The Rev. Jesse Jackson conferred in Damascus with President Hafez al-Assad but received no reply to his request that Syria free a captured American flier. However, Syria asked Mr. Jackson to delay his departure for a second time. A Government official in Damascus said that more time was needed to respond to the request from Mr. Jackson and his delegation that Lieutenant Goodman be freed as a “humanitarian gesture.” While members of the delegation could not estimate how long they would have to wait, some said privately that they believed they would have an answer by Tuesday morning and would, therefore, be able to leave that afternoon or the next day. Few would guess whether they would be leaving with or without the 27-year-old navigator-bombardier, who was captured on December 4 when his plane was shot down during a 28-plane American bombing raid on Syrian antiaircraft positions east of Beirut.
Iraq and Iran fought sea and air battles over the Persian Gulf today in which five Iranian vessels were reported sunk and two Iraqi warplanes were shot down, according to communiques. An Iraqi military communique said Iraqi Navy and Air Force units detected a convoy of Iranian vessels sailing north toward the port of Bandar Khomeini and “hit and destroyed” five of them. It said Iranian helicopters arrived to help the stricken ships and that one United States-built Chinook helicopter was intercepted and shot down by Iraqi jets. The Iraqi communique said two Iraqi jets were shot down in an ensuing dogfight with Iranian warplanes. Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency also reported the shooting down of two Iraqi jets and identified them as a Soviet-made SU-22 and an MIG-23.
The day’s battles came one day after Iran reported its warplanes had destroyed an Iraqi land-to-sea missile base at Bisheh on the northern tip of the Persian Gulf. The Iranian press agency said in a report monitored in Beirut, Lebanon, that the Iraqis used the base to fire missiles on Iranian vessels entering ports east of the Shatt al Arab waterway. In its report of the air battle, the Iranian agency quoted an Iranian military communique issued in Tehran as saying the dogfight occurred “over the southern operational region,” but no exact locations were given. Iraq invaded Iran in September 1980 to gain control of the Shatt al Arab, its only waterway to the Persian Gulf.
France announced a redeployment of about 25 percent of its troops serving with the four-nation force in Beirut. Paris said that within a month 482 troops from the 1,750-man French contingent would leave Beirut and return to French positions with the United Nations force in southern Lebanon.
The French troops in Beirut have become prime targets for terrorist groups, and 82 French soldiers have been killed there. France, like its partners in the four-nation force, would prefer to leave Lebanon, but regards a total pullout now as politically impossible.
A reassessment of policy in Lebanon is vital, according to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House. Representative Robert H. Michel, the Republican minority leader, said of the position of American marines: “We’re just so darned boxed in, how can we influence anything?” Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. said he was originally persuaded to support White House policy on the basis of key Administration assumptions that have not been realized.
A riot in Tunis kills over 100 people. Policemen and national guard units opened fire on rioters in the southern Tunisian town of Gafsa today, causing several casualties, witnesses said. Early reports from local labor organizations said 8 people were killed and 40 were wounded in the shooting. The toll soon was revised upwards. Gafsa, 200 miles southwest of Tunis, is a stronghold of opposition to President Habib Bourguiba’s ruling Socialist Destourian Party, which is to begin its 50th anniversary celebration on Tuesday. The Tunisian Interior Ministry said earlier today that four people had been killed in rioting in the Kabili, Hamma, Kasserine and Gafsa areas of the country since Thursday. The riots were provoked by the “jobless and idlers,” the ministry said, according to the Tunisian press agency. It did not mention a recent 70 percent increase in Government-controlled price of bread.
Yasser Arafat today repeated his longstanding criticism of President Reagan’s Middle East peace plan and vowed to continue an armed struggle for an independent Palestine. Mr. Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, termed the Reagan plan “unacceptable” because it “suppresses the rights of the Palestinian people and ignores its national aspirations.” The plan calls for the creation of a Palestinian entity on the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip that would eventually be associated with Jordan. But Mr. Arafat, who was ousted from his last base in Lebanon on December 20 and arrived in Tunisia from Yemen on Friday, said the Palestinian National Council voted at its last meeting in February 1982 to accept confederation with Jordan only after the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
King Hussein called today for early Jordanian-P.L.O. talks on a joint strategy to recover Israeli-occupied land. Without referring to Mr. Arafat by name, King Hussein said in an interview broadcast on Jordanian television that it was imperative for Jordan and the Palestinians to work together to recover the West Bank. “Efforts will be undertaken as soon as possible to realize a Jordanian- Palestinian relationship,” the Jordanian King said. King Hussein and Mr. Arafat broke off talks last April on working out a joint position in the Middle East peace process.
Eight groups take responsibility for the New Year’s Eve bombings in a Marseilles rail station and aboard a high-speed train traveling from Marseilles to Paris. The death toll from the two explosions rose to five. Fifty people were injured.
A major New Year’s storm whipped by winds of 75 miles an hour pounded the Soviet Republic of Estonia and flooded Leningrad, inundating 13.5 square miles of the city’s seafront, official Soviet reports said today. “The first night of the new year was alarming,” Leningrad television said. “Territories of a number of districts were partially flooded, power lines were damaged and municipal traffic disrupted.” The Neva River quickly receded to normal levels, the Government television reported. It said cleanup operations were under way. It gave no estimate of the extent or value of property damage. There were no reports of casualties.
Two major Salvadoran defeats at the hands of the rebels in the last three days have dealt a serious blow to the morale of the military, according to United States officials in San Salvador. They said the rebel successes showed that the military has major problems with its command and intelligence-gathering apparatus. One diplomat said he was concerned about “an overwhelming collapse of morale.”
Fidel Castro used harsh words in denouncing the Reagan Administration. The Cuban leader, marking the 25th anniversary of the revolution, said the United States was led by “Nazi-fascist barbarians blinded by their own stupidity” and charged that Mr. Reagan was leading the world toward nuclear holocaust.
More unidentified bodies were reportedly discovered in cemeteries throughout Argentina over the weekend as an investigation of the activities during military rule continued. According to workers at Lules cemetery in Tucuman province, seven bodies were unearthed as the workers were laying water pipe at the cemetery. They said all of the bodies had been bound hand and foot. Argentine newspapers also reported the existence of 21 unmarked graves at a cemetery in the northern province of Jujuy and an unspecified number at a cemetery in the country’s second city, Cordoba. Some 200 unidentified bodies, many shot, have been found since the elected Government of President Raul Alfonsin took office last month. Up to 30,000 people disappeared during the armed forces’ campaign against leftist guerrillas in the 1970’s. In a related matter, the former police chief of Buenos Aires, Gen. Ramon Camps, was questioned today by a federal judge in connection with a 1978 kidnapping.
Major General Muhammadu Buhari is declared Head of State in Nigeria, following a military coup. Nigeria’s new military ruler said today that his regime would jail dishonest civil servants without bothering with the “nonsenses” of trials, according to a Lagos radio broadcast monitored here. General Buhari, who assumed power after the overthrow of Nigeria’s civilian Government in a coup Saturday, issued the warning in a speech to top civil servants. General Buhari told the civil servants to resign if they felt they could not abide by his strict new policies, the radio said in a broadcast monitored here by the British Broadcasting Corporation. A curfew remained in effect in Nigeria today and the nation’s borders and airport remained closed. There was still no word on President Shehu Shagari, who was reported to have been arrested in Saturday’s coup.
A statement calling on world governments to try again to end hunger within a decade was issued in New York yesterday in the name of former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald R. Ford and 100 other prominent people. The statement recalled that 10 years ago, 130 nations met at the World Food Conference in Rome and agreed to try to eliminate hunger on earth by the end of 1984. Impact on Hunger, a five-year-old nonprofit organization that has sponsored several projects to end hunger, said it had gathered the signatures and was sending the statement to the world’s heads of state and Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar.
W. Wilson Goode was sworn in as the 126th Mayor of Philadelphia. He begins “a journey once thought impossible,” he said, “but in America, dreams can come true.” Mr. Goode, the son of a sharecropper, is the first black to be Mayor of Philadelphia. He promised the establishment of a Philadelphia Volunteer Corps to be “composed of people from all walks of life.”
Raymond L. Flynn was inaugurated as Boston’s 46th Mayor, pledging to make “the people” his only special interest group. Mr. Flynn, whose parents were a longshoreman and a cleaning woman, promised to help the poor, improve decaying schools and end racial tension.
President Reagan returns to Washington from his California holiday vacation.
The American Civil Liberties Union has accused the Reagan Administration of demonstrating “an unprecedented hostility” toward civil rights and freedom of speech in 1983. In a special report to be made public Tuesday, the organization’s national legislative director, John Shattuck, said, “The President is operating far outside of any national consensus on issues of fundamental justice.” The report cited President Reagan’s attempt to change the membership of the United States Commission on Civil Rights and the ban on press coverage of the American invasion of Grenada as examples of what it called the Administration’s assault on civil liberties. “The President’s use of raw executive power to pack the Civil Rights Commission, even after Congress had acted to protect its independence, symbolized an Administration willing to bend the law at every opportunity in order to reverse a quarter century of bipartisan progress” in civil rights, Mr. Shattuck said in his introduction to the report. He said the restrictions on reporters on Grenada were “indicative of an Administration at war with the First Amendment.”
Reubin Askew cites Federal deficits as the major domestic problem, and he urges a postponement of adjusting income tax brackets to inflation to increase revenue, and a postponement of some scheduled increases in Social Security payments. Mr. Askew, a former Governor of Florida, pledged that if elected President he would abandon the MX missile and the B-1 bomber and press development of the Stealth bomber.
The revolution in the navigation of planes, submarines, spacecraft and missiles is accelerating as internal guidance systems become smaller, cheaper, more versatile and more accurate, according to experts. For a quarter-century these “black boxes” have sensed, remembered and computed every movement, however slight, constantly checking actual motion against flight plans.
The Police Department in Philadelphia has agreed to hire 70 Spanish-speaking officers in the next two years, tentatively settling the last of a series of discrimination lawsuits. “The Philadelphia Police Department is now free of the charges of discrimination brought against it in the 1960’s and 1970’s,” William J. Green said Sunday in announcing the final formal action of his mayoralty. “The grievances of the past have been laid to rest.” Mr. Green left office today when W. Wilson Goode was inaugurated. The agreement must be approved by the Federal District Court where class actions were filed in 1977 and 1979 by Hispanic applicants to the Police Department.
A similar agreement was approved in Federal District Court in November to end a 13-year-old lawsuit by black applicants to the Police Department, which has 7,500 officers. In that agreement, the city said it would add 293 black officers over several years.
Two Columbus, Ohio cancer researchers have been stabbed to death in a hospital laboratory where they worked, and robbery may have been a motive, according to the police. The police had no suspects today in the slayings of Patricia Matix, 30 years old, of the city of Delaware, and Joyce McFadden, 33, of suburban Dublin, said Sgt. Jon Cherubini. The two were killed Friday afternoon in Riverside Hospital’s medical research laboratory, homicide detectives said. Although the laboratory contained drugs, detectives tended to discount them as a factor in the slayings, Sergeant Cherubini said. “There is no high-powered stuff,” he said.
A dud shell of World War II vintage whistled through the sky and landed with a “resounding crash” on a Lakewood, California backyard patio, leaving a crater four feet deep, officials said today. A Los Angeles County sheriff’s bomb squad dug up the unexploded shell Sunday and determined that it contained no explosives, Deputy Stephen Lee said. The Federal Aviation Administration and the Sheriff’s Department believe the shell was dropped by a prankster, but no one reported seeing a plane, said Deputy Wes Slider. The 22-pound missile struck about 4 P.M. in the yard of Fred Simons, 79 years old.
Two of the three teen-agers charged with killing the son of a Laotian missionary in a highway robbery in Hillsboro, Illinois, tried to hang themselves with bath towels in their jail cell, officials said today. Claude Kilbert, 17 years old, and Direck D. Jones, 18, tried to kill themselves Friday evening.
The rising use of cocaine continues dramatically in the United States, according to an extensive new survey. The conclusion was drawn by researchers who have interviewed or talked briefly with thousands of callers on a telephone service set up to offer advice to the nation’s five million cocaine users.
President Reagan used his influence so that Dennis Wilson, the late Beach Boys drummer, could be buried at sea by the Coast Guard, the President’s spokesman confirmed today. Mr. Wilson, 39 years old, drowned Wednesday while diving off Marina Del Rey, California. Federal rules prohibit burial at sea except for veterans, and Mr. Wilson was not one. Scattering of ashes is permitted. Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman, said Mr. Wilson’s family took Mr. Reagan up on a promise he made this summer when the Beach Boys visited the White House. The President said then that he would be glad to help the Beach Boys if they ever needed it.
Fiesta Bowl, Tempe, Arizona: Ohio State 28, Pittsburgh 23. Ohio State scored first when quarterback Mike Tomczak scored on a three-yard quarterback keeper. Pittsburgh tied the score at seven on a 6-yard pass from John Congemi to wide receiver Clint Wilson. Running back Keith Byars scored on an 11-yard run before halftime, to give Ohio State a 14—7 halftime lead. After a scoreless third quarter, the action increased in the fourth. Pitt wide receiver Clint Wilson recovered a fumble in the end zone for a touchdown to tie the game at 14. Byars took the kickoff 99 yards for a touchdown, and Ohio State reclaimed the lead at 21—14. Congemi then found Dwight Collins for a touchdown, but the two-point conversion attempt failed, and Ohio State held on to a one-point lead. A 37-yard field goal from Tom Everett with 2:39 left, gave Pittsburgh a 23—21 lead. Tomczak threw a 39-yard touchdown strike to Thad Jemison for the game-winning touchdown, with 39 seconds left, and Ohio State escaped with a 28—23 win.
Sugar Bowl, New Orleans, Louisiana: Auburn 9, Michigan 7. The only scoring in the first half was on a four-yard touchdown run by Michigan quarterback Steve Smith. It was set up by a 19-yard completion from Smith to Triando Makray, and 38 yards rushing by Rick Rogers. The Wolverines finished the first quarter with a 116–61 differential in yardage and took that 7—0 lead into halftime. Auburn used a tremendous Wishbone rushing attack throughout the game and attempted only six passes. They finished with 301 rushing yards on 21 first downs, with 130 yards by Bo Jackson, the game’s MVP. Midway through the third quarter, Auburn kicker Al Del Greco made a 31-yard field goal to get the Tigers on the scoreboard and the quarter ended with Michigan leading 7—3. In the fourth quarter, Del Greco added two more field goals, of 32 and 19 yards, the latter in the last half-minute, to seal a 9—7 victory for Auburn.
Cotton Bowl, Dallas, Texas: Georgia 10, Texas 9. Texas drove deep on its first possession, but settled for a 22-yard field goal by Jeff Ward. Georgia’s Kevin Butler made one from 43 yards to tie the game in the closing seconds of the first quarter. The second quarter was scoreless. Ward added six more points with two more field goals of 40 and 27 yards in the third quarter, and Texas led 9—3 with less than five minutes to play. A Chip Andrews (Georgia) muffed punt by Texas defensive back Craig Curry, recovered by Defensive Back Gary Moss (Georgia), late in the fourth quarter allowed Georgia quarterback John Lastinger to run 17 yards for a touchdown with 3:22 left to play to capture a 10—9 victory. The loss was the first for the Longhorns, costing them a possible national title.
Rose Bowl, Pasadena, California: UCLA 45, Illinois 9. Quarterback Neuheisel, and several other Bruins awoke with food poisoning that morning. Some UCLA players were unable to play, including starting defensive tackle David Randle, punter Kevin Buenafe and reserve defensive lineman Tory Pankopf. Bruin Coach Terry Donahue realized that Neuheisel was so sick that his presence on the team bus might psych out the rest of the team. Donahue put Neuheisel into a private car for the trip to the stadium. The Bruins kicked off. Don Rogers, the 1983 Rose Bowl player of the game, intercepted a pass from Jack Trudeau on the third play of the game with only 43 seconds off the clock. At the end of the drive, John Lee attempted a field goal. It was blocked by Luke Sewall of the Illini, and was picked up by the Illini safety Craig Swoope. Swoope ran with the ball and fumbled, which was recovered by the Bruins. The first score by the Bruins came on the following drive. The first of four touchdown passes by Rick Neuheisel was to Paul Bergmann. The Illini barely used their rushing game, passing 79% of the time, and Trudeau threw 14 straight passes in the first half. They had the ball on the UCLA 28-yard line starting the second period. Trudeau threw two incomplete passes and a four-yard completion. Chris White kicked a 41-yard field goal to make the score 7—3 with 13:59 left in the half. Kevin Nelson completed the next score for the Bruins with a 28-yard run. Don Rogers got a second interception from Trudeau, which tied a Rose Bowl record. On the following drive Neuheisel finished off with a 16-yard touchdown pass to Karl Dorrell to take a 21—3 lead. On the Bruins next drive, Mike Young scored another touchdown from a Neuheisel pass.
In the second half, Neuheisel threw his record-setting fourth touchdown pass to Karl Dorrell to put the Bruins up 35—3. The Illini were still struggling to get the passing and ground game going and failed to convert on third down. Another Bruin field goal by John Lee put the Bruins up 38—3. After the field goal, the scoreboard read: Caltech 38, Illinois 3, which was then changed to Caltech 38 M.I.T 3. The Rose Bowl was able to cut the power to the scoreboard before it was able to read Caltech 2 Rose Bowl 0. The Rose Bowl officials could not get the scoreboard straightened out, so time and score were kept on the field spoken over the public address system. At this point, Illini coach Mike White was battling the clock. The Bruins allowed the Illini short passes and Thomas Rooks of the Illini would score. UCLA finished off with one more running touchdown to make the final score 45—9.
Orange Bowl, Miami, Florida: Miami (Florida) 31, Nebraska 30. Nebraska came into the game as a 10½-point favorite, and on their opening drive, the Huskers moved downfield rather easily. However, the Hurricanes got an early lift when they forced Nebraska to attempt a field-goal, which they then blocked. It was a huge early momentum swing and they capitalized very quickly. Kosar’s two touchdown passes to Glenn Dennison along with a 45-yard Jeff Davis field goal gave Miami a 17—0 lead at the end of one quarter. Miami’s second touchdown came after linebacker Jack Fernandez intercepted a pass from Gill at the Miami 35 and Kosar threw a pass to Eddie Brown for a touchdown, but the Kosar to Brown touchdown was erased after Stanley Shakespeare was caught for illegal blocking on a Nebraska defensive back and thus resulted in a 15-yard penalty at the spot of the foul, but it was good enough for a first down. Nebraska didn’t panic. Early in the second quarter, Osborne reached into his bag of tricks. First, in an attempt to confuse Kosar, he switched jerseys between defensive backs Dave Burke and Mike McCashland. As a result, Burke then played in the free safety position and McCashland played in the right cornerback position. Also, Burke, wearing McCashland’s jersey, intercepted a pass from Kosar at the Nebraska 26. Then, on the 12th play for a 74-yard touchdown drive, he ran a trick play known as the fumblerooski. Facing a 3rd and 5 situation, Nebraska quarterback Gill intentionally “fumbled” the snap from center by effectively setting it on the turf, faking the ball to the fullback Mark Schellen, who, alongside Gill, Rozier and the tight end Monte Engebritson, ran right. The ball was picked up by All-American offensive guard and Outland Trophy/Lombardi Award winner Dean Steinkuhler, who ran left with the ball on a 19-yard touchdown run. While it is neither the first nor the last time this play has been run, it is arguably the most famous incidence of this play, which is now illegal. A touchdown run by Gill later in the period made the score 17—14 at halftime, on a 64-yard touchdown drive.
Miami fumbled at the 23-yard line of their own territory and Nebraska added three points to tie 17—17, beginning in the third quarter. Two long Miami touchdown drives of 75 and 73 yards took the score to 31—17, behind the passing of Kosar (who passed for exactly 300 yards on the night), and the running of backs Alonzo Highsmith and Albert Bentley, who each contributed rushing touchdowns to cap each drive. Rozier left the game with an injured ankle, after having rushed for 147 yards on 25 carries. Nebraska had many opportunities to score without Rozier. Late in the third quarter, Gill ran to his left, initially keeping the ball and running into the grasp of a Miami defender before pitching the ball to backup I-back Jeff Smith, who came off the bench, ran for 40 yards before fumbling at the Miami 1-yard line, which Miami eventually recovered. Early in the 4th quarter, after Miami went three and out at their own end zone, Gill threw the ball to Scott Kimball in the end zone, but Rodney Bellinger broke up the pass. After Kevin Fagan sacked Gill at the Miami 31, Nebraska was forced to attempt a field goal, which they missed. After Miami went three and out, Smith scored on a 1-yard run early in the fourth quarter on a 75-yard drive, which brought the margin back to 31—24. Then Nebraska caught a break, when Davis missed a 42-yard field goal attempt that would have made the margin 10 points in favor of the Hurricanes. Then Gill completed a long pass to Fryar which took the ball inside the Miami 35 with under 2 minutes to go, then after an incomplete pass to Shane Swanson, he also completed a pass to Ricky Simmons down at the Miami 26. After Smith ran for two yards, the Huskers called for their last timeout. On 2nd and 8 from the Miami 24, Gill found a wide-open Fryar all alone in the end zone and threw a perfect pass, which Fryar dropped. On third down and 8, Gill dropped the football after Fagan tackled him. Confused, Steinkuhler picked up the ball for a few yards, but the officials ruled it an incomplete pass. Thus, setting up a 4th down and 8 from the Miami 24-yard line with the clock running down inside a minute. Osborne called an option play, which Gill ran to his right, initially keeping the ball and running into the grasp of a Miami defender before pitching the ball at the last second to a streaking Smith, who sprinted in the rest of the way, making the score 31—30 Miami, with the extra point pending.
A successful kick would have tied the score at 31. Instead, Osborne went for the two-point conversion and the win, and with it, risked everything (the NCAA introduced overtime for Division I-A college football more than a decade later, so this 1983 game would have ended in a tie). Miami’s Kenny Calhoun broke up the conversion pass from quarterback Turner Gill to I-back Jeff Smith, leaving the inspired Hurricanes with a 31—30 upset victory over the top-ranked Cornhuskers. “We were trying to win the game,” Osborne said. “I don’t think you go for a tie in that case. You try to win the game. We wanted an undefeated season and a clear-cut national championship.” A tie would most likely have been enough to give the Huskers their 3rd national championship with a 12–0–1 record, their 1st for Tom Osborne, since second-ranked Texas also lost earlier in the day to Georgia in the Cotton Bowl Classic and third-ranked Auburn had won unimpressively. Regardless of the tie, they still would have been ranked as one of the greatest college football teams of all-time.
Born:
Kristen Hager, Canadian actress (“Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem”, “Being Human”), in Red Lake, Ontario, Canada.
History Diaries 