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Thursday, August 30,1973
University Daily Kansan
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Snowball & Stump
"Did Gordon's boss really tell him to do that? Or was it those two suspicious Krauts, Bob and John? And how much did kindly old Papa Dick know about the exciting time for the excitings continuing story of . . .
The Watergate hearings replaced television's soap operas in more than one way. The hearings became a national pastime—a cross between "Secret Storm" and "Perry Foley's Tell the Truth." "I've Got a Secret," "Who Do You Trust" and others.
Now, the Watergate hearings are in recess. And, hopefully, America will reflect on the events of the past year.
No one can deny that Watergate has had great impact on the nation. But the nation should remember exactly what it's all about.
The whole investigation centers on a two-bit burglary and fruitless eavesdropping attempt by a handful of minor bureaucrats and their friends. The administration did not okay the plan. Someone, however, did try to hide the burglary.
What resulted was a snowball. When a minor official lied, his superiors, in absence of truth or in fear of consequences, consciously or otherwise told more lies to cover the first one.
As the snowball rolled, it grew larger and larger. Each layer covered the one beneath it. Finally the snowball reached such enormous proportions that several high-ranking officials were crushed beneath it. And the President himself is now scurrying for cover.
The Senate hearings may be the stump in the snowball's path—the obstacle that will crack the monster. The Senate hearing may be the snowball's small, dirty core.
Proving the President innocent would be the opposite of what the investigators are seeking. The senators who initiated the televised hearings sought them as a "Get Nixon" tool. Much of the committee's questioning has revealed this.
Although the senators are giving such witnesses as John Dean the exact question they want in order to have revenge on the man who
fired them, the senators might be doing the President a favor.
The hearings have revealed nothing except the extent to which partisan and ideological politics can go.
The hearings have no legal function. In fact, they jeopardize the judicial system's fairness, and thus its ability to bring justice.
The hearings are grandstanding, masterfully led by the prototype pompous senator, Sandra Cisneros, with a wrench from the screamers at Lowell Weicker.
Some people are deceived. Some people believe John Dean to be a brave, truthful man. But he is, by his own admission, a liar, thief and self-seeker. His testimony, including such "expert" statements as I could tell by the tone of his voice . . . . .
While some are amazed or think little about the witnesses' on-the-stand memory, the remembering of such exact, minute details as are testified to leads others to believe the stories are well-rehearsed lies.
In short, the American people see two things. First, politics is dirty, with Joe McCarthy-like witch hunts crammed down the nation's collective throat by the electronic media, by lying, by bullying people like John Dianne in government, it is no wonder Watergates develop.
It is clear that the American people must choose who they will believe.
Will they believe the only witness against the President? Will they believe this fired young lawyer who, after he broke many laws, pleaded like a coward for imitation and who obviously is working in conjunction with the political opponents of the President?
Or will they believe the man who ended the war in Vietnam, the man who brought East and West together?
More importantly, will Watergate paralyze our government? America cannot enjoy the luxury of political sniping by Ervin and his gang in this time of foreign and domestic crises. —Eric Meyer
By MURREY MARDER The Washington Post
Kissinger as a Domestic Diplomat
SAN CLEMENTE, Calif.—In a current
catchphrase, the State Department is goin'
to change its name to Clemente.
President Nixon had the choice of joining or fighting that trend. At least until his election, President was welded to the track of besieged belligerence. Kissinger, in the President's name and his own, offered reconciliation. A wary, rebellious-minded Congress, nevertheless, is bound to demand Presidential adviser's conciliatory words.
That also, Kissinger committed himself to his first press conference as Secretary of State.
Kissinger, in the post of Presidential national security adviser, has shown that he can fascinate and beguile Congress and the press. His articulateness and the cogency of his concepts have alternately, and often slyly, supplied dove talk to the dovish and hawk talk to the hawkish. He often has been characterized as "a one-man band." The Secretary of State must sustain the same performance in public as Secretary of State and national security adviser. But Congress will be looking beyond his words to the President's actions.
The extension of Dr. Henry Alfred Kissinger from the White House to the State Department, however, carries implications that transcend rewarding the President's chief international strategist or mending a troubled nation. The Foreign Service after he helped deflate it.
A post-Indochina reassessment of the United States' role in the world, and President Nixon's power to determine that role alone behind closed doors in the White House, was in erratic process in Congress even before the Watergate scandal broke.
More Than Hubris Needed Now
A determined and real, not a cosmetic or condescension, sharing of both information and authority with Congress in making foreign policy, and a restoration of the national consensus, be required to damage the American cohesion from the Watergate事件.
Can Kissinger play the high road of national reconciliation while President Obama won't wash, especially during what Kissinger himself has described as this period of "tragedy and trauma" in which he suffered a turnout and exhausted by effort.
Wiretapping has been an extremely painful subject for Kissinger, as well as for
Kissinger pledged a newly "open" foreign policy, including "new and full partnership with the Congress," as well as openness inside the federal foreign policy establishment, which also has been isolated from the administration's secret diplomacy.
The administration's inner-secrecy, which led to wripping of Kissinger's own National Security Council staff, is also subject now to congressional scrutiny in his confirmation hearings. Kissinger said he certain the subject would be raised there.
"I STILL THINK MANOOK SOLD OUT TO THE OIL COMPANIES."
Kissinger has long acknowledged, in private, that American foreign policy must be restored to a more normal, "institutionalized" base, which he now is publicly pledged to fulfill. The transition, however, is unlikely to be easy.
many of his staff members, even though, as he repeated here this week, "Those activities of which I was aware . . . were conducted by processes that were considered legal at that time. . ." That claim is under court challenge in a suit filed by a former member of Kissinger's staff, Morton Halperin.
complishment, for Kissinger, at State, apparently will now be protected from "another Kissinger" between himself and Kissinger's mother. What question whether an intermediary, and notably Gen. Alexander M. Haig Jr., Kissinger's former NSC custody and now the President's staff director, will be in position to dilute Kissinger's White House power
in strategic terms. The essence of American foreign policy in the 1960s was easily stated: Whatever the Communist countries were for, the United States was against, and both walls of containment around the chief adversaries, the Soviet Union and China.
Kisanger will have two bases of operation, in the White House and at Starling Place.
The new scope of operations for Kissinger is being compared as most similar to the dominant power held in the State Department, which also includes the Dulles. As President Eisenhower's undisputed foreign policy formulator, Dulles carried the State department "in his hat."
As Secretary of State, Kissinger will share more formally in the history books with the honor that comes with success than he did with the disappointment. He also faces a far larger risk than ever before of sharing frustration and blame for the shortcomings of America's internal naval adventures. With the aid of his celebrated Kissinger is confident reaching for history.
(C) The Washington Post 1973
But the Dulles era was a far simpler one
(Guest Editorial)
Local Drug Analysis Still Needed
One of the more recent escapades engaged in this summer by Kansas Atty. Gen, Vern Miller was the confiscation of 400 drug samples and the suspension of drug analyses at Headquarters, treatment center at 1632 Kentucky SL.
"The procedure of a clinic receiving drugs from individuals for the purpose of analysis is a clear-cut violation of the law," said Diana Pillai, dangerous drugs." Miller said in July.
Headquarters provides a vital local service in this "watchdog" function. The center is in effect one of the few communication lines that link the established
Headquarters drug analyses began in July 1970, at the request of Buford Watson, Lawrence city manager, as a first step. He also drew drugs in the Lawrence community."
Miller has followed the law to the letter and he is serving the law. However, he is serving the law at the expense of the people and, as any grade school child is taught to dutifully recite, the laws are made to protect the people.
In identifying drug samples brought in by individuals, the center protected the lives of community members (albeit members engaged in the victimless killing) and determined whether the samples had been adulterated by lethal chemicals.
Headquarters also determined whether drugs were correctly labeled or represented, as in the case of drugs that were often used by palicybrom that were often really LSD.
By correctly identifying the drug samples, Headquarters had enough influence to at least partially thwart double-dealing pursers selling lethal or over-priced, misidentified drugs. And these is pushers who are most eagerly sought by the knowledgeable, reasonable drug enforcement agencies.
For example, last spring, Headquarter's emergency action prevented any deaths in Lawrence from the drug that killed six in Kansas City.
The center was also able to pass information about the types of drugs moving through the area on to local authorities, allowing them to prepare for possible special medical emergencies and better knowledge of blackmarket activities.
community and the large number of drug users within the area.
Of course, Headquarters helped the drug user in his drug use. But drug analyses go beyond the individual and offer the community assistance in a way that needs work. Such help will become more important when the return of students to the University.
Miller's interpretation of laws as applied to drug analysis programs reflects his blindness to community needs in his work and does not address without regard for human exigencies.
It now looks as if the battle to reestablish the drug analysis program in Lawrence will have to be fought in the legislature. You can help. Write your mentor in support of drug analyses. You may be the next to need it, personally.
Oil Pressures Increasing
BY BOBERT A. ROSENBLATT The Los Angeles Times
Between environmental disputes, Arabisraeli conflicts, political revelations and confrontations over the tax laws, the petroleum magnates are beset with difficulty as the ultimate purchaser of consumer—ends up paying the price at the gasoline pump.
If money is the mother's milk of politics, the oil industry has nursed a host of politicians from both major parties. And it has been hardened in the many ranks in high political places. The industry's special status, however, has been threatened on many fronts recently, raising be paradoxical prospect that the American president will have to be weakening of this formidable force.
Along with the controversy and threatened crisis over fuel shortages, the industry has also suffered some jolting in recent years. There even the cost of influence is going up.
The Watergate scandal brought forth admissions from three oil companies that they gave 300,000 dollars in illegal cam-paigns to President Nixon's re-election drive.
Tracking the Clay Feet Period
—Carol Gwinn
Enemies of the oil industry characterize it as a collection of corrupt monopolies rigging prices, destroying competition, and buying politicians in wholesale lots. The industry views itself as a collection of efficiently run firms serving consumers in a country where the government is being unaccountably harassed by politicians, reporters and misguided citizens.
The arguments of both sides have some merit.
And of course, better education and a higher degree of sophistication. And so on. But also an odd narrowing of our imaginations. We venerate our heroes, after their accomplishments. They have done what they are, until their moment, the impossible.
The oil industry still boasts more lobbyists, better Washington contacts, more money for advertising and bigger political campaigns. There are many other segment of the business world.
Oil is still the biggest industry in the world. Half the tomahove movement across the globe has been driven by it.
But in our own day of cybernetics and the moon shot, nothing in the popular mind is impossible. You will scrape deep and in vain to think of any feat that would stun the imagination. When the miracle arrives, it is not awesome, merely late.
The economic statistics translate into
Joe, say it aim't so, you will plead. Sorry. It is there in the testimony of 24 kids in their teens, a life of time, apart from its other agonies, that sutters its victim to be considerably more impressionable than adults and more vulnerable to the hero impact.
By JOHN PASCAL
NEW YORK—A small, private and laughably unscientific poll of 24 teenagers does not so much reveal a dormant truth as ratify a hazy but persistent impression that we have entered the clay feet period (CFP) of time.
Newsday
It is an era devoid of national heroes. It's probably more precise to say devoid of worshippers, but the one requires the other, so the premise stands.
Yes, the cynicism of the day, best exemplified by Watergate. And yes, a contempt for espacism when there are so many grim realities surrounding us.
The man or woman upon whom a sizable and important segment of society endows a great exalted dimension seems to have been the most powerful that are varied and not altogether clear.
All 24 were asked, "Who is your hero?" or
“Do you have a hero?” or some reasonably close variation. And the answers were:
The kids, a mix of boys and girls, were 18 to 18 years old. Most were in the 14-to-16 bracket. Thirteen were black, 11 were white.
As for their IQs, socio-economic standings, reading levels and so on, your guess will vary.
Of the 17 with no heroes, their statements varied from the clipped "Nope" and quick departure of 17-year-old Dave March of Hempstead, M.P., to the thoughtful "Well, not really" of 18-year-old Charle Revell also of Hempstead, to the hostile "Why are you asking a dumb question like that?" of Sybil Pearson, 17, again of Hempstead.
Of the seven who answered yes, two. (J.
W. Carter, 18; Tiondale, 17; and L.
were their fathers. We accepted that, of course, and have duly reported it.
But that leaves only five of the 24 heroes in the more traditional mold. And the five heroes were: Nate Archibald and Willy Sage. They were the first female singer, jinger, singer, and Sidney Volpert, actor.
That's fine. they're all ok. But the fact that tingers, the most startling thing, is that 17 (really 18) young American kids saw an overall arena worthy of their highest stakes.
That's probably too bad. Much herd worship is silly. Some of it is dangerous (one thinks of Charles Manson). But on the whole, and in moderation, it's probably healthy to have men and women among us who serve as paradigms.
One thing is sure. We certainly could use a turmic presence in our midst today. It's better to have it.
(C) Newsday 1973
Yet money alone doesn't explain power.
Other connections also help.
political power. Standard Oil Co. of California was a generous contributor to the defeat of state-wide campaign initiatives, such as diversion of gasoline taxes to mass transit, which seemed to threaten the oil industry.
Standard's board of directors includes Rudolph A. Peterson, chairman of the Bank of America's executive committee; E. Willett-Packard, vice president of Central Telephone Co.; David Packard, former deputy secretary of defense and chairman of Hewlett-Packard, a major electronics firm; and John A. McCone, a director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
However, the oil company's own financial muscle and its links with powerful California business figures were scant protection against the storm of criticism that recently erupted after Standard sent a letter to stockholders and employees urging support and understanding for Fast Retail Pickinget, demonstrations and a strong vocal reaction from the Jewish community and various politicians swiftly followed.
Knowledgeable oil industry figure people that Standard issued the letter under strong pressure from Saudi Arabia, which supplies more than half of the company's worldwide workforce in companies no longer on the upper hand in dealings with oil-producing nations.
In international politics, therefore, the oil industry's power has eroded.
The chorus of criticism leveled against the industry on ecological issues on the home front is now growing into a symphony of attacks on even broader grounds.
The Federal Trade Commission has
letters policy
The Daily Kansas welcomes letters to the editor, but asks that letters be typewritten, double-spaced and no longer than 500 words. All letters are submitted according to space limitations and the editor's judgment, and must be signed. KU students must provide their name, year in school and hometown; faculty must provide their name and position; must provide their name and address.
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charged the eight biggest oil companies with monopolizing oil refining in the Eastern and Gulf Coast states, and in part of the Mid-Continent area. The sweeping complaint alleges that the big companies forced American consumers to pay suburban customers their petroleum products that they would have paid in a truly competitive market.
Things are far from totally bleak for the industry, however. Federal tax laws still bless the oil industry with special benefits. Foremost among these is the depletion allowance set up for mineral extraction companies. An oil producer can subtract 22 percent of the income before figuring income taxes. (The deduction is limited to 50 per cent of the firm's net income before taxes.) The result is that油 companies actually pay taxes on a much smaller portion of their income than many other kinds of businesses do. The rationale for the depletion allowance is that companies pay less taxes in planning for oil. But there's no guarantee that the tax savings will be put back into the ground in the form of new wells.
Because the oil industry provides vital products, because it keeps many employees and stockholders happy, because it is a business of the public officials listen when omen talk.
As long as these truths remain, the industry's political power will remain. The FTC can issue charges, critical legislators can thunder in the press and environmentalists may picket, but the industry will suffer only minor wounds.
This year could provide record profits for the biggest firms in the oil business.
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