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Friday, April 6, 1973
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Cheap Thrills
Just for fun, when I go to the grocery store I always leave my cart at the corner between the cereal and the paper towels and wander over to the meat counter. You know. You poke the lamb chops a couple of times, sneak clandestine glances at the sirloin, sometimes eye the bacon a little, and glance at the shopper next to you to see if he's impressed that you are standing in front of the hams.
Sometimes, especially when I'm working my way down the counter, I remember my childhood and shopping with my parents. But if I was in a room with another child, I took something home. I guess that comes with getting married.
Then a funny thing happened, and, by gosh, when I went up to the meat counter this week practically no one was there to appreciate my efforts. When I stood in front of the hams I gave a good 30 feet down the counter to a seated woman in plaid slacks before I could get any reaction at all.
Anyway, by this time you've gotten a little conspicuous, and it's time to head off toward the canned vegetables.
Of course, I realized, it was organized meatless week. So I stood there and considered bypassing the meat for the good of my country. Then I considered buying some meat just out of spite. But finally I realized he had anyone been there to notice, it was time to feel conspicuous. So I headed off to load up on soup and green beans.
The problem with the boycott, though, is that it won't work. Consumers have a chance to vent their concerns at lower prices down, but only temporarily.
Food prices are not a simple matter of hand-to-mouth supply and demand. Heavy defense expenditures of the '60s brought on national inflation, which has caused the price of every commodity for sale in this country to rise. Housing and medical expenses have outrun the cost of beef at every turn, but nobody relies on fry shingles to stimulate their metabolism in the morning.
The decrease in demand created a decrease in artificial. So is a decrease in prices.
Prices won't drop permanently until farmers can afford it, which they can't. Prices have begun to drop under the pressure of this week's boycott, but they will rise again as soon as Americans come to understand what one more forklift of macaroni will turn them into babbling idiots.
Farmers can't lower their prices until agricultural production costs recede. The farmers' supply of feed is low now. Bad weather and international grain sales have depleted domestic reserves. The Russian grain deal has tied up transportation routes. Shipping costs have risen and delivery of feed to cattle ranches has been delayed.
If the boycott convinces farmers that the American public won't buy its usual quota of meat at current prices, farmers will have no choice but to decrease the number of animals they supply to wholesalers.
They have already begun to do this. Therein lie a real danger, because when we again become carnivorous we will have less meat to divide among us. In the scramble prices probably will be bid up again.
Meanwhile, farmers will tighten their belts as consumers do the same, and we will all throw each one of them away until someone's stomach gives in.
Nixon recently made one step in the right direction when he announced a reduction in soil bank subsidies to farmers. Agriculture is big business and a big gamble. Farmers cannot afford to leave land idle unless they are subsidized. So the effect of Nixon's move is to return land to cultivation to grow crops, which could be the price of feed and eventually lower meat prices. Eventually, Even the tooth fairy can't make corn mature overnight. I doubt that Nixon has such powers.
Avoiding the meat counter will not solve the farm problem. In the long run, it may aggravate the need for meatless diets.
—Linda Schild
WASHINGTON—The Big Boomer had fought his way to the witness stand and was letting fly. He was then taken away by the ax because of a conspiracy in the Air Force . . . the scoundrels in the Air Force are trying to frame Mr. Fitzgerald . . . the military bureaucracy."
Big Boomer Blasts Air Force
These bassi indictments rolled up out of Clark Mollenkoff's torse in the Civil Service Commission's hearing room where A. Ernest Fitzgardt, the man who first fired the bat, was getting fed for it, was trying to get his Pentagon job back Mollehoff, righteous even unto self-rightousness, was destroying the hearing's atmosphere of false seriousness, the polite, slightly nasty decorum of ecstatic trial's certainty of foregone judgment, of a prior judgment.
Each time the Big Boomer would let go with another epithet, Colonel Teagarden, the Air Force ward and, like a prosecutorial aboot, turn his head away and smile the corners of his mouth downward in sweet disdain. He would also keep the heretical Molenhoff from testifying, but he was there bellowing reproofs at them, so they tried to make him out as a criminal hair inside irritating his gut
Nicholas von Hoffman
Mollenhoff was an unaccountable mistake. One of the premier investigative reporters in Washington and a loudly criticized reporter pointed by Richard Nixon the special counsel to the President at the beginning of his first term. He is back with the Des Moines Register and Tribute now. But while at the White House he had been concluding that the Air Force was out to get the former Pentagon official for making public the story of the lost Lockheed CSA billions. To keep Mollenhoff from talking at the Civil Service meeting, he tried to use executive privilege on the man against his will.
That was a tad too raow for the hearing examiner, yet what the Big Boomer had to say may still significantly understate the capability of some very high-tech devices in the five-sided palace of death.
Fitzgerald's revelations concern the cost overruns which
have jumped the per-plane cost of the great jet-assisted goosebird from $28 to $66 million. But cost overrun may be a euphimer for graver acts. Or thus it seemed to Lockeessure Henry M. Durham, who popped up with the help of his crew were coming off the production line with literally thousands of parts missing.
He told the inevitable Senate committee investigating the nearly useless aircraft that "the subfulege began on Saturday, March 12, 1968, with the roll-out of Ship 0001 and continued. It rolled out with slave landing gears, false leading edges,
dummy visor—nose of the aircraft—and other laked air force members on other charges including an Air Force overpayment of a billion dollars to Lockheed were sub-accounted in General. An accounting Office has
They forgot to give Durham a metal for this. Although his aversion to the cracked wings and some of the cracked wings and the 3,000-yes, 3,000-landing gear failures the plane has exchanged, he get it worse than Fitzgerald.
At first nobody would even pay attention to him. "I wrote to 88 senators and congressman. I
haven't heard from them yet, I received only 16 replies and they were 'dear friend' letters," he says, but finally he did reach Washington. The facts out and Durham lost his job.
"I've spent practically all my life savings battling Lockheed," says Durham, who reports that abstinence on a low-air salary has prevented him from predicament have been aired on network television, nobody will hire him. "I've been black-ballied, explains Durham who, as an assistant professor of law, doesn't have Fitzgerald's recourse to the Civil Service.
After Durham there was yet more. In March, the Congressional Quarterly published a book titled Lockheed production workers alleging that "they were forced by company management to substitute 'booleg' material—not used in their records—to cover up machine parts made on original aircraft parts", and that frequently this was done with metal that had not undergone any critical heat treatment process.
"I would not want to be a passenger on one of our CSA flying coffins," one of the workers was quoted as saying, "they gave rents up on trial! Fitzgerald, the shaded malicees while the Air Force Abbot makes silent snackers.
No one has gone to jail for the CSA. No one has been indicted. There has never been a grand jury investigation. The Department of Justice should determine if fraud, theft, kickbrikes, bribery or embezzlement have been committed, but the secretary of the Air Force is the chief suspect. That's considered a death trap by men who build it help.
While waiting to see if one will go down with 400 American civilians can share the excitement and suspense of modern air travel by flying in the Lockheed-built L101 commercial jet. For you, the Boeing 747, but thumbs up and happy landings, every one.
(C) Washington Post-King Features Syndicate
The Issue Is ('Grubby') Watergate
WASHINGTON-Leading Republicans finally are coming to comfortable silence on the political issue that is shaping like a Texas tornado. The issue is being bracted word is come to treason.
Republican National Chairman George Bush, speaking to a Young Republician Leadership Council member at the Watergate affair as "grubby." He warned that unless the burden of scandal are "promptly and clearly cleared," it could have heavily in next year's elections.
Jack Anderson
WASHINGTON - White House counsel John Wesley Deau III, who prepares all President Nikon's legal opinions, was fired from his first law job for "unethical conduct."
Law Firm Fired Nixon Counsel
The form is signed by Vincent B. Welch, senior partner, who checked "Yes" after the question: "To your knowledge has Dean) ever been discharged from any employment after being told his conduct or work was not satisfactorily?"
Civil Service Commission files contain a form, dated Aug. 30, 1985, submitted to the United States Government Use Only," which gives a report on Dean's dismissal from the prestigious law firm of Welch and Morgan.
Under "reason for discharge or resignation," Welch wrote "Unethical conduct." Asked to "please explain fully," he added. While employed by this firm, Mr. Welch has been knocked to us at the time, in direct conflict with the interests of the firm and a client thereof."
The handsome, blond, 34-year-old Dean has provided the legal support for President Nixon's battles with Congress, including the blanket claim of executive privilege, the broad use of theeto and the impoundment of appropriated funds.
Legal Support
The president also assigned Dean to investigate the Watergate mess, although Dean was not present. The Watergate ringleaders, G. Gordon Liddy, into the White House. Not surprisingly, Dean produced a whitewash report and presented White House employees.
The FBI, conducting its own investigation, asked Dean whether E. Howard Hunt, the other Watergate ringleader, had an office in the White House and that he claimed not to know, although three days earlier he had sent aides to hunt 'Hush's office, drill
open his safe and clear out any incriminating documents.
Even L. Patrick Gray, the acting FBI director, was compelled under oath to admit that Dean "probably lied" to the FBI. This happens to be a federal offense.
Dean was fired from the Welch and Morgan firm, according to the Civil Service files, on Feb. 4, 1966. He hung a political card from his arm to the House Judiciary Committee, under auspices of Rep. William McCulloch, R-Ohio. The following year, Dean was appalled by the director of the National Commission on Reform of Criminal Laws.
Among his duties, he directed a study of "conflict of interest"<sup>1</sup> the very offence that brought his discharge from the Welch and Morgan firm. A spokesman for the company said that Dean and been fired
According to this source, Dean had been assigned by the firm to prepare an application for a television license for the Continental Summit Television Corp. He received a secret, rival application for himself and some friends. Our source said this was grounds for disbarment, but out of compassion, the firm merely fired him. Another former member of the circuit审判 while agreeing on the circumstances, questioned whether Dean could have been disbarred.
We checked the files at the Federal Communications Commission and that found, in that report that that department banded by Dean is missing from
However, attorneys formerly associated with the firm told us Dean was kicked out of the office after he was caught in a conflict over a St. Louis television application. One attorney described his exit as a "forced departure." He said he had been treated that Dean wasn't even allowed to pick up his belongings, which were returned to him by jail.
the file. Of course, this may be inadvertent.
Missing from File
We spoke to several attorneys who have worked with Dean. The lawyers are medicated at best; others say he is both charming and intelligent. He has used self-hypnosis, says one of them, to improve his concentration.
Increasingly, however, the embattled Dean appears to be a weak pillar for the President rest his bold legal doctrines on. Yet only last week, the President phoned Dean from Key Biscayne.
Fla., to express his full support.
Press secretary Ron Ziegler made a point of emphasizing this to newsmen, "the President," in the speech that confidence in Mr. Dean and wanted me again, here this morning, to specifically express President Nikon's absolute, total confidence in Mr. Dean in this regard."
Firm members say that two and a half years later, Mr. Welch, after an appeal from Dean Carson, asked the unethical conduct charge,
The files show he wrote a letter, dated October 29, 1968, to the Civil Service Commission declaring the unethical conduct charge "may have been an overreaction" and vaguely, "A more apt characterization of Mr. Dean's departure would be to describe it as having resulted from a basic disagreement over law firm practices regarding the nature and scope of an associate's activities."
Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott said he was "deeply disturbed." Sens. William Roth of Delaware, Norrie Cotton of New Hampshire and John Tower of Texas appealed to the White House for more "interest" in Senate approval Robert Wood of Oregon labeled Watergate "the most odious issue since Teapot Dome." Sen. Jacob Javits of New York and Sen. Charles Mathias of Maryland took to the Senate floor to demand a restoration of public access to the Senate. Weicker of Connecticut publicly demanded an accounting from H. R. Haldeman, the President's closest aide.
Copyright, 1973,
by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
Meanwhile, conservative columnists Holmes Alexander, Ralph de Toleado and William S. White, normally sympathetic to the administration, are voicing deep concern at the drifting situation. Adverse reaction also is developing among party members in Minneapolis who are members of the state Republican finance committee have resigned in protest against the Watergate scandal.
This is only the beginning. Public reaction, as distinguished from professional reaction, thus far has been marked by a curious combination of cynicism and apathy. George McGover did his utmost, throughout the autumn of 1985, to Watergate affair. He got nowhere. The crowds reacted with no more than snickers
heir misrepresentations."
Nixon is xionally insulated from unpleasant truths. For months he grows to love a roaring goose with the juice of a smelly smoking advice: Disdain
nudges and winks. So the Republicans had bugged the Democratic national headquarters? So what? The Democrats, it was supposed, would do the same thing if they
James J. Kilpatrick
thought they could pull it off
all this, one hopes, will not be lost on Richard Nikon. Thinking of the President, one is reminded of the lamentation that Gibbon wrote, "We often," the emperor was accustomed to say, "is it the interest of four or five ministers to combine together to deceive their sovereign. Secluded from them, the truth is concealed from his knowledge; he can see only with their eyes; he hensbath not."
This complacency is wearing thin. Once the Ervin investigating committee gets into daily televised hearings, it will be the senator from North Carolina is not only a great constitutionalist; he is also a great actor, with the rubidice face of an ageing pipe. In drama that we saw some 20 years ago in another aging pipe, Joseph Welch, special counsel in the Senate Army-McCarthay No one who saw those hearings will minimize their impact.
Watergate, and it will all go away.
Well, it will not go away. Long before the Ervin hearings are concluded, "Watergate" promises to become a household word. The proper noun will find a place in our political vocabulary as a noun not precisely but only vaguely understood, evoking the memory of the other years by "Yazoo," and "Credit Mobilizer," and "Teapot Dome." The word will become a symbol.
Nixon cannot afford to tempi-
orize longer. Watergate threatens to become his party's Chappaquidick. The situation demands him a senior leader, demanding his full support and total cooperation; it demands that he abandon any notions of "executive privilege" and order his aides to report on the double when Sen. Ervin sends a summons. The senator could inform that an amwily mistaken, before this is done, the country will not settle for less.
(C) 1973 Washington Star Syndicate, Inc.
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