The Administration acknowledged today for the first time that the Central Intelligence Agency had been directly involved in secret arms shipments to Iran. The White House spokesman, Larry Speakes, said at a briefing that the National Security Council staff ran the operation “in conjunction with the C.I.A.” and that an agency operative attended each meeting with the Iranians. Mr. Speakes did not indicate why he chose to acknowledge that the C.I.A. was involved. President Reagan did not mention the C.I.A. role in his speech Thursday night. In Tehran, the Iranian President denied today that his Government had held talks with the United States at a diplomatic level, and he dismissed Mr. Reagan’s account of negotiations as “mere lies.” Previously, officials had said that the C.I.A. had been bypassed and that the National Security Council staff controlled the operation on its own. But today, officials said that on a trip to Tehran in May, Robert C. McFarlane, the former national security adviser, was accompanied by Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North of the N.S.C. staff and by a C.I.A. officer whose identity was not revealed.
President Reagan’s defense of the White House’s secret policy of conducting talks and sending military equipment to Iran continued to draw criticism today from Republicans and Democrats. The Senate majority leader, Bob Dole, Republican of Kansas, in his first comment since Mr. Reagan’s revelations, said that although the policy was “well motivated,” it was “a little inept.” He said the President’s policy had produced “a lot of doubt” that the United States was sticking to its anti-terrorist policy. But even as Mr. Reagan again justified the Iran operation, his chief of staff, Donald T. Regan, said he believed it would not be resumed.
The President of Iran took issue with President Reagan today, denying that his Government had held talks at a diplomatic level with the United States. The Iranian President, Hojatolislam Ali Khamenei, speaking a day after President Reagan said the United States had sent a small amount of weapons to Iran in a bid to improve relations with Teheran, dismissed Mr. Reagan’s assertions of negotiations as “mere lies.” Hojatolislam Khameini vowed that there would be no “leniency and comprise” with the United States until it changed what he called its aggressive policy in the Middle East.
France and Britain reacted today to President Reagan’s speech on dealings with Iran by reaffirming that they would not negotiate with terrorists. In London, the opposition Labor Party spokesman, Denis Healy, said Mr. Reagan’s speech was “stupefyingly incredible.” Mr. Healey said Mr. Reagan had “broken ranks” with other Western nations by supplying arms to Iran when it was known to be planning a final offensive against Iraq. The Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, reporting on European Community action against Syria, told Parliament, “This Government will not do deals with terrorists for the release of hostages.”
Environmental officials and non-government activists have expressed increasing concern over a compound of mercury that was among the chemicals and dyes washed into the Rhine River during a fire at a chemical plant in the Swiss city of Basel on November 1. Officials in Basel said they believed about 440 pounds of toxic mercury washed into the river in the runoff from water dumped on the fire at the warehouse of Sandoz AG, one of the country’s largest chemical companies. The subsequent chemical spill has prompted ecologists and environmental officials in West Germany, France and the Netherlands to declare it the worst environmental disaster in Europe in many years. In the Netherlands, officials said today that mercury levels at the Dutch-West German border had reached three times their normal levels in the Rhine last Saturday, and in Paris, Claude Glaize, an official of the Environmental Ministry, said France was looking for traces of mercury and trying to determine how much of it flowed down the river from Basel. A key question was whether the mercury, now in a relatively less toxic form, had washed down the river or settled to the bottom, where it could be transformed into a more toxic substance. The chief danger to people would be in consuming large quantities of contaminated fish.
A steep decline in the Lebanese pound touched off angry recriminations in the Lebanese Cabinet today, with Moslems blaming the President, a Christian, and Christians pinning responsibility on the Prime Minister, a Moslem. Prime Minister Rashid Karami said this week that the time had come to replace President Amin Gemayel. Mr. Gemayel’s Christian supporters have responded that it is Mr. Karami who should step down, as they seek to blame him for Lebanon’s deteriorating economic and political conditions. Since the beginning of the year, the value of the Lebanese pound has declined by 300 percent against foreign currencies on the Beirut free exchange market. Since Lebanon is a country that imports nearly 90 percent of its needs and must pay hard currency for what it imports, the fall of the pound has drastically eroded the incomes and life savings of the Lebanese.
The main pricing committee of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries recommended tonight that the group raise prices by $3 a barrel, to $18, and return to setting fixed rates for petroleum. There was no official recommendation on what has been considered the critical issue of how to restrict production to get prices to rise. But the three oil ministers meeting here, from Kuwait, Ecuador and Libya, urged that a quota system, restricting output country by country, be continued. They said there was wide agreement within OPEC for such a system, as evidenced in communications sent by members not present.
The White House announced several economic and political sanctions against Syria today, saying they were “to express our outrage” against reported Syrian involvement in an attempt to blow up an Israeli airliner in London. “These measures and our own actions will send a clear and unequivocal message to Syria,” said Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman. “Its support of terrorism is unacceptable to the international community of nations.”
Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar has protested to Afghanistan’s chief delegate over an attack against Afghan opposition leaders visiting the U.N. last week. The attackers were identified as four members of the Afghan Mission. But a Pakistani diplomat who was escorting the Afghan opposition leaders to a news conference when they were attack called the letter “inadequate” and said Pakistan and Saudi Arabia would press their call for the Afghans to be expelled. “The resort to physical violence, for whatever reason, on the premises of the Secretariat constitutes improper conduct against which the Secretary General has asked me to lodge a protest with you,” said the letter, signed by Karl-August Fleischauer, the United Nations’ legal counsel. The spokesman for the Secretary General, Francois Giuliani, said Mr. Perez de Cuellar did not have the authority to revoke diplomatic status.
Vietnam has devalued its currency for the third time in less than two years, indicating a continuing failure to curb rapid inflation or solve other economic problems. According to an announcement last week in Hanoi by its Central Bank, the Vietnamese unit of currency, the dong, has been devalued from 15 to 80 to the United States dollar. Before the devaluation, the dollar (pegged officially at 15 dong since September 1985) had been buying up to 430 dong on the black market, according to residents of Hanoi. The black market exchange rate is considered by diplomats to be a more realistic indicator of the state of the Vietnamese economy than the official exchange rates.
Dissidents returning from the United States to join Taiwan’s newly formed opposition party were denied entry today, the authorities said. Some of their supporters clashed with the police in an airport lounge, leaving three protesters injured. The dissidents, members of the overseas branch of the Democratic Progressive Party, left Taiwan for Tokyo and Singapore. The officials said five dissidents were turned back because they did not have entry permits. Party officials in Taiwan said the authorities had refused to issue entry permits because, while in the United States, they belonged to groups opposing the Taiwan Government.
After a flurry of negotiations aimed at undercutting protectionist moves in the new Congress, Japan has agreed to sharp reductions of exports of textiles and machine tools to the United States, officials of both countries said today. The new arrangements follow the announcement by the Japanese Finance Ministry earlier this week that the United States had a record $5 billion deficit in trade with Japan in October, suggesting that this politically sensitive measure will exceed forecasts for 1986. Just last Aug. 6, President Reagan’s veto of a textile quota bill was sustained by a margin of only eight votes in the House. And Democratic leaders have promised that trade legislation will come up early in the new Congress, now fully controlled by their party.
Unintentionally, Corazon C. Aquino’s visit to Japan this week highlighted the keen sensitivity that lingers in Japan about any reference to Emperor Hirohito and his views of World War II. In recent years, under careful Government instruction, the Emperor has issued several deliberately vague statements of regret for Japanese wartime aggression against the United States, China and South Korea. But he never went so far as to make an unequivocal apology. So it was startling to many Japanese when Mrs. Aquino, through a spokesman, reported that in her meeting with Hirohito he “kept apologizing” for “the pain” that Japan caused during its 1940’s occupation of the Philippines. That disclosure touched off rumbles of discontent, especially in the press. True to form, Japanese reporters had limited their source of information to the Foreign Ministry, and it had said nothing about an apology. Then, after questions were raised, a senior palace official allowed that he had been present, but had heard no mention of an apology or of the war.
President Corazon C. Aquino called for calm today and opened a Government investigation into the killing of a prominent leftist leader, saying she would seek the culprits “whatever the political cost.” The discovery Thursday of the mutilated body of the leader, Rolando Olalia, head of the country’s largest left-wing political party and largest labor union, drew a strong reaction from left-wing organizations. Several of these organizations, which have been largely quiescent in the nine months of Mrs. Aquino’s presidency, blamed the military and said they were planning protest actions. The killing also caused the suspension of cease-fire negotiations with the Communists that had appeared close to success. No new date was set.
An Organization of American States meeting in Guatemala has convinced many United States officials that for others it can be logical both to disapprove of the Nicaraguan Government and still oppose the rebels who are fighting to overthrow it. Many of the United States officials say they believe such a policy is fundamentally inconsistent. Yet, to their frustration, it is the policy of many Latin American Governments. As the O.A.S. held its discussions here, diplomats from several member nations, speaking to reporters, expressed distaste for the Sandinistas on ideological grounds. At the same time, however, they condemned United States support of Nicaraguan rebels.
Brazil will hold nationwide elections Saturday, the first since a military Government left office last year. The campaign has been dominated by a fierce battle between two men who are not running for office, over a job that is not up for grabs. The 69-million-strong electorate will be voting to pick 23 state governors, 49 senators and 487 deputies. But most eyes are already fixed on the emerging race for the presidency and, specifically, on how long Jose Sarney will hold onto the office and whether his main critic, the Governor of Rio de Janeiro state, Leonel Brizola, will succeed him.
Chad said today that its armed forces had shot down a Libyan fighter plane and killed 200 Libyan soldiers in fighting in the northeast of the country. A Chadian military communique reported heavy fighting near Fada, about 85 miles north of the 16th parallel, which divides Chad into a Government-controlled south and rebel-held north. The Libyan troops were supported by fighter aircraft, rocket launchers, and tanks, the communique said. The communique coincided with the opening of a French-African meeting in the Togolese capital, Lome, that is expected to be dominated by discussions on Chad’s 20-year-old civil war.
In the first such action to be reported in more than a year, the South African military said today that its forces had attacked insurgents of the South-West Africa People’s Organization at a camp in Angola. It said 39 people had been killed, all identified as insurgents. Officers said two South African soldiers were killed.
President Reagan participated in a photo opportunity while signing S. 1744, Omnibus Health Care Bill. President Reagan today signed a comprehensive health bill designed to promote exports of prescription drugs and to compensate children injured by vaccines. Mr. Reagan said he had approved the bill “with mixed feelings” because he had “serious reservations” about the vaccine compensation program. But he warmly endorsed provisions of the bill that would, for the first time, allow pharmaceutical companies to export drugs to other countries that have approved their use, without waiting for the United States to approve the drugs’ sale here. Mr. Reagan said this part of the new law “will increase the competitiveness of the American pharmaceutical industry abroad, create jobs, foster biotechnology and aid other nations.” However, he said there were “substantial deficiencies” in the vaccine plan, under which injured people could obtain payments from the Government without proving fault or wrongdoing by the vaccine manufacturer or anyone else.
President Reagan participates in a briefing for corporations and organizations that have supported philanthropic causes in recognition of National Philanthropy Day.
President Reagan vetoed the NASA authorization bill Friday, saying the bill’s attempt to establish a “National Space Council” would interfere with his decision-making power. President Reagan vetoed a major space bill today, objecting primarily to the establishment of a council to advise him on space-related matters. He said setting up a National Space Council “would constitute unacceptable interference with my discretion and flexibility in organizing and managing the executive office as I consider appropriate.” Mr. Reagan also objected to a “buy American” provision in the legislation passed by Congress, which he said would violate trade agreements and bring foreign retaliation, and to the bill’s setting of launching priorities for the space shuttle.
Representatives of 200 American religious leaders said today that they had won President Reagan’s commitment to make a national anti-pornography campaign a major priority of his Administration. The President “indicated his willingness to speak out, his willingness to put the authority of his office behind the Attorney General and the Justice Department in the legislative package that will emerge,” the Rev. Jerry Kirk of Cincinnati said after a 45-minute White House meeting with Mr. Reagan and Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d.
Ivan F. Boesky, one of the biggest and best-known speculators on Wall Street, has agreed to pay a $100 million penalty for illegal insider trading, the Government announced today. The sum was by far the largest ever assessed against someone who has reaped “ill-gotten gains,” said John S. R. Shad, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which announced the penalty. Half of the sum represents illegal profits, the other half a civil penalty. In addition to the financial penalty, Mr. Boesky, after an 18-month phase-out period, will be barred for life from the American securities industry. And Rudolph W. Giuliani, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said Mr. Boesky has agreed to plead guilty to one criminal charge. It was unclear tonight whether Mr. Boesky’s deal with the Justice Department might keep him out of jail.
Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d has removed himself from the Justice Department investigation of a former White House official, Lyn Nofziger, and his ties to a Bronx military contractor, the department said today. Instead, Mr. Meese has asked his deputy, Arnold I. Burns, to determine whether an independent investigation should be made into whether Mr. Nofziger violated Federal ethics laws when he lobbied on behalf of the company, the Wedtech Corporation.
An expert committee of the National Research Council reported today that passive smoking was a clearly established health risk for infants, young children and the nonsmoking spouses of cigarette smokers. The committee also found ample documentation for assertions that tobacco smoke results in a disagreeable, lingering odor and can seriously irritate the eyes, nose and throat of nonsmokers. The report was also significant for what it did not say. The committee said that much more research was needed to assess the hazards of passive smoking in the workplace and other public environments, areas that have been the focus of much recent regulatory and legislative attention as well as dissention from the tobacco industry.
A private American group opposed to nuclear testing and a team of scientists from the Soviet Union have selected three sites in California and Nevada where they plan to establish seismic monitoring stations to record earth tremors caused by nuclear weapon tests. The sites, in Nelson and Troy Canyon, Nev., and in Deep Springs, Calif., are within 100 miles of the Nevada Test Site where the United States tests nuclear devices. All the sites are on Government property, and permits will be required to drill 300-foot-deep holes where seismometers will be placed.
They formed a human chain on the Maryland-District of Columbia border, and then, taking an awkward group step, the Great Peace March ended a trek that began more than eight months and 3,600 miles ago. It was an emotional milestone for the jaunty army of about 1,000 who sought to awaken America with a protest against nuclear armaments. As they crossed the district line, some were tearful, some chanted, and a few even vowed to continue the march. “It’s really powerful and really sad,” said Donna Hickey, a 27-year-old former hot-tub repairer and installer from Wichita, Kansas. “This has been the most liberating and incredible experience of my life.”
In California, where civic boosterism and unbounded community expansion have been pursued with a kind of religious fervor since the Gold Rush, citizens are increasingly forcing a limit on urban growth. Capping a decade in which scores of smaller cities have acted to restrict growth, residents of San Francisco and Los Angeles last week approved sweeping voter-initiated referendums to limit construction of new office towers, hotels, shopping centers and other buildings. “This is the dawn of a new era in Los Angeles politics and land use planning,” said Marvin Braude, who, with a fellow City Councilman, Zev Yaraslovsky, drafted the measure on growth control in that city. “People no longer want the destiny of the city determined by large developers and their lobbyists.”
Reagan Administration officials said today that four laws passed in the closing days of the 99th Congress would significantly enhance the Government’s ability to discover, punish and deter fraud and waste in Federal programs, particularly those involving military contracts. The four new laws, including a major revision of the 123-year-old False Claims Act, the Government’s principle tool for prosecuting fraud, were signed by President Reagan over the last few weeks. Among the most important new provisions of the False Claims Act are several designed to make it both safer and more lucrative for employees to report fraudulent acts by their employers. Such “whistle blowers” are given enhanced protection under the law against retaliation.
Economic problems in the Southwest have increased the homeless population, but local governments provide little funds for shelters. Privately run shelters scrambled this week to meet the demand in the chilly weather.
The University of Notre Dame today named as its 16th president the Rev. Edward A. Malloy, a specialist in ethics who is a former basketball player for the Fighting Irish. In May the 45-year-old priest, who is currently the university’s associate provost, will succeed the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, who has been Notre Dame’s president for the last 35 years, longer than anyone ever held that office. “I am overwhelmed,” Father Malloy told the university’s board of trustees upon receiving official word of his election after lunch today.
As America’s nearly 300 Roman Catholic bishops converged on Washington last weekend, they seemed to be facing a wrenching choice in the case of Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen of Seattle: Should they support the Vatican’s disciplining of him or support a suffering colleague whose shortcomings some consider no more serious than many of their own? But to those familiar with church politics and structure, there never really was a choice at the conference in Washington. As bishops in a church where Pope John Paul II is not simply an institutional leader but one with a theologically endowed status whose power determines their own, the bishops had to support the Pope publicly. The only questions were how they would do so while expressing some affection for their colleague, and what hints they might include of the displeasure many felt with the way the case was handled.
Raymond G. Hunthausen, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Seattle, said today that he wanted his full pastoral powers restored and that he saw no need to change the way he governed the Archdiocese before he was censured two months ago. Sharing power with his Auxiliary Bishop, an arrangement ordered at that time by the Vatican, is “unworkable,” the Archbishop said, reiterating a view he expressed this week to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
A black cadet whose room was invaded by five white cadets dressed like Ku Klux Klansmen has left the Citadel, the South’s historic military academy, because of harassment. “I feel that I have been made the villain when the villains remain at the Citadel,” the 17-year-old freshman, Kevin Nesmith, said in a statement issued by his family today.
Sears, Roebuck & Company, the nation’s largest retailer, yesterday announced its entry into video home shopping. It gave QVC Network Inc. exclusive rights over two years to present Sears products in a home shopping program. QVC will also show non-Sears products. Sears took an option to buy up to two million shares of QVC, a company listed on the over-the-counter index, for about $35 million. The agreement is expected to stimulate the buy-at-home trend, which is estimated this year to total about $450 million. Smaller retailers have rushed to home shopping, but none approaching the size of Sears.
Gillette is expected to oppose a $4.1 billion takeover proposal from Ronald O. Perelman, the head of the Revlon Group. When Perelman waged his successful takeover fight for Revlon last year, he argued that he was acquiring an undermanaged company with a well-known brand name that needed a kick. With his $4.1 billion offer for the Gillette Company, which began yesterday, Mr. Perelman is going after another household name, but one that is generally considered well managed. And while Revlon argues that the two companies would be a good fit, Gillette is disinclined to lose its independence.
A nuclear weapon that was detonated in a test in the Nevada desert today sent shock waves through some buildings in Las Vegas. The test, which had an explosive power of up to 150,000 tons of TNT, registered 5.6 on the Richter scale at the National Earthquake Information Center in Boulder, Colo. Janet Coppa, a secretary in a law office in downtown Las Vegas, 82 miles from the test, said hanging plants and a chandelier began to sway seconds after the blast.
It has become a fixture at college sports events and some high school games. Forming a human pyramid, cheerleaders stand in ranks on each other’s shoulders with one, generally a nimble young woman, perched triumphantly at the top. Then she dismounts in what appears to the gasping crowd as a death-defying leap to the arms of catchers waiting below. For all its popularity, it is becoming increasingly clear that the stunt can be as dangerous as it seems, and the recent death of a 21-year-old football cheerleader who suffered fatal head injuries while practicing a leap from a pyramid at North Dakota State University has made the inherent danger clearer still. That and another recent accident, in which a 22-year-old University of Kentucky cheerleader was paralyzed from the neck down after flipping off a small trampoline, have focused new attention on cheerleading, a largely unregulated activity that experts say has become as demanding and dangerous as any sport.
Major League Baseball:
The Doubleday Publishing Company agrees to sell the World Champion Mets to Nelson Doubleday and Fred Wilpon for $80.75 million. The company had purchased the Mets for a then-record $21.1 million in 1980.
Stock prices rallied yesterday on a new wave of takeover and restructuring news, allowing Wall Street to recover some of the losses from the previous session. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 11.39 points, to 1,873.59, as volume on the New York Stock Exchange advanced to 172.1 million shares, from 164 million shares the day before. The blue-chip index had been down about 10 points at the start of trading, following a drop of 31.50 points on Thursday that resulted from speculators’ retreat from supposed takeover stocks, as well as program selling.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1873.59 (+11.39)
Born:
Joe Webb, NFL quarterback and wide receiver (Minnesota Vikings, Carolina Panthers, Buffalo Bills, Houston Texans, New York Giants), in Birmingham, Alabama.
Ricky Sapp, NFL linebacker (New York Jets, Houston Texans), in Bamberg, South Carolina.
Thomas Austin, NFL guard (Houston Texans, Carolina Panthers, Indianapolis Colts), in West Point, New York.
Danielle Page, WNBA forward (Connecticut Sun), in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Cory Michael Smith, American actor (“May December”, “Saturday Night”), in Columbus, Ohio.
