NATION/WORLD
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Tuesday, April 30, 1996
5A
Former CIA director missing after accident
Coast Guard crew search river for William Colby
The Associated Press
ROCK POINT, Md. — Former CIA Director William Colby was missing and presumed drowned yesterday after what the sheriff said was an apparent boating accident near Colby's vacation home.
Knight Ridder Tribune
Colby's canoe was found on a sandbar Sunday a quarter-mile from his home on the Wicomico River, and divers searched the rough and murky water for the 76-year-old former CIA Director.
"Right now, we are viewing it as an accident," Sheriff Fred Davis said. "We're not ruling out foul play, but we never rule out foul play."
Colby, who headed the CIA from 1973 to 1976 under Presidents Nixon and Ford, apparently went canoeing late Saturday.
His absence wasn't noticed until Sunday night because neighbors became suspicious that his car was still in the driveway. Colby usually has returned to Washington by then.
A neighbor who checked his home found his radio and computer still on. Investigators found dinner dishes on a table and clam shells in the kitchen sink.
Neighbors said the water was rough Saturday and not good for canoeing.
"I don't see why a man his age would be out there," said neighbor Joseph Hervey. "If I went out there it would be in a 16- to 20-foot boat — not a canoe."
The sheriff ruled out the possibility of suicide.
Coast Guard crews searched the river for more than five hours late Sunday and resumed the search yesterday morning. Authorities didn't know if Colby was wearing a life preserver.
Colby began his intelligence career parachuting into France to fight the Nazis. He later headed the CIA's Saigon office during the Vietnam War.
In Vietnam, he was associated with Operation Phoenix, an infiltration
effort to stomp out rural support for communist guerrillas. It led to sweeping arrests, torture and execution of suspects. Critics said most of those killed were innocent peasants.
He was dismissed by Ford as CIA director because of a growing feeling in the White house that he was cooperating too freely with congressional investigators looking into allegations of wrongdoing within the agency.
The agency had been accused of plotting assassinations overseas and of spying on civilians in the United States.
Colby was born in St. Paul, Minn.
He dropped out of Columbia University Law School after his first year to join the Army.
He went into intelligence when he answered a call for French-speaking volunteers and joined the Office of Strategic Services, the CIA's foreruner.
Colby joined the CIA in 1950. After retiring from the CIA, he practiced law and was a consultant.
A director of a U.S.-based investment fund called the Vietnam Frontier Fund, Colby was denied a visa to visit Vietnam in 1994.
Recently, Colby and former KGB Gen. Oleg Kalugin played themselves in a new interactive CD-ROM game, "Spycraft: The Great Game."
"We've got lots of former enemies," Colby said in an interview to promote the game. "We fought a lot of them, and now we are allies. ... We have many kinds of games used in the government for training and to stretch the minds a bit."
Clinton plans to get tough in fighting war on drugs
The Associated Press
MIAMI — Criticized as weak in the war on drugs, President Clinton announced a drive yesterday to curb the sharp rise in marijuana use among young people and to stop the spread of the cheap and dangerous drug methamphetamine.
The administration said Clinton's election-year initiative was the opening shot in a 10-year effort aimed at returning America to a 1960s, pre-Vietnam level of drug use.
"Make no mistake about it, this has got to be a bipartisan, American, non-political effort," Clinton said.
Republicans have scoffed at Clinton's drug-fighting record.
"Since Bill Clinton was elected, the number of illegal aliens is up, the number of drug addicts is up," House Speaker Newt Gingrich said in a Las Vegas speech.
The administration acknowledged that Clinton erred early in his administration by cutting staff in the White House drug control office.
Clinton implored Congress to approve his request for a $15.1 billion initiative relying heavily on drug education, prevention and treatment programs, interdiction efforts and a crackdown on drug-related crime and violence. It would amount to a 9.3 percent increase in drug-fighting funds.
Clinton made his proposal in a sunny schoolyard at the George Washington Carver Middle School in front of hundreds of cheering young people who have taken a pledge to abstain from drugs and alcohol.
"We are here because of what you have done: zero guns, zero assaults, zero incidents of drug-related violence, zero drugs," the president said. "That's where America ought to go."
White House drug policy chief Barry McCaffrey acknowledged later there were no major new elements in Clinton's program.
"Everything in this strategy is already being done," McCaffrey said. There was no magic solution to stop the rise in drug use among American, he added.
"Make no mistake about it, this has got to be a bipartisan, American, non-political effort."
Bill Clinton President
Despite Clinton's political disclaimer, there was a heavy political air around his trip.
After the drug speech and an afternoon of golf with brothers-in-law Hugh and Tony Rodham, Clinton was to raise more than $3 million for the Democratic National Committee at a fund-raising reception and two dinners, the more exclusive of which was being held at the home of attorney Marvin Rosen.
The president was accompanied by his top political aides, and White House press officials were armed with ammunition against expected Republican attacks on Clinton's anti-drug campaign. For example, presidential representative Ginny Terzano said that the GOP's Contract With America made no mention of fighting drugs.
Likewise, she said, Sen. Bob Dole, Clinton's Republican rival, made no mention of drugs in his rebuttal to the president's State of the Union address.
Yet, even McCaffrey said the president's 1993 cuts in the Office of Drug Control didn't work out.
Florida has been hostile territory for Democratic presidential candidates for 20 years but Clinton's advisers believe he has a shot at the state's 25 electoral votes this year, because of his defense of Medicare against Republican budget attacks and his tough stand against Cuba's Fidel Castro.
FDA approves anti-obesity drug despite doctors' concerns
Drugs also are an important issue in Florida, sometimes viewed as the nation's gateway for cocaine and other drugs.
Consumer advocates fear drug could cause lung, brain damage
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The Food and Drug Administration approved the first new anti-obesity drug in 22 years yesterday, a controversial medicine that essentially fools patients into feeling full so they lose weight.
Dexfenfluramine won FDA approval despite the objections of consumer advocates and some doc
tors, who fear it could cause brain damage or a rare but dangerous lung disorder.
But the FDA said the brain damage so far has been found only in animals, and the lung aliment is rare. Consequently, obese Americans can use dexfenfluramine longer than is allowed for any other appetite suppressant, the agency ruled.
"We believe the benefits outweigh the risks," said James Bilstad, FDA's chief of metabolic drugs.
Dexfenfluramine, created by Interneuron Pharmaceuticals, will be sold by Wyeth Laboratories under the name Redux.
Obesity, defined as more than 20
percent over ideal weight, causes such ailments as high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes. Obesity-related diseases kill 300,000 Americans a year.
Doctors typically urge patients to diet and exercise to drop the pounds, but almost all who succeed regain the weight within five years. Until now, patients could take amphetamines, which can be addictive, or the drug fenfluramine to help them lose weight — but none are supposed to be used for more than several months at a time because of potential side effects.
Dexfenfuramine is a chemical relative of fenfluramine. The FDA is
not restricting how long patients can use it, although its label will warn that dexfenfluramine has not been studied in patients for more than one year.
It won't work for everybody, the FDA warned yesterday. In one study, six out of 10 patients who lost at least 4 pounds during the first month of dexfenfluramine treatment went on to lose up to 10 percent of their body weight by the end of the year-long study. Those who hadn't responded within a month weren't helped.
Diet and exercise alone helped three out of 10 patients lose as much weight.
But dexfenfuranamine patients lost an average total of just 7.5 pounds more than dieters who didn't take the drug, said Sidney Wolfe of the patient advocacy group Public Citizen.
Dexfenfluramine should be used only under a doctor's close supervision because of the risk of primary pulmonary hypertension, a rare but sometimes fatal disorder, the FDA said.
A bigger question has been if dexfenfluramine, which alters the brain chemical serotonin to make people feel full without eating as much, causes brain damage.
When animals received 10 times
the human dose, dexfenfluramine crippled their ability to make serotonin naturally. Although there is no proof that people are similarly affected, 22 neurologists wrote the FDA in December to ask that it not allow dexfenfluramine for sale until the safety question is answered.
Wolfe noted that the United Kingdom is investigating 15 deaths in patients who took dexfenfluramine and related appetite suppressants, and restricts dexfenfluramine's use to just three months.