University Daily Kansan / Thursday, December 7. 1989
Nation/World
7
Thornburgh overrules aides
Inquiry requested on HUD official
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Dick Thornburgh overruled staff members who wanted to order a preliminary inquiry into allegations of political favoritism and perjury against former Housing Secretary Samuel R. Pierce Jr., Thornburgh's spokesman said yesterday.
Thornburgh reversed the recommendation from the Justice Department's public integrity section, sayings that would give basis to conduct a preliminary inquiry on allegations against Pierce, said spokesman David Runkel.
The 60-day inquiry Thornburgh ordered will determine whether he is
should seek court appointment of an independent counsel to conduct a full criminal investigation of the former housing secretary.
Runkel dismissed suggestions that Thornburgh had ordered the preliminary inquiry to deflect charges from Congressional Democrats that he was a former investigative of a fellow Republican and former Cabinet colleague.
The allegations that Pierce awarded Department of Housing and Urban Development grants on the basis of political favoritism and lied to Congress about final nominal hearings last spring were made last month by 19 House Democrats.
The lawmakers cited testimony that Pierce gave to the House Government Operations employment and housing subcommittee that he had not had "hands on" involvement in awarding HUD grants to politically connected developers.
The independent council process was triggered when the 19 Democrats, members of the House Judiciary, called for the formation of allegations to Thoreauph or Nov. 2.
In accordance with that procedure, Thornburgh disclosed Monday his decision to conduct the preliminary inquiry.
Pierce has denied any wrongdoing but has twice refused to give additional testimony to the House subcommittee on the national right against self-incrimination.
Pierce's lawyers have contended that the lawmakers did not provide the Justice Department with any evidence that their client had committed a crime.
The public integrity section, applying that standard as outlined in the independent counsel law, apparently agreed with that view.
Security troubles nuclear arms plants
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Lax protection of high-grade plutonium and other nuclear arms material is emerging as one of the most serious, though least well-known, flaws in the Energy Department's troubled weapons program.
Compared with highly publicized mechanical breakdowns, management failures and environmental violations at the nuclear weapons plants, little has been documented of little lapses and efforts to correct them.
Most official information about protection of nuclear materials, including plutonium and enriched uranium, is classified. Only people with special security clearances are
allowed inside areas of weapons manufacturing plants and laboratories that hold the materials. Several key weapons plants are shut down temporarily for safety reasons.
Evidence is now growing, however, that despite the weapons makers' devotion to secrecy, some federal nuclear facilities have run the risk in attacking the goal of allowing the theft of enough plutonium to build a nuclear bomb.
Members of Congress are suggesting that some Energy Department officials have soft-pedaled the protection problems. Some department officials complain that budget constraints have prevented the filling of security posts with adequately trained people.
Among security flaws disclosed
this week by a house Energy investigations subcommittee:
Argonne National Laboratory-West, near Idaho Falls, Idaho, violated rules last year on controlling access to portable plutonium at a nuclear reactor site at the lab.
Details of the incident are classified, but a senior Energy Department official told a closed hearing of officials that the violation "revealed a deficient and vulnerability" to the diversion of bomb materials to terrorists.
Portions of the hearing transcript were declassified earlier this week.
▶ Quantities of plutonium large enough to make a nuclear bomb were left unattended in rooms without alarms at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory last spring.
BOMBING IN COLUMBIA: A truck bomb containing half a ton of dynamite exploded outside secret police headquarters in Bogota, Colombia, during the morning rush hour yesterday, killing at least 35 people and wounding hundreds.
The bomb was the most powerful to strike the capital since Colombia's cocaine traffickers began a wave of war after the government declared war on them 16 weeks ago.
A spokesman for President Virgilio Garbo said the bombing might be the start of a new camouflage killings by the drug traffickers.
The blast, which tore open a crater 20 feet deep and destroyed or heavily damaged a score of buildings, occurred less than 24 hours after government investigators said a bomb caused the crash of a Colombian jetliner last month that killed 107 people.
SALVADOR FIGHTING: Leifstat guerrillas in El Salvador shot down a military observation plane, and scattered fighting killed five
World Briefs
rebels and two government soldiers, the army said yesterday.
The O-2 observation plane was shot down by rebel rifle fire Tuesday near the town of Ozatian killing the pilot the army said.
The rebel's clandestine Radio Venceremos said that the plane — the second downed in the past month — was shot down as it wired firing rocks at rebel positions.
The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front broadcast said the rebels have damaged 23 government aircraft during a new offensive that they launched Nov. 11, but military sources refused to confirm or deny it.
SOVIET REFORMS: Lithuania's parliament yesterday fell nine votes short of changing the republic's constitution to legalize multiple political parties, the first threat to the Communist Party's supremacy in the Soviet Union.
The 219-1 vote was shy of the 228 needed for the two-thirds majority, but 84 deputies were absent and 30 abstained. The parliament will vote again today, said Eduard Potashinskas, an activist.
Also yesterday, the Armenian legislature failed to draw a quorum large enough to consider a similar constitutional change, said activist Karen Shakhbazyan in Yerevan.
RIGHT TO DIE: The Supreme Court entered the wrenching "right to die" controversy yesterday as lawyers clashed over whether to permit the withdrawal of life-sustaining nutrition from a 32-year-old Missouri woman.
In Moscow, green photocopied cards appeared yesterday in subway stations and main streets calling for a two-hour general strike Monday to ask the Congress of People's Deputies to rescind the same provision in the national constitution.
William Colby, a lawyer for the parents of Nancy Cruzan, told the justices that if the woman were "lucid for a moment and could come before this court," she would "choose liberty" and ask for removal of the feeding tube. But, he said, the woman will never recover.
Experts predict continued economic growth
The Associated Press
said, but prices range from flat to modest increases.
WASHINGTON — The nation's unprecedented peaceetime economic expansion, entering its eight year this month, will last at least three more years, the nation's top business economists said yesterday.
The National Association of Business Economists said that the latest survey of its members found that 62 percent expected no recession for the next three years.
At the same time, the Federal Reserve Board reported economic activity ranging from stable to modest expansion. Consumer spending varies around the country, the Fed
The economists' forecast was considerably more optimistic than recent surveys by the organization. Last May, for instance, 63 percent of the economists expected a recession next year. Three months later. 37
percent still expected a recession in 1990.
The economy has slowed considerably since the Fed began to boost interest rates to restrain price increases. As inflation pressures moderated, however, the Fed has gradually let rates fall.
In its latest survey of the economy, the Fed said that the Federal Reserve districts that reported prices generally noted flat to modest increases.
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