Two gunmen wounded the Pope on May 13, 1981, not one, as the authorities originally assumed, according to an Italian judge. The disclosure by the judge, Ilario Martella, came at a news conference in which he formally announced that three Bulgarians and four Turks would be tried on charges of complicity in the attempt to kill John Paul II. Only three of the seven are in Italian custody, however. In addition, Mehmet Ali Ağca, who was convicted in 1981 of shooting the Pope, will stand trial again, this time on charges of complicity in illegally importing the weapon used to shoot the Pope.
Mehmet Ali Ağca, the central figure in the conspiracy case in the attempted murder of Pope John Paul II, has partly recanted his testimony about another purported plot, to kill Lech Walesa, the founder of the Polish union Solidarity. But Mr. Ağca’s testimony included a wealth of details, many of which were independently corroborated by investigating magistrates. Much of what he said about the Walesa plot in one hundred pages of still-secret testimony implicated the same three Bulgarians who were indicted today on charges of conspiring along with four Turks to kill the Pope. Those close to the case here say they believe that his credibility on one case will affect his credibility on the other. Mr. Ağca, who was convicted on July 22, 1981, of shooting the Pope the previous May 13, offered a wealth of detail about a plot on Mr. Walesa, the leader of the independent Polish labor union Solidarity, most of which has not been published before.
General Wojciech Jaruzelski deplored the abduction a week ago of a pro-Solidarity priest as an attack on the Polish Communist Party. There has been no sign of the priest, the Rev. Jerzy Popiełuszko, since he was abducted October 19 near the northern city of Torun. The authorities have said that an official of the Interior Ministry will be charged in connection with the abduction, and that he has been placed under arrest along with two accomplices. “We are still facing all kinds of challenges and problems,” General Jaruzelski said at a meeting of the Communist Party’s Central Committee. “We should firmly fight everything that poisons the social atmosphere, violates elementary norms of law and order and at the same time strikes against the policy of our party and its leadership.”
Shortly after the general spoke, the Central Committee called for “severe punishment” of the kidnappers and a review of the nation’s internal security apparatus. It said the ruling Politburo should assert party control over the actions of the police and consider personnel changes in the Interior Ministry. But it expressed “full confidence” in the Interior Minister, General Czeslaw Kiszczak, and said the uniformed police and security services “fully deserve social esteem and confidence.” It attributed the kidnapping to “a few criminals, provocateurs and agents of bad cause.”
A former senior Solidarity official said Father Popiełuszko’s friends felt the chances of finding the Roman Catholic priest alive were “diminishing with every hour.” In the absence of reliable information on a possible motive for the kidnapping, some Poles speculated that a hardline, anti-Solidarity group within the security forces was trying either to eradicate Solidarity supporters quietly, or else to create an incident to embarrass or weaken General Jaruzelski. Some members of the party and agents of the Interior Ministry, which includes the police, are thought to believe that General Jaruzelski’s policies, including amnesty for Solidarity activists, are too lenient.
The latest attempt to negotiate a settlement of the eight-month-old strike in Britain’s coal mines broke up early today with no indication that any progress had been made. Arthur Scargill, the president of the National Union of Mineworkers, met officials of the National Coal Board for more than nine hours at the offices of the independent Arbitration, Conciliation and Advisory Service. A further meeting may be held next week, officials said, but they held out little hope of an early end to the walkout, which has idled three-quarters of the country’s deep-pit mines.
A close aide to Chancellor Helmut Kohl was designated today to become the next Speaker of the West German Parliament, succeeding Rainer Barzel, who resigned Thursday after being accused of receiving more than a half million dollars in payoffs from the giant Flick concern. The new Speaker, Philipp Jenninger, 52 years old, is a minister of state charged with handling relations with East Germany.
George P. Shultz’s speech on terrorism Thursday produced sometimes conflicting or ambivalent statements by President Reagan and other officials over whether it broke new ground in policy. Secretary of State Shultz contended that American military force should be used against terrorists even if it might lead to the death of soldiers and civilians. With the Presidential campaign in its last two weeks, Administration officials sought to avoid an impression that they are divided over a key issue like responding to terrorist attacks. But their public statements as well as private comments underscored that Mr. Shultz’s speech had not resolved their differences.
The Vice Consul of the United Arab Emirates was seriously wounded in the head and an Iranian companion was killed today when at least five shots were fired at the diplomat’s car, the police said. The diplomat, identified by the Italian news agency ANSA as Mohammad al-Sowaidi, 27 years old, underwent a five-hour operation for removal of a bullet from his head and was listed in guarded condition. A man picked up at the shooting scene and identified as a 22-year-old Jordanian was placed under arrest, a police spokesman said. The shooting occurred when the diplomat slowed his car to make a turn. He was hit once in the head while the Iranian woman who was with him, a 23- year-old university student, was hit by three bullets and killed instantly.
The implication of the armed forces Chief of Staff in the assassination of Benigno S. Aquino Jr. seems certain to accelerate the erosion of President Ferdinand E. Marcos’s power. “After this report naming Ver, not many people are going to rush to hoist the ruling-party banner in 1986,” a senior Government official conceded. “People here are starting to look to the post-Marcos period.” The Chief of Staff, General Fabian C. Ver, a cousin and close friend of the President, was named in a majority report issued this week by a panel that has been investigating the 1983 slaying of Mr. Aquino, the opposition leader. The report said Mr. Aquino was the victim of a military conspiracy involving General Ver and 25 others.
Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone was all but guaranteed a second term in office today as opposition to his re-election as head of Japan’s conservative ruling party melted away. By tonight the only obstacle standing between Mr. Nakasone and his unchallenged election was the allocation of top political and Government jobs among the five major factions that dominate the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party. That task is likely to be completed in behind-the-scenes maneuvering this weekend, with Mr. Nakasone’s formal designation as party leader expected next week.
The Premier of New Brunswick, Canada was charged today with possession of marijuana. The police said they found a small bag of the drug in Premier Richard Hatfield’s suitcase on September 25 before it was loaded onto the plane of the visiting Queen Elizabeth II. Mr. Hatfield, 53 years old, has said he does not know how the marijuana got into his luggage. The summary charge, similar to a misdemeanor charge in the United States, was lodged before a Fredericton judge. There was no indication when Mr. Hatfield, a Progressive Conservative in office 14 years, would appear in court. A first conviction for marijuana possession can carry a fine of $750 or imprisonment up to six months, but the maximum penalty is rarely imposed.
El Salvador’s leading army combat commander, killed Tuesday in a helicopter crash, was buried here today with all the ceremony of a state funeral. In life, the army commander, Lieutenant Colonel Domingo Monterrosa, was known as the army’s most charismatic and effective military leader. In death, he has rapidly been memorialized by government officials as the country’s first modern military hero. The grief Government officials have expressed over his death appears to be a recognition of his military talents and also a recognition that he represented the possibility of change in a traditionally corrupt and often brutal army.
A Salvadoran security guard at the United States Embassy in San Salvador was shot dead early today in an attack that may have been carried out by leftist gunmen. The guard, Raul Menendez Aquino, 62 years old, had been employed by the embassy for 13 years.
President Reagan was quoted today as saying he has no objection to Americans joining rebels to fight against the Sandinista Government of Nicaragua. In an interview with Scripps-Howard editors and news executives that was released today, Mr. Reagan said, “It’s quite in line with what has been a pretty well-established tradition in our country.”
In one of the most brazen terrorist incidents in Santiago, Chile in months, a car bomb exploded today across the street from the main government building, wounding four people and shattering dozens of window panes. No one took responsibility for the incident, which came three days before opposition groups are to begin two days of demonstrations, including a day of protest Monday and a call for a national strike Tuesday. The government attributed the explosion to terrorists trying to “create public alarm” and vowed to take measures to control the step-up in violence.
An Argentine federal prosecutor will charge a rightist priest with inciting rebellion for telling worshipers at a mass to take up “spiritual and material arms” against the Argentine Government, the state- run Telem press agency has reported. The agency said Thursday that a federal court prosecutor, Julio Strassera, ordered that charges be filed against the Rev. Julio Trivino, who was quoted as calling the 10-month-old civiian Government “pornographic” in his sermon Wednesday. Several military officials were at the mass, sponsored by a right- wing group, the Relatives and Friends of Those Killed by Subversion.
Stephanie Fae Beauclair (“Baby Fae”) gets a baboon heart transplant, and lives 21 days. In Barstow, California, Stephanie Fae Beauclair was born three weeks premature with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a fatal defect in which the left side of the heart is underdeveloped. Though babies with the condition were expected to live for about two weeks, and Fae’s mother was given the option of letting her die in a hospital or at home, Dr. Leonard Bailey had another option in mind. Other than her heart, Fae was in good health. A transplant would fix the problem, but this was new territory: even though transplant surgery had come a long way since the first human-human heart transplant was performed in 1967, no one had yet completed a successful infant heart transplant, mainly due to the lack of infant donor hearts. As no infant donor hearts were available, Bailey resolved to use a baboon heart.
Bailey’s research included, per TIME, “more than 150 transplants in sheep, goats, and baboons, many of them between species.” The first simian-human transplant had been performed in 1964 but the patient died a few hours after his surgery and only a few more were attempted after that; nonetheless, Bailey received permission to perform such a transplant on Baby Fae. As 12-day-old Fae’s condition began to deteriorate on October 26, 1984, the medical team choose a donor baboon and began the transplant operation. At 11:35 a.m., TIME wrote, Fae’s “new heart began to beat spontaneously. ‘There was absolute awe,’” recalled Sandra Nehlsen-Cannarella, a transplantation immunologist working on Fae. “I don’t think there was a dry eye in the room.
Tragically, no human infant hearts became available in the following weeks. Everyone knew that rejection was inevitable unless such could be found. Although Fae initially improved steadily, she began to decline 14 days after the transplant and died on November 16, 1984. Upon her death, TIME wrote, “So ended an extraordinary experiment that had captured the attention of the world and made medical history. For three weeks the 5-lb. infant had survived with the heart of a baboon — more than two weeks longer than any previous recipient of an animal heart.” Bailey would perform the first successful infant heart transplant the following year, in 1985.
President Reagan leaves to campaign in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. President Reagan, taking his campaign to New York, Connecticut and New Jersey, stepped up his appeals for support among Democrats today and asserted that Walter F. Mondale and the Democratic leadership lacked the “moral courage” to condemn anti- Semitism. On Long Island, Mr. Reagan also told a crowd of Jewish supporters that he had sent American troops to Beirut in 1983 to prevent another Holocaust of Jews. He said the Jewish battle cry, “never again,” should “be impressed on those who question why we went on a peacekeeping mission to Lebanon.” In Fairfield, Connecticut, and in New Jersey, the President ridiculed his Democratic opponent, saying that Mr. Mondale represented “the small voices in the night” that were “sounding the call to go back, back to the days of drift, the days of torpor, timidity and taxes.”
President Reagan enjoys lunch at the residence of Rabbi Friedman. The President, in Woodmere, Long Island, New York, courted Jewish voters by visiting Temple Hillel and dined at the home of Rabbi Morris Friedman and his family. The visit deeply divided the congregation and the community, and one neighbor protested by practicing drum rolls.
Assailing “a sunshine President,” Walter F. Mondale criticized President Reagan for failing to commemorate the first anniversary of the deaths of 241 United States servicemen killed in Beirut, in contrast to the White House commemoration of the invasion of Grenada.
Walter F. Mondale has been told by his campaign aides of “an across-the- board attrition” in voter support for his Presidential candidacy in the last two weeks, according to Democratic sources. However, at the same time he has aggressively attacked President Reagan before large and enthusiastic crowds.
A plan to build a defensive shield against Soviet nuclear missiles advocated by President Reagan would eventually cost at least $400 billion, according to the Council of Economic Priorities, a private research organization. However, the Pentagon’s officer in charge of research for the program, Lieut. Gen. James A. Abrahamson, contended that it was “premature” to provide a cost estimate for a long- range plan on which research has just begun. “I don’t think this is responsible now,” he said. The council briefed reporters this morning on a report that was to have been released on Monday. Pentagon officials, queried by reporters for a response, called a news conference this afternoon with General Abrahamson and Fred C. Ikle, the Under Secretary of Defense for policy. The council then released the report. The study by the council was based on the Defense Department’s current five year $24.2 billion research program and on experience with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Apollo program and other large projects. The study arrived at an estimate of $400 billion to $800 billion for the plan.
Rules restricting demonstrations on the sidewalk in front of the White House were upheld by a federal appeals court. Reversing a lower court ruling that the regulations violated protesters’ First Amendment rights, the three- judge panel upheld some rules as reasonable precautions against bombings and terrorist attacks. It said others helped prevent obstruction of the view of the White House seen by tourists and television cameras. The regulations restrict the size of signs used on the sidewalk. They prohibit using large plywood signs, leaning signs against the White House fence and leaving packages unattended on the sidewalk. They also require demonstrators in the central 20 yards of the sidewalk to keep moving with their signs.
The Miami City Commission dismissed the City Manager in a surprise 3-to-2 vote Thursday night, leaving politics in this ethnically divided city in turmoil today. The three Hispanic members of the Commission cast the votes to oust the city’s chief administrator, who is black, citing a “lack of communication with the Commissioners.” Voting to retain City Manager Howard V. Gary at the emotion-filled meeting were a black Commissioner and a non-Hispanic white. Both Miami’s major English-language newspapers advocated removal of the entire City Commission, while black leaders urged drives to recall them from office, and some Cuban- American leaders sought to dissociate themselves from the Commission’s action.
Progress was reported today in negotiations between General Motors of Canada and the United Automobile Workers as the company made a new economic offer after almost a week of deadlock. The offer, described as a “broad, all- encompassing proposal” by the union’s Canadian leader, Robert White, came as the effects of the nine-day-old walkout by 36,000 Canadian workers continued to spread in the United States. The details of the offer were not disclosed.
Prime lending rates were lowered by most of the nation’s leading banks for the third time in the last month, to 12 percent from 12½ percent.
Vehicles violating emission control standards must be recalled even if automobile makers offer to offset the pollution by reducing emission levels in later models, a Federal appeals court ruled today. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia made the 3-to-0 ruling in a case involving a line of engines built by the General Motors Corporation. (The Associated Press reported the recall order applied to 700,000 Pontiacs built in 1979.)
A modest decline in airport delays is expected around the country as a result of changes in rush-hour schedules that will take effect next week at six major airports, including the three in the New York area.
Harold Rosenthal, a former bail bondsman, was found guilty today in Atlanta of directing a drug trafficking ring that Federal agents said brought more than five tons of cocaine into the country from September 1981 to January 1984. A Federal jury found Mr. Rosenthal and eight others guilty of drug charges after three days of deliberations that climaxed a 10-week trial. A 10th defendant was found not guilty. Sentencing was set for the week of November 26. Defense attorneys said Mr. Rosenthal was conducting the smuggling with a special dispensation from the Government because he was spying on Marxist groups in Colombia for the Central Intelligence Agency. The prosecutor, Craig Gillen, said in his closing argument that Mr. Rosenthal and his co-conspirators were motivated by greed. Mr. Rosenthal was arrested in Bogota, Colombia, a year ago. He had escaped in 1981 from a Federal prison in Memphis where he was serving 31 years for drug smuggling.
A religious school that considers rock music sinful will discipline students who attend the Jacksons’ Victory Tour concerts in Miami next week, administrators said today. Dr. E. G. Robertson, director of the Dade Christian School, said children would be penalized 15 demerits if they attended the concerts November 2 or November 3 at the Orange Bowl. A pupil who accumulates 25 demerits is usually expelled, Dr. Robertson said. School officials sent a letter to parents advising them that “rock music is associated with dancing, drinking, the drug scene and other unacceptable behavior.” The note forbid the 1,300 pupils, from grades kindergarten through 12, from attending the concerts featuring the rock singer Michael Jackson and his brothers.
Vanessa Redgrave, at times breaking into tears, testified today that she earned no money as an actress for 14 months after the Boston Symphony Orchestra canceled a contract with her in April 1982 because of her pro-Palestinian activities. “The next time I did work for which I was paid was June 1983,” she said, when she earned $20,000 for a role in an Italian film procured by the actor Franco Nero. Mr. Nero is the father of one of her two children. Before that, Miss Redgrave said, she had earned more than $1 million as a performer. She was testifying for a second day on behalf of her $5 million lawsuit against the orchestra. She is contending that the orchestra violated her civil rights and committed a breach of contract by its decision to cancel a series of performances featuring her narration of Stravinsky’s “Oedipus Rex.”
[Ed: Let me play my tiniest violin for you… Now where did I put it? It’s so small it’s hard to find…]
“The Terminator,” directed by James Cameron, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, and Michael Biehn is released in the United States.
Ken Stabler, one of the most accurate passers in National Football League history with a completion rate of nearly 60 percent, retired tonight. Stabler, who will be 39 years old December 25, was not available for comment, but his agent, Phillip Henry Pitts, said from home at Bay Minnette, Alabama, that the former Alabama quarterback “felt that it was time.” “Under the circumstances, he thought it was best to retire,” Pitts said. The agent refused to elaborate.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1204.95 (-6.07)
Born:
Sasha Cohen, American women’s figure skater (Grand Prix Final Champion, 2003; Olympic silver medal, 2006), in Los Angeles, California.
Jesús Flores, Venezuelan MLB catcher (Washington Nationals), in Carupano, Venezuela.
Katie Gearlds, WNBA guard and forward (Seattle Storm), in Beech Grove, Indiana.
Amanda Overmyer, American rock singer (American Idol season 7 finalist), and nurse, in Mulberry, Indiana.
Died:
Gus Mancuso, 78, American baseball catcher (World Series 1931, 1933; MLB All Star 1935, 1937; New York Giants, St. Louis Cardinals) and broadcaster (Cardinals’ radio network), dies from emphysema.
Sue Randall, 49, American actress (Miss Landers – “Leave it to Beaver”), from lung cancer.
History Diaries 