Section A • Page 8
The University Daily Kansan
Tuesday, March 17, 1998
Advisers admonish AIDS policy
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — President Clinton's AIDS advisers demanded yesterday that the administration immediately allow local communities to fight the deadly virus by spending federal money on clean needles for drug addicts.
Saying that 33 people each day catch the AIDS virus directly from a dirty needle, the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS issued its harshest criticism yet of the Clinton administration's refusal to federally fund needle-exchange programs — despite scientific consensus that the programs work.
"Lack of political will can no longer justify ignoring the science," the council wrote to Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala yesterday. "Every day that goes by means more needless new infections and more human suffering."
Ignoring these programs would be an abdication of your responsibilities, the council wrote.
Today, the 30-member council will vote on a resolution expressing no confidence in the administration's ability to stop HIV's spread, and members predict a unanimous vote. Members also were drafting a letter to Clinton expressing their growing frustration.
"We're angry," said Scott Hitt, chairman of the council and a Los Angeles physician.
Clinton officials ignored earlier warnings, said Robert Fogel, a Chicago lawyer and Clinton fundraiser. If the Clinton officials don't listen this time, the council is going to have to consider calling for the secretary to resign, or the council itself could resign in protest, he said.
Shalala has said that needle exchanges effectively can fight HIV, but the department has not yet concluded that needle-exchange programs do not encourage drug use, said her representative, Melissa Skolfield.
Until Shalala proves that last issue, Congress has refused to let communities use federal AIDS prevention dollars to establish needle exchanges.
The AIDS advisers said yesterday that Shalala already could answer the drug-use question.
"There is no credible evidence that needle-exchange programs lead to increased drug abuse," they wrote.
"The absence of proof is not the same as proof," responded Skofield, who said Shalala was awaiting several federal studies of the issue.
More than half of all people newly infected with HIV got the deadly virus through contaminated needles, sex with injecting drug users or are children born to infect addicts.
The nation's leading scientific groups agree that letting addicts exchange used needles for fresh ones significantly cuts the spread of HIV. The National Institutes of Health has called needle exchange a powerful AIDS weapon that has been blocked by political concerns about providing needles to addicts.
More than 80 needle exchanges, paid for by private or other nonfederal money, already operate in the United States, but AIDS activists say expanding the exchanges would require federal funding.
Congress decided last fall that if Shalala did support needle exchanges, communities could spend federal dollars on the exchanges only after March 31. Hitt said the approach of that spending date added urgency to his panel's call for action.
Weather-weary conversation
Phyllis DuBose, St. Louis junior, and Fuegoenee Jackson, Panamag City, Fl., junior, wait for the bus in the rain. Yesterday's dreary weather is expected to continue through the week. Photo by Holly Groshong/KANSAN
Vatican holocaust document criticized by Jewish leaders
The Associated Press
VATICAN CITY — In a long-awaited document that Jewish leaders immediately criticized, the Vatican expressed remorse yesterday for the cowardice of some Christians during the Holocaust but defended the actions of the war-time pope.
The Vatican's version of the Roman Catholic church's role during World War II, coming in a statement promised by Pope John Paul II a decade ago, singled out Pope Pius XII for praise as a wise diplomat. He long has been criticized for failing to speak forcefully against Nazi persecution.
"It is too little, too late." Meir Lau, Israel's chief rabbi and a Holocaust survivor, said in Tel Aviv. "I have no doubt that the church did not do everything it could have to save people... His (Plus XII) silence cost millions of human lives."
In recent years, bishops in several European countries have apologized on behalf of their churches for not having done enough to fight the Nazis, and there were expectations that John Paul would use the document to apologize for the Roman Catholic church as an institution.
In a preface, the pope expressed hope
that the document would help heal the wounds of past misunderstandings and injustices.
The document is titled We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah (Holocaust).
"It) asks our Jewish friends to hear us with an open heart," said Cardinal Edward I. Cassidy, whose Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews produced the work.
But many Jews had hoped to hear more. "I'm disappointed in it," said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League.
In one of its principle points, the document said, "We deeply regret the errors and failures of those sons and daughters of the church."
"We cannot know how many Christians in countries occupied or ruled by the Nazi powers or their allies were horrified at the disappearance of their Jewish neighbors and yet were not strong enough to raise their voices in protest," the document said.
Most of the criticism centered on the document's ringing defense of Pius XII and the wisdom of his diplomacy.
It cited a 1939 Pius encyclical warning that an hour of darkness could result
from Nazi theories, which denied the unity of the human race.
The document took pains to distance Nazism from any Christian inspiration, calling the Holocaust the work of a thoroughly modern neo-pagan regime.
The 12-page document went beyond the Holocaust and condemned other mass killings this century.
It did not, however, move the pope's position beyond what he has expressed in the past.
Man may have forged Kennedy papers
ownership shares of letters and notes purportedly written by Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Monroe. father, Lawrence Cusack, a lawyer who died in 1985.
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — A document dealer was arrested yesterday on charges he forged papers that supposedly proved that President John F. Kennedy had an affair with Marilyn Monroe.
Court papers said Cusack defrauded dozens of investors around the country of up to $7 million by selling them
Lawrence Cusack III was charged with mail and wire fraud.
ABC News, which was producing a documentary based in part on Cusack's papers, hired experts who concluded they were forgeries.
The documents initially formed the basis for a chapter in Hersh's book "The Dark Side of Camelot," but Hersh deleted the chapter before publication last year after the documents' authenticity was challenged.
father, Lawrence Cusack, a lawyer who died in 1985.
Cusack claimed to have found 700 documents relating to the Kennedy family, Monroe and Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana in the files of his
Among the items that Cusack is accused of selling were a signed copy of Monroe's will for $145,000 and a document written by Kennedy for $55,000.
Postal Inspector John G. Feiter said in court papers that Cusack admitted forging the documents.
Cusack was arrested at his home in Fairfield, Conn. He could be sentenced to up to five years in prison and $250,000 in fines.
Calls to his lawyer, Thomas Sargent,
were not immediately returned.
CBS interview spreads worry about approval of presidency
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Stunned by Kathleen Willey's dramatic TV appearance, the White House launched a campaign yesterday to discredit her allegation of a crude sexual advance by President Clinton in 1993.
"Nothing improper happened," Clinton said.
Clinton's aides said privately that Willey was the most credible accuser yet, and they clearly were
worried about how the public would react to her nationally televised interview.
In a CBS-TV 60 Minutes show watched by nearly 20 million Americans, the soft-spoken former Democratic fund-raiser and ex-Write House aide said of her encounter with Clinton, "I just felt overpowered."
Clinton's political team anxiously awaived polls about whether Willey's allegations would undercut Clinton's approval ratings, which have remained high throughout the Monica Lewinsky investigation.
Clinton: Advisers wait for poll results to show effect of latest allegation.
The question asked throughout Washington and at water coolers across the country: Do you believe her?
House Speaker Newt Gingrich said she was a credible witness. "If it proves to be true, I think it'll have very profound consequences and certainly it should quiet all of those who have been complaining about Judge Starr." Gingrich said.
"I found her credible," Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said. "But, you know, there is contradictory testimony that has been given, and I presume at some point we'll find more about what the actual truth is."
After Willey's statement on 60 Minutes that she felt betrayed by Clinton, the president's lawyers gathered letters written by her to Clinton after the incident.
In the letters, many signed "Fondly, Kathleen," she requested jobs and a Christmas party invitation and referred to herself as Clinton's "No. 1 fan." Less than a month after the encounter, she wrote to wish him a wonderful Christmas and thanked him for the opportunity to work in the White House.
The letters were released yesterday by the White House at the request of The Associated Press.
Willey, 51, is a potentially critical witness for Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr, who is investigating whether Clinton had an affair with Lewinsky and lied about it under oath. Both the president and Willey provided sworn testimony in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case; one of them did not tell the truth.
Clinton said he tried to console Willey, who came to the Oval Office in November 1993 with severe finance problems and a request for a full-time job. In his deposition, the president told lawyers that he might have kissed her on the forehead.
With a look of bewilderment, Clinton said yesterday that he did not know why Willey would fabricate the charge.
Clinton's advisers, all speaking on condition of anonymity, said they believed the answer was in Willey's money problems or emotional state of mind.
She came to Clinton for help after learning that her husband's finances were failing. Ed Willey, who was under investigation for alleged financial wrongdoing, killed himself the day of the encounter — without his wife or Clinton knowing about it at the time. She still has money troubles.
Willey told lawyers she met with Clinton shortly after the incident and she told him she wanted to put the incident behind her. Months later, upon leaving her White House job, she thanked Clinton for sending her to two international conferences.
for taking Clinton's lawyers compared Willey's TV testimony to her deposition and highlighted inconsistencies. They said that she told 60 Minutes that Clinton kissed her on the lips, but in the deposition, she said he tried to kiss her but she couldn't remember if he succeeded.
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