Banner Graphic, Volume 22, Number 123, Greencastle, Putnam County, 27 January 1992 — Page 3

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BORIS YELTSIN Mysterious circumstances

Yeltsin clears his calendar for two days MOSCOW (AP) President Boris Yeltsin canceled all of his appointments for today and Tuesday and left Moscow for unspecified reasons. His chief spokesman denied reports it was due to ill health. “He is in good health. He’s in more than good health. He is in excellent sports condition,” said the spokesman, Pavel Voshchanov. VOSHCHANOV gave no reason for the cancellations by the 60-year-old Russian president, but said there would be an announcement Tuesday night. His planned trip to the United States this week is still on, the spokesman said. Yeltsin’s mysterious departure came amid rumors about his health and about a drinking problem. “These rumors are absolutely foolish and are being circulated by those who do not want Yeltsin to be Russian president,” Voshchanov said today. U.S. News and World Report this month quoted unidentified sources as expressing new concern about rumors of Yeltsin’s heavy drinking. AMONG THE meetings canceled or postponed was one with Japanese Foreign Minister Michio Watanabe. Voshchanov said Yeltsin had not planned to attend the Middle East peace conference that opens Tuesday in Moscow. One Japanese newspaper quoted Yeltsin aides as saying Yeltsin was suffering from a heart ailment that has reportedly plagued him in recent months. But another newspaper said aides cited personal reasons. The Interfax news agency quoted a high-ranking Russian Foreign Ministry official as telling Japanese diplomats that Yeltsin was spending the two days working on urgent domestic issues and preparing for his trip. Interfax did not name the Foreign Ministry official. YELTSIN, WHO was elected president in June, stirred serious concern about his health when he canceled appearances a month after the August coup. Aides then said Yeltsin was indisposed by a minor, unspecified heart ailment. In October, he took a 17-day vacation to recover from weeks of relentless work. And on Jan. 18, after some tough traveling inside Russia, his doctor ordered Yeltsin to rest at home for a day and cancel his meetings. Voshchanov said Yeltsin plans to leave Thursday for London and New York to attend a U.N. Security Council meeting. YELTSIN LAST visited the United States in June, just days after he became Russia’s first popularly elected president.

Fithian sure of mafia role in JFK murder

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) A former Hoosier congressman maintains that gangsters were involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Floyd Fithian, who investigated the 1963 murder as a member of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, says he still believes that elements of organized crime orchestrated the attack. THE COMMITTEE’S official conclusion in 1979 was that Kennedy “was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.” Much of the recent interest in the assassination has been kindled by the movie “JFK”. Fithian said he disagrees with the film, arguing it . manipulates the past Conspiracy theorists long have suggested the mob had a motive to destroy the Kennedy administration. THEY HAVE argued that several Mafia leaders were openly unhappy with Kennedy’s failure to overthrow Cuba’s Fidel Castro, who had closed their casinos in Havana. Robert Kennedy was in-

Bush nearly ready to unveil economic plan

WASHINGTON (AP) The Bush administration insists that its long-awaited growth package will be just what the doctor ordered for an ailing economy. But critics say the president has opted for a minimal package of spending cuts and tax increases that will do little to bolster the confidence of recession-jarred Americans. AFTER MORE THAN two months of talking about it, Bush will go before Congress and the nation Tuesday night to outline the details of his plan to revive a stagnant economy. The package, much of which has already leaked, will include income tax relief for the middle class in the form of an increase in the personal exemption for families with children, a tax credit for first-time home buyers and a reduction in the tax rate cm capital gains, income earned from the sale of assets. In addition, the president’s elec-tion-year budget will propose higher spending for such popular programs as Head Start, environmental cleanup, park purchases and space exploration. TO KEEP THE budget deficit, projected to hit an all-time high of $352 billion this year, from spiraling further out of control, the administration wants to slash defense spending by an extra SSO billion over the next five years, reflecting the collapse of the Soviet Union. The administration will also propose repealing the 10 percent luxury tax on the purchase of yachts costing over SIOO,OOO. White House Chief of Staff Samuel K. Skinner defended that move Sunday, saying the 1990 tax had cost the jobs of thousands of boat builders while netting the government little in new revenue. “WHAT WE’VE GOT to do is

Coverup of whistleblower complaints alleged

WASHINGTON (AP) The former special agent in charge of whistleblower complaints at the Forest Service says the agency regularly covered up incriminating evidence against forest managers and top administrators. John McCormick, who retired earlier this month, will testify this week before a House panel probing allegations that Forest Service workers are under political pressure to maximize logging in violation of environmental laws. “THERE IS A very strong tendency for managers to choose to ignore the law or do anything they want to for convenience sake,” McCormick told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from his home in Brunswick, Ga. “Some of the coverups were so ridiculous that a grade-school kid would be able to see it.” McCormick, a 33-year veteran of law enforcement who directed the Forest Service whisdeblower program for two years, said confidentiality of whistleblowers was violated and reprisals were commonplace. Investigations into the complaints often were “whitewashed” because those accused of wrongdoing ultimately were in charge of the inquiry, he said. “I’M GOING TO testify about the lack of integrity of the program. There is not much protection for the whistleblower if any at all,” McCormick said. “I’m not asking them to believe me. I’m asking

vestigating James Hoffa of the Teamsters Union, who was closely linked to the criminal underworld. Fithian, a Democrat, represented the 2nd District then in northwest Indiana from 1975-1982 until losing the district in reapportionment. He ran unsuccessfully against Richard G. Lugar for the Senate in 1982. “Put yourself back in that time,” Fithian, now an aide to Sen. Paul Simon, D-111., said in an interview published Sunday in The Indianapolis Star. “There had never been such detailed, intense pressure put on the mob than what Bobby Kennedy was putting on them. “PUT YOURSELF in the Mob’s position. You are already getting hassled by the Kennedy administration, but if you knock out the brother, then what is the reaction of the president? You’ll double the activity.” Organized crime was “politically sophisticated enough to know that with the president out of the equation, then Bobby and Lyndon

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PRESIDENT BUSH Speech is Tuesday night

get America back working again. We’ve got to get government off America’s back. And if that means a tax destroys an industry, we ought to look at it,” Skinner said on ABC’s “This Week with David Brinkley. The luxury tax, passed in 1990 as part of that year’s deal to reduce the budget deficit, also applies to expensive jewelry, furs, automobiles and airplanes. Senate Republican Leader Bob Dole of Kansas said Sunday he believed the administration also would propose removing the luxury tax on airplanes and predicted Congress, in a bipartisan bid to get the economy moving, would support many of the president’s budget initiatives. BUT SENATE Majority Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine, said Bush would have to demonstrate a greater willingness to compromise, especially in such areas as his quest for a reduction in the tax rate for capital gains, which Democrats contend would primarily benefit the

them to go in and audit the program and look at the investigations of high-level people.” Forest Service spokesman Jim Sanders said the agency would have no comment on McCormick’s allegations until Wednesday’s hearing. Associate Forest Service Chief George Leonard is scheduled to testify Wednesday before the House Civil Service subcommittee on civil service. McCormick said Forest Service Chief Dale Robertson was targeted in one investigation and that most of the cases involved “waste, fraud and abuse.” HE SAID THE General Accounting Office, Congress’ investigative arm, is gathering evidence that will support his claims. But he said he wouldn’t discuss details until he testifies. Regional leaders for the Forest Service and National Park Service told the subcommittee in September they were ordered transferred from their jobs when they resisted political pressure to ignore environmental laws and compromise their ethics. John Mumma, former regional forester for the northern Rockies, said he was ordered to meet logging quotas on national forests in Montana and Idaho even though he repeatedly told Robertson such excessive cutting would violate federal laws. LORRAINE MINTZMYER, former Park Service regional director in Denver, said pressure from

Johnson would not stay together,” Fithian said. Personal differences made it likely the younger Kennedy would not remain U.S. attorney general under the new president, he said. The panel, which took testimony from 335 witnesses and conducted 4,924 interviews, concluded in its 27-volume report that Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots from the Texas School Book Depository and at least one other shot came from a grassy knoll to the front right of Kennedy’s motorcade on Nov. 22, 1963. “WHEN IT GETS to be more than three shots then it gets to being something involving more than Oswald, and that’s the bottom line,” Fithian said. Fithian, 63, said his biggest regret was that no federal criminal investigation resulted in any arrests or any apparent widening of the committee’s findings. “The sadness is that we went that far with it and nothing more happened,” he said.

wealthy. “I think some of what he proposes will be adopted. Much of what he proposes won’t be,” said Mitchell, who appeared with Dole on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” Skinner repeated the administration’s pledge to keep its budget proposals within the pay-as-you-go provisions of the 1990 budget agreement, which requires tax cuts and increased spending to be offset to keep the deficit from rising. BY STICKING TO the budget deal, Bush hopes to avoid a bruising election-year fight with Congress. But conservatives in his own party contend that with the country struggling to get out of recession, the president needs to be much bolder. Republican presidential challenger Patrick Buchanan has labeled Bush’s expected proposals “anemic and pathetic.” Private economists have also expressed reservations about how much the presidential package will do to revive the economy. MICHAEL EVANS, head of a Washington forecasting firm, said that in the past, if the government’s tax and spending package was equal to 1 percent of the total economy, then it succeeded and if it was much lower than that, it failed. Currently, that would require S6O billion in increased fiscal stimulation, far below the amounts Bush is talking about. “What he has done is cobble together a middle-of-the-road package. It lacks pizazz,” Evans said. “There is too much emphasis on not widening the deficit in the short term,” he said. “I am not sure we are going to get a whole lot of economic stimulus out of the package.

the White House led to easing ecological protections in a management plan for Yellowstone National Park. Rep. Pat Williams, D-Mont., said the allegations are the tip “of an iceberg of a scandal. ” Subcommittee Chairman Gerry

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Highlights of Bush’s plan:

WASHINGTON (AP) Here are some of the provisions expected in President Bush’s economic growth package, which he will unveil in his State of the Union message Tuesday night and in the budget he sends Congress the next day: TAX RELIEF: • Increase the personal exemption, currently $2,300 a person, by as much as SI,OOO for each child. The increase would mean that workers would have less tax withheld from their paychecks this year. The change would cut the tax bill for a family in the 28 percent tax bracket with one child by S2BO. • Offer a tax credit of up to $5,000 for first-time home buyers. • Create a new Family Savings Account that would expand the tax advantages of Individual Retirement Accounts. • Reduce the tax on capital gains, the profits earned from the sale of assets, from the top rate of 28 percent. Bush previously proposed cutting the rate to 19.6 percent for assets held three years but conservatives are pushing for a bigger cut, to 15 percent • Provide tax credits or vouchers to help low-income families buy health insurance while giving a new tax deduction to help higher-income families meet health insurance costs their employers don’t pay. • Eliminate the 10 percent luxury tax on yachts. • Provide business incentives

Sikorski, D-Minn., said his panel had launched a full-scale investigation of Mumma’s charges and would hold another hearing on his case later this spring. “The more you get into this, the more you discover all kinds of ways that the mandates of Congress

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January 27,1992 THE BANNERGRAPHIC

by increasing tax breaks for new investments and by restoring for people in the real estate industry the “passive loss” tax breaks eliminated in 1986. SPENDING CUTS: • Reduce military spending by an additional SSO billion over the next five years, in part by cutting purchases of the B-2 bomber and canceling production of the only nuclear warheads still on order by the military. SPENDING INCREASES: • Boost spending in such areas as providing doctors farural areas and inner-city neighborhoods, providing poverty food aid through the Woman, Infants and Children food program and in fighting new outbreaks of tuberculosis. • Increase by 6 percent the Environmental Protection Agency budget, with money targeted for such projects as cleaning up Boston Harbor and pollution along the U.S.-Mexican border. Funding would be boosted by 25 percent, to $5.5 billion, to deal with nuclear and toxic wastes on federal facilities. • More money for an orbiting space station and programs to put robots on the moon and develop a new launch system to replace the shuttles. • Increase by S6OO million funding for the preschool Head Start program for poor children. • Seek a big increase in the Interior Department’s budget to support creation of state parks and recreation facilities.

are being sabotaged from within,” said Steve Johnson, an aide to Sikorski. Robertson has denied that Mumma’s transfer was the result of political pressure to log more trees than federal law allows.

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