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Nation/World
University Daily Kansan
Friday, Oct. 18, 1985
News Briefs
Driver of stolen bus allegedly killed girl
SAN ANTONIO — A transmester stole a city bus Wednesday and, with police in pursuit, careened through downtown streets, hitting four cars, killing a 3-year-old girl and injuring five people, including himself, police said yesterday.
SEABROOK, N.H. - A federal judge yesterday ordered about 2,500 workers at the Seabrook nuclear plant to end their wildcat strike and return to their jobs. Wildcat strikes are called without official sanction.
Before the bus finally stopped, it had smashed into a compact car carrying the child. Police pulled the driver and arrested him, the driver's seat, and arrested him.
U. S. District Judge James Watson in Concord issued a temporary injunction at the request of Seabrook management, which said the two-day walkout violated a national labor agreement on nuclear plant work.
Ronald Ennis, 33, who listened his address as the local Salvation Army Mission, was charged late Wednesday with murder and attempted capital murder. He was lied in lieu of $150,000 bond.
Wildcat strike ends
Seabrook managers said they did not expect workers would get the order in time to report for the second shift yesterday.
Star's husband fined
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Actor Sean Penn was fined $100 and given a suspended 90-day jail term yesterday after pleading no contest to charges he attacked two British journalists who tried to photograph Penn's wife, pop star Madonna, outside a hotel.
Markham-Smith, 33, a freelance reporter, and photographer Laurence Cottrell, 30, said Penn Smith helped Nashville's Maxwell House Hotel
The journalists claim in their suits that Oriant Pictures was partially responsible for the attack because it created an image of Penn as a "mean and moody film star."
Effects of Achille Lauro surface
From Kansan wires
WASHINGTON — After the triumph of capturing the hijackers of the Achille Lauro, the Reagan administration now must deal with the unfavorable consequences. The most disturbing of which is the fall of an Italian government long supportive of American interests.
Particularly alarming to some is that a terrorist incident could have led to the resignation of the government of Premier Bettino Craxi of Italy, an important NATO ally.
"We all have been trying to show terrorists can't achieve anything by what they do," said Helmut Sonnenfeld, a former senior Nixon administration official who is now a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution here. "The terrorists didn't intend to overthrow the Italian government, but it is unfortunate
that a terrorist incident can have an effect of this magnitude."
The fall of Premier Craxi stemmed from a decision to release a suspected terrorist, Mohammed Abbas, who was accused by the Reagan administration of planning the hijacking. Italian Defense Minister Giovani Spadolini withdrew from the Craxi government coalition in protest of how the Abbas matter was handled.
Sonnenfeldt said that the Craxi government had been a good and effective government from American and NATO standpoints and that losing this government was a setback.
The consequences of the Achille Lauro hijacking, including the American seizing of the Egyptian aircraft carrying the fleeing hijackers, continue to grow. Most of the positive gains were immediately apparent, but the negative ones have taken longer to develop.
One of the positive gains has been a feeling by Americans that after years of painful losses to terrorists, the national pride has been upheld by the capture of the accused murderers of 69-year-old Leon Klinghoffer.
In New York yesterday, the Kinghoffer family created a fund to combat world terrorism in memory of the slain tourist.
In addition, the capture of the hijackers showed an American firmness and level of technological expertise that would improve the nation's ability to deal with future terrorist attacks, experts say.
The already close bonds between the United States and Israel may be strengthened even more because Israeli leaders think their rejection of the Palestine Liberation Organization as a terrorist group has been vindicated.
Another setback is friction in relations with Egypt, which has long been the United States' chief Arab ally. It could become a major setback if Washington and Cairo were to let those frictions erode their basic relationship.
Mubarak has demanded an apology from President Reagan, but Reagan has refused.
The U.S.-sponsored search for a Middle East peace could be derailed. The U.S. strategy has focused on bringing the PLO and its chairman, Yasser Arafat, into a peace negotiation with Jordan and Israel. But if evidence of PLO involvement in the hijacking proves accurate, the PLO may now be excluded.
GNP growth unexpected by analysts
United Press International
WASHINGTON — The nation's gross national product grew at a healthy annual rate of 3.3 percent during the third quarter, the government reported yesterday, and the administration said the figure was evidence of "sustained, steady growth" in the economy.
Commerce Department economists said the GNP - the broad measure of the nation's goods and services - benefited from substantial boosts in spending by consumers and government.
The GNP for the July-September quarter was significantly ahead of the preliminary "flash" estimate of 2.8 percent growth issued last month by government economists.
Warrants issued for piracy
But a private economist was more skeptical about the possibility of continued growth, saying he saw "very little prospect" for strong growth in the next several months.
To reach the Reagan administration's forecast for a 3 percent growth rate for 1985, the fourth quarter would have to produce a strong 6.7 percent annual rate of growth, a Commerce Department economist said.
United Press International
WASHINGTON — The United States charged three Lebanese Shilites with air piracy and murder yesterday in the hijacking of TWA flight 847 in which a Navy petty officer was killed, and a $250,000 award was offered for information leading to their arrest.
Attorney General Edwin Meese announced that the suspects, identified as Hasan 'Izz-Ald-din, Mohammad Hamedel and Ali Atwa, were each held on Tuesday. The bodies of TWA flight 847 on June 14 and with murder in the death of Robert
Stethem, who was beaten, shot in the head and thrown on the tarmac at Beirut International Airport.
The three men, identified as Lebanese nationals and members of the radical pro-Iranian Hezbollah Shite group based in West Beirut, are not in custody.
Stephen Trott, head of the Justice Department's criminal division, said the murder charges fall within the "special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States," and the fugitives could face the death penalty if convicted in the United States.
Trott also said U.S. authorities know where the suspects are but
declined to elaborate.
Meese said the steps to track down and punish the hijackers are "a determined, coordinated effort by the United States to bring those responsible for a notorious act of terrorism to justice."
The charges for the TWA hijacking follow legal steps by the United States to prosecute five other Arabs, including accused Palestinian terrorist Mohammed Abbas, who have been charged with air piracy, conspiracy and hostage taking in the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro.
Reagan says SDI plan won't break treaty
and Secretary of State George Shultz over what limits, if any, the United States accepts on its Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as "star wars."
The declaration came amid apparent differences between national security adviser Robert McFarlane
United Press International
"Everything we're doing is within the context of the treaty." Reagan officiating for pictures in the Oval Offices of Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres.
At the center of the controversy was an Oct. 6 statement by McFarlane that said the administration, relying on a broad interpretation of the treaty, thought SDI testing and development were authorized by the fact. Reagan has made similar statements on numerous occasions.
WASHINGTON — President Reagan, glossing over an apparent policy conflict between two top advisers, said yesterday that the objective of his "star wars" missile-defense plan could be achieved without violating the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Eight days later, Shultz assured NATO allies that SDI work would be
done with a restrictive interpretation of the treaty's obligation. He did not explain what restrictions were recognized.
However, White House spokesman Edward Dijerjean denounced "inaccurate reports in the press" that McFarlane and Shultz had been at odds over interpretation of the treaty.
At the same time, Djerejian added a new dimension to the debate and then came back later to try to clarify it.
Jury hears last words in spy case
LOS ANGELES — The FBI perhaps should have moved more quickly in firing accused spy Richard W. Miller, but the agency's conduct is under scrutiny for espionage, a federal prosecutor said in his final comments yesterday.
The jury was to begin deliberation in the case today.
United Press International
U. S. Attorney Robert Bonner, in his closing argument, admitted that the FBI should have stepped in sooner to take stronger disciplinary action against Miller. But he insisted that nothing justified Miller's alleged spying liaison with his Soviet lover, Sveclana Ogorodnikova.
"You can't have a disgruntled FBI agent . . . a misfit, come in here and suggest that his agency should have known he was vulnerable, should have known he had problems, should have fired him." Boren said.
"If that's a defense against these charges, then God help us all, because that's exactly the kind of person the KGB will go for."
Bonner's remarks were the last to be made before the jury was to be instructed on the law and begin deliberations.
Miller, 48, is accused of passing at least one secret document to Ogorod-nikova for sex and $65,000 in cash and gold. He is the only FBI agent ever charged with espionage and faces life in prison if convicted.
Miller's argument that he was using Ogorodnikova in a maverick attempt to infiltrate the KBG and gain glory for himself and his country does not hold up, Bonner said.
"I submit to you, it was baloney then and it's still baloney," the prosecutor said.
Bonner said Miller's moral weaknesses and financial and personal problems drove him to Ogodnikova. He said Miller knew FBI rules but followed them only "when it suited him."
He said the unhappy agent photocoped the FBI's Positive Intelligence Reporting Guide — which reportedly outlines the agency's interests and showed it to Ogorodnikova in August in the bedroom of his home.