The Battalion
Wednesday, June 14, 1978
College Station, Texas
News Dept. 845-2611
Business Dept. 845-2611
Inside Wednesday
• Off-campus housing abundant
this summer - p. 3.
• Two-headed calf alive and healthy
- p. 5.
• Braves’fate still undecided - p. 7.
rairie View president
suit against mayor
By LEE ROY LESCHPER JR.
Battalion News Editor
Most of the damages Prairie View A&M
President A. I. Thomas is seeking in his
$1.25 million law suit against the city of
Prairie View and some of its officials are
meant to show those officials “their conduct
will not be tolerated,” Thomas’s attorney
said Tuesday night.
Houston attorney Larry Watts said the
three defendants — Prairie View mayor
Eristus Sams, police chief B. T. Morgan
and Gordon Parker, agent for a Bryan engi
neering firm - conspired to create a situa
tion which would let Sams exercise author
ity over the university. That situation in
volved the city’s laying two sewer lines
across the Prairie View campus.
Watts was responding to remarks made
earlier by Sams.
Thomas filed the suit in federal court in
Houston Monday, charging that the defen
dants had harassed and humilated him by
ordering his arrest.
Sams ordered Thomas arrested by
Prairie View police May 31 after university
workmen removed sections of pipe from
two city sewer lines connected to the uni
versity’s sewage treatment plant. The city
was preparing to put those lines into use.
Sams had city police charge Thomas with
ordering university employees to destroy
city property by removing the sections of
pipe. But Thomas said he did not give that
order.
“I didn’t know the lines had been cut
until after it had been done,” Thomas said.
T have been harassed and humiliated,”
Thomas said after filing the suit. “I have
been illegally arrested. I was marched out
of my office under armed guard.” Prairie
View authorities had released Thomas after
he posted a $200 bond.
Thomas is seeking $250,000 for damages
done to his reputation and ability to operate
as university president by the arrest, Watts
said. He is also seeking $1 million in puni
tive damages from the three defendants,
the attorney said. Watts said Sams had ex
ceeded his authority as mayor in ordering
the arrest.
“Mayor Sams has acted in the best tradi
tion of Idi Amin,” Watts said. “What good
can have been done by his (Thomas) being
arrested?”
Sams declined to comment on the
harassment suit Tuesday night.
The dispute involves what Thomas and
Sams both describe as their respective re
sponsibilities to the jobs they hold.
Sams says he is protecting city sewer
lines which, he contends, he has every
right to lay across the university campus.
Under a 1972 resolution, the city and
university agreed to renovate the univer
sity sewage treatment plant with federal
funds the city had received to build its own
plant. The agreement provided for the uni
versity to handle the city’s sewage
whenever the city had completed its sew
age lines to the university plant. But that
agreement did not, as Sams contends, give
the city the right to lay those lines across
the university campus.
Thomas argues - with the support of the
University System board of regents - that
he is protecting the Prairie View campus by
preventing connection of sewage lines
which would interfere with future univer
sity construction. The two lines, one about
1,500 feet long and the other over 400 feet
long, cross areas of the campus which are
now open grassy fields but which university
officials say are slated for construction
projects within the next five years.
if those lines had been connected and
put into service, there would be not way to
move the lines later, university officials
said. The Prairie View residents who would
be served by those lines now have either
septic tanks or primitive outhouses, Sams
said.
“And you can’t tell somebody to stop
flushing his commode,” Watts said.
-iZ i : m ^
Battalion photo by Lee Roy Leschper Jr.
oviets counterattackU.S. charges
Press says poison report an opening volley
United Press International
MOSCOW — The Soviet Union has
ed that its report that an “innocent
on y Er died from poison supplied by a U.S.
C voman diplomat .is just the opening volley
jiacounterattack against U.S. spy charges,
[he Soviet press repeatedly warned of
a counterattack if the United States
Jtinued to make an issue of a bugging
(vice found in the U.S. Embassy last
lonth.
The Soviet government newspaper Iz-
?stia said Monday Martha Peterson, a
inner embassy vice consul, was caught
pt summer beneath a Moscow bridge hid-
mm ig a rock filled with microphones, ruble
iotes and poison capsules.
ollege Station
esident killed
n morning fire
A College Station man was killed in a
re that gutted the living room and front
iroom of his home early this morning.
Cdward Chew, 76, of 101 Holleman
)r., who died in the blaze, was the only
<Dccupant of the house. He lived there for
62| years.
IRCause of the fire is under investigation,
|however it appears to have originated in
^|fhe living room, College Station Fire Mar
shal Harry Davis said. Smoke and water
lavily damaged the back portion of the
iuse.
.Jlwenty-four firemen were dispatched to
Ithe scene when the call came in at 1:32
'a,m. Three firemen were treated for
smoke inhalation, but were not hos-
gjitalized.
E Firemen fought the blaze until about 4
a.m. this morning. They were hampered
by electrical lines that shorted out around
the house until the electrical department
arrived to disconnect them, Davis said.
P Chew is survived by two children, Ed-
Iward Chew Jr. of San Antonio and Odessa
Haynes of Los Angeles, Calif. Services are
pending in a local funeral home.
As she tried to hide the rock, Soviet
counterintelligence officers caught her, the
newspaper said.
She yelled, “I’m a foreigner,” the news
paper said, claiming she was trying to warn
her spy contact.
The U.S. Embassy issued a brief state
ment late Monday saying “the U.S. gov
ernment as a matter of policy does not
comment on charges of alleged intelligence
activity.”
Mrs. Peterson, described as in her 30s,
left Moscow in July 1977 at the time of the
alleged incident. The U.S. Embassy would
say only that the Soviet government had
declared her persona non grata.
The newspaper said Mrs. Peterson had
delivered equipment to the unidentified
spy before and “it turned out the poison,
which was given to the spy previously, was
used by him against an innocent man for
criminal activities.”
It did not elaborate or identify the
victim, but said he died.
Izvestia said an embassy official asked
the Soviet government to go easy on Mrs.
Peterson because “she doesn’t know any
thing. She was just carrying out things
planned by others.”
The newspaper said U.S. Ambassador
Malcolm Toon told Soviet officials he would
be grateful if die matter were kept quiet. It
said the Soviet side agreed, based on the
belief it would not happen again.
But the newspaper said the assurances
were not upheld.
“The Peterson case is not the only one in
the chain of those uncovered by Soviet
counter-intelligence,” Izvestia said.
The Soviet press warned last week it
would begin exposing American espionage
activities if the United States doesn’t quit
“aggravating” the issue of a bug found in
the embassy May 25.
Employees making a security sweep dis
covered the listening device and traced it to
a nearby apartment building, according to
U.S. Embassy officials.
The Soviet press said the building was
used only as a protection system against
American electronic espionage being car
ried on from the U.S. Embassy.
This trench in Prairie View A&M University’s front lawn marks the spot
where university workmen removed a section from one of the two con
troversial sewer lines laid across the university campus by the city of
Prairie View. The Prairie View campus “skyline” is in background.
Bryan man shot
in local parking lot
A Bryan man has been hospitalized after
being shot Tuesday in the parking lot of
Manor East Mall.
Bryan Detective Bobby Riggs said Lon
nie Idlebird, 19, was shot in the leg as he
approached the car of his girlfriend, Caro
lyn A. Shirley, at about 11:30 a.m. A bys
tander, H. E. Foster, was treated and re
leased at St. Joseph’s Hospital for minor
foot abrasions he received from flying
fragments of metal.
Shirley, 21, was charged with two counts
of aggravated assault, Riggs said.
Idlebird was listed in satisfactory condi
tion Tuesday at St. Joseph Hospital.
Support growing
to break filibuster
United Press International
WASHINGTON — Efforts to break a
15-day Senate filbuster against legislation
to revamp federal labor laws have gained
support, but the leadership still lacks the 60
votes needed to limit debate. Senate Dem
ocratic Leader Robert Byrd said Tuesday.
Byrd, commenting hours before a third
cloture vote, said the leadership had picked
up “half a dozen” additional votes to end
unlimited debate. But a gain of six votes
brings the total to 55, still five votes short.
A cloture vote was scheduled in the after
noon.
Should the vote fail — as expected — the
West Virginian said he hoped for cloture by
Wednesday. But if that failed, Byrd said he
did not know when he would try again.
Byrd earlier had pledged daily cloture
votes to end unrestricted debate on the
administration-backed legislation to make
it easier for union to organize employees
and increase penalties on firms that consis
tently break federal law.
The Senate last week voted 47-42 against
limiting debate and then 49-41 in favor.
Passage of the initial Wagner National
Labor Relations Act in 1935 took only three
days of debate.
Senate GOP Leader Howard Baker dis
puted Byrd’s assessment, saying he was
confident of holding on to 41 votes at least
through a fourth cloture vote.
“Ifwe survive this week, they (the Dem- •
ocrats) might take it down” from the calen
dar and drop the bill. Baker said, in a move
that would be a victory for the business
interests battling the measure.
Byrd Monday held out the possibility
that the opposition tactic of weeks-long
post-cloture debate on 600 stalling
amendments would keep the Senate work
ing late into the evening in the days ahead.
And as other bills come up behind
schedule later in the year because of the
filibuster, he raised the possibility of a
lame-duck post-election session.
U.S. defector discusses
returning to homeland
The living room and front bedroom of this house that killed an elderly College Station man.
were completely gutted in a fire early this morning Battalion photo by Lee Roy Leschper Jr.
Outcome could affect electric bills
Hill tests his right to sue state agencies
United Press International
AUSTIN — Attorney General John Hill
goes to court today in a fight over the au-
hority of the state’s top attorney to sue
l&tate agencies — a fight that could affect the
lectricity bills of millions of residents of
ouston, Austin and South Texas and the
purity of drinking water in San Antonio.
Hill is appealing two decisions by district
judges dismissing his suits against the
Texas Water Rights Commission and Texas
Water Quality Board.
The attorney general sued the agencies
to challenge controversial actions on the
South Texas Nuclear Project, which is sup
posed to supply electricity to Houston,
Austin and San Antonio, and the Edwards
Acquifer, San Antonio’s main source of
drinking water.
The two agencies, since merged into the
Texas Department of Water Resources,
maintain the attorney general is supposed
to defend whatever a state agency does and
has no authority to contest their decisions.
Hill contends the attorney general must
be able to defend the public interest.
“Any power of a goverment official or
agency is subject to abuse,” the attorney
general’s written argument contends. “The
question before this court is whether abuse
of the agency’s power is subject to the
check of judicial review initiated by the
attorney general on behalf of the people of
the state of Texas. ”
The three-man Water Rights Commis
sion voted over Hill’s objection in 1976 to
allow Houston Lighting and Power Co. to
pay the Lower Colorado River Authority
for water to be used to cool generators at
the South Texas Nuclear Project.
The project, a joint venture of Houston,
Austin and San Antonio, is located in
Matagorda County near the mouth of the
Colorado River.
Hill said LCRA does not own the water
there and got Houston to agree to pay only
by blackmail and threats to oppose a federal
license for the nuclear facility.
The Water Quality Board drew Hill’s
opposition over changes in pollution con
trol regulations for the Edwards Acquifer,
an underground reservoir that provides
water for more than one million people and
is the principal source of San Antonio’s
drinking water.
The board set strict pollution control
rules for the seven-county recharge area in
1975, but substituted new regulations with
less stringent standar s for rural counties in
1977.
Hill contends the changes “significantly
lessen the degree of control of pollution
causing activity over the recharge zone pos
ing a threat of contamination of the reser
voir which would be a hazard to those
people dependent upon it for drinking
purposes.”
United Press International
LENINGRAD — Bernon F. Mitchell, a
cryptographer at the supersecret U.S. Na
tional Security Agency who defected to
Moscow 18 years ago, evidently wants to
come home, informed sources report.
Mitchell, 49, and a colleague, William
H. Martin, 47, were employed as junior
mathematicians in the NS As cryptography
department at Fort Meade, Md., when
they defected to the Soviet Union in the
summer of 1960.
After turning up in Moscow Sept. 6,
1960, they told reporters they had defected
“for moral and political reasons,” saying
they were disenchanted with U.S. intelli
gence methods.
Their defection caused an uproar in U.S.
defense circles because it was believed
they carried with them information con
cerning the inner workings of the agency.
NS A, the most secret of all American
intelligence agencies, is concerned mainly
with breaking foreign codes and protecting
American codes. It also intercepts foreign
communications with sophisticated
monitoring equipment.
A U.S. Consulate official in Leningrad
confirmed that Mitchell of Eureka, Calif.,
had been in contact with American officials
regarding the possibility of returning to the
United States.
“Mitchell has visited the consulate two
times this year to talk to a consular official,”
the American diplomat said. “The talks
were mostly exploratory.”
Informed sources said Mitchell visited
the consulate three times this year to ask
about legal questions regarding possible
prosecution for espionage if he returned to
the United States.
They said during the first two visits there
were substantial discussions, but that on
the third visit, Mitchell, who had to wait a
few minutes until the consular official was
free, suddenly got up and left without
meeting the diplomat.
The sources said that the fact that Mitch
ell got past the Soviet militia (police) guard
outside the consulate indicated the visits
were carried out with the knowledge of
Soviet authorities.
Mitchell currently lives in Leningrad
and teaches at Leningrad University. Mar
tin, of Ellensburg, Wash., also lives and
works in Leningrad.
They said Martin, upon hearing that
Mitchell wanted to leave the Soviet Union,
“got very angry and has been trying to talk
him out of it.”