UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, October 5,1994
5B
Pilots feel strain of defense cuts
The Associated Press
SPANGDAHLEM AIR BASE, Germany — It was supposed to be the standard slide presentation by the general for the VIP from the Pentagon. Instead, Defense Secretary William Perry got an earful about the strains of military life in an era of defense cuthacks.
Pilots are overworked and undertrained, he was told. Spouse and alcohol abuse are increasing. Child abuse, too.
"Should I be concerned, or deeply concerned?" Perry asked Brig. Gen. John Dallager yesterday after being told that 21 of 23 air combat controllers had been unable to meet training requirements and needed waivers to remain on duty.
Perry, a mathematician and hightech entrepreneur who has been in office eight months, visited Spang-
dahlem during a European tour in connection with NATO meetings.
Dallager, commander of a fighter wing, told Perry that reports of spouse abuse among the base's 11,915 civilian and military personnel are up 9 percent in the past year.
The base is eight miles east of Bittburg, in western Germany near the Belgian border.
Child abuse is up 20 percent, he said. alcohol abuse is up 11 percent.
said of our success. Pilot training, he said, has declined sharply, and so has readiness to fight a war.
Dallager conceded that the increases in reported violence and other domestic problems could be the result of better monitoring now that the base is "starting to take care of people."
"We've made this a priority," he said.
But the pressure that constant deployments put on training is beyond question. Dallager said.
Dallager said the crews are still capable but that the trend in training is in the wrong direction.
Perry could offer no assurances of change.
"That trend will continue as long as we have these operations," he said. "Since we're not going to get an increased force structure, there are two options: We can reduce our operations tempo or we can use the Guard and Reserves to supplement missions."
For most of the past 40 years, this base has been on the front line of the Cold War. If one of the nightmare scenarios of that era had developed — an invasion of the West by Soviet forces — pilots at Spangdahlem would have been among the first into combat.
White House in-law wins Democratic primary
The Associated Press
MIAMI — First brother-in-law Hugh Rodham easily won yesterday's Democratic primary runoff for the U.S. Senate against a former radio talk show host who believes in a government coverup of UFOs.
The brother of first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton had 148,565 votes, or 57 percent, to Mike Wiley's 43 percent, or 111,458 votes, with 70 percent of the precincts reporting.
He will face popular Republican incumbent Connie Mack in the November general election.
Yesterday's victory was "based in part on the fact that Rodham is a strong candidate," said consultant John Walker who worked on the successful campaign.
Although the Rodham campaign ridiculed Wiley and professed not to take him seriously, Mrs. Clinton was brought in over the weekend for a round of campaign appearances amid reports low voter turnout could hurt her brother's chances.
NY public defenders strike for raises The Associated Press Rudolph Chilll
NEW YORK — On the best of days, the city's vast court system is slow, confusing and inefficient. So what happens when the mayor fires the company that manages hundreds of striking public defenders?
The answer, four days into the strike. The usual.
Legal Aid Society attorneys picked outside courthouses, but inside all was calm. Judges juggled their calendars; Legal Aid supervisors filled in for striking staffers; private lawyers were hired to handle arraignments; some Legal Aid staffers showed up for trials and other previously scheduled proceedings.
In a perpetually snarled system that constantly verges on chaos, it was just another day.
The 1,000 public defenders walked out at midnight Friday demanding better pay and health benefits. On Monday, Mayor
Rudolph Giuliani canceled the city's longstanding contract with the Legal Aid Society, a private agency that represents most of New York's indigent litigants, including criminal defendants.
Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor, said he was offended that lawyers would strike. He said the strike meant Legal Aid couldn't fulfill its contract.
Giuliani said Legal Aid would have to make concessions to get a new contract, including cutting management salaries.
Few defendants were immediately affected by the dispute because the lawyers' union decided that striking lawyers would continue to represent their clients in cases that had already gone to trial.
The lawyers have rejected an offer of 2 percent raises in each of two years. Their union has sought raises of 4.5 percent, matching recent management raises. The lawyers have averaged about $45,000 a year.
Hill then asked no questions of prosecution witnesses who said they saw him or a man looking like him outside a clinic at the time of the July 29 shotgun slayings of Dr. Jqhn Bayard Britton, 69, and bodyguard James H. Barrett, 74.
PENSACOLA, Fla. — Acting as his own lawyer after another change of heart, the man accused of killing an abortion doctor warned the jury at the start of his trial yesterday that those who countenance abortion "will answer to God."
Trial begins in abortion case
The Associated Press
The 40-year-old former minister is the first person to stand trial under the federal law enacted earlier this year against injuring or otherwise interfering with anyone entering an abortion clinic. Conviction could bring a life prison term.
Hill is also awaiting trial in state court on charges of murder and
attempted murder; if convicted there, he could get the electric chair.
Hill, a former pastor in the Presbyterian Church in America and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, took over his defense after U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson refused to let him argue the killings who justifiable homicide.
Hill's lawyers had wanted to employ a necessity defense, arguing that Hill killed to prevent the greater evil of abortion. Before the slayings, Hill had openly advocated killing abortion providers.
Vinson also ruled the defense had failed to provide evidence that abortions performed at the clinic were illegally done on viable fetuses.
Nine prosecution witnesses testified they saw Hill firing a gun, standing near Barrett's body or leaving the clinic parking lot immediately after the shooting.
Bush weeps about Tailhook scandal
The Associated Press
LAS VEGAS — Paula Coughlin testified yesterday that President Bush wept when she told him of being sexually assaulted by drunken aviators at the 1991 Tailhook convention.
The former Navy leutenant told a U.S. District court jury that she had met with Bush at the White House in the summer of 1992 as she was granting a series of media interviews about her experiences at the convention.
"President Bush said he had recently found out what happened to me," she testified. "He had a 30- or 31-year-old daughter. He started to cry."
Former Navy Secretary H. Lawrence Garrett III resigned over the Tailhook scandal.
night after it occurred, but he took no immediate action despite promises to do so.
Coughlin, 32, also testified that her former boss, Adm. Jack Snyder, "shrieked" at her during a phone call in which he suggested she change her story.
Snyder has said that he didn't know of the attack until nearly two weeks later.
Sobbing in her second day of testimony, Coughlin said she told Snyder about the Sept. 7, 1991 incident the
Coughlin is suing the Las Vegas Hilton and Hilton Hotel Corp. for unspecified damages, saying they failed to provide proper security at the gathering of Navy and Marine aviators.
She recently settled a lawsuit against the Tailhook Association for an undisclosed sum. After Coughlin went public with her ordeal, about 90 other women said they too were groped and fondled at the convention as they were forced down a gauntlet of aviators in a hallway. A dozen have sued.
Coughlin said she told Snyder about the attack again later that same week but "he scoffed it off again."
She resigned from the Navy earlier this year, citing pressure from her role as a Tailhook whistle blower.
Private company now responsible for public school
The Associated Press
HARTFORD, Conn. — Desperate for a remedy for high dropout rates, low test scores and deteriorating buildings, Hartford has become the nation's first city to put a private company fully in charge of its public school system.
After contentious debate, the Board of Education voted 6-3 Monday to make Education Alternatives inc. responsible for the education of 25,000 children in 32 schools.
There were many dissenters among the 120 yelling, stomping, screaming and cheering parents and teachers at the board meeting.
"What we're going to have left is nothing for the children. You treat them like so much livestock," parent Steven Fourier hollered at the board. "This is an invitation to corruption."
Education Alternatives has promised to raise Hartford's test scores without spending more money by using a system it calls the Tesseract Way. The name is from Madeleine L'Engle's children's book "A Wrinkle in Time," which describes a corridor for traveling to new worlds.
The system relies on computers and parent participation. Students help set their own goals and work in groups at their own pace.
Education Alternatives manages nine public schools in Baltimore and one in Miami Beach, Fla.
Another firm, The Public Strategies Group Inc., was hired in November by the Minneapolis school board as a consultant to help resolve financial problems and boost student achievement in a 79-school system. The head of the firm became school superintendent.
Learn to Fly 842-0000
Lawrence Air Services
Instruction • Charter Services •
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Joann Byrd, Ombudsman The Washington Post
to speak Oct. 6, at the Lied Center, on
THE PRESS AND POLITICAL COVERAGE: WHOSE ELECTION IS IT ANYWAY?
during a program beginning at 2:30 p.m., open to students, faculty and the general public
Ms. Byrd will lecture and answer questions during Editors Day, a program beginning at 2:30 p.m. Thursday, October 6, at the Lied Center. Ms. Byrd has been the Washington Post's reader representative since 1992. Her career has included work as a newspaper editor and reporter in the states of Washington and Oregon. She has an undergraduate degree in journalism and a master's in philosophy, with an emphasis on ethics. The Editors Day program will begin with inductions into the Kansas Newspaper Hall of Fame.
Sponsored by the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications, in cooperation with the Kansas State University School of Journalism, the William Allen White Foundation, the Kansas Press Association and Kansas Press Women