University Dally Kansan, February 13, 1984
NATION AND WORLD
Page 9
Committees receive red-carpet treatment
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the sixth in a 10-part series of reports investigating overseas travel made by members of Congress.
By GREGORY GORDON United Press International
WASHINGTON — Free of public reporting requirements, the Pentagon paid more than $1 million of Congress' domestic travel costs in fiscal 1983 — mainly for House and Senate committees that review military programs.
On at least three Pentagon-financed excursions to West Coast military bases, Air Force and Navy escorts arranged for aides to congressional Armed Services committees to stay at Vegas and Reno, Nev., hotel-casinos.
CRITICS ARGUE THAT BY accepting at least $556,000 of the Pentagon travel expenditures for 200 trips, six congressional panels that are the chief watchdogs over the defense budget compromised their independence.
Committee aides rejected such suggestions.
Most of the Defense Department's red-carpet treatment involved trips to military facilities. Many of them were made in the comfort of T-39 Lear jets
with crews waiting, United Press International and the Better Government Association found in a review of thousands of Pentagon travel vouchers obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
Congressional travelers, accompanied by military escort officers carrying "contingency funds," were treated to lodging and meals — sometimes at elegant restaurants — with no worries about the House and Senate's normal, modest daily expense limits.
James McGovern, staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee, staunchly defended the system, saying a shift to requiring Congress to pay its own bills would result in less travel and have a "chilling effect" on the panel's ability to give close scrutiny to military bases and programs.
"If you think that somebody on the staff or one of the members can be influenced by whether he gets a free meal or an airplane ride down to Fort Bliss or Pensacola, no way," McGovern said.
IN PAYING FOR COMMITTEE TRAVEL and trips by individual members, the Pentagon also gave congressmen at least 54 free rides to or from their home states or districts
most of them official visits to military bases.
The transportation courtesies meant affected members did not have to tap their individual office travel allowances, set from a formula based on the distance from their homes to Washington D.C.
nigobon D. L.
In the last two months of 1982, Sen.
Barry Goldwater, D-Ariz., took five
military flights to or from Phoenix,
including one with no specific purpose
listed on Air Force manifests.
One Senate aide called such home-state travel courtesies "outrageous."
"IT'S NOT AVAILABLE TO everyone," the aide said. "It's only available to a few." It makes one senator more engaged and it's an indirect public subsidy.
UPI reported last week that its joint research with the BGA turned up 2.16 million in congressional overseses and 4.3 million in federal coverage, 4.8 million of it fooled the Pentagon.
The Defense Department draws its authority to pay Congress' domestic travel costs from a 1954 statute providing that congressional committees may make field trips to review estimates of agencies' appropriations.
UPI and the BGA found that:
*Among trips paid for by the Pentagon were a Senate Armed Services Committee annual retreat last March to A.P. Hill, Va. — for which the Army paid $2,358 and Navy paid $2,358 livesaves men to the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md., and its base at Quantico, Va.
*There are few controls on military-paid domestic travel. Donald Anderson, a floor manager for the House Office of the Doorkeeper, decided on his own to take extra seats on Navy planes in November 1982 and August 1983 to view sea trials of two new battleships. Anderson, who said he was "keeping up on Navy technology" as part of his job in "floor information services," paid his own room bills in Long Beach, Calif., and San Diego, Calif. But the Navy had to provide him flights home when the planes were full.
- Unlike other domestic travel, which is reviewed by congressional auditors, there is no congressional monitoring of Pentagon expenditures. Most military escorts' meal receipts are quickly destroyed and expense vouchers rarely specify the restaurant names or people in attendance.
5 arrested for attempted smuggling of electronics
By United Press International
NEW YORK — Five people, including two Chinese citizens and a former Bell Laboratories technician, have been arrested on charges of trying to smuggle to China sophisticated electronic equipment that could have been used in missile guidance systems. U.S. officials announced yesterday.
It was the first time any foreign agent had been caught in the United States trying to smuggle sensitive equipment, including a lot of Customs Special Agent in New Jersey.
The suspects — two Chinese nationals and three Chinese-born Americans — were arrested in Marlborough, N.J., Saturday night. The key member of the
ring had been employed in the past at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey.
IF CONVicted, THE FIVE suspects — all of whom were charged with conspiracy and attempted violation of airport port — face up to seven years in prison.
Arrested were: Da-Chuan Zheng, 41,
of Peking; his sister-in-law, Jing-Li
Zhang, 23, Shanghai; Kwong Allen
Yeung, 24, Cortland, N.Y. David Tsai,
29, Flushing, N.Y.; and Kuang-Shin
Lin, 38, Lincroft, N.J.
Lin, the central figure in the conspiracy, had been employed as an electronic engineer at Bell Laboratories in Chicago. Customs spokesman Michael Kaufman.
An American Telephone and Telegraph spokesman said that at the time of his arrest, Lin was working at AT&T's Development Center in Lin-
croft, N.J., although he had once worked at the Bell Labs.
"IT'S THE FIRST TIME in the New York area that we've ever seized anything like this," Kaufman said. "The five were arrested as they attempted to smuggle equipment that could be used in a missile attack, and six would have ultimately ended up in the People's Republic of China."
Customs officials, who announced the break up of the ring at a New York news conference, said the arrests represented the first time a foreigner had been caught in this country trying to smuggle sensitive equipment out. In other incidents, officials said, the equipment may have been seized in the United States, but the smugglers had escaped.
THE RING SOUGHT TO BUY from a
Customs undercover agent $1 million worth of devices, the size of a large loaf of bread, called transverse wave tube computers, to which they were worth at least $10,000 each.
Had the conspirators been able to purchase everything on their shopping list, officials said, they would have smuggled $1 billion worth of electronics
The equipment can be used for missile jamming, missile guidance or the detection of incoming enemy aircraft if it is available only to NATO countries.
The suspects planned to send the equipment to Hong Kong and from there to Mexico.
The suspects, who were arrested following a year-long investigation that included secretly video-taped meetings. The Metropolitan Correctional Center
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Mondale describes charges as 'trash'
By United Press International
DES MOINES, Iowa — Walter Mondale's presidential campaign yesterday denied charges by two rivals that he had received a $43,700 fee for lobbing on anti-corruption in Alaska pipeline company in 1981.
Maxine Isaacs, Mondale's press secretary, said the former vice president or his law firm received the fee from Northwest Energy Co. for "trade and international economics" consulting work when he was in private law practice in Washington.
Later in a news conference, Mondale shrugged off that and other charges made against him, saying it was just eleventh-hour rhetoric by candidates trying to catch the front-runner.
THE COMPANY HAD SOUGHT LEGISLATION, backed by the Reagan administration, which sought to prevent advances in advance for construction costs.
"This is trash time," he said. "It's no coincidence that we're hearing, seeing all this debris thrown around on the eve of the election. In some cases by people who suspect they may be behind. This can be expected. It helps explain the charges
being made. It doesn't prove the charges."
ALL EIGHT DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES were in Iowa Saturday for their last debate before the season-opening precinct cancuses.
In the debate, former Gov. Reubin Askew of Florida asked Mondale about the fee, and Sen. John Glenn of Florida asked Mondale for lobbying for the bill
Isaacs said Mondale had made one telephone call to Rep. Phil Sharp, D-Ind., to inquire about a package of pipeline legislation that included the controversial prepayment provision.
"Mondale has said it was an innocent phone call," Isaacs said. "He didn't say anything about the prepayment provision. Mondale had the connection with the pipeline provision other than that phone call."
IN RESPONDING TO ASKEW'S QUESTION in the debate, Mondale said: "I have spent my whole life, Reinhau, fighting for the consumer. I have never permitted anything to interfere with the integrity of my positions. The pre-billing you're talking about — I was always opposed to that. I did no lobbying on that."
Nigerian election gets veto
By United Press International
LAGOS, Nigeria — Maj. Gen. Mohammed Bukari, who seized control of Nigeria in a New Year's Eve coup, said yesterday that the country cannot afford to hold elections for a new civilian government.
"I'm afraid to say that we cannot afford any expenditure now to bring back the Federal Electoral Commission, start buying boxes, ballot papers, getting elections and sending the police to supervise them," Bubari said in an
interview with the Lagos Sunday Concord newspaper.
BUHARI A FORMER OIL MILITER, said the civilian government of deposed President Shehu Shagari left the country in "bad shape and my government is not thinking of returning power again to the civilians now."
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The military leader said he decided to launch a coup and seize power "in order to put an end to the serious economic problems in the west African nation, and that he would investigate charges of vote rigging and fraud.
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