Malta prevented a U.S. general and two other senior United States military officers from playing any role in the Egyptian commando assault on a hijacked Egyptair jet, according to a Maltese source and officials in Washington. The three officers had been flown to Malta with the commandos last Sunday, a day after the airliner on an Athens-to-Cairo flight was hijacked by men who initially identified themselves as members of a group called Egypt’s Revolution. Fifty-seven people aboard the plane died in the Egyptian operation, leading to questions about whether the commandos bungled the job by using too powerful an explosive to blast into the plane. ”The simple truth is the Americans played no role at all in the assault on the plane because the Maltese wouldn’t let them,” a Maltese source said. ”Malta’s unwillingness to anger Libya made an American presence too politically risky for them.” The Maltese sources said Maltese officials had been infuriated by the presence of the Americans in full battle dress. The Maltese objections were so strong that two of the three officers, who did not have civilian clothes with them, were asked to remain inside the United States Embassy in Valletta until their departure for Egypt. The third officer, who had brought civilian clothes, was permitted to remain at the airport, but was kept most of the time in a room isolated from both the Egyptian commandos and the airport’s control tower, the sources said.
The United States disclosed that three American military officers, including General Robert D. Wiegand, flew to Malta with Egyptian commandos who carried out a bloody assault on a hijacked Egyptian jetliner November 24. The State Department and Pentagon denied that the three coordinated the attack. Meanwhile, Maltese officials reported the death of an Israeli woman who was shot by the hijackers. An American woman was also slain by the hijackers, and 58 people died in the Egyptian assault.
The opening of a two-day summit meeting of the European Economic Community was disrupted today when a small bomb exploded less than a hundred yards from the building where the leaders are meeting. No one was hurt. The police said the bomb was thrown from a passing car. No one claimed responsibility for the attack. The Common Market leaders reported limited progress today toward agreement on a compromise plan designed to strengthen the 10-nation group before Spain and Portugal join next year. But there were signs that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain was becoming isolated in her resistance to rapid Western European integration. The leaders are debating proposals to allow more Common Market decisions to be made by a majority rather than a unanimous vote. The aim is to hasten the elimination of trade barriers between member countries and create a single Western European market for goods and services by 1992. West Germany and France agreed to define the single market they envision as an ”area without frontiers.” Mrs. Thatcher favors a more restrictive definition that would commit the members only to abolish specific national regulations that hamper trade or prevent foreign companies from doing business.
A 62-year-old West German man and his 34-year-old son have been jailed on suspicion of espionage for Communist East Germany, West German officials said. The names of the men were not released. Meanwhile, the weekly Quick magazine reported that a West German husband-wife spy team who had close contacts with East German leader Erich Honecker has been betrayed by Hans-Joachim Tiedge, the West German counterspy who defected to the East last summer. Bonn refused to comment on the magazine’s report.
An armed gang of about 10 men kidnaped two Brinks company employees from their homes, forced them to open the firm’s headquarters in Colombes, a Paris suburb, and looted an estimated $9.4 million from safes and strongboxes, police said. One gunman remained with the employees’ families during the robbery, and police said the robbers communicated with each other by radio and also monitored police calls. Afterward, the employees and their families were released.
The police chiefs of Ireland and Northern Ireland met today for the first time in nearly three years to discuss security cooperation. It was the first such step taken under a British-Irish agreement last month on cooperation in the North. The Northern Ireland Police Chief, Sir John Hermon, met with Ireland’s Police Commissioner, Laurence Wren, for more than two hours amid tight security at Dublin police headquarters. Afterward, they issued a three-line statement saying that they had ”discussed security matters.” No further details on the talks were released. Police sources said the meeting’s aim was greater cross-border security cooperation. Sir John has repeatedly accused the police in the Irish Republic of doing too little to combat the Irish Republican Army, which is outlawed in both parts of Ireland.
London’s policies are depriving Britain’s inner cities severely and increasingly, according to a Church of England report.
The Roman Catholic Church is not ready to consider asking the forgiveness of Jews for centuries of religious persecution, said Cardinal Johannes Willebrands, co-chairman of a synod of bishops meeting at the Vatican. At a press conference, he explained: “We need much more confidence between the two communities (Roman Catholic and Jewish) before we feel a church declaration would be well understood and well received. . . . Otherwise, it would not be accepted as real.” He also said that the synod, convened to assess reforms initiated by the Second Vatican Council, is not the proper forum to consider the issue despite a petition from a group of Italians who called for the apology.
When Anne Henderson-Pollard was arrested last month, she was planning to offer the Chinese a secret document that describes in detail what American intelligence knows about Peking’s espionage activities in this country, prosecutors charged. In a 23-page document, prosecutors contended that Mrs. Pollard was far more deeply involved in the espionage activities of her husband, Jonathan Jay Pollard, than previously indicated. The document is the Government’s first assertion that Mrs. Henderson-Pollard had been intending to deliver secret documents to the Chinese. Her husband has been accused of selling secret intelligence documents to Israel. They have not been formally indicted and they have not indicated how they would plead.
Israel will permit U.S. officials to interview the senior Israeli counterterrorism official said to have been responsible for operating an espionage operation in Washington, Israeli Government sources said. The arrangement was part of a wider understanding worked out in a telephone call placed early Sunday morning by Secretary of State George P. Shultz to Prime Minister Shimon Peres in an effort to resolve the spy affair before it caused any further damage to American-Israeli relations. The sources said the other elements of the understanding were the apology Mr. Peres issued Sunday for any Israeli espionage that may have been carried out in the United States, an affirmation of the official Israeli policy against such practices and possible disciplinary measures against any Israeli officials found to have been involved in the affair. In addition, Israel will allow the F.B.I. to send representatives to Israel to interview two Israeli diplomats who were withdrawn from the United States because of their purported connections with Jonathan Jay Pollard, a United States Navy intelligence analyst accused of spying for Israel.
A celebrated West Bank lawyer who advocated creation of a Palestinian state coexisting in peace with Israel was found stabbed to death tonight near his home in Ramallah, the Israeli television said. It was unclear if the lawyer, Aziz Shehadeh, 73 years old, had been killed because of his moderate political views or for business reasons, the television said, adding that his legal practice was the largest in the occupied West Bank.
Violations of human rights have become widespread in Afghanistan since Soviet forces joined the fighting there nearly six years ago, according to a report presented today to the United Nations. The report, prepared for the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, says that violations include indiscriminate mass bombings and killings of civilians; mutilations and routine torture; the forced evacuation of rural areas; the imprisonment without trial of tens of thousands of political prisoners, and religious intolerance. The report says the actions appear intended not only to destroy opposition to the Afghan Government, but to break the spirit of an independent people and destroy the traditional family and tribal structures.
More than 3,000 people waving torches and shouting, ”Down with the killer!” demonstrated tonight outside the Bhopal plant where a leak of deadly gas a year ago created the world’s worst industrial accident. ”Hang Anderson! Hang Anderson!” the protesters screamed as they poured kerosene on effigies of the Union Carbide Corporation chairman, Warren M. Anderson. A leak of methyl isocyanate gas at the plant late on the night of Dec. 2, 1984, killed more than 2,000 people and injured more than 200,000.
South Korean police entered the U.S. Cultural Center in the southern city of Kwangju, scene of extensive anti-government violence in 1980, and arrested nine students who occupied the director’s office in a protest against the authoritarian government of President Chun Doo Hwan. The youths demanded a conference with the ruling party, constitutional revision and a change in U.S. economic policies toward Korea.
Corazon C. Aquino declared her candidacy for President of the Philippines one day after a three-judge court acquitted all 26 defendants accused of involvement in the 1983 assassination of her husband, Begnino S. Aquino. Mrs. Aquino said the country needed an ”unequivocal change” from 20 years of rule by President Ferdinand E. Marcos.
The Reagan Administration, responding to the acquittal of Gen. Fabian C. Ver in the Aquino assassination trial in the Philippines, said in carefully worded statement today that the court decision was at variance with the findings of an independent investigation. A State Department spokesman said it was ”very difficult” to reconcile the outcome of the trial with the findings of a citizens’ panel that military personnel were involved in the slaying and a cover-up. Earlier today, a three-judge court in Manila acquitted General Ver and 24 other military men and one civilian for the 1983 murder of the opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr. ”Recall that in October 1984 the Agrava Commission, a board of respected, independent-minded citizens, unanimously refuted the government contention that a lone Communist gunman killed Senator Aquino,” said the State Department spokesman, Charles E. Redman. said. ”The board found the murder to be the work of Philippine military personnel who were charged with the crime and the cover-up.
A courtroom was destroyed in New Caledonia today in what the police said was the biggest bomb blast ever in this French territory. The police said three walls of the courtroom were blown out by the blast. The building was empty at the time of the blast, and no one was hurt. It was the second bomb attack in Noumea, the capital, in less than 24 hours. Late Sunday, a bomb wrecked the car of a pro-independence militant, Norbert Caffa, outside his office. No one claimed responsibility for either attack. There have been 12 bombings this year in the South Pacific territory, where many among the indigenous Melanesians, the largest ethnic group, are demanding independence.
Liberals downed the Parti Quebecois overwhelmingly. The Liberal Party leader, Robert Bourassa, will return to the office of Premier, which he held in two Quebec governments from 1970 to 1976. As Liberals waved Canadian and Quebec flags and a band played at a celebration tonight, Mr. Bourassa said, ”What a great victory for Quebec, Canada, and for change.” But Mr. Bourassa lost to his Parti Quebecois opponent in his own district of Bertrand, near Montreal. As a result, another Liberal may be asked to step aside to create a safe seat that Mr. Bourassa could win in a by-election.
Secretary of State George P. Shultz said today that the United States had no intention of resuming direct negotiations with Nicaragua in the context of the peace initiative by Panama, Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela. At a meeting of the Organization of American States here, Mr. Shultz said past talks had resulted in a Nicaraguan effort ”to undermine” the so-called Contadora peace process, ”so we don’t intend to go back to that.” He spoke with reporters after conferring with the Foreign Ministers of Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Panama, the four Contadora Group nations. Mr. Shultz said he had heard nothing to suggest ”Nicaragua’s willingness to engage in the kind of internal reconciliation that we feel is an essential attribute to any dialogue we might have with them.”
Peru’s President Alan Garcia ordered the retirement of 137 high-ranking police officers in his largest shake-up to date aimed at ridding Peru of official corruption. The dismissals affected lieutenant colonels, colonels and majors in all three branches of Peru’s national police force. Since taking office last July, Garcia has fired 369 top-ranking police officers.
Decades of drought, famine and debt have left Africa facing a crisis so severe that it is “almost impossible for the rest of the world to imagine or comprehend,” a panel of foreign policy experts said. Their report, jointly prepared by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Overseas Development Council, urged the United States to triple its African aid, stretch out debt repayment and tie all aid to long-term development. The proposals are included in a 24-page report by the Committee on African Development Strategies, which was formed by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Overseas Development Council. It is headed by Lawrence S. Eagleburger, a former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, and Donald F. McHenry, a former chief delegate to the United Nations. The 24-page report, titled ”Compact for African Development,” recommends a rescheduling of African debt and longer-term food aid arrangements that avoid the annual United States budget process. The report also calls on African nations to increase agricultural output, to let prices act as incentives for production and to reduce the role of government in their economies.
House and Senate leaders said they are close to agreement on balanced budget legislation, but White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan said the Administration does not want “our defense posture crippled” by defense cuts. Despite general backing for the “Gramm-Rudman” balanced budget measure, Regan told reporters the Administration is concerned about cutting military spending, especially early next year during arms control negotiations with the Soviets. The balanced budget legislation, attached to a bill to raise the national debt ceiling to a record $2 trillion, is currently in conference between the House and Senate.
President Reagan plans to propose a 1987 budget with a ”maximum” deficit of $144 billion, President Reagan’s budget director, James C. Miller 3d, said today. The figure is the same as the target required by the Senate’s Gramm-Rudman-Hollings bill, now being debated in Congress, that would require a balanced budget by 1991. ”In the 1987 budget,” Mr. Miller told a meeting of the American Enterprise Institute, ”I will tell you where I expect the President’s budget to come in, and that is at a $144 billion deficit maximum, whether we have Gramm-Rudman-Hollings or not.” It was the Administration’s first public comment on an important feature of the budget for the fiscal year 1987 that Mr. Reagan is to submit to Congress in late January or early February. The figure is nearly $21 billion below the 1987 deficit that he projected in his budget proposal of last February and is $66 billion less than the record $212 billion deficit that the Government recorded in the fiscal year 1985 that ended in September.
NASA’s administrator was indicted along with the General Dynamics Corporation and three of its executives on charges of defrauding the Army on an ill-fated weapons contract. The space agency official, James M. Beggs, worked for General Dynamics until 1981 and was accused with the other defendants of illegally billing the Army for millions of dollars in cost overruns on a prototype of the Sergeant York gun.
President Reagan travels to Seattle, Washington from Los Angeles, California to attend a fundraiser. President Reagan said here today that his meeting with Mikhail S. Gorbachev had opened the door to improved United States-Soviet relations by a crack, but not fully ajar. At a fund-raising luncheon for Senator Slade Gordon, a Republican, Mr. Reagan cautioned against an overly optimistic interpretation of the first meeting between the two leaders. Mr. Reagan, who was en route back to Washington after the Thanksgiving holiday, also urged Americans to avoid ”shooting ourselves in the foot” by giving way to protectionist legislation. The Northwest of the United States is heavily dependent on the export of forest products.
President Reagan returns to the White House from his Thanksgiving vacation at the Reagan Ranch.
The Senate began its first debate on campaign financing in eight years today with the leader of a drive to limit contributions from special interest groups urging colleagues to put conscience ahead of self-interest. ”The mushrooming influence of political action committees is beginning to threaten grass-roots democracy,” said Senator David Boren, Democrat of Oklahoma, sponsor of legislation to limit how much political action committee money Congressional candidates can accept. Mr. Boren, who does not take such contributions himself, said they have risen from $8 million in 1974 to $113 million last year, with incumbents getting $4.50 for every $1 received by challengers.
In a case that could affect the financial health of the nation’s largest social program, the Supreme Court agreed to decide whether state and local governments can be prevented from withdrawing their employees from the Social Security system. The justices will review a court ruling that held unconstitutional a 1983 law barring such withdrawals. Congress passed the measure in an effort to protect the economic integrity of the system. In another action, the court left intact the military conviction of former Marine Robert R. Garwood, the only Vietnam War POW found guilty of aiding the enemy.
William J. Casey, the Director of Central Intelligence, met today with Senator Jesse Helms, one of several conservative senators who have been accusing the C.I.A. of a possible ”pro-Soviet bias.” In an October 2 letter, Senator Helms, a North Carolina Republican, raised a series of questions about whether the agency analysis of arms control and military issues had been fooled by Soviet deception tactics. At today’s meeting, according to sources familiar with the session, Mr. Casey delivered a written response to the Helms letter.
Retired CIA employee Larry Wu-Tai Chin, 63, pleaded innocent in Alexandria, Virginia, to the charge that he spied for China for more than 30 years. Meanwhile, a prosecutor warned that the wife of another spy suspect, Jonathan Jay Pollard, might try to sell classified documents if she were freed on bail before her trial. In papers filed in federal court in Washington, U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova said the government may not have recovered all of the classified documents allegedly stolen by Pollard.
Two Turkish citizens and a Canadian businessman were arrested on charges of conspiring to buy and smuggle to Iran $10 million in sensitive radar and electronics equipment, the U.S. Customs Service announced in Newark, New Jersey. The arrests at Port Newark capped an investigation that began five months ago when Metin Tanir, 49, president of a Montreal communications firm, approached an undercover Customs agent seeking to buy the equipment, said Customs agent Michael Kaufman.
About 5,300 union machinists went on strike at Pratt & Whitney, which warned it will begin replacing strikers and may fire another 5,800 workers at its largest plant if they join picket lines. Workers struck the world’s largest jet-engine maker in Southington, Middletown and North Haven, Connecticut, in a bitter dispute over job security. The union failed to gain the two-thirds vote needed for a strike at Pratt’s main plant in East Hartford, Connecticut.
The Democratic Party has no plans to renounce the sturdy, stubborn donkey, the Democratic National Committee’s press secretary said. “We’re not shunning the donkey,” said Terry Michael. “We love the donkey.” Michael’s declaration of affection was provoked by reports that the party was retiring the donkey as “the official symbol of the party” and replacing it with a new logo.
Blacks in former President Carter’s hometown of Plains, Georgia won only two of three City Council seats in today’s municipal election. Black leaders here had threatened to file a Federal lawsuit seeking to replace at-large elections with district voting if their candidates did not win all three seats.
Hamilton Jordan, the architect of the campaign that vaulted the nationally unknown Jimmy Carter into the Presidency in 1976, said today that he had sufficiently recovered from cancer to run for the United States Senate. Mr. Jordan said he made the decision after treatment for lymph cancer left him free of disease. He also said he missed public life and believed no strong Democrat had emerged to challenge the incumbent, Senator Mack Mattingly, Republican of Georgia.
A jury in Seattle failed to reach a verdict in a negligence suit against the Weyerhaeuser Co. stemming from the eruption of the Mt. St. Helens volcano, but the plaintiffs said they would seek a new trial. The jury of eight women and four men deadlocked on whether any of the deaths stemming from the May 18, 1980, eruption resulted only from “an act of God,” as the company had maintained. The nine plaintiffs, including volcano victims and the families of loggers killed in the eruption, had alleged in the suit that the forest products company kept its workers too close to the volcano.
The U.S. Government’s top immigration official in the West says he will explore whether Los Angeles can be cut off from receiving Federal funds after the City Council declared it a sanctuary for Central American political refugees. Harold Ezell, Western regional director of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service, said this weekend, ”I feel so strongly that the Los Angeles City Council made a very poor decision that I have asked Washington, my headquarters, to find out legally what we can do to change this decision.”
Sandra Good, still with the “X” she carved in her forehead as a symbol of fealty to Charles Manson, left a federal prison in Alderson, West Virginia, having served nearly 10 years for conspiring to send death threats to corporate officials. Prison officials declined to specify her destination, but Rep. Vic Fazio (D-California) said Good will begin her five years on parole at a group home in New England. Good, 41, still professes total allegiance to Manson, who is serving a life term for the 1969 slayings in Los Angeles of actress Sharon Tate and eight others. In March, she rejected terms of a release agreement, saying that if she could not be with Manson she did not want to be freed. Prison officials, who described Good as a model inmate, said they had no choice but to reschedule her release because of her accumulated “good time.” Probation terms prohibit her from having any contact with Manson and she will not be traveling to California, Fazio said.
The law assuring the handicapped a free public education has transformed their lives over the last decade. The skills they are learning increase the prospects of their being self-sufficient adults.
The Unit 1 reactor at Three Mile Island was returned to 71 percent power production today after a malfunction that shut down the plant this weekend, releasing some radioactivity. The plant was restarted nearly 12 hours after a malfunction in the plant’s electrical generator triggered the shutdown at 2:10 A.M. Sunday.
A bitter supermarket strike and lockout in southern California entered its fifth week. The dispute between the supermarkets and meatcutters and teamsters centers on changes in work rules and pay scales.
The incidence of lung cancer has dropped significantly for white men in the United States for the first time in at least 50 years, according to the National Cancer Institute. The decrease was attributed primarily to a sharp drop in smoking that began more than two decades ago.”This proves that people can successfully reduce their cancer risk by quitting smoking or not taking up smoking,” Dr. Vincent T. DeVita Jr., director of the cancer institute, said in making public the Government’s annual update on cancer statistics. Lung cancer rates among women and black men did not show similarly sharp declines. Officials at the institute said smoking among women had decreased, but at a much slower rate than among white men. They said that the smoking habits of black men might also differ from those of white men and that blacks might also be affected by factors other than smoking. New workplace health standards on the use of three widely used substances suspected of causing cancer and other illnesses in humans will be proposed this week. After years of discussion, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is expected to propose new rules restricting exposure to benzene and formaldehyde today, and issue final rules on cotton dust Thursday.
A storm struck from north Indiana to northwestern Pennsylvania and western New York, drifting snow up to 6 feet high, clogging highways, stranding travelers and causing many class closings. Meanwhile, a new Pacific storm struck the Northwest with wet snow and high winds.
Rupert Holmes’ musical “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”, based on an unfinished work of Charles Dickens, opens at the Imperial Theater, NYC; runs for 608 performances, winning 5 Tony Awards.
NFL Monday Night Football:
The Chicago Bears’ quest for an undefeated season came to a resounding end tonight as the Miami Dolphins soundly beat them, 38–24, at the Orange Bowl, Miami. The Bears, who had given up only a field goal in their three previous games, had not yielded so many points in more than two years. Their pressing defense, with its unusual ”46” deployment of eight men on the line that had worked so well throughout the season, was rendered virtually useless against the Dolphins. Dan Marino was sacked only twice as he completed 14 of 27 passes for 270 yards and three touchdowns, many of them against the ”46.” This Chicago defense is named after Doug Plank, a former Bear, who wore uniform number 46. In an odd turnabout, the Dolphins, whose defense was ranked 26th among 28 teams after 12 weeks of play, sacked Steve Fuller four times and his replacement, Jim McMahon, twice. Fuller completed only 11 of 21 for 169 yards and one touchdown. He also threw two passes that were intercepted. McMahon, who had missed the Bears’ three previous starts, relieved Fuller with about 13 minutes to go after Fuller sprained his ankle. While the loss dropped the Bears to 12–1, it did no appreciable damage to their playoff situation. They had clinched their division two weeks ago. One bright note for the Bears: Walter Payton set a league record by carrying for 100 yards or more in an eighth-straight game. He rushed 23 times for 121 yards. For the Dolphins, the victory had dramatic residuals. With a 9–4 record, they move into a tie for the lead in the American Conference East with the Jets and the New England Patriots. It also preserved their record of being the last team to go through a season without a loss. The 1972 Dolphins were 17–0, after a victory in Super Bowl VII. Bears’ head coach Mike Ditka and defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan almost come to blows at halftime tonight.
Chicago Bears 24, Miami Dolphins 38
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1457.91 (-14.22)
Born:
Amaury Leveaux, French swimmer (Olympic gold medal, men’s 4x100m freestyle relay, 2012; WR 100m freestyle short course – 44.94s), in Belfort, France.
Dorell Wright, NBA small forward (Miami Heat, Golden State Warriors, Philadelphia 76ers, Portland Trailblazers), in Los Angeles, California.
History Diaries 