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Thursday. April 26,1973
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comme
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Monument to Stupidity
"Lest we forget." This phrase often is etched on monuments dedicated to people who have made sacrifices for their country. These monuments adorn parks and recreation areas all over the country and remind us of the great heritage we share.
But there is another kind of monument from which we can benefit. One such monument was erected about a year ago in Excelsior Springs, Mo. This monument is a building, a $5 million, 10-story apartment building. It sits quietly beside a creek in a low-lying area on the northeast side of the downtown area.
The most striking characteristic of this building is that it is empty and has been for the last year. Why? Because this federally subsidized project for elderly persons was built in the middle of a flood plain. Until a water waft on oveelea built around this structure, it will remain vacant.
The project has other problems. Government regulations prohibit people in certain income brackets from occupying this building. Government regulations also allow for the construction. This means that there is a strong possibility that even if the building could legally be occupied,
the occupants could not provide the owners with enough revenue to keep
There are four basic principles involved in management: planning, organizing, actuating and controlling. Obviously, government "planners" ignored the first principle—planning. In the event that the levee is constructed and the building opens, whether it stays open will depend on whether the government is willing to exercise the fourth principle—control. What a mess!
All of this information tends to make our government look very stupid. This may not be the case. To place this incident in the proper perspective, it should be noted that it is possible that this project was very well planned—planned to put money into the pockets of the original owner of the land, the construction contractor and a few bureaucrats. This is a fifth principle of management that is often applied in discussions of government dealings and activities—graft.
This is just one monument. There are probably many such monuments around the country right now. They all call out to us, "Lest we forget." They are monuments to stupidity—ours.
—John P. Bailey
Nicholas von Hoffman
Rennie Davis Discovers The Movement in India
WASHINGTON—The news of Rennie Davis' conversion into a disciple of the 15-year-old Indian kid, Kuru Maharaj JI, has been floating around the country for the past two or three weeks. I've known Rennie almost since his first days in SDS 19 years ago, and I'm now reacting properly as a newspaperman should by following up the tips and checking them out.
It was one thing for Tom Hayden to marry a well-intentioned if slightly flat-headed movie star, or for Stokley to marry a folk singer, or some of the other movement heavies to turn into the psychological basket of the film's stars. Rennie is the most stable, the calmest, the most enduring of that group of young people who set out to change America at the beginning of the 1960's.
But for Rennie, hung in those years trying to organize the poor, who led the opposition at Chicago in 1983, who created Mayo and who pushed for pulling your leg. "There is only one saturn, a perfect master who teaches you to be perfect, and that's Guru Mahara) JI," said Rennie, a former collaborator, said, "The Revolution is over, baby."
Saul's explanation of what happened to him on the Tarsus Road is satisfactory only to fellow believers, but the outward frame of circumstances tells you that he should have suggested he was whipped, not by Nixon, but by a huge falling away of his constituency.
"In the spring of 1970, this generation believed it could overcome all," he recalls, "but then came the summer . . . drift and no direction and by the fall of 1970 we really lost the hope that we would be timed but after that it wasn't the same. People went into the country, they were into drugs and into themselves."
Rennie persisted, but without a base you can't politics. Then a couple of months ago on his way to Paris for another of his many meetings with the North Vietnamese, Rennie gave him a free ticket to India and a recommendation to see the divine teen-ager.
Rennie went and it happened.
He received the knowledge that one cannot transmit but only experience: "I'm sitting on top of the story of the century, and I'm not going to miss anything there's an avatar on this planet."
When he made his first public appearance he was 12 years old and the police in Delhi say there were over a million people there. He began by weeping for over an hour and said I would give your love and I will give you peace; surrender the rein of your life to me, and I will give you
salvation . . . Many times I've come, but this time I come with more power than ever."
From that you might say that tennie, having failed to prevail with merely terrestrial strength, falls down the night of heaven to an arid, inhospitable arthly ideology as "inadequate," but says that the Divine United Organization, as the Majaril's outfit currently styles everything they wanted to accomplish in the Movement."
Rennie first beheld the perfect teacher of perfection in February at an Ashram called Prem Nager, which he says means City of Love. There were about 60 Americans there, some of whom told him they'd been arrested in a car accident and were now dormant he'd led, and were now verging on accepting the kid's teachings. It's a tribute of Maharaji iJ's powers, or evidence of Rennie's exhaustion, that he could buy the Guru on first sight, considering what that first sight was. Ji turned up, according to Rennie, and he suit, with cowboy boots which zipper up the front—and riding on a motorcycle.
"he drove it around in circles, tried to run people over, tied a bed to it, and dragged people in the bed around, and people were relating to him as the Lord of the Universe. Every day he played, but everything had a credible witness. He was at the level of a child. At one point I thought he wasn't God, but the King of the Yippies."
The Vippe God-King is also into expensive motor cars and electric trains. If that sounds preposterous, all religions do to it, and the Bible tristernically incredible that God plays with electric cars than
that he gets crucified or is a philandering skirt-chaser like Zeus or damms mankin to toil and death because some guy ate an apple? It makes good sense if you believe, and if you don't,
Still, the received American cultural definition of God isn't as an adolescent biker. Rennie knows that and is at pains to tell her friend she's an inquester who was convinced only by the manifest truth of it all: "I really resisted as long as I could. I braked out when I first saw him and had as many doubts as anybody else. I wouldn't be out on this limb and hanging over this cliff if I didn't think there was something incredible fraud ever run on this planet or he is god on earth."
All theistic religions say much the same. The more evangelical ones claim an invincibility and Rennie says that the Maharaji Ji is going to take America by storm this year. "It's moving with the force of country," he says, and maybe it is. It would not be the first time that Rennie correctly gamed the mood of the American youth populace. On top of that he says they're recruiting all kinds of talent, not just burnt-out freaks and used-up political, and have all kinds of projects ablime like the Obama administration the smart planned for Houston.
For those who are not tempted by the onward march of a great river of converts, Rennie has another ancient message, which he says "One side of the world is dying and the other side is being reborn. Time is running out now, the change is going to happen quicker. You can sit on it and enjoy the water. Just find yourself sweet away."
Washington Post-King Features Syndicate
WASHINGTON — The story can now be told how one word, "Gentstone," slowly tightened the Watergate gate noose around the neck of Jeb Magruder until he decided to confess.
"DICK, WHAT IF I TOLD YOU I DROVE THE GETAWAY CAR?"
'Gemstone' Forces Magruder's Hand
Mitchell, Magruder and White House counsel John Dean were present. They were briefed on the bugging plan by Watergate ringleader G. Gordon Liddy who was charged with preparing charts to illustrate how he would tape the telephones of Democratic party officials.
Magruder has confirmed Watergate wristraper James M. McCain was quoted to us on April 2, that the Watergate bugging was planned in the Department of Justice for former Att. Gen. John Dickson.
Magruder has also confirmed our reports of Dec. 28, Jan. 11 and Jan. 15 that the Watergate defendants were offered money to plead guilty and keep their mouths shut. The attempt to buy treasure, Magruder has now said, was received by Mitchell and Dean.
Throughout McCord's revelations, Magruder stuck to his sworn testimony at the Watergate trial said he had no knowledge of the bugging. It was Laddy's secretary, Sally Hartley, who finally finished his story. She had back up her first appearance before the grand jury. But she went back this month and told all she knew.
"Would you explain to the grand jury," she was asked, "why it was that in your prior investigation?" "How less than canid with them?"
In secret session, she told how she had typed up the telephone conversations of Spencer Oliver, a democratic party official, on secret stationery marked with the code word "Gemstone."
"Do you remember," asked Assistant U.S. Att. Earl Silbert, "whether there was ever any reference by any of the participants to conversations with anyone?"
"Well," she confessed, "I find it difficult to explain why I did what I did, or how it came about. I was absolutely gifted of all you to begin with, but I had no one to talk to, and I felt my loyalty for you. I lied and the committee at that time, and I just—did it."
Asked about the substance on the tapped telephone conversations, she recalled, "There was something that had do with Mr.
"Yes," she answered. "There was one conversation with the name of Terry Sanford (former governor of North Carolina)."
Oliver's taking a trip either to North Carolina or South Carolina—I have forgotten which."
Harmony also testified that "I have on occasions typed a couple
Jack Anderson
--of memos that have come from (Sen. George) McGvern's headquarters."
"And what kind of memo," asked Silbert, "would you have typed that came from the heart of Sen. Sen. McGovern?"
"At one time," she said,
"Liddy) dictated a memo to megiving information that the workers in the McGovern campaign were very unhappy that their funds were low, they were not going to be paid, or their pay would be cut drastically . . ."
"Now did you ever have anything to do with anything else from McGovern headquarters the memo relating to staff?"
"Just the list of names," she replied. "I did get the list of names of persons working in headquarters, on the occasion."
She reported that McCord had dropped off reports for Liddy and that she once took an empty brown manila envelope to the campaign treasurer and brought it back filled for Wategate
conspirator Howard hunt.
Liddly instructed her, she said to "give it to Hugh Sloan (the campaign treasurer). He will give you a few dollars and ask him to pick it up."
"Did you do that?" asked Silbert.
"And where did you give it to Mr. Sloan?"
"I did that..."
"I took it to his office, which was right in the same area."
"And," asked Silbert, "was it any different in any way when you got it back?"
"Yes," she testified. "It had something in it and it was sealed."
"Do you know what was in it?" "I do not."
"Was it the same size as money would have been?"
"Yes," she said. "I would assume it was the same size as the money would have been."
Thereafter, she handed the envelope to
But it was the code word, "Gemstone," that upset Magruder's appletace. His assistant, Jake, reminded him that he had been instructed by Magruder to remove all sensitive material from his office after the Watergate burglary-bugging team was dismissed. The team removed, dusted Reisner, was a blue folder marked "Gemstone."
This was evidence that Magruder had received the Watergate bugging reports from Laddy. The handsome, cavalier Magruder, facing perjury charges for denying any advance knowledge of the bugging, decided to turn state's evidence.
Copyright, 1973, by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
Navy Man Recalls Thresher Tragedy
By A. W. HURLBUT
Konson Staff Writer
Ten years ago in April the nuclear-powered submarine USS Threater failed to surface from a deep test dive in the Atlantic. One hundred-twenty-nine crewmen and navy yard personnel went to the bottom with her.
My own boat, the USS Grenadier, had been running submerged in the Carribean all day. The news of Thresher's disappearance did not reach us until we were pulling into Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, late that night.
As we tied up at the ammunition pit, some of our crew, who had stayed in to draw supplies, asked us if we had heard the news. Yeah, we did. I put down the rifle and pointed.
My good friend and the other half of the communications gang, Bill Bush, caught me in the after tornado room.
"Yeah," I said, "we heard.
"Did you hear about the Thresher?" he asked.
"Ain't that a bitch?" Bill said.
The biggest reason, however, was an experience my crew had shared just a few months before.
That was probably as much as any of us had to say about it at first. Although Thresher was a breed of sub different from our 1951 vulture, we fell close to the tragedy for many reasons. Many of our crew would go as soon as they re-enlisted. A couple had already been in the nuclear program but had returned to the conventional boats for one reason or another.
Through a combination of procedural oversights, the Grenadier had been allowed to make her first dive of the day too fast and badly out of trim. Before we were able to pull her out of it, she had reached nearly a 50-degree down ankle.
fortunately, we were an experienced crew and we had the right men in the right places. Thresher, perhaps, had not been so fortunate.
The depth gauges showed us farther below the maximum tested depth than any of us cared to think about.
Gittio was a somewhat more relaxed place than the last time we had been there in October 1962; life went on. We split up into groups of fishermen, poker players and drinkers. I joined one of the drinking groups and headed for the enlisted men's club.
and of SeeBees noticed submarine insignias on our uniforms
a came over to our table. (Come to think of it, it was probable our
died in the water.)
"Do youguys mind if weask you a couple of questions about the Thresher?" they wanted to know.
We didn't mind at all. We told them to bring their beers over and si down.
"How do you think it happened?" they asked of no one in particular.
We gave them a number of pretty good guesses, trying to keep from guessing.
"What do you think happened to the guys inside?" one of them asked.
"That was something none of us had considered in any great detail. Most had probably drowned, we agreed. Some had been electrocuted. It was even possible that a few were still alive while we were sitting there nursing our drinks."
Some of the old World War II boats had been forced down to 1000 feet by depth-charging and had remained intact. And their hulls had been made of only a half-inch of rolled steel, an egg-shell compared with Thresher's hull.
"Is there any way they could escape if they were still alive?" they asked.
We talked with the SeaBee about other things awhile, then caught a bus back toward the Ammo nier.
No, no way. They would eventually die of suffocation or exposure. They wouldn't drown, however. If the hull fissured at that depth, they would be crushed immediately. If deep enough, the first few drops of water would go through them like bullets.
As we walked the last half mile, we could see the black, sinister form of the Grenadier lying low in the water. I caught myself wondering why a reasonably humane and ethical young man would volunteer to sink other ships and other crew in the mostCellous was inevitable.
The next morning at quarters Jack McGee read us the official Navy announcement. Although we knew what he was going to do, I did not know where to find it.
It wasn't until he read the last few words, "presumed lost with ah hands," that the finality of Thresher's fate was accepted.
The captain then asked our chief-of-the-boat, the senior enlisted man, to say an appropriate prayer. The OOB stepped forward one pace, turned and issued the command: "Officers and chiefs, about face."
Then, with the entire crew facing the open sea, he said an appropriate prayer.
Legislators Review Shield Laws
Federal and state lawmakers are debating a wide variety of bills that would give newsmen partial or complete immunity from being forced to disclose information of confidential information.
Associated Press Writer
By LOUISE COOK
Action in the conflict over a newsman's right to protect his sources has shifted from the courts to the legislative chamber.
The House Judiciary Committee ended hearings last month on newsmen's privilege and a subcommittee headed by U.S. Rep. Robert Menzel, D-Wis., has met twice to reach a consensus.
The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights, headed by U.S. Sen. Sam J. Ervin J., D-N.C., also held
lengthy hearings last month, but has taken no action.
Most of the falls into two basic categories: one group unqualified immunity from testifying about their sources before any grand jury or court, and another offers limited immunity.
It would provide only limited privilege in civil or criminal proceedings in federal courts. Newsmens could be required to disclose confidential information or sources if the court found that
In the House, for example, a bill cosponsored by five Republicans would provide absolute privilege for newsmen in investigative proceedings before government agencies, federal grand juries or congressional communities.
Another bill, introduced by
Rep. John B. Anderson, R-III,
would give professional newsman
unqualified protection from
county court orders to
revel confidential news sources
or information.
Anderson said any qualifications in a press shield bill would provide loopholes for him on "fishing expeditions,"*
The American Newspaper Publishers Association and other press groups have urged urging of an unqualified shield law.
Congressional sources say, however, that chances for passage of such a measure are slim.
the material was relevant to a significant issue in the case and could not be obtained elsewhere.
Griff and the Unicorn
By Sokoloff
"They're not going to get anything strong out of the subcommittee," said Lawrence to the Senate subcommittee.
Ervin said earlier, "I don't believe Congress will pass an unqualified privilege bill."
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that the First Amendment to the Constitution does not bar testimony from testifying before a grand jury about information gained in confidence. Several reporters have gone to jail for disclosing their sources.
The court refused Monday to hear the case if David M. Lightman, a Baltimore Evening Sun reporter who was cited for county grand jury refusing to release the source of a 1972 article.
Lightman claimed the investigation was motivated by a grand jury's desire to harass his newspaper. A special state court of appeals had upheld the contempt citation, ruling that the defendant was the "source" of the story, which was about marijuana.
New Jersey lawmakers passed a bill earlier this year that would have given newsmen broad immunity from testing, but it was veted by Gov. William T. Cahill.
"It is no more acceptable to have the press all-powerful than it is to have government all-inclusive. The Republican governor said.
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