Banner Graphic, Volume 12, Number 44, Greencastle, Putnam County, 28 October 1981 — Page 7
Re-emergence of radical underground no green light for hysteria
By TOM WICKER c. 1981 N.Y. Times News Serv ice NEW YORK The violent reemergence of the Weather Underground, and the suggestion of links between it and other radical and terrorist groups perhaps even with foreign intelligence agencies is amply scary to justify the intense follow-up investigation launched by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. "We’re a long way from knowing what happened,” Roger Young, the FBI spokesman, said Monday, "or how pervasive the cancer is." Or, he might have added, whether there really is a "cancer." But some pertinent questions certainly need answers: How much previous criminal activity not identified as terrorist in nature, for example, might now be traced to radical groups 0 And can such activity be linked to a specific, planned purpose? After all, as Young observed, “If you go for $1.6 million, you’re probably not going for bacon and eggs"
Physicians reject hospital bed plan as 'tacit approval' of nuclear war
By W AYNE KING c. 1981 N.Y. Times News Service SAN FRANCISCO A group of doctors in the San Francisco Bay area have rejected a request from the Pentagon to allocate hospital beds for casualties of an overseas war on the ground that the allocation amounts to preparation for a nuclear war. The doctors, members of the medical staff of Contra Costa County Hospital, turned down the Department of Defense request for contingency hospital beds in a letter last month to Dr. John H. Moxley 3d, former assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. The letter, signed by Dr. Kathryn J. Bennett, president of the hospital’s medical staff, informed Dr. Mpxley that the staff “does not wish to participate in the Civilian-Military Contingengy Hospital System" and said the plan “encourages preparation for a war of catastrophic proportions.”
AW ACS impact
Vital questions focus on vast amounts of weapons in a dangerously unstable area
By DREW MIDDLETON c. 1981 N.Y. Times NEW YORK The controversy over the proposed sale of five AWACS aircraft to the Saudis has raised questions that go beyond the elementary issue of what the weapons will mean initially to Saudi Arabia and Israel. The larger issue is what the entry of these planes into a region already absorbing vast amounts of modern weapons will mean for the future stability of the Middle East. Defense Department officials, Air Force and Army planners and analysts, and civilian authorities say that the ability of the United States to establish a credible defense of the Persian Gulf region will be influenced by the Senate’s decision on the AWACS sale. If the Senate does not block the sale these sources said, America will demonstrate that it has the means as well as the will to provide support for friends in an increasingly dangerous area. If the Senate rejects the sale, it was pointed out, future pledges of assistance by Washington will be in doubt and American influence in the Arab world will be reduced. The Saudis, it is widely believed, will then turn to Britain to purchase the Nimrod, an aircraft with radar systems comparable to those aboard the AWACS, and to France to purchase advanced fighter planes instead of the American F--15s that have been cleared for sale to Saudi Arabia. Some European intelligence sources report that France is seeking Saudi Arabian financing for the next versions of
Smoke detectors are saving lives, survey shows
But the Nanuet, N.Y., Brink’s car holdup, resulting in the vicious murders of two policemen and an armored car guard, was not an efficient or well-conceived operation. If the $1.6 million in the armored car was the object, it could have been stolen without immediately opening fire on the guard; if killing law officers was the point, sniping would have made more sense for the attackers, who were quickly caught.
opinion
LARRY GIBBS Publisher
The medical staff, the letter said, “feels strongly that participation in the system would offer tacit approval for the planning of a nuclear war.” It concluded, “As physicians, we believe that a war on the scale envisioned by the military would be disastrous for the human race.” The letter was in response to a request from Moxley in February asking area
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the Mirage fighter, a highly sophisticated aircraft considered by some to be a generation ahead of the F-15 in performance. The sale of the AWACS and the delivery of the F-15s are linked to the promise given by two administrations that the United States is prepared to support the govern-
(c) 1981 Boston Globe The number of residential fires in the United States has increased dramatically in the last three years, but the death and injury rate has gone down. The increased use of smoke detectors in the home is the reason, according to fire officials. National statistics show that while the number of residential fires has jumped from 700,000 to 757,000 since 1977, the number of fire deaths dropped 11.2 percent. And a survey conducted recently by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the government unit that runs theU.S. Fire Administration, found that nearly 50 percent of the households in the country now have smoke detectors an increase of 28 percent over 1977. The FEMA survey also showed that the mortality rate from fires is twice as high in homes that are not protected by smoke detectors as in homes where smoke detectors are used. Robert W. Grant, president of the National Fire Protection Assn., a Boston-based private organization that collects fire statistics, also has said the decrease in fire deaths in 1980 “may be the result of increased use of smoke detectors and household fire escape plans.” According to the NFPA, a smoke detector will detect smoke, which always preceeds flames, within two minutes of the start of the fire. It takes the average household fire about
The botched robbery and its aftermath, moreover, yielded law enforcement agencies many leads to weapons caches, safe houses, and to other probably terrorist groups. In that sense, federal agents have more information about terrorism than they had before; and terrorism in America, therefore, may ultimately have been set back rather than disclosed as a more potent force than suspected. As for the terrorist apparatus itself, FBI officials say there was nothing different or surprising about it that would lead to concern about new operational methods or some sharp change in approach. Nor is it particularly surprising that underground groups might be in touch or cooperating with one another. Unfortunately, the events following the attempted Nanuet robbery were lurid enough, and press and television coverage in some instances was sufficiently hysterical, to give the impression that
WICKER: How real is the threat?
ERICBERNSEE Managing Fditor
hospitals to participate in the plan, which would set aside 50,000 hospital beds nationwide to supplement military facilities in the event of an overseas conflict that would produce a high number of casualties. In the letter, Moxley said, “Because of technical advances in weaponry and the greater mobility of armies today, a future
ment of Saudi Arabia against external or internal attack. Although it is unclear what the United States could do in either case, the consensus in the Defense and State Departments is that the warning will suffice to deter attacks on Saudi Arabia by any of the region’s hostile states. These include Iran,
widespread underground terrorism suddenly had thrown off its cloak and become a major threat to the nation. That impression, of course, was not hard to create following repeated terrorist crimes in Europe, notably the shooting of the pope. But it doesn’t downgrade whatever real threat there is to point out that the links to foreign agencies for which federal agents say they are looking haven’t yet been discovered and documented; that groups such as the Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army never have been large or widely supported quite the opposite; and that they haven’t yet, certainly not at Nanuet, given evidence of efficiency, effectiveness or anything else but a singularly mindless, often vicious hatred of existing society. None of that is likely to prevent the Senate’s newly established terrorism subcommittee, chaired by former Adm Jeremiah Denton of Alabama, from holding new hearings; nor should it. But
large-scale conflict overseas will probably begin and end very rapidly and produce casualties at a higher rate than any other war in history.” Although that request did not specifically mention nuclear weapons, Moxley said in a later letter, on June 11, in response to an inquiry from a San Francisco doctor, that while “in principle” the plan was developed to care for casualties from a war involving conventional weapons, “it is possible that such a war could escalate to the use of chemical or tactical nuclear weapons within a combat theater.” That letter came in response to an inquiry by Phillip Shapiro, a physician who is a member of the local steering committee of a group called Physicians for Social Responsibility. The group attempts to spread the message that society cannot survive nuclear war and that medical “disaster planning” is meaningless and
Iraq, Southern Yemen, Ethiopia and Libya. There has been little discussion, however, of the greater danger Soviet support, either directly or more likely through a client, of a “war of national liberation” in Saudi Arabia. Israeli opposition to the AWACS sale,
seven minutes to reach proportions that would prevent escape. However, according to the results of national fire tests, once a fire starts there is only about four minutes in which a safe escape can be guarenteed and that time period is shortened by two minutes if the fire starts in the same room in which people are sleeping. Lack of education about smoke detectors and their role in saving lives seems to be one of the reasons why more smoke detectors are not in use. The FEMA survey indicated, for example, that there are twice as many renters who do not have smoke detectors as there are those who do. The principal reasons tenents gave for not owning them were that they were “not considered necessary” or because the respondent had “no interest” in them. The survey also found that smoke detectors are most likely to be found in households headed by white males with higher income and educational levels (89.2 percent) and least likely to be found in households headed by blacks or Hispanics, (8.5 percent), people between the ages of 18 and 24 with lower incomea and less education or by people 65 and over. More than 80 perecent of the respondents owned one or two detectors with the rest owning three or more. The NFPA recommends that detectors be placed in first floor hallways near the foot of stairs and in hallways outside bedrooms. They should be mounted just short of the ceiling on the upper
unless far more threatening evidence of widespread conspiracy is discovered, the subcommitee will be hard put to make a case for drastic new anti-terrorist legislation, for “unleashing” the FBI from its operational guidelines, or for any kind of “Red scare” approach. On the other hand, liberals who dread that kind of reaction to the Weather Underground’s bloody reappearance won’t serve their own purposes by terming the necessary follow-up investigations a government plot “to stamp out dissent”; or by offering any kind of political defense for the shoot-out murders of law officers or for those who took part in these killings; or by associating the political left in any way with bombings and killings alleged to people who have never even offered a coherent critique of the society they abhor, much less an explanation of any strategy they are employing to “change” it. Those arrested deserve a legal defense
should not be used as a basis for any strategic policy. The group says it has 6,500 members, including five Nobel laureates. Since the refusal of the Contra Costa hospital to take part in the contingency plan, the area chapter of the group has asked other local hospitals to refuse to take part in it and has plans to start a nationwide campaign of opposition, according to a spokesman. Moxley resigned the defense post Aug. 1 and his successor has not yet been confirmed by the Senate. Lieut. Comdr. William Lambert, deputy director of the contingency program, said in a telephone interview from Washington that while other hospitals had declined to take part in the program none had cited nuclear strategic planning as the reason. “Some have refused on the grounds that they don’t have the resources,” he said, adding that he did not know how many of
muted recently but still strong, is more complicated than it appears. Their concern is twofold the initial impact of a combination of Saudi AWACS and 60 or more F-15s on the military balance in the region and the effect in the future of such a force used in conjunction with the advanced aircraft of other Arab nations. Israeli sources say the additional F-15 fuel tanks that are part of the agreement would extend the range of the fighters by about 70 percent. F3lss with the new tanks could take off from central Saudi Arabia, reach the Mediterranean Sea and attack Israeli targets from the west, according to the sources. Does Saudi Arabia need AWACS for an effective defense against hostile aircraft? The Israeli answer is no. But at NATO neadquarters in Brussels and among British and French military analysts the answer is yes. Anthony H. Cordesman, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, noted in a recent study that Saudi Arabia’s oil installations, pumping stations, gas-oil separators and maintenance facilities are in terrain close to sea level. He said ground-based radar in the area provides only 30 to 50 miles of low altitude coverage, an estimated two to four minutes of warning time. The U.S. Air Force has concluded that without AWACS a minimum of 48 large, fixed and vulnerable radar installations would be needed to cover Saudi Arabia’s frontiers, and that even these would leave penetration gaps. With five AWACS, however, Saudi Arabia would be reasonably sure of seven minutes of war-
part of a wall. A third detector is useful at the head of cellar stairs. Other findings of the FEMA survey in which 1200 people across the country were polled by telephone, were: Smoke and fire detector ownership is markedly greater (39.2 percent to 10.2 percent) in one- or two-family dwellings and mobile homes than in apartments. People with 10 years or less at their present address are more likely to own detectors than those who have lived at one address longer. Battery powered detectors are favored by more than three to one to electrically operated detectors. Most respondents (56.4 percent) could not identify their •• detector by brand name but First Alert, General Electric, Honeywell and Sears were mentioned most frequently ; followed by Norelco, Nutone, Smoke Guard and Sentry. Both FEMA and NFPA report that heating and cooking fires are the predominant type of home fire with smoking the | third major cause. However, fires from careless smoking ! have resulted in the highest number of fire deaths and in- ! juries. Arson, the leading cause of major nonresidential ! fires, rates fourth as a cause for residential fires. In the Northeast and Southeast, the number of heating ! related fires is on the increase, largely the result of the in- I crease in the improper use portable heaters and wood- < burning stoves. J
October 27,1981, The Putnam County Banner-Graphic
in court and all the Constitutional protections afforded to any other accused person in America that, and no more. And when they get their day in court, it will *be ludicrous for anyone to proclaim that “society is on trial” instead; society has its sins to answer for, but they do not include the crimes committed last week; in Nanuetand Nyack. Meanwhile, those fearful that the hand was that of the Weather Underground but the brain was that of Moscow or Havjma would do well to remember that Director William Webster of the FBI said in a rare television interview last spring that “there is no real evidence of Soviet-sponsored terrorism within the United States.” FBI spokesmen say that until the investigative leads turned up last week have been followed and “all the facts are in” Webster is not altering that position. If he can stay cool, let’s hope congressional redhots and most other Americans can, too.
those refusing were ia the San Francisco area. He said that the military's goal of 50,000 beds was essentially a benchmark and not an inflexible strategic goal. So far, he said, 19,000 beds have been pledged since the program began in early February, intended to be completed in about a year. Lambert said that while “several people have expressed concern” in the San Francisco area and that he had heard that some physicians in New England were concerned over the program, only the Contra Costa hospital had taken any formal action over the nuclear issue. Asked how the program would operate in the event high casualties were incurred in a war, he said that participating hospitals would be “activated on an alert status,” and asked how many of their pledged beds they could make available within 24 to 48 hours.
ning time. Israeli opposition to the sale is based on the present fear that the AWACS operating with F-15s from the Tebuk base, which is the closest Saudi base to Israel, would present a threat to southern Israel. In general Israelis doubt the value of Saudi Arabia’s supposed informal agreement not to deploy F-15s at Tebuk and move support personnel to the base. In war, a retired general said, “These informal agreements are forgotten.” Israeli military analysts, however, are not thinking in terms of 1981 or 1985. Their concerns are about the future strength of all the Arab air forces, including Saudi Arabia’s. Cordesman believes that the Saudi Air Force could grow to 200 to 250 combat aircraft by late in this decade. But he estimates that it will take six to eight years for the Saudis to absorb additional sophisticated aircraft, such as France’s Mirage or the Tornado produced by Britain, West Germany and Italy. Even without the expansion of Saudi air power, the Israelis argue, the AWACS could be used in support of other Arab air forces in the event of war. This is possible, but remote. Most of the Israelis consulted conceded that the immediate danger from the AWACS sale is not great. Some would go further and admit that the failure of the sale would reduce American prestige in friendly Arab nations. But, as a reserve general said, “We are not thinking of today, but of our children and our children’s children and the future of our state.”
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