Today is the last day
for Q-drops
See page 4
Another EDB warning
is released to public
See page 3
ocon Hamilton takes
the gold for the U.S.
See page 16
mm Texas ASM ^ — . V| A
The Battalion
Serving the CIniversity community
|ol 78 No. 97 USPS 0453110 16 pages
College Station, Texas
Friday, February 17,1984
roop withdrawal plan announced
United Press International
SASHINGTON — President
jan received a final plan for
(drawing most of the U.S. Ma-
b from Lebanon within 30 days
Jrsday, and a senior White House
[final said the first troop
ements could come within 48
r
me report, prepared by Defense
Jetary Caspar Weinberger, is de-
[npd to implement a pivotal deci-
Jset into motion by Reagan more
an iwo weeks earlier. Reagan will
This formal approval later today,
elfficial said.
|4though the timetable remained
fwhat ill-defined, the official said
pullout will take place “in a stable
jorderly fashion” and completion
within 30 days “remains the presi
dent’s expectation.”
“I’m very confident that we will be
able to complete this redeployment
in the projected timetable,” the offi
cial said.
The official disclosed the process
was accelerated after a major push by
Moslem militiamen last weekend in
order to remove a major point of
contention between the government
and its sectarian opponents.
The official said about 200 of the
1,100 Marines now surrounded by
Druze militiamen in their position at
the Beirut airport will remain ashore
to provide security to the U.S. Em
bassy and the residence of U.S. Am
bassador Reginald Bartholomew.
All told, the official said, about 500
American military personnel will re
main in Beirut, including an ex
panded contingent of Army advisers
and security and support units.
The official said the Marines
moved offshore will continue to
function as a peace-keeping force,
despite unresolved questions over
their precise role and mission while
stationed off the Lebanese coast on
ships of the 6th Fleet.
The proximity of the fleet to the
coast is a factor in discussions on re
placing the dwindling multinational
force in Beirut with a U.N. peace
keeping force. However, the official
indicated the United States will not
accept restrictions on the movement
of the fleet, as advocated, for exam
ple, b^the Soviets.
“We are interested in a U.N. force
— under terms that ensure its effec
tive function there,” the official said.
The Weinberger report was sent
to Reagan only after a final round of
cbnsultations with the Lebanese gov
ernment and the other members of
the multinational force.
Vice President George Bush con
ducted the consultations over the last
week in London, Rome and Paris,
and returned to Washington early
Thursday. Britain, Italy and France
all contributed troops to the multina
tional force established in September
1982.
All three have announced similar
plans to reduce their military pres
ence on the ground in Lebanon. In
announcing a pullout of Italian
troops Thursday, Defense Minister
Giovanni Spadolini said, “There are
no winners m Lebanon, only losers.”
But the Reagan administration
sought to put the best face on what
top officials insisted on calling a
“phased redeployment,” rather than
a retreat.
The official who briefed reporters
at the White House denied the move
reflects a failure of U.S. policy in
Lebanon. “There certainly have been
setbacks — bad ones — but there also
have been gains,” the official said.
In the former category, the United
States has lost 264 servicemen in Leb
anon. In the latter category, the offi-
iller, panel
iscuss rights
By ROBIN BLACK
Staff Writer
[he right to know vs. the right to
alone: two fundamental rights
feat are inevitably going to cross,
iaTvard law professor Arthur Miller
pid.
lliller mediated a panel discussion
injmedia and privacy after an ad-
pess Thursday as part of the Stu-
}t Conference on National Affairs
‘Media: Behind the Headlines.”
)ne of the most interesting and
things about being an Ameri-
fencitizen,’’Miller said, “is our rights.
jThe United States has more
[jus than anywhere else on the face
If the earth. But whenever you give
la lot of rights, there will always be
of them somewhere that cross,
bump heads in the night; espe-
y the right to privacy and free
Jss/f'ree speech.”
Miller illustrated this conflict of
Imping rights” to the panel in
Ne hypothetical situations.
[ Pacing back and forth across the
Miller supplied the panel
jtembers with the facts of each situa-
ji, then challenged them to publish
ost facts or keep the information
fetjfidential.
The fictitious cases he presented
fenged from a former government
Icial who is now a womanizing,
ntally-ill, drug-abusing, alcoholic
official to a factory owner who
T a nazi death camp officer to a
f er who had an abortion 25
Irsago.
j Miller told the panelists that they
lad obtained the facts about those in-
[ividuals, all verifiable but not pre-
|tsly known, from an anonymous
Btjrce.
[He then questioned them on the
lit of whether it was fair for the
Mic to be made aware of those
ft or fair for the individual in-
fed to maintain his privacy.
When he got an answer from a
panelist, he became the devil’s advo
cate, countering the answers with the
opposing stand.
As a result, most of the panel
members became increasingly con
fused, changing their answers and
struggling with the conflict of the
rights that Miller called “two of the
basic rights Americans consider most
important.”
When one panelist used the First
Amendment to defend his decision
to publish the facts, Miller said “I
love it when you guys wrap your
selves in the flag.”
Miller, who said he advocates the
individual’s right to privacy, con
cluded the debate with the possibility
that the public prefers to take a
hands-off stance in deciding what
should be kept private and what
should be published.
He said most people are aware of
the moral difficulty in making that
distinction, and therefore embrace
the attitude of “let them decide.”
From the present trend, he
pointed out, the press seems to be
“deciding” with more regularity.
“We’re living in a period of post-
Watergate euphoria,” Miller said,
where the press is becoming more
aggressive and intrusive, resulting in
a kind of Woodward-and-Bernstein
complex.
He said free press is “uniquely
American,” and the media are the
only business institutions in the
United States that “own a constitu
tional amendment.”
Miller argued that privacy rights
are endangered by this.
“Privacy doesn’t have its own press
agency or corps of journalists out
touting its virtues,” he said.
With modern technology making
the media’s intrusive abilities that
much easier, Miller said that a pri
vate citizen pulled into the public
arena by chance is “informationally
raped.”
Photo by JOHN MAKELY
Harvard law professor Arthur Miller mediates a SCON A panel discussion
‘Journalists do lie,’
SCONA speaker says
By ROBIN BLACK
Staff Writer
Journalists do lie, Reed Irvine,
founder and chairman of the board
of Accuracy in Media, >said Thurs
day.
Irvine cited the American media
as a “transmission belt for disinfor
mation” in his address on domestic
news reporting for the Student Con
ference on National Affairs.
Inaccuracy and deception are run
ning rampant in the press, and it has
emerged as a serious problem in so
ciety, Irvine said.
“You’re always hearing people
quote Jefferson as a young man when
he said ‘If I had to choose between
government without newspapers or
newspapers without government, I
would choose the latter,”’ he said.
“What you don’t hear a lot of peo
ple quoting is what he said after he
gained the experience of the presi
dency. T am indifferent now as to
whether I ever see another newspa
per.’”
Irvine defined three areas of “mis
representation of the truth:” total
and flagrant fabrication, refusal to
check out questionable sources and
slanted reporting, or “not telling
both sides of a story.”
Irvine said that the reporter
usually “takes the rap,” when the edi
tor who decides the fate of the story
should take the blame as well.
Is there a cure? He said that what
America needs most is a press that
supports the government and its ac
tions.
cial said, the multinational force
helped hasten a departure of Pales
tinian troops and efforts “to establish
a government reflective of the demo
graphy of the country.”
However, the official also inti
mated the U.S. role — once that of a
mediator and active participant —
has changed, and that the fate of
Lebanon is now in the hands of Saudi
Arabia and, to a large extent, Syria.
Several hours earlier, White
House spokesman Larry Speakes in
dicated Reagan would give his final
approval to the plan by the end of
the day. But the official at the White
House Thursday said the details
were discussed on the assumption
Reagan would do so Friday.
Jury gives
Jones
99 years
United Press International
GEORGETOWN — A jury Thurs
day rejected defense pleas for mercy
and probation for Genene Jones and
sentenced the nurse to 99 years in
prison for the drug injection death of
a baby girl.
Prosecutors contended the thrill
seeking nurse killed 15-month-old
Chelsea McClellan — as well as seve
ral other children who survived simi
lar drug injections — to show a need
for a special unit for critically ill chil
dren at a small hospital in Kerrville.
Although some jurors cried as de
fense lawyers begged for mercy for
Jones, it took the jury little more than
an hour to assess the maximum pun
ishment.
“Essentially the facts were so over
whelming we could not ignore
them,” said jury foreman Edwin Ed
wards of Georgetown.
He said the fact the crime involved
a child “was tough. We all have chil
dren or grandchildren or would like
to have children.”
The former vocational nurse was
convicted Wednesday of killing Chel
sea with the powerful paralyzing
drug succinylcholine at a Kerrville
pediatric clinic on Sept. 17, 1982.
Edwards said jurors agreed from
the start of their deliberations on
both the conviction and the 99-year
sentence.
Jones, a 33-year-old mother of
two, must serve at least 20 years be
fore becoming eligible for parole.
Defense attorneys said they would
appeal the conviction on grounds it
was improper to allow testimony
about other children allegedly in
jured by Jones. They said the appeal
also would be based on the “circus at
mosphere” created by the intense
media coverge of the trial.
Jones, red-eyed and visibly upset,
stared stunned at the jury as the sen
tence was read. She sobbed violently
Wednesday when her conviction was
announced.
not-sa-comman experience
SCONA delegates ‘impressed’
By MICHELLE POWE
Staff Writer
It seemed like a typical college
tty. There was a dim roar of peo-
yelling over loud music and each
er. Visibility was minimized by the
frnmed lights and smoke-filled air.
College and high school students
Inced, drank and were merry.
■But though the evening’s activities
re like those of any college party,
conversations were probably a
lemore varied and intellectual,
tudents from several universities
several countries were at the
rty. They discussed, among other
ngs, the speeches they have heard
he past two days.
They are among the 145 delegates
Texas A&M’s Student Conference
National Affairs going on this
lek.
MEDIA
MSC SCONA 29
The students represent universi
ties located from New York to Cali
fornia, Canada to Honduras. There
are students from universities in El
Salvador, the Dominican Republic,
Guatemala and Mexico, and students
from Bangladesh and Kenya who are
going to school in Canada and the
United States.
Besides hearing speeches in the
past two days by numerous experts in
communications, the delegates also
have gotten a chance to see some of
Texas A&M.
Wednesday they went to the Dixie
Chicken. Thursday evening, the del
egates went to a review of the Corps
of Cadets and ate dinner with the
Corps in Duncan Dining Hall. Some
checked out the local bars.
Tonight they are being treated to a
barbeque dinner and a square dance.
And what trip to Texas would be
complete without barbeque?
All of the delegates seem im
pressed by the hospitality of their
Texas A&M hosts and by the friend
liness of the student body.
For some, the number of “how
dy’s” they have gotten walking across
campus has been suprising. For all, it
has been an experience.
One delegate said the people and
the weather in Texas are marvelous.
“I love it here,” he said. “I’d love to
live here.”
Another said Texas A&M students
are “very friendly and patriotic.”
The delegates to SCONA have
had the opportunity, in a couple of
days, to meet new people and make
new friends. They have had the not-
so-common opportunity of learning
about people from different societies
and cultures.
In Today’s Battalion
Local
• The Director of the A.P. Beutal Health center has
called the propsed $1 lab fee ‘pointless’. See story page 3.
• Texas A&M vet students are taking weekly trips to
Austin to help the Humane Socity. See story page 6.
State
• The parents of Eliseo Moreno, the man accused of
killing a College Station couple, say that he was insane with
jealousy during his five-hour rampage. See story page 3.
• The former bubble boy David’s condition has wors
ened and doctors are not sure of the prognosis. See story
page 4.