The Victory of People Power
Despite publicly maintaining that he was still president, privately Marcos knew his position was untenable. Even as he was holding his rival inauguration, he and his family were already preparing to flee the country. At 5:00 AM on Tuesday morning, Marcos phoned United States Senator Paul Laxalt, asking for advice from the White House. Laxalt advised him to “cut and cut cleanly”, to which Marcos expressed his disappointment after a short pause. In the afternoon, Marcos talked to Minister Enrile, asking for safe passage for him, his family, and close allies such as General Ver. He also asked Enrile if United States Ambassador Stephen Bosworth could assign a security escort for the Marcos family’s departure.
Around midnight, the Marcos family boarded a United States Air Force HH-3E Rescue helicopter and flew to Clark Air Base in Angeles City 83 kilometers north of Manila. At Clark Air Base, Marcos asked to spend a couple of days with his family in Ilocos Norte, his native province. Aquino vetoed the request. President Reagan privately derided Aquino for denying Marcos a last look at his home province.
The deposed First Family and their servants then rode U.S. Air Force C-9A Nightingale and C-141B Starlifter planes to Andersen Air Force Base in the north of the United States territory of Guam, then flying to Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii where Marcos finally arrived on February 26. The United States government documented that they entered the United States with millions of dollars in jewelry, gold, stocks, and cash.
When news of the Marcos family’s departure reached civilians, many rejoiced and danced in the streets. Over at Mendiola, the demonstrators stormed the Palace, which was closed to ordinary people for around a decade. Despite looting by some angry protesters, the majority wandered about inside through rooms where national history was shaped, looking at objects extravagant and mundane that the Marcos clan and its court had abandoned in their flight. Shortly after midnight on February 26, five army trucks of troops under the command of Fidel Ramos arrived in Malacañang Palace to secure it after Ferdinand Marcos had left – marking the end of the Marcos dictatorship, and placing the palace under the control of the provisional government of the Philippines until a new constitution could be enacted a year later, in 1987.
As the provisionary government took control of Malacanang Palace, and in the rush of the Marcos’ family’s departure, documents pertaining to overseas land holdings and bank accounts were recovered. These documents were the foundation of successive attempts to recover the Marcos family’s ill-gotten wealth starting with Operation Big Bird, as well as court cases against the Marcos family and cronies.
Corazon C. Aquino began her first full day as President of the Philippines Wednesday by naming 17 Cabinet members, conferring with defeated rival politicians and holding her first presidential news conference. Early today, Mrs. Aquino’s top military aide urged her to release 33 political prisoners. He also said the Government was studying another 400 cases. One day after Ferdinand E. Marcos fled the Presidential palace in an American helicopter — a day on which one of her advisers said she did not know if she would be arrested or killed — Mrs. Aquino moved quickly to put her Philippine Presidency into motion. The deposed President, his wife, Imelda, and about two dozen close associates arrived Wednesday at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii, after a flight from Guam. At her election campaign headquarters, Mrs. Aquino worked throughout the day Wednesday to select her Cabinet, with more ministers expected to be named today. She met with a dozen Cabinet ministers from Mr. Marcos’s disbanded Government and told them it was “time to heal wounds and forget the past.”
The Aquino Cabinet is centrist on balance, according to political analysts in Manila. The 17 Cabinet officials named today by President Corazon C. Aquino seem to be largely a blend of opposition politicians from the years of resistance against the Marcos Government. The mix, with a few Marcos-era exceptions, appears to reflect the results of the key compromise that made Mrs. Aquino’s unity candidacy a reality last December. For the most part, the appointees also reflected elements of the economic middle ground and social establishment. Indeed, President Aquino was asked at a news conference whether the choices were too “elite.”
President Reagan sent a congratulatory message to President Corazon C. Aquino today, saying the United States “welcomed the democratic outcome” of the Philippine elections, according to White House officials. The officials said Mr. Reagan had also noted that the United States and the Philippines “would be working closely” to promote the Manila Government’s efforts to revamp the economy and the armed forces. At the same time Mr. Reagan sent a message to Ferdinand E. Marcos in Hawaii, praising his “difficult and courageous decision” to step down after 20 years as Philippine President, according to the officials. Meanwhile, representatives of the new Philippine Government and some members of Congress said they would take steps to try to strip Mr. Marcos of millions of dollars of assets in this country that might have been gained illegally. The White House said Mr. Marcos might remain in Hawaii for a long stay. The 68-year-old former President and about two dozen associates, including his personal physician, landed at Hickam Air Force Base today aboard a United States military plane from Guam.
Vatican officials said today that the vocal part played by the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines had raised difficult questions about the church’s political role and about Pope John Paul II’s campaign to distance priests from political activity. But the Vatican generally welcomed the outcome of the struggle, in which President Ferdinand E. Marcos was deposed. “At the end, the thing was for the best,” a high Vatican official said. “Up to this moment, I think everyone in the world has a feeling of relief.” The only official comment today came from the Pope himself, whose statements on the conflict had been remarkably cautious.
In other countries, people also rejoiced and congratulated Filipinos they knew. CBS anchorman Bob Simon reported: “We Americans like to think we taught the Filipinos democracy. Well, tonight they are teaching the world.”
The New People’s Army, the Communist fighting force, will continue its insurgency despite the departure of Ferdinand E. Marcos, a ranking Filipino Communist said today. The official said the Communists believed that the new Government would pursue much the same “repressive” policies as Mr. Marcos. “Of course, the armed struggle will go on,” said the official, who was one of the founders of the Communist Party of the Philippines in 1968. “Basically, the same problems of the U.S.-Marcos dictatorship are still there, except Marcos is no longer around,” he said.
The United States today rejected a suggestion by Mikhail S. Gorbachev that the timing of his next meeting with President Reagan should depend on progress in the Geneva arms control negotiations. “That kind of linkage, in our opinion, simply won’t work,” Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman, said. “We can have a productive meeting without progress at Geneva.” The White House statement came as the House of Representatives approved a resolution urging the Administration to resume negotiations toward a comprehensive nuclear test ban. The vote, which came after four hours of debate, was 268 to 148.
The 5,000 delegates gathered in Moscow for the 27th congress of the Communist Party have heard almost as much talk about capitalism as communism. Most of it has been pretty grim, with the United States the main villain. American society is described about as charitably as the Soviet Union would be depicted at a convention of the Democratic or the Republican Party. Looking at the world through a Marxist-Leninist prism, Mikhail S. Gorbachev said in his keynote speech on Tuesday: “The capitalism of the 1980’s, the capitalism of the age of electronics and computer science, computers and robots, is leaving more millions of people, including young and educated people, without jobs.
In his marathon keynote speech to the Communist Party congress on Tuesday, Mikhail S. Gorbachev went to great lengths to generate a sense of urgency and excitement over his economic program. His delivery of the five-and-a-half-hour address in the Palace of Congresses grew more animated when he passed from an exposition of current official ideology to the subject that has dominated his first year in office. Like a preacher trying to fire a somnolent congregation, Mr. Gorbachev pressed his case before the 5,000 delegates and the nationwide television audience with a blend of fiery rhetoric, tantalizing hints of bold new policies, exhortations and reprimands. Ears perked in the hall as he ticked off the buzzwords of the advocates of economic change — market forces, financial incentives, local autonomy, and even a bit of private enterprise.
An Italian airman who worked at the command center of a NATO nuclear missile base has been arrested on espionage charges amid indications that he sold secrets to Libyan agents, senior Italian officials said today. The espionage activities reportedly took place at the NATO installation at Comiso in southeastern Sicily, where United States nuclear cruise missiles are deployed. Details of the case remain closely guarded by the Italian military intelligence officials who are conducting the investigation, and there is no publicly available information as to whether the base’s security has been compromised. According to police officials here, the airman, Giuseppe Franchi, a noncommissioned officer in the Italian Air Force, was arrested last Friday along with another man on charges of stealing secret documents and of disclosing classified information.
The Irish Parliament rejected a bill to end the nation’s constitutional ban on divorce. The bill was offered by the Labor Party, but most of the deputies in the Fine Gael party, Labor’s coalition partner, opposed the measure. Fine Gael’s leader, Prime Minister Garret FitzGerald, has pledged to introduce legislation permitting divorce under certain circumstances, but he has postponed action pending discussions with Roman Catholic leaders. Ireland and Malta are the only countries in Europe where divorce is illegal.
Protestant leaders called today for a general strike for 12 hours Monday to protest the British-Irish accord that gives the Irish Republic a voice in the governing of the province. James Molyneaux, leader of the Protestant Official Unionist Party, announced plans for the strike to a session of the Northern Ireland Assembly, an advisory body that is dominated by Protestants. Organizers said the strike, the first major test of British resolve to maintain the accord, would last from 7 AM to 7 PM and is intended to cripple industry, businesses, ports and airports.
Mark Palmer, deputy assistant secretary of state for European affairs, told a Senate hearing that Romania has agreed to let three dissident Baptist ministers, a labor activist and 16 other people emigrate to the West. Such permission, however, represents only modest progress in a recently intensified U.S. effort to help ease conditions in the Soviet Bloc country, U.S. officials said. Members of Congress repeated warnings that unless Romania’s human rights record improves, Washington will strip it of special trading rights worth $300 million a year.
Prime Minister Shimon Peres of Israel said today that he was considering measures to promote self-rule among Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territories. “We shall keep the door to peace open and enable Palestinians to assume responsibilities as they wish to,” he said in an interview at his home. The Israeli leader’s comments came a week after King Hussein of Jordan ended efforts to work out a joint strategy with the Palestine Liberation Organization for Middle East peace talks. In the interview, Mr. Peres outlined steps that Israel would take, or was considering, to enhance the ability of the 1.3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to more easily express their political views and to play a more active role in administering their affairs. The Peres Government has previously advanced such an approach, with relatively few specifics, under the name of “devolution.”
Rebellious paramilitary policemen fought pitched battles with troops in the capital today as the Egyptian Government struggled to put down a revolt that began overnight in the luxury hotel section near the Great Pyramids. A round-the-clock curfew was ordered for Cairo and its suburbs. President Hosni Mubarak convened his Cabinet in emergency session this evening to discuss the violence. Diplomats called the disturbances the most serious challenge to Mr. Mubarak’s authority since he took office in 1981 after the assassination of President Anwar el-Sadat. The paramilitary police officers, believed to be mostly young conscripts, began rioting because of a rumor that they would have their duty length extended to four years from the current three. The Government denied the rumor.
A Peugeot packed with TNT blew up in front of Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp at Sidon, killing the driver and wounding 10 people. The explosion at the entrance to the Ein el Hilwa camp, the home to 26,000 U.N.-registered refugees, occurred just 10 minutes before hundreds of Palestinians were to assemble to commemorate the 1975 assassination of Marouf Saad, who was a member of Parliament from Sidon. The blast flattened six houses, a pharmacy and four parked cars on the southern fringe of Sidon. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.
Iran said today that its troops advanced farther into mountains in northern Iraq, killing 1,500 Iraqi soldiers and capturing another 25 villages. However, Lieutenant General Saadi Toomah al-Jbouri of Iraq dismissed the reported advance as “mere skirmishing.” The official Iranian press agency, which is monitored in Cyprus, also said Iranian troops in Iraq’s southern Fao Peninsula killed or wounded 500 Iraqi soldiers in an overnight assault and routed an armored division. General Jbouri, the commander of the Iraqi forces responsible for defending the Fao peninsula, told reporters the confrontation that began when Iran invaded February 9 “might be a long one.”
Soviet troops in Afghanistan killed about 35,000 civilians last year in a campaign of “systematic brutality” that included bombing villages and planting explosives in children’s toys, a report prepared for the U.N. Human Rights Commission said. The author was Australian law professor Felix Ermacora, who said his findings are based on testimony from Afghan refugees in Pakistan.
A leading United Nations official said today that he would travel to the capitals of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran next week to try to break a deadlock in talks on Afghanistan. The official, Diego Cordovez, Under Secretary General for Special Political Affairs, said in an interview that he expected the trip to take two weeks but that he was prepared to “stay as long as is necessary to solve the problem.” Mr. Cordovez, an Ecuadorean, said an “impasse” in the United Nations-sponsored talks on Afghanistan must be resolved before Pakistan and Afghanistan can deal with the question of the withdrawal of Soviet troops. The last round of talks, held in Geneva in December, was suspended because the two sides could not agree how to negotiate the sensitive subjects of troop withdrawal and noninterference in Afghanistan’s affairs.
Demonstrators protesting price increases hampered commerce in much of India today and paralyzed Bombay, a financial and shipping center. Although no major violence was reported, the rallies attended by opposition workers, housewives and union members were the first major protest against Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s economic policies.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert A.K. Runcie, said he opposes foreign Christian missionaries seeking converts in India. “The Christian church is a missionary church and will always try to attract members,” the Anglican leader said in New Delhi during a three-week Indian tour. “But this must be the work of Indian missionaries.” Hindu militants have denounced foreign proselytizers, saying they exploit Hindu poverty.
An impasse in the negotiations to end the fighting in Sri Lanka is stirring new fears that the Government and its foes may resume their warfare on a larger scale than before the talks began. The Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, and his aides have begun suggesting that President J. R. Jayewardene of Sri Lanka has been inflexible in the talks. Recently Mr. Gandhi abruptly canceled a trip to Colombo by a senior Indian diplomat, apparently to express displeasure over Mr. Jayewardene’s position. He also recalled the Indian Ambassador to Sri Lanka for discussions.
A United States military team arrived in Hanoi today to resume talks on American servicemen listed as missing in action in Vietnam and to set a date for the return of 14 sets of American remains, military officials said. In Laos, a joint United States-Lao team continued digging for remains in the wreckage of an AC-130 warplane shot down in southern Laos in March 1972.
The Canadian government announced personal and corporate tax increases, combined with federal spending cuts, aimed at slicing the national deficit by $3.25 billion in the fiscal year beginning April 1. Personal and corporate taxes will rise by 3% in 1987 and the federal sales tax will be increased by 1%. In presenting the new budget to the House of Commons, Finance Minister Michael Wilson forecast a deficit of $21 billion for the new year, down from nearly $25 billion this year. Wilson said the government is committed to further reductions that would chop the deficit to $16 billion by the end of the decade.
An 11-man team ventured onto the frozen Beaufort Sea today to recover the wreckage of an unarmed American cruise missile that crashed at the start of a test flight. Debris was spread over an area about 100 feet in diameter where the missile crashed Tuesday after being dropped from a B-52 bomber, a Canadian forces spokesman, Capt. Ross Hicks, said.
New disturbances racked the country of Haiti today, only hours after General Henri Namphy, president of the five-man interim Government, lifted a monthlong curfew and appealed, in an address to the nation, for unity. By nightfall, the government declared that curfew had been reinstated, with an earlier starting time of 7 PM instead of the previous 11 PM. It ends, as before, at 5 in the morning. The government also forbade the departure of former officials accused of human-rights abuses and arrested two reputed torturers. The actions were were seen as a response to the street unrest and as reflecting disagreement within the junta that was formed after President Jean-Claude Duvalier fled the country February 7.
The State Department announced today that the United States would provide the new Government in Haiti with $26.6 million in economic and military aid that had been suspended by Washington in the last months of the Duvalier regime. The move was the most tangible American gesture to the new Government since President Jean-Claude Duvalier and his family and closest aides were evacuated from Haiti on February 7 aboard a United States Air Force plane and taken to France. The President’s departure ended nearly 30 years of rule by the Duvalier family. The $26.6 million represented about half of Haiti’s aid for this fiscal year and its suspension was regarded later as having played a part in persuading Mr. Duvalier to give up power.
Under Secretary of Defense Fred C. Ikle said the United States can buy more weapons from Brazil and provide advanced military technology to Brazil if safeguards are taken against Soviet “theft and espionage.” Ikle, completing two days of meetings in Rio de Janeiro, announced that U.S. Navy oceanographic ships operating in the South Atlantic will be overhauled and repaired in Brazilian yards.
A strike by blacks at the Vaal Reefs gold mine grew worse today when 19,000 miners seeking the release of nine jailed co-workers stayed off the job, the miners’ union said. The union, the National Union of Mineworkers, South Africa’s largest black union, said the strike could spread if the Anglo-American Corporation continued to reject the miners’ demand for release of nine colleagues arrested in connection with the murder last week of four black supervisors at the mine. Anglo-American, which owns the mine, put production losses from the strike, which started Monday, at $3 million. It said 11,000 if the mine’s 40,000 workers were off the job today.
Key middle-level space agency managers denied today that they had used “harsh language” or undue pressure to force a contractor to reverse a recommendation against launching the shuttle Challenger in cold weather January 28. But members of a Presidential commission investigating the subsequent explosion of the craft, which killed seven astronauts, expressed skepticism about the explanations by officials from the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., of why the launching was permitted over objections of the contractor’s engineers. And the commissioners forced Stanley Reinartz, manager of shuttle projects at Marshall, to acknowledge that he did not report the engineers’ objections to superiors who had to make the final decision because finally officials from the contractor, Morton Thiokol Inc., and Marshall engineers agreed that the liftoff should proceed. It Was ‘Normal Discussion’ In tense and sometimes heated cross-examination of agency officials, the investigators are beginning to suggest that, given strong evidence of critical design flaws, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration should have decided much earlier to stop the shuttle flights. In testimony today about the debate in the hours before the launching, several officials from Marshall said that they had simply challenged the engineers to analyze their data more rigorously in what amounted to a “normal discussion” among engineers, and that after the information was reconsidered, Thiokol’s own management team concluded it was safe to launch.
The President pressed military spending in a televised speech. Mr. Reagan declared that efforts by Congress to reduce his proposed level of military spending threatened the nation’s security and posed dangers to any chance of improving relations with the Kremlin. In a speech that marked the start of a campaign to urge Congress to support his military buildup, Mr. Reagan asserted that United States security was threatened by those who seek spending reductions and that a military imbalance exists between the United States and the Soviet Union. He said that the record of Soviet behavior pointed to the need to maintain his military buildup. “Strength is the most persuasive argument we have to convince our adversaries to negotiate seriously and to cease bullying other nations,” Mr. Reagan said in remarks prepared for delivery tonight in a nationally televised speech. “But tonight, the security program that you and I launched to restore America’s strength is in jeopardy, threatened by those who would quit before the job is done.
Military spending is underestimated significantly, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The agency said that President Reagan’s 1987 budget was $15.7 billion over the $144 billion deficit ceiling of the new budget-balancing law. At the same time, Senator Pete V. Domenici, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said that most Senate committees had reacted negatively to the President’s proposals to eliminate programs, impose user fees, sell Government assets and put Government functions in private hands, which make up the core of Mr. Reagan’s effort to meet the ceiling set in the new budget-balancing law. “The response has been very weak,” Mr. Domenici, a New Mexico Republican, said. Based on the Congressional agency’s estimates, Mr. Reagan would have to propose $16 billion more in savings to reach the statutory 1987 deficit ceiling of $144 billion while retaining his requested increase in the military budget, 8 percent on top of an increase to make up for inflation. The extra savings is regarded as politically difficult to achieve in a Congress that failed to agree in 1985 on an omnibus deficit-reducing bill.
Representative Jim Wright, the House majority leader, said this evening that it would be impossible to continue President Reagan’s proposed military buildup and balance the budget unless there was a tax increase. Mr. Wright’s remarks were the official Democratic reply to Mr. Reagan’s nationally televised speech on the military budget this evening. Mr. Wright, a Texas Democrat, also said the President’s insistence on cutting many important domestic programs, including education and Medicare, to pay for his military buildup is “a misplaced priority.” Mr. Wright did not advocate a tax increase in his talk. He and other Democratic leaders have said they would not support an increase in taxes unless it were proposed by Mr. Reagan, who has repeatedly vowed not to do so.
President Reagan meets with the Board of Directors of the new U.S. Institute of Peace.
The President and First Lady are filmed by an ABC production crew to be included in the Barbara Walters television Special.
Congressional opponents of President Reagan’s request for $100 million in aid to the Nicaraguan rebels began to mobilize today, indicating that the Administration faces an uphill fight to gain passage of the authorization. Senator Mark O. Hatfield, Republican of Oregon, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, declared his opposition and predicted “intense resistance” in the Senate in view of projected cuts in domestic social programs. He said that the Administration’s request would be referred to his committee as well as to the Foreign Relations Committee. He and Senator Paul Simon, Democrat of Illinois, initiated a letter to President Reagan, signed by 18 senators, urging a postponement of the request pending thorough diplomatic efforts at negotiations through the Contadora group of Latin American countries. “This would be a particularly bad time for the United States to increase the level of conflict inside Central America,” the letter said. The President has said that one purpose of the aid is to force Nicaragua into negotiations.
Rep. Jack Kemp (R-New York) said that Social Security payroll taxes are too high and that “we ought to give thought” to cutting the present rates. The 14.3% payroll tax, half of which is paid by wage earners and half by employers, is an unfair burden on low-income workers and discourages employers from hiring new employees, Kemp, a 1988 GOP presidential prospect, told reporters in Washington.
Industries are pumping millions of pounds of toxic wastes into the nation’s sewer systems, probably causing significant emission of air pollutants and ground-water contamination, a new federal study said. The Environmental Protection Agency study said that due to an exemption in the federal Clean Water Act, 92 million kilograms of toxic metals and organic chemicals are being dumped into public sewage treatment plants each year. Ten kilograms equals roughly 22 pounds. The study expressed concern about the frequent presence of such dangerous chemicals as acetone, methyl ethyl ketone and methanol in waste water.
House and Senate Superfund negotiators differed sharply in their first meeting to produce legislation renewing and expanding the cash-starved toxic cleanup program. Senate leaders opened the session by urging both sides to push for a compromise Superfund bill by March 21 but warning that two new initiatives in the House-passed bill could stall the conference. The House provisions would attack the growing problem of leaking underground storage tanks and set up a liability fund to compensate for damages caused by oil spilled on the nation’s waterways.
Seabrook officials, in a crucial step toward winning a license for their controversial nuclear plant at Newington, New Hampshire, staged an emergency drill that included a mock uncontrolled release of radiation. The highest level of alert, a general emergency, was declared, and all residents within 10 miles of the plant hypothetically were ordered to leave. In reality, residents in the 10-mile emergency zone were not told of the drill, but state, local and utility officials participated.
Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger may soon approve a sweeping recommendation by two of his top assistants to ban the sale of cigarettes in military grocery stores, Pentagon sources said. The sources, who agreed to discuss the matter only if not identified, said Weinberger was now considering a flat ban on cigarette sales at commissaries rather than just an end to the price discount that the stores provide. The Senate approved an end to discounts last year, but the move was blocked by several influential House members from tobacco states.
An F.B.I. official said yesterday that a detailed examination of the bottles in Westchester County that held cyanide-laced Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules found there had been tampering with the packaging. This finding reverses earlier statements by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and appears to expand the range of possibilites in the case. Law-enforcement officials familiar with the case said the F.B.I. reversed its initial finding, that the bottles had not been tampered, with after specialists conducted a sophisticated forensic examination. These officials said they believed that while the bottles could have been tampered with anywhere between manufacture and sale, the new evidence gave some weight to the theory that the integrity of the packaging was violated and the bottles and boxes resealed after the product had been shipped from its two manufacturing sites.
An accused Nazi war criminal charged with operating the gas chamber at a Polish death camp during World War II was in New York awaiting extradition to Israel, U.S. officials said. State Department spokesman John Russell said John Demjanjuk, a retired Cleveland auto worker who has been identified by death camp survivors and U.S. prosecutors as the notorious “Ivan the Terrible,” will be taken out of the country shortly. If found guilty of the charges, Demjanjuk faces execution.
A federal jury in Boston today convicted Gennaro J. Angiulo, two brothers and an associate of racketeering activity including murder, illegal gambling and loansharking. The jury found a fourth brother guilty of illegal gambling but not racketeering. A jury of eight women and four men convicted the defendants, who the government charged were all organized crime leaders, on 29 of 44 possible charges in the 20-count indictment. It threw out most of the charges of obstruction of justice, but convicted Gennaro Angiulo on two counts.
A Navy surgeon was convicted by a military jury on two charges of involuntary manslaughter and one charge of negligent homicide in the deaths of patients in heart operations at the Bethesda Naval Hospital. The surgeon is Commander Donal M. Billig. Dr. Billig, a former chief of heart surgery at the hospital, was found not guilty of two charges of involuntary manslaughter in the deaths of two other patients. He was acquitted of 5 of 24 charges of dereliction of duty resulting from other operations at Bethesda, considered the Navy’s premier hospital. He was convicted of varying degrees of dereliction on the remaining counts.
A judge dismissed charges of political bribery against Representative Bobbi Fiedler of California and her top aide. Mrs. Fiedler and the aide, Paul Clarke, were indicted last month by a Los Angeles county grand jury for violating a provision of the state election code that bars offering money to a candidate to quit or stay out of a political race. Judge Robert Altman, who dismissed the charges in California Superior Court, said the 1893 law, “seldom if ever used,” was unclear about what conduct was prohibited. “The court would have to rewrite this statute to encompass the conduct we are talking about,” Judge Altman said. “On the face of it, it seems to address things most people would think were wrong. But it also could be applied to conduct that no one would want it to apply to.”
The jury in the retrial of Richard W. Miller on espionage charges today heard the former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent portrayed by the prosecution as a “vulnerable, morally weak and corrupt loser.” But the jury also heard Mr. Miller, a 20-year-veteran of the bureau, described by the defense as a “bumbler and a fumbler, an “overweight Inspector Clouseau who took on the fantasies of a James Bond” in order to salvage his reputuation and his job. “He was not venal,” the defense said. These disparate portrayals of Mr. Miller, 49 years old, the first F.B.I. agent to be charged with espionage, were presented to the jury in Federal District Court in two days of opening statements. Mr. Miller’s first trial ended last November with the jury dealocked 10 to 2 for conviction on the key espionage counts.
A mock alert sounded at the Seabrook nuclear plant today, signaling the start of an emergency response test that could have real consequences on Federal licensing of the reactor. The emergency drill is required in the Federal licensing process for Seabrook’s first reactor, which is 96 percent complete and is scheduled to begin operation late this year. About 50 observers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency will issue a graded report in 60 to 90 days. Opponents persuaded some towns to boycott the disaster drill. Massachusetts did not allow six towns within the emergency zone to participate. Six of the 17 New Hampshire towns in the area also boycotted the drill. Those communities that dropped out cited questions about the emergency plan. There was no mock evacuation in the drill, which focused on communications systems to coordinate activities in the event of a nuclear accident.
A rent control ordinance was upheld by the Supreme Court. The 8-to-1 decision sustaining the strict ordinance in Berkeley, California, is likely to make it far more difficult for litigants to use antitrust laws to challenge the regulatory actions of local governments. The decision was a victory for cities and consumer groups that favor rent controls and a defeat for landlords in Berkeley, New Jersey and elsewhere. The broad rationale of the 8-to-1 decision may effectively insulate cities and other local governments from a deluge of antitrust suits that have hit them in recent years over regulation of prices on matters ranging from rents to taxicab fares. It leaves some room, however, for antitrust suits to invalidate conspiracies between city officials and private economic interests to use government regulations to benefit those economic interests. Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall, writing for the Court, said local rent control ordinances such as Berkeley’s did not violate Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, even if they were not authorized by state law. The Court has previously made it clear that states and municipalities, acting under explicit state authorization, are immune from antitrust suits.
It was devastating enough when Nina Shearer learned that her 3-year-old daughter — her only child — had AIDS. But Mrs. Shearer’s trauma deepened as she and her daughter, Jackie, were gradually cut off from the world they had known. Mrs. Shearer gave up her job as a visiting lecturer in the design department at the University of California in Los Angeles last October and moved to New York so Jackie, who doctors say contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion, could be part of an experimental AIDS program at Children’s Hospital in Newark. Mrs. Shearer’s husband, from whom she was separated, stayed behind. She says her mother has stopped visiting. Her closest friends have become distant.
Two former San Diego City Council members, Maureen O’Connor and William Cleator, will face each other in a runoff to determine the successor to Mayor Roger Hedgecock, who resigned after conviction for perjury and conspiracy. The runoff is necessary because no candidate won more than 50 percent of the vote in the special election Tuesday. Mrs. O’Connor, who has been off the City Council since 1979, received 80,861 votes, or 46 percent, to Mr. Cleator’s 52,940 votes, or 30 percent, in the nonpartisan election.
A defendant’s rights were not violated by his lawyer’s threat to expose him if he lied on the witness stand at his murder trial, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously. The decision reversed a federal appellate court ruling.
The first American Poet Laureate is Robert Penn Warren, the 80-year-old poet, novelist and essayist. Mr. Warren, whose most famous novel, “All the King’s Men,” appeared 40 years ago, is the only writer to have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and for poetry (twice).
Lady Fleming, the Greek-born widow of the British scientist who discovered penicillin, and a prominent political activist, died in Athens today. She was 73 years old. A hospital announcement said Lady Fleming, who was a Member of Parliament for the Socialist Party of Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou and also a member of the European Parliament, died of a heart attack as a result of kidney failure. In April 1941 Greece was occupied by the Axis German and Italian forces. Amalia and her husband joined the Greek Resistance. She helped many British, New Zealand and Greek soldiers escape occupied Greece, transcribed BBC broadcasts, and produced fake identity cards for Greek Jews and foreign officers. She was arrested and jailed for her activities by the Italians. She feigned appendicitis as she knew she would be moved to the prison hospital from which it would be easier to escape. Following her appendix operation, she was instead handed over to the Gestapo and sentenced to death. In 1944 she was rescued from prison by British troops during the Allied advance into Greece.
Evert van Benthem wins 14th Frisian 11-Cities skating race (6:55:16).
On the strength of just two stocks, Union Carbide and Kodak, the Dow Jones industrial average moved closer to the 1,700 level yesterday while the rest of the market turned in an unremarkable performance. The Dow surpassed the stubborn 1,700 level twice during the session -once in late morning and again in the afternoon — before profit taking caused the index to close at 1,696.90, for a gain of 4.24 points.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1696.9 (+4.24)
Born:
Martins Karsums, Latvian National Team and NHL right wing (Olympics, 2010; Boston Bruins, Tampa Bay Lightning), in Riga, Latvian SSR, Soviet Union.
Tim Jamison, NFL defensive end (Houston Texans), in Riverdale, Illinois.
Teresa Palmer, Australian model and actress (“A Discovery of Witches”, “Warm Bodies”), in Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
Crystal Kay, Japanese pop, R&B, and dance music singer, in Yokohama, Japan.
Died:
Amalia, Lady Fleming, [née Koutsouri, formerly Vourekas], Greek physician, bacteriologist, human rights activist and politician.
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