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Nation/World
University Daily Kansan
News Briefs
Israeli spy suspects could be questioned
JERUSALEM — Israel will allow Justice Department officials to question Israeli counterterrorism chief Rafael Eitan and others suspected in the Jonathan Pollard spy case, a U.S. official said yesterday.
PARIS — A team of highly organized thieves wearing bullet-powder vests held 11 people at gunpoint and robbed a Brink's depot of up to $9 million yesterday in the 10th largest robbery in history, authorities said.
At the same time, Prime Minister Shimon Peres rejected suggestions that Israeli agents routinely spy on the United States and said the Pollard scandal was "the case of a lone spy, which contradicts our principles."
A U.S. official in Jerusalem, who spoke on condition he not be identified, said the Israeli government told the United States it would allow Justice Department officials to interview suspected Israelis in the spy scandal.
Robbers hit Brink's
A group of about 10 thieves forced two Brink's security transport company employees to open vaults at the depot in the northwestern suburb of Colombes while their families were held at gunpoint in their homes, police said.
No one was injured, police said, and the thieves made off with between $8 million and $9 million in cash and checks.
New hearts on hold
WASHINGTON — A Food and Drug Administration advisory group, worried by poor results with the artificial heart, is considering whether to ask Dr. William DeVries to delay three more implants the agency earlier authorized, a panel member said yesterday.
DeVries, based at the Humana Heart Institute of Louisville, Ky., is the only U.S. surgeon licensed to implant permanent artificial blood pumps in humans. Seven Jarvik-7 hearts have been implanted since late 1982 and most of the recipients have suffered strokes blamed on blood clots from the devices.
Tuesday, Dec. 3, 1985
From Kansan wires.
Four indicted in cover-up effort
From Kansan wires
WASHINGTON — James M. Beggs, the administrator of NASA, was indicted yesterday with three other present or former executives of General Dynamics Corp. on charges involving attempts to hide overrun losses on the Army's illfated Sgt. York anti-aircraft gun, the Justice Department said.
The seven-count indictment, returned by a federal grand jury, charged General Dynamics and the four managers at its suburban Los Angeles division tried to reduce multimillion-dollar losses on its $80 million contract with the Army to build a prototype of the DIVAD anti-aircraft gun.
The individuals and the corporation were charged with one count each of conspiring to defraud the Department of Defense between January 1, 1978, and Aug. 31, 1981, in its function of administering and paying its contractors. They also were charge-
ed with six counts of making false statements.
If convicted, the corporation faces a maximum fine of $10,000 on each of the seven counts. The individuals face maximum sentences of five years in prison and $10,000 fines on each count.
A government source said $7.5 million was mischarged, resulting in a $3.2 million net loss to the government.
A spokesman at General Dynamics' headquarters in Clayton, Mo., said the company and individuals "intend to contest these charges vigorously."
Beggs became head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on July 10, 1981, after leaving a post as corporate executive vice president of General Dynamics.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who chairs a subcommittee that oversees defense procurement, said in Washington that Beegs should step aside in the same way that former Labor Secretary Ray
mond Donovan did after his indictment. Donovan's case is still in the courts.
Grassley said he was pleased with the indie-
ments but added, "I expected big things like this to
happen months ago."
He said the Justice Department was "feeling the heat" and finally going after the large defense contractors and said yesterday's action might be a forerunner of more such indictments.
During a Los Angeles news conference, U.S. Attorney Robert Bonner said the indictment was part of the federal government's "continuing crackdown on defense contractors who through fraud are pillaging the United States treasury."
He said General Dynamics, "rather than absorb these losses" in the DIVAD project, "illegally shifted $7.5 million to overhead accounts reimbursed by the government."
Court to hear pension case
United Press International
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed to decide yesterday whether Congress can force states to keep their workers in the Social Security system, a move that the government argues is necessary to preserve the federal pension plan.
The justices will hear arguments this term from federal officials who want them to reverse a decision that found unconstitutional an amendment to the Social Security Act barring states or their subdivisions from pulling employees out of the system.
The government, however, warned that taking state employees out of the system could be crippling, costing the system between $500 million and $1 billion annually.
If the state agencies pulled out of Social Security, neither they nor their employees would have to contribute payroll taxes for the plan, which pays benefits to more than 35 million Americans. Those favoring the pullout maintain state-sponsored pension programs would be less costly than participating in the nationwide system.
pending the State of California, several state agencies, taxpayers and a group calling itself Public Agencies Opposed to Social Security Entrapment went to court against the 1983 change in the Social Security law, which was one of several efforts to shore up the financing of the system.
Midwest storm moves east
United Press International
An arctic cold wave gripped much of the nation yesterday and sent temperatures plummeting from Montana to Georgia, while a snowstorm that had blanketed the Midwest moved into the Northeast with blizzard-like conditions that closed schools and roads.
Midwesterners buried under as much as 15 inches of snow over the weekend began digging out of their first major snowstorm of the season that stranded travelers and prompted wind chills of 50 below.
As it moved east, the intense low-pressure system brought blowing snow to the Great Lakes region in the afternoon, causing hazardous travel. A blizzard warning was again in effect for much of upper Michigan, the National Weather Service said.
Up to 2 feet of snow was forecast by Tuesday afternoon at elevations above 7,000 feet in Utah, with 12 to 18 inches possible over far western Wyoming.
Another storm over the Pacific Northwest prompted blizzard warnings for parts of Oregon. Winter storm warnings were posted for the Mt. Sasta-Siskiyou region of northern California.
The new arctic air mass that moved down from Canada sent temperatures plummeting as far south as Georgia where freeze warnings were posted. Record low temperatures were tied or broken in 40 cities in 12 states.
Havre, Mont., recorded the nation's coldest temperature at 33 below, but it wasn't enough to get into the record books.
In the Northeast, high winds and heavy snow in Buffalo, N.Y., closed schools, caused near-zero visibility and pushed Lake Erie water to record levels.
An Oswego State, N.Y., student was missing and presumed drowned and a second student was injured when waves swamped the break wall where they were walking and washed the pair into Lake Ontario.
Marcos reinstates Ver as chief
The Associated Press
MANILA, Philippines — President Ferdinand E. Marcos reinstated Fabian C. Ver as armed forces chief yesterday, hours after a court acquitted the general, 24 other soldiers and a civilian of assassinating opposition leader Benigno Aquino.
in their 90-page decision, the three civilian judges accepted Marcos' version, given the day after Aquino was killed on Aug. 21, 1983, while stepping off a commercial airline that brought him home from voluntary exile in the United States — that Aquino's assassin was Rolando Galman.
Galman, a supposed communist, was killed by soldiers immediately after Anuino was shot.
Marcos welcomed Ver at the presidential palace immediately after the acquittal, and issued a handwritten order restoring him to his post. The president said the reinstatement was "for such a period as may be decided upon by me and by senior officers of the armed forces."
ed to blunt criticism here and in the United States of the return to command of a man under whom the army has been accused of widespread human rights abuses.
The qualification appeared intend
Sen. Richard Lugar, chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, criticized the verdict and Ver's restatement. "The court ruling does not contribute to the crying need for credibility in the Philippines government, nor does it answer the need for reform and reorganization in the military," the Indiana Republican said in Washington.
Prison term for ex-boss starts today
The Associated Press
CHICAGO — A federal judge yesterday ordered former Teamsters president Roy Williams to begin serving a 10-year prison term for conspiracy to bribe a U.S. senator.
U. S. District Judge Prentice Marshall ordered the ailing labor leader to report by 4 p.m. CST today to the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Mo. Williams suffers from emphysema, and his attorneys have said he fears he will die in prison.
Attorneys for Williams, who did not attend yesterday's hearing, had requested a reduced sentence or even probation. Lawyer Michael LeVota urged the judge to consider Williams' recent cooperation with the government in its investigation of organized crime and said incarceration would send a negative message to other Teamsters who might be contemplating helping the government.
The U.S. Justice Department asked for a 60-day reprieve so authorities could continue questioning Williams about Teamster ties to organized crime.
Williams was convicted in December 1982 of conspiracy to bribe former U.S. Sen. Howard Cannon, D-Nev., and remained free pending appeals and legal maneuvers.
In August, Marshall handed down a final sentence of 10 years and ordered Williams to begin the term Oct. 19. Later that month, the former Teamsters chief began cooperating with federal investigators and won another delay of the prison term.
In November, Williams testified at the trial of eight reputed crime syndicate figures in Kansas City, Mo. He identified Sam Ancona, a former Teamsters official in Kansas City, as the messenger who delivered to him monthly payoffs of $1,500 from the late reputed syndicate boss, Nicholas Civella.
Gary Shapiro, chief of the Justice Department's organized-crime strike force in Chicago, said Williams' cooperation with the government warrants "at best . . . some symbolic reduction in his sentence."
But in court documents, Shapiro called Williams' request for probation "absurd."
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