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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (March 22, 1973)
College Station, Texas Thursday, March 22, 1973 THE BAIT All FELLOWSHIP Friday, March 23, 1973 At 8:00 p. m. Guest Speaker BILL ASHWORTH Rootbeer Float Bust See and hear (film) “THE SOUND OF THE TRUMPET” Won’t you come help us piece it together! ! BAPTIST STUDENT UNION YES! We Have Them jeans *n things 325 University Dr. 846-0223 AT NORTH GATE OPEN FROM 10:00 A.M. TO 7:30 P.M. Page 6 Feds Want Carr, Osorio Guilty DALLAS DP)—The government asked the eight-woman, four-man federal jury Wednesday to find Waggoner Carr, 54, and John Oso rio, 51, guilty “on each and every count” of the indictment against them alleging mail and wire fraud. Robert Mahoney, crew-cut law yer for the Justice Department in Washington, spent one hour and 15 minutes arguing the case for the prosecution on the 13th day of the trial. He said the state’s former at torney general and its former state insurance commissioner, had gotten control of banks and insurance companies by holding themselves out as men who could be trusted. But, Mahoney claimed, they said: “Give us your money, we’ll take care of it for you.” “They did,” said the govern ment lawyer, “right into their pocket.” “This type of activity by men of their stature is the grossest violation of public trust,” Ma honey added. Mahoney described Carr, Osorio and Joe P. Novotny, who pleaded guilty and will be sentenced lat er, as three co-schemers. Carr lent his reputation as for mer attorney general and speaker of the Texas House, Mahoney said, while Osorio was “the man who manipulated the money.” Novotny, according to Maho ney, “by his close association with Frank Sharp and by the office he held in National Bankers Life In surance Co. was the one who seal ed the fate of the company,” caus ing it to lose $582,000 in paying off Carr and Osorio’s debt. The government prosecutor compared the activities of the three to a magic show—“the ma gician creates an illusion with one hand, so you don’t watch the oth er hand where the action is really taking place.” Claiming that Carr and Osorio never put a penny of their own money into various transactions revolving around the loan that lies at the base of the fraud charges against them, Mahoney said they worked on the princi ple: “Never use you own money if you can use someone else’s, especially if that money belongs to a corporation you own or con trol.” rio, described the Carr-Osorio transactions as “a business ven ture that turned out to be a failure.” Speaking softly to the jury, Colvin said: “It would have been nice to see Frank Sharp in this courtroom. He is the man who could explain many things . . . Those people from Houston raped NBLTt the culprit, all right, But it not John Osorio; it was not* goner Carr.” Colvin’s final words, as kr ed the jury to find Osorio- cent, were: “I suggest to yor 1 Frank Sharp is the man should really be in this: Speech Scrambling Topic Of Technology Conference An urban technology confer ence on speech scramblers in radio communications has been announced by A&M’s Center for Urban Programs and the Electri cal Engineering Department. The conference, set for June 26-27 on the TAMU campus, will present the current state of the art in scrambling technology, rel ative security and costs of the systems available. Demonstra tions of voice channels character istics and speech-scrambled trans missions are planned for the course. The object of the conference, held at the request of the Texas Criminal Justice Council, is to provide law enforcement person nel with the technical, economic and relative security aspects of available systems. This informa tion should be useful to law en forcement agencies in making de cisions concerning needs, types, costs and other aspects of speech scrambling systems. Dr. William L Beasley, assist ant professor of electrical engi neering, said the early speech scrambling systems were easily decoded by criminals who listen to police radio broadcasts. A speech scrambling system is desirable in two-way radio com munications systems of law en forcement agencies. Such sys tems are currently available for use with existing equipment and require minimal modifications. There are, however, various de grees of security available at dif fering costs. Dr. R. E. Thomas, director of the Center for Urban Programs, said that in test situations, crime rates had dropped as much as 40 STARTS WED - SAT. LASTS 4 DAYS PINK FLOYD “Dark Side of the Moon” PINK FLOYD “Obscured by Clouds” 1 PINK FLOYD “Meddled” X m ■ipk. 7 ._Xii PINK FLOYD “Ummagumma” Constant Everyday Prices — All Labels TAPES $4.99 Reg. $6.98 8-Track Constant Everyday Prices — All Labels ALBUMS $3.99 Reg. $5.98 NEW STOCK IN EVERY TUBS. AND FRIDAY SPECIALS PINK FI OYD EVERY SPECIAI WEEK ^FECIAL SPECIALIZING IN HEAVY ROCK »=sSSSSSS@aSSSS@888SSSSS@SSSSSS WE NOW SELL Staying open til PAPE RS 10:00 Thursday Night. 3SSS8SSSSS& ^SS8SSSSSSS^SSSgSS: Sis' ukjveilsi (across fr.-m Tiyas A M) At North Gate per cent in communities where speech scrambling equipment was used. “The criminal of today is pretty smart,” Dr. Thomas said. “He buys a cheap police frequency monitor and can listen in on dis patch calls. He knows what the police are up to at all times. If he hears a dispatch call to his location, he drops what he is doing and runs. “When the criminal doesn’t know what the police are doing or where they are, he is less likely to go out and break into a building.” Dr. Beasley said the newer sys tems depend on switched codes, enabling the police to thwart at tempts to defeat their system. “In the past,” he said, “all you had to do was steal a scrambler system or buy one, and you de- feaated the whole purpose of the system. Now, a criminal may have identical equipment, but it will be useless unless he has the proper codes. Some systems offer thousands of different codes pos sibilities.” There will be no charge for registration at the conference, and attendance is open o all state law enforcement agencies. Regis tration information can be ob tained by writing Dr. R. E. Thom as at Texas A&M’s Center for Urban Programs or to Dr. W. B. Jones, head of TAMU’s Electrical Engineering Department. Carr listened, grave faced, rock ing back and forth in his chair, as Mahoney went into detail about what he called “doing business with other people’s money.” Oso rio closely followed the flat, un emotional presentation of the gov ernment attorney. Novotny was not there. He has not been in the courtroom since he appeared briefly to plead guilty to one count of the 12-count in dictment when the trial opened two and a half weeks ago. Mahoney called the June 23, 1970 agreement between Carr and Osorio on one side and Novotny on the other, “a transparent de vice” intended to fool the Ex change Bank, which held the loan, and also the jury. “Don’t be fooled,” he urged them. That agreement, the defense contended, provided for Sharp’s Sharpstown Realty Co. to take over liability for the Carr-Osorio loan. But Mahoney called it an attempt by Carr and Osorio “to cover their tracks, to see if some how they could squirm out of an obligation that was theirs.” “They have gone as far down the road as they can go,” Ma honey concluded. “The time to settle accounts is now. And the people to settle them with are the people of the state of Texas.” Jerry Birdwell, representing Osorio, told the jury he would “tell it like it is.” So far from “raping the company treasury” as Mahoney suggested, Birdwell said Osorio put $90,000 out of his own pocket into RIC International and had never been repaid. Birdwell accused the govern ment of “character assassination” on Osorio and Carr and asked why Joe P. Novotny, “the boy wonder of the banking world,” had not been called to testify. “That was the man who took control after June 23—he and Frank Sharp called the shots,” Birdwell said. “Why have we not seen Joe Novotny on the witness stand to testify about this farce?” At this point, U.S. District Court Judge William M. Taylor Jr. directed the jury to disregard Novotny’s failure to testify. Emmett J. Colvin, also for Oso- Supermarket Prices Advanct At Record Pace Last Month WASHINGTON DP) — Super market prices climbed at a record pace last month, driving over-all consumer prices up in February at a rate not equaled since the Ko rean war, the government reported Wednesday. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said the cost of living jumped eight-tenths of one per cent on a seasonally adjusted basis last month, the biggest rise since Feb ruary 1951. On an unadjusted basis, the surge was seven-tenths of one per cent, the highest monthly in crease since March 1969. Prices of food bought in gro cery stores increased by 2.4 per cent seasonally adjusted, the steepest rate since the bureau began computing supen prices in 1952. The main cilf were meat, fish and which rose by 5 per cent in month. The figures reflected the' full month under President! on’s Phase 3 wage-price con and White House officials p ed the situation will getwota fore it gets better later this The administration is a imposing controls at this, on raw farm products or ti# ing controls on food sold top essors and distributors. The February surge in ] pushed the annual rate of i tion in the past three mon‘.?| 6.3 per cent, nearly three t the goal the administrationh to achieve by year’s end. 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