Terrorism is tantamount to war and the United States military is ill-equipped to fight that kind of war, according to a special Pentagon commission that investigated the October 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon. Pentagon officials said the Defense Department has moved to correct some of the deficiencies in the 11 months since the commission submitted its findings. Concluding that the Marine contingent in Lebanon was “not trained, organized or supported to deal effectively with the terrorist threat,” the commission recommended that the Secretary of Defense “direct the development of doctrine, planning, organization, force structure, education and training necessary to defend against and counter terrorism.” In addition, while President Reagan and his advisers have debated whether the United States should engage in pre-emptive or retaliatory action against terrorism abroad, other Federal agencies have taken steps to defend against and possibly retaliate for terrorist violence in the United States and abroad.
Konstantin U. Chernenko, the Soviet leader, said today that Soviet and American officials should “roll up their sleeves” and start forging concrete agreements on limiting and reducing arms. Mr. Chernenko made the comment in a prepared statement to Armand Hammer, chairman of Occidental Petroleum, who has a history of dealing with Soviet leaders going back to Lenin’s time. Mr. Hammer distributed Mr. Chernenko’s statement at a news conference after meeting the Soviet leader in the Kremlin. Although Mr. Hammer had consultations at the State Department and the White House before coming here, he said that his visit was private and that he would not speak on behalf of President Reagan. The Chernenko statement made available by Mr. Hammer did not substantively advance the Soviet-American dialogue, but it was couched in terms of good will and readiness to begin moving on arms negotiations. After a yearlong hiatus, talks will resume in January between Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko.
Faculty and student representatives, whose rights of self-government are being threatened by proposed legislation, elected a former Solidarity member Monday to serve as rector of Warsaw University. When the university electors reached a similar decision last spring, their choice, another Solidarity sympathizer, Prof. Klemens Szaniawski, a philosopher, was kept from assuming the post through the exercise of emergency powers retained by General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the Polish leader. On Monday, by voting in Professor Grzegorz Sieniawski, a physicist, the electors may have set the stage for a repetition of what happened in the spring, when an acting, temporary rector had to take over.
A Common Market meeting ended in bitterness and confusion when Greece threatened to veto longstanding plans to admit Spain and Portugal to the community unless it agreed to pay poor southern European farmers up to $5 billion in special aid over the next five years. Other European Government leaders at the two-day summit meeting in Dublin were visibly angered by Greece’s demand.
French President Francois Mitterrand ended months of speculation with the announcement that External Relations Minister Claude Cheysson will be stepping down in January to return to his old post in Brussels as European Community commissioner. Mitterrand made the announcement at Common Market talks in Dublin. A successor to Cheysson was not named, but the most often mentioned candidate for the post is Roland Dumas, minister of European affairs and a confidant of Mitterrand.
The editor in chief of Le Monde, France’s most influential daily newspaper, indicated today that he would step down from his post after the editorial staff rejected an austerity program that he had proposed. The editor, Andre Laurens, who has held the top post at Le Monde since 1982, had proposed that the newspaper sell its building on the Rue des Italiens as the first in a series of measures designed to cut costs. But at a meeting of the editorial staff on Monday, the sale of the building was rejected, a move that was taken as a vote of no confidence in Mr. Laurens. Mr. Laurens then called for a meeting to be held on December 20 when, according to participants at today’s session, the main order of business will be to begin the process of selecting a successor.
The International Planned Parenthood Federation has cut its 1985 budget, threatening birth control programs in Third World countries, because of concern that the United States will stop providing funds, Director Frances Dennis said. The London-based federation, which funds programs in 120 nations, has reduced its $55-million budget by $17 million. The move follows a July announcement by the Reagan Administration that funds will be cut off to groups that perform or promote abortion. However, there has been no formal word on U.S. funding plans for 1985. Dennis estimated that less than 1% of the federation’s budget is spent on abortions.
A senior Jordanian diplomat in Romania was shot to death on a street in Bucharest, and police arrested a Jordanian student as the killer. The slain envoy was identified as Azmi Mufti, the charge. d’affaires in Bucharest and son of former Jordanian Prime Minister Said Mufti. The official Romanian news agency said that the suspected killer, Ahmed Hersh, was known among Arab students as “an unbalanced person.” An anonymous caller told a French news agency in Paris that the killing was the work of Black September, a long-dormant Palestinian terrorist group, and denounced both Jordan’s King Hussein and Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat.
The Reagan Administration said today that it would send a high-ranking official back to the Middle East in the next day or so to try to help end the stalemate in the negotiations on Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon. The State Department avoided calling the trip of Richard W. Murphy, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, a mediation mission. But officials acknowledged that after months of deliberately doing little in the Middle East, the Administration was increasing its direct diplomatic involvement.
Hezbollah militants hijack a Kuwait Airlines plane, killing four passengers. A five-day hijack drama begins as 4 armed men seized a Kuwaiti airliner en route to Pakistan and force it to land in Tehran, where the hijackers killed American passenger Charles Hegna. Arabic-speaking gunmen forced a Kuwaiti airliner with at least 155 people on board to fly from the United Arab Emirates to Tehran, where airport security guards said one of the hostages was killed, apparently during a scuffle, and his body thrown out of the plane. The hijackers, believed to number four, later freed 44 women and children. The State Department said at least three Americans were aboard. The hijackers’ intentions were not immediately known, and their only reported demands were for more fuel and an Arabic-speaking interpreter.
Iran will replace two of its judges who assaulted a Swedish judge at a tribunal settling claims between Iran and the United States, the tribunal said today. Iran said in a letter to the tribunal president that the two new judges, Hamid Ahmadi and Seyed Tafreshi, would start work on January 15. The United States had asked for the removal of Mohammed Kashani and Shafie Shafeiei, who grabbed and punched Nils Mangard, 69 years old, at the start of the session on September 3. The Iranian letter said their replacement was not a concession to Washington. The tribunal was established in 1981 as part of an agreement under which Iran released 52 American hostages.
Iraq reported that its warplanes attacked another vessel in the Persian Gulf. An Iraqi military spokesman said a “large naval target” a term Iraq often uses to denote an oil tanker-was “accurately hit.” The attack, not independently confirmed, would be the second such raid in two days by Iraq, which has struck at dozens of civilian tankers in an attempt to cripple oil exports of its war foe, Iran. A day earlier, Iraqi jets hit the Cypriot-registered supertanker Minotaur, breaking a six-week lull in the so-called tanker war.
More than 1,000 Indians have been killed by poison gas leaking from a Union Carbide insecticide plant in the central India town of Bhopal. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi said he would seek compensation for the disaster, which is one of the largest known industrial accidents in history.
There are no current regulations in the United States to control hazardous chemicals stored in underground tanks, such as the leaking facility in India, according to officials of the Environmental Protection Agency. Several said that a similar accident could occur in this country.
The Union Carbide chemical factory in Institute, West Virginia, a sister plant to the one that leaked toxic gas in India, has become an uneasy neighbor to the nearby middle-class houses and college buildings. Balanced against thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenue are the occasional chemical releases, evacuation notices and links to increasing cancer. After having indicated that they would probably let reporters tour the plant, Union Carbide officials reversed themselves.
A Philippine military court sentenced four people to death after convicting them of conspiracy to assassinate President Ferdinand E. Marcos, allegedly with the aid of U.S.-based dissidents. Sentenced were Eduardo Olaguer, 47, former executive vice president of a company that publishes the Manila newspaper Business Day; Reynaldo Maclang, a former employee of Olaguer; businessman Othoniel Jimenez, and his wife, Ester. Two people were acquitted for lack of evidence. The sentences must be reviewed by the defense minister and Marcos.
The American vessel that broke down and drifted into Cuban waters last week, causing the aircraft carrier Nimitz to be dispatched to the area, was gathering hydrographic information along the coast of Haiti before developing engine trouble, Navy officials said today. The officials denied that the vessel, the Seaward Explorer, owned by Seaward Services of Miami, was on a covert intelligence mission. The sudden dispatch of the 95,000-ton Nimitz to rescue the 105-foot Seaward Explorer has set off rumors to that effect in Washington and elsewhere.
United States officials seized 371 Haitians on two ships heading toward Florida on Sunday and Monday, and the Coast Guard sank one of the boats because the authorities said it was a health hazard. The Haitians were put aboard Coast Guard cutters pending questioning by immigration officials, the authorities said.
President Reagan welcomes President Lusinchi of Venezuela to the White House. President Jaime Lusinchi of Venezuela told President Reagan today that the use of military force would not solve the “delicate and complex crisis of the Central American countries.” Mr. Lusinchi said at a welcoming ceremony at the White House, “We firmly believe that the solution to the existing crisis rests on an effective democratization of the region and the exclusion of external factors, be they continental or extracontinental.” Venezuelan officials traveling with Mr. Lusinchi said his remarks were intended to cover the involvement in Central America of all outside powers, including the Soviet Union and the United States. Mr. Lusinchi later met for 90 minutes with Mr. Reagan and senior American officials to discuss the effort of four Latin American nations to develop a peace plan for Central America.
The Chilean Government sent 58 more people into internal exile today, but relaxed the nightly curfew by one hour. The 58 were sent to remote areas for three months under emergency powers the government assumed last month when it declared a state of siege to crack down on dissent. A total of 221 people have been sent into internal exile since the state of siege was imposed. The curfew in Santiago was also imposed when the state of siege was declared. Under the one-hour relaxation, the curfew will start at 1 AM on weekdays and at 2 AM on weekends. It will run until 5 AM on all days.
Decisions on domestic spending cuts have all been made by President Reagan, leaving him to decide next week how much he wants to cut the proposed military budget to reach his deficit reduction goal. Mr. Reagan has opposed slowing the military buildup, but some of his senior aides have said they expect him to accept some slowdown. President Reagan finished an initial round of deciding where to cut domestic spending and White House aides indicated the next move will be to determine how much the President’s planned military buildup must be trimmed to fight the flood of federal red ink. “We’ll have a pretty good feel at the end of the day as to how close we are to our… budget reduction goal for ’85, and I think we can then begin to work with defense numbers,” White House spokesman Larry Speakes said. The Washington Post reported that Reagan has given tentative approval to a package of $34 billion in domestic spending cuts for next year.
President Reagan receives the first 1984 Christmas Seals from Ms. Pearl Bailey of the American Lung Association.
Geraldine A. Ferraro violated the Ethics in Government Act by failing to report details of her husband’s finances, the House ethics committee found. But the panel ruled that the violations were not intentional, and it therefore did not recommend any sanctions against Mrs. Ferraro, the Queens Congresswoman who was the Democratic candidate for Vice President. Also today, Walter F. Mondale agreed to pay the Treasury $379,640 and a fine of $18,500 because of excess contributions for his Presidential campaign from political action committees organized by labor unions.
[Ed: Ignorance of the Law is no excuse for you; but the rules are different for the glorious nomenklatura, filthy little Kulaks.]
The Mondale campaign has agreed to pay $379,640 to the Treasury and to pay a civil fine of $18,500 for taking excess labor donations through delegate selection committees during the Democratic Presidential primaries. In return, the Federal Election Commission agreed to close its books on the case involving the campaign of Walter F. Mondale. Under pressure from Senator Gary Hart of Colorado, who was one of the former Vice President’s rivals for the Democratic Presidential nomination, Mr. Mondale ordered the delegate committees to disband in late April. Mr. Mondale promised at the time to refund several hundred thousand dollars to union political action committees and individuals who had given more than the legal maximum to his campaign.
An alleged Czech spy who once worked for the CIA was denied bail in New York, while his wife drew a jail sentence after she defied a court order to testify against her husband. Despite the revelation by an FBI agent that the suspect, Karl Koecher, had told the agency as early as 1970 of approaches by the Czech intelligence service, U.S. Magistrate Sharon Grubin refused to release Koecher on bond pending his trial on espionage charges. She agreed with the government that the chances are good that Koecher would flee the country if released. Koecher, 50, and his wife, Hana, 40, were arrested November 27 outside a Manhattan hotel a few hours before they were to catch a flight to Switzerland en route to a new home in Austria.
The Rev. Jerry Falwell, testifying in Roanoke, Virginia, in his $45-million lawsuit against Hustler magazine, said an ad parody depicting him as an incestuous drunkard nearly drove him to tears and caused him “the most difficult year” of his life. “I think I have never been as angry as I was at that moment,” Falwell said of his first look at the November, 1983, issue of the sexually explicit magazine, which contained the ad. Earlier, Senator Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina) testified on Falwell’s behalf.
AIDS cases in San Francisco and deaths from the disease more than doubled in the first 11 months of 1984, according to a report released by county health officials. Four-hundred-and-sixty cases of the disease were reported through November 30, a 109% increase over the 220 cases for the same period in 1983. Acquired immune deficiency syndrome-related deaths jumped from 105 for all of 1983 to 230 for the first 11 months of 1984.
A 4-month-old girl who was kidnaped from her home last month in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, was raped and bludgeoned to death, possibly to avenge a $100,000 marijuana deal that went sour, police said. Jerri Ann Richard was kidnaped November 11 from a makeshift apartment above an antique auto restoration business run by her father. Five days later she was found bludgeoned to death in an alley behind a factory about 200 feet from her home. The infant’s father, Ralph Richard, admitted involvement in a $100,000 interstate drug deal in September, 1983, police Sgt. John Haberle said.
A Chicago real estate broker accused of trying to hire a hitman to assassinate Mayor Harold Washington was acquitted by a judge who said tape-recorded conversations failed to prove such a plot existed. Circuit Judge Thomas Maloney also attacked the credibility of the key prosecution witness, Keith Freeman, who had testified against his cousin, Lawrence Oberman, 39, in the solicitation to commit murder case. Oberman had been free on bond since his arrest last September following an undercover investigation aided by informant Freeman. The judge said that although authorities were “properly alarmed” by some of Oberman’s remarks, tape-recorded conversations played during the trial were “long, rambling, aimless and inane.”
Alabama’s “moment of silence” law was argued before the Supreme Court. The heart of the issue is whether the statute, which permits public school teachers to open class with a minute of silence for “meditation or voluntary prayer,” violates the constitutional separation of church and state. The case, one of the most closely watched on the Court’s heavy docket of religion cases, is an appeal by the State of Alabama with the backing of the Reagan Administration. Alabama’s “moment of silence” statute, which is similar to laws in 23 other states, was declared unconstitutional last year by the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. Lawyers for the state and the Federal Government told the Justices that the moment of silence was a harmless way to accommodate some students’ desire for an opportunity to pray while not forcing religion on anyone else.
A divided Federal appeals court in Manhattan ruled yesterday that prosecutors could not systematically exclude people from juries solely because of their race. The 2-to-1 decision, by the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, marks the first time that a Federal appellate court has invalidated such use of peremptory challenges, for which potential jurors can be rejected without cause. Such challenges have often been used to keep blacks and Hispanic people off juries.
William J. Schroeder, nine days after receiving an artificial heart, is moving into the next phase of his recovery: exercise. On Wednesday, to help Mr. Schroeder regain his strength, doctors at the Humana Heart Institute International will start an exercise program, getting him out of bed, moving around and developing a more effective range of motion and use of his muscles. Mr. Schroeder, a 52-year-old retired Federal worker, remains seriously ill but is slowly regaining his strength. He is now able to stand up and walk to a scale to be weighed, his doctors said. Last Thursday, when he got out of bed and took his first steps since the implant operation, he needed help. “He is progressing very well and we are all very pleased,” Dr. William C. DeVries, Mr. Schroeder’s surgeon, said at a news conference.
Mayor W. Wilson Goode, criticized for the way the city is dealing with homeless people staying at the main Amtrak rail station, has personally asked them to use available shelters. Mayor Goode toured the station with a police escort Monday night, asking people to go to city shelters. Both Amtrak officials and advocates for the homeless have contended it is the city’s responsibility to find an alternative to the 30th Street Station, where 40 to 100 people have taken refuge. Leona Smith, a representative of the Committee for Dignity and Fairness for the Homeless, had said people were being turned away from shelters. Mr. Goode denied that anyone had been turned away. He said the city would have five social workers on duty daily at the station.
A tentative agreement was reached today in a 13-week strike against 26 San Francisco restaurants, including some of the city’s most famous. Details of the pact will not be released until ratification meetings, the mediator, Sam Kagel, said. The restaurant owners are to vote on the agreement Wednesday. The union is to consider it Friday. The agreement was between the 55-member Golden Gate Restaurant Association and Local 2 of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees and Bartenders Union, which began the strike September 1. The pact did not include 11 other struck restaurants, whose owners are bargaining as a separate group. Mr. Seely said the owners achieved most of their demands, including stricter eligibility standards for health and pension benefits, minimal increases in wages over three years and lower entry wages for new employees. Some strikers said they would vote against the proposed contract.
Thousands of schoolchildren, hospital patients and Air Force personnel in five states ate “putrid and decomposed” beef butchered from dying and diseased cows, a Federal grand jury concluded Monday. The grand jury handed up a 31-count indictment alleging a conspiracy among four men associated with a pet-food company and a meat processor. Each week from October 1980 to February 1984 the processor sold up to 15,000 pounds of meat that “consisted in whole or in part of filthy, putrid, and decomposed substances,” said Joel Friedman, director of the Federal Strike Force in Philadelphia on organized crime. Mr. Friedman said the tainted meat had been sold to wholesalers having contracts with Veterans Adminstration hospitals in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Salem, Virginia; with four Pennsylvania state mental institutions; with Delaware school districts in Claymont, New Castle and Wilmington, and with Dover Air Force Base in Delaware and McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey.
The earliest shipwreck ever excavated has yielded a treasure of Bronze Age artifacts that archeologists believe will provide revealing glimpses into shipbuilding and trade in the eastern Mediterranean 3,400 years ago.
Whales seem to have a sensitivity to geomagnetic fluctuations that may lead them to their death on the beach when they encounter magnetic anomalies near the shore, according to scientists who studied records of 212 whale and dolphin strandings on the Atlantic Coast.
Freezing temperatures reached deep into Dixie and a new storm brewed in the Southwest, but the storm that dumped a foot of snow on New England pushed out into the Atlantic. Some New England ski resorts reported snow was still falling. Stowe, Vermont, had 12 to 16 inches of snow by midday. One traffic death was blamed on icy roads in Maine. Up to six inches of snow was expected in Upstate New York, Vermont, northwestern. Pennsylvania and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Dr. John Rock, the co-developer of the contraceptive pill, died of a heart attack in Peterborough, New Hampshire, at the age of 94.
6th ACE Cable Awards: “David Bowie: Serious Moonlight” by Anthony Eaton and HBO win.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1185.07 (+2.65)
Born:
Joe Thomas, College and Pro Football (inducted 2013) Hall of Fame tackle (U. Wisconsin; Pro Bowl, 2007-2016; Cleveland Browns), in Brookfield, Wisconsin.
Ikaika Alama-Francis, NFL defensive end (Detroit Lions, Miami Dolphins), in Kane’ohe, Hawaii.
Anna Petrakova, Russian women’s basketball power forward (Olympics, 4th, 2012), in Budapest, Hungary.
Lauren London, American actress (“The Game”), in Los Angeles, California.
Lindsay Felton, American actress (“Caitlin’s Way”), in Seattle, Washington.
Brooke Adams, American model and professional wrestler, in St. Louis, Missouri.
Jelly Roll [Jason DeFord], American singer-songwriter and rapper (“Son of a Sinner”), in Antioch, Tennessee.
Died:
Dr. John Rock, 94, American obstetrician and gynecologist, co-developer of the birth control pill, of a heart attack.
History Diaries 