computer was searched after he was dismissed.
John Browne, the director of the Los Alamos lab in New Mexico, said at a Senate hearing yesterday that as early as 1968 laboratory officials suggested to the FBI, which had just begun investigating Lee, that the Taiwanese-born scientist's computer be searched. They argued they could do so under a 1995 policy directive that advises all lab employees that their computers are subject to search without notice.
"The FBI and the Department of Justice felt that the policy was not adequate (and) ... that if we proceeded independently, anything that was found they could not use" in court, Browne told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Investigators have alleged that Lee had transferred massive amounts of critical computer codes — known as the "legacy file" — from Los Alamos' top-secret computer system to his unsecured desktop computer, mostly in 1944-95, but some as far back as 1983. The codes provide a virtual history of America's nuclear warhead development and are used to simulate how warheads perform.
The Los Alamos lab installed a sophisticated encryption barrier in 1996 to further isolate the lab's classified computer system and its unclassified network. So far, there's no indication that Lee made any improper transfers after 1995, officials said.
Meanwhile, congressional sources said yesterday that the transfer of topsecret data from the classified system involved special, complicated procedures that were supposed to be known only to a small number of senior employees such as systems supervisors.
It's not clear how Lee could have obtained these procedures, which were supposed to be closely controlled.
Meanwhile, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said that there were a number of warnings as far back as 1984 — covering both Republican and Democratic administrations — suggesting that Lee might be involved in espionage, but that they were not adequately followed up because of "a tragedy of errors, lost files, omissions and bad judgment."
Domenici said Lee's activities — he had a top "Q" security clearance until last December — should have been curtailed long before December. Lee was the focus of suspicion on several occasions dating back to the early 1980s, the senator said.
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