Viewpoint
The Battalion Thursday
Texas A&M University August 10, 1978
trouble brewing at OMB
N ew
By DAVID S. BRODER
WASHINGTON — A rumor that swept
through the Executive Office Building,
next door to the White House, a few
weeks ago is a symptom of a problem for
President Carter that many administration
insiders consider far more serious than the
drug-talk spurred by the resignation of his
assistant. Dr. Peter Bourne.
The rumor concerned the possibility
that a man little known outside the tight
Carter circle, Hubert L. (Herky) Harris,
Jr., will be named as deputy director of
the powerful Office of Management and
Budget (OMB). Harris is an amiable young
bank official Bert Lance brought with him
from Atlanta to handle OMB’s congres
sional lobbying when Lance became direc
tor of the OMB at the start of the adminis
tration.
James T. McIntyre, Jr., who succeeded
Lance as director of OMB, told me last
week that he “never seriously considered”
his fellow Georgian, Harris, for the job,
but was aware of the rumors.
AND THOSE RUMORS themselves
are evidence of a serious problem. It is a
the doubtful condition — or what one
senior Carter appointee called the “disin
tegration” — of the professional cadre at
OMB.
Although one of the smallest and least
publicized parts of the government, OMB
is crucial to the success of any president.
Its few hundred professionals pride them
selves on both their top status in the civil
service and their loyalty to the man in the
Oval Office. They represent the president
in continual dealings with the departments
in ques^ons of budget, management and
organization. When it is functioning well,
OMB is the president’s strong right arm in
running the government.
Carter signaled his awareness of the im
portance of OMB when he named his close
friend Lance to the director’s post as
virtually his first step after the election.
Lance used his clout with the president to
make OMB judgments count, even though
he never troubled himself to learn the de
tails of budgets and operations that ulti
mately provide an OMB director with his
greatest power.
McIntyre, 37, was budget director of
Georgia under Carter and his successor,
Gov. George Busbee. As Lance’s deputy,
he was the inside man who ran the OMB
store while Lance cut a wide swath
through Watshington.
WHEN LANCE WAS forced to resign.
Carter named McIntyre as acting director,
and last December he gave him the job on
a permanent basis. But McIntyre has had a
hard time convincing some people that he
is up to the job. The financial press and the
business community — which believe a
strong OMB director is as important as a
strong Federal Reserve chairman in the
fight against inflation — have been partic
ularly critical. One senior business execu
tive, with long experience on past White
House staffs, recently approached a Carter
intimate with a plea to “do one thing for
the president; get him to replace Jim
McIntyre. ”
But there is no sign of this happening.
Meantime, McIntyre has let months go by
without naming a deputy director — thus
creating the climate in which rumors of
strange appointees are bound to circulate.
Even though McIntyre is as busy out
side the office as Lance had been, testify
ing on administration bills before Con
gress, attending White House meetings,
conferring with Cabinet and agency heads
and making speeches to various groups, he
insists he has no need for filling his old job
as an inside administrator.
“Quite frankly, I haven’t felt the pres
sure to move hastily or make the decision
quickly,” he told me. “I don’t think we’ve
let anything slip through the cracks; we’ve
held our own. I feel like the structure
we’ve set up has worked well, and I don’t
think OMB has suffered.”
AT PRESENT, he has two executive as
sociate directors, W. Harrison Wellford
for management and reorganization and
W. Bowman Cutter for budget, reporting
to himself. While McIntyre suggested in
the interview that he may seek legislation
permanently eliminating the deputy direc
tor’s job and just keep the structure he
has, other insiders see the rivalry between
Wellford and Cutter as itself a source of
some OMB problems.
There are professionals all over the city
who challenge McIntyre’s view that OMB
has not “suffered” a decline of influence
and effectiveness.
With a few phone calls, I found no less
than five former senior officials in OMB
who echoed my original source’s view
about the “disintegration” of the agency.
One former director of OMB (when it was
still called the Bureau of the Budget) said-
he had had a lunch the previous day with
two former colleagues, specifically to dis
cuss what they might do about “the horri
ble condition of program implementation
and the disarray in OMB.”
I ALSO FOUND some Carter political
advisers worried that the president has not
reckoned how much the troubles in OMB
may cost him as he heads into a tough
budget battle over the next 12 months. In
his drive for a smaller budget deficit next
year. Carter is trying to cut $13 billion to
$15 billion from what it would cost just to
maintain existing federal programs at their
present levels, let alone expand or im
prove any of them or start any new initia
tives.
That stiff economy effort will provoke
the strongest resistance imaginable from
the agencies and their client interest
groups. It is no time for a president to
have an undermanned OMB, unless he
wants to invite the kind of rebellion within
the ranks of the bureaucracy that will
cause fresh questions to be raised about
his ability to command.
(c) 1978, The Washington Post Company
Cruise missiles earning more respect
By ROBERT KAYLOR
United Press International
WASHINGTON — Tiny cruise
missiles, which a year ago we re.; The
downfall of the B1 bomber, now are'be
ginning to make fighter pilots nervous
about their jobs.
Less than 20 feet long, the highly accu
rate, pilotless jets are already well on their
way to becoming a major strategic weapon
in the 1980s. Between 3,500 and 7,000 of
them would be carried by B-52 bombers,
and possibly aboard adaptations of wide
bodied jetliners.
Nuclear-armed versions are also being
developed for ground, ship and submarine
launching. Beyond that, defense officials
are now looking at still another potential
use in nonnuclear warfare.
Last April a fillip was added to the com
puterized terrain “map” that guides the
Tomahawk, one of two cruise missile types
that will compete for the bomber-
launched role. It was a photo of a desert
airstrip “target” that could be matched up
with the actual view seen by an electronic
eye in the missile’s belly.
Nicknamed “Smack (for Scene Match
ing Area Correlation), the photo system
enabled the Tomahawk to zero in on the
airstrip after an 800-mile flight with
greater accurgpy ;,thah qyfe)-bqjpVe, dump
ing dummy-jicrmbft sqtrarely across it. - —
It was the sort of precision to’mbing
normally done by skilled fighter pilots. It
brought raves of “remarkable” from senior
officers. And it also started shock waves
Defense
among military power groups who re
member President Carter’s decision to
cancel the B-l in favor of cruise missiles.
“People who fly airplanes are nervous,”
said one source involved in the program,
“because it points to the direction of at
least reducing their jobs, if not someday
eliminating them.”
As one example, the source said, there
had been “quite a bit of support for the
ground-launched cruise missile in the Tac
tical Air Command until some bean
counters in (Defense Secretary Harold)
Brown’s office suggested they might re
place two wings of F-lll fighter-
bombers. ”
Far-reaching effects wouldn’t involve
the Air F<>rce alone. Smirces say the.Navy,'
spearlreaged by.-its senior weaptms-expert,
undersecretary James Woolsey, is starting
to look into using the small missiles with
aircraft or possibly even launching them
directly from aircraft carriers, a potential
space and money saver.
The subject is sensitive enough that
Woolsey declined to discuss it at a time
when Congress is considering another
large-deck supercarrier for the Navy. The
Air Force’s chief of staff, Gen. Lew Allen,
isn’t as reluctant.
Allen sees no wholesale threat to piloted
planes, which fly much faster, do many
jobs that include fighting other airplanes,
and can be used more than once. But he
also considers “massive Soviet air de
fenses are now deadlier in Europe than
the strategic attack route across the north
ern borders of Russia.
“If the defenses are heavy and we re
going to be losing men and $15 million
airplanes, the expense of $1 million cruise
missiles may not be so bad, he says. “The
cruise missile is almost bound to find some
regions of non-nuclear, tactical applicabil
ity.”
.General Dynamics, maker of the To
mahawk, won’t fly its 'missile* in competi
tion with a model being built by Boeing
until next year, and there are still unan
swered questions about ground-launched
missiles.
But cruise missiles are considered a sure
enough bet that the company is already
setting up a sprawling Detroit-style as
sembly line at a San Diego plant. It has
also “borrowed a giant B-52 bomber from
the Air Force, taken it apart to bring in
doors, and is now assembling it again to
test the air-launch system.
Close in the future, decisions loom in
August on whether the ground-launched
version may supplant the Army’s Pershing
2 missile.
Further ahead, study work is being
done on models that might drop mines in
enemy harbors, fly reconnaissance runs,
or carry a supersonic tip that would break
off at high speed to carry out a mission.
The pilots are watching closely.
Argentine labor uniting
By JOHN REICHERTZ
United Press International
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Argen
tina’s once-powerful labor force is moving
to rediscover the unity and strength that it
had found previously only under the guid
ance of one man, former President Juan
Peron.
Peron’s charisma lingers despite his
death on July 1, 1974, and is playing an
important role in the resurgence of labor.
On the fourth anniversary of Peron’s
death, 3,000 people gathered outside a
church where a mass was held in his mem
ory.
The crowd chanted “Viva Peron,” “We
Shall Return” and “Neither Yankees nor
Commentary
Marxists — Peronists” as labor leaders
emerged from the church after the serv
ice.
Police then intervened, bringing an
abrupt end to the demonstration with tear
gas.
Before its end, however, the mass had
brought together a diverse group of labor
leaders who over the last 30 days have
been increasing their contacts and activity
in search of one goal: to bring unity to the
labor movement.
Argentine labor unions, once the most
powerful in Latin America, have been
hog-tied by anti-labor regulations ever
since the armed forces ousted President
Isabel Peron, Peron’s widow, in March.
1976.
President Jorge Videla’s government
stripped labor of a wide variety of contract
privileges won during the Peronist era,
prohibited strikes and held wages down in
its fight against the world’s highest infla
tion rate.
The General Labor Confederation, the
2.9 million-member congress that had
been the citadel of Peronism, was given a
military director.
Independent unions, at least those not
affected by military intervention, have
petitioned the government for the restora
tion of basic rights, wage increases and the
release of imprisoned union leaders and
Isabel Peron, jailed since the coup.
Without the support of the Peronist
labor confederation, however, the inde
pendent unions represent at the most only
30 percent of the labor force and do not
have the necessary backing to speak with
authority.
The International Labor Organization
met in June at Geneva and the Argentine
government went seeking to improve its
image abroad.
Representatives of the Commission of
25, a group of the unions that have been
forced to accept military directors, repre
sented Argentina’s labor sector at the
meeting.
Labor Minister Horacio Tomas Liendo
spoke and promised a gradual return of
labor rights.
The first advance already has been
made. Argentine labor is represented
abroad by a labor organization that was not
under government control and is recog
nized by the International Confederation
of Free Trade Unions.
But at home labor is split into different
factions. Col. Jose Hipolito Nunez, the
military official in charge of the General
Labor Confederation, on July 3 ordered an
end to the unauthorized meetings being
held by union leaders in their search for
unity.
The warning was issued because the
meetings had begun to take on a definite
“political tinge, labor sources said.
The warning also came two days before
the Commission of 25 was to hold a meet
ing that was to have been followed by a
news conference, a rare occurrence.
A labor observer said recently that
Argentine labor, if it manages to achieve
unity, would find it only under the um
brella of the Commission of 25, the only
organization with the freedom to truly
represent labor.
For the moment, however, the gov
ernment has indicated that it is still in con
trol of labor and that when advances are
made they will be advances that have been
granted by the government, not won by
labor.
Jail doesn't
By ED ROGERS
United Press International
WASHINGTON — An ex-mobster
being used by a Senate committee to ex
pose organized crime says that going to
prison did not stop his narcotics racket. It
meant new customers — fellow inmates of
the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.
Gary Bowdach, 35, confessed mur
derer, arsonist, loan shark and bodyguard
for a narcotics racketeer, told the Senate
C rime
Permanent Investigations Subcommittee
smuggling and “contract murders” occur
in prison as well as outside.
Bowdach, under a 15-year sentence for
loansharking and a firearms violation, has
been given immunity for crimes he confes
sed to since he began cooperating with au
thorities last fall.
Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., says the sub
committee wants to learn what went
wrong at the Atlanta penitentiary, where
nine inmates have been slain since
end crime
November 1976 — two of them apparently
suspected of being police informants.
“Given the type of persons that com
prise an inmate population, it is no doubt
impossible to maintain an atmosphere free
from fear, retribution and illegal ac
tivities,” Nunn said.
“On the other hand, we must seriously
question whether the Bureau of Prisons is
doing all that it can to assure that all of our
federal institutions are operated as effi
ciently as possible.”
Bowdach began cooperating with au
thorities because he feared a fellow inmate
had a “contract’ to kill him with a
homemade knife — the way most of the
other inmate victims died, a subcommit
tee staff report said.
As a result, the subcommittee has taken
extra precautions to protect its chief
source of new information about organized
crime operations.
Trained bomb-sniffing dogs check the
big hearing room before each session, 60
police guard the area while Bowdach is
testifying, and U.S. marshals sit with their
backs to Bowdach as he testifies — his face
turned away from cameras.
Top of the News
State
Jarvis to visit Texas
Howard Jarvis, who lobbied for successful passage of Proposition H
13 in California, will make an appearance in Texas next week, tW P
executive director of the Texas Taxpayers League said Wednesday in
Austin. Royal Massett said as many as 10,000 persons were expected
to hear Jarvis speak Aug. 17 at the Tarrant County Convention Cen
ter at the invitation of the Taxpayers Association of Fort Worth.
Horse chow contaminated
A contaminated lot of Ralston-Purina’s Horse and Mule Chow,
which was linked to deaths of 14 horses, was recalled recently, the
Food and Drug Administration in Washington said Wednesday. The
lot, manufactured June 21 at a feed mill in Gonzales was distributed
between June 21-30 only in southeastern Texas, FDA press officer
Nancy Click said. FDA said the feed was contaminated inadvertently
with monensin sodium, a drug which is highly toxic when fed to
horses.
Flash flood victim found
Bandera County sheriff's deputies Wednesday found the bodyofa
6-year-old girl, the 24th victim of last week’s hill country flash floods.
Deputies said the young girl was identified by' her parents as Lisa
Torres of San Antonio. Torrential rains triggered by' Tropical Storm
Amelia sent the Medina and Guadalupe rivers over their banks last
week, flooding nine hill country communities. Twenty-four persons
died at Bandera, Center Point, Comfort and Kerrville. Four others
remained missing.
Nation
Pregnant waitress loses job
Cynthia Logan, a 7-month pregnant topless-bottomless nightclub
waitress, has gone to court in Denver for motherhood and beauty in
the eye of the beholder. Logan said Tuesday she filed suit to regain
her job at Sid King’s Crazy Horse Bar and to obtain compensation for ]
the alleged violation of her rights as a woman. “What constitutes
beauty and sex appeal is a subjective matter,” said Logan, 24. King,
owner and manager of the downtown nude bar, said he dismissed
Logan because he said she didn’t look good. He also expressed a
chivalrous concern for her condition.
Jury awards explosion survivors v
A state district court jury in Cleburne Tuesday awarded $900,000
in damages to 18 persons in connection with the 1973 chain-reaction
explosion that killed four workers and injured 33 at the Gearhart-
Owens munitions plant. The suit was filed against Penguin Indus
tries, a Pennsylvania firm which manufactured machinery used to
assemble hand grenade fuses at the Cleburne plant. "We think that
probably there is an error in the verdict and probably we will appeal
it,” said company attorney Rufus Garrett.
Tank explodes
An oil storage tank being repaired by' a team of welders exploded
outside Temple, Okla., Wednesday, killing three workmen andinjur-
ing two others. Cotton County Sheriff Paul McKown said the men
were working in an empty slush pit and using an acetylene torcfito
weld a line leading from a well to the tank about 40 to 50 feet froititte'
pit. “It was a real had explosion, ” McKown said. “There wasn’t any
fire, but they were killed instantly. It was just one of those things you
hope you never see.”
World
Record gold value fixed
Gold was fixed at a record level of $208.00 on the London bullion
market Wednesday, up $1,125 from the overnight close of $206,875.
That mark tops the previous record fix set on Aug. 1 by 50 cents.
Dealers reported active trading conditions as buyers, concerned
about continuing U.S. trade deficits and worsening inflation, turned
to gold because of the slump in the dollar’s value. Shortly after the
price was fixed the metal was trading in a range of $208 to $208.50. J
Defection confirmed
Administration officials in Washington confirmed Wednesday that
a high-ranking Romanian security officer, Lt. Gen. Ion Pacepa, has
defected and is in the United States. State Department spokesmen
were under instructions not to discuss the case and refused to com
ment publicly. A West German newspaper. Die Welt, reported that
Pacepa disappeared 12 days ago while on a business visit to Cologne.
He contacted the CIA, according to the report, and administration
officials said he is now being questioned in the United States.
Cosmic chemists explain flu
The announcement, concerning the influenza epidemic that hit
Britain last winter, came from two prominent astronomers, but it
sounded more like the title of a science-fiction flick. They said, It
came from outer space.” The London Daily Telegraph Tuesday
quoted Prof. Fred Hoyle and Prof. Chandra Wickramasinghe at a
conference on cosmic chemistry at Gregynog, Wales, as saying statis
tical breakdowns of absenteeism from Welsh boarding schools during
the epidemic showed the pupils caught the flu last year while in the
open air and not in dormitories.
Weather
Partly cloudy and warm with slight thundershowers for this
evening and Friday. High today in the upper 90s and low in
the mid-70s. South wind at 5 to 10 mph. Probability of rain
20% today and tonight and 30% Friday.
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