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Battalion
Serving the University community
Vol. 79 No. 167 CISPS 045360 8 pages
College Station, Texas
Tuesday, July 2, 1985
Officials say
U.S. may strike
at terrorists
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Reagan
administration hinted Monday the
United States will strike against ter-
jrorist training camps or support
bases in the Middle East, saying the
Beirut hostage crisis had created
widespread support in America “for
more firmness in dealing with ter
rorism.”
Meanwhile, the United States ini
tiated “legal action and diplomatic
' steps” to close Beirut airport to in
ternational travel, declaring the goal
was to put it “off-limits” to terrorists.
As the 39 Treed American hos
tages were pronounced in good
mental and physical health after
checkups in Wiesbaden, West Ger
many, the administration signaled it
was weighing steps to underscore
U.S. determination to combat ter-
orism in the wake of the hijacking
jfTWA night 847.
Robert C. McFarlane, national se
curity adviser to President Reagan,
laid there are “two or three strategic
bcations in the Middle East” that
night be targets of U.S. action. He
lid not pinpoint any sites.
McFarlane, in an interview with
|he Independent Network News,
as asked if it was possible to “surgi-
ally retaliate” against those respon
sible for the hijacking, and whether
[he United States must retaliate in
rderto maintain credibility.
“Well, I think that’s true,” McFar-
•janesaid. “And I think the focus of it
the purpose of it — has to be not
|o conduct a random act of ven-
leance, but instead, to focus our
lower on dealing with the root
sources of terrorism .. . .”
I White House spokesman Larry
©peakes declined to elaborate on
icFarlane’s suggestion of a strike
igainst terrorist camps.
However, the spokesman said the
possibility of closing the Beirut air
port “was discussed again this morn
ing” when Reagan met for an hour
with top national security advisers to
review the outcome of the hijacking
and U.S. efforts against terrorism.
The airport was where hijackers
Hew the TWA flight and held pas
sengers and crew members hostage.
It is under the control of the Amal
militia, whose leader, Lebanese Jus
tice Minister Nabih Berri, played a
key role in negotiations over their
release.
At the lime Lebanon’s civil war
started 10 years ago, the airport was
a major hub, served by about 30 air
lines. Today, only Lebanon’s na
tional airline provides regular serv
ice there.
Administration officials said it was
not feasible to retaliate against the
radical Moslem faction known as
Hezbollah — the group that held
four of the hostages separate from
the others — because they live in ur
ban areas and any attack would kill
innocent people.
The president raised the prospect
of U.S. action against terrorists dur
ing a five-minute television speech
Sunday afternoon as the freed hos
tages were flying from Damascus,
Syria, to Wiesbaden. “Terrorists, be
on notice,” said Reagan. “We will
fight back against you in Lebanon
and elsewhere. We will fight back
against your cowardly attacks on
American citizens and property.”
McFarlane, in his interview with
INN, said, “I think . . . what has
emerged from this experience in the
United States has been a very wide
spread popular support for more
firmness in dealing with terrorism.”
He said that until now, such senti
ment “has been missing.”
Gay Parade
Gay Student Services President Marco Roberts, right, carries the ban
ner proclaiming the GSS’ new marching band during the parade that
marked the closing of Gay Pride Week ’85 in Houston Sunday.
ANTHONY S. CASPER
. The band, comprised of GSS members, played the Texas A&M fight
song as well as other A&M songs on their kazoos. The group received
the Best Marching Band award for their efforts.
Former captives in West Germany
Hostages enjoying freedom
Overpricing to cost
Exxon over $2 billion
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Exxon,
the world’s largest corporation,
was ordered Monday to pay more
than $2 billion for overpricing
crude oil during the energy-short
1970s.
A special federal court, hand
ling alleged violations when oil
was under now-expired federal
price controls, held Exxon Corp.
liable for $895.5 million in over
charges from 1975 until 1981 for
crude oil from its Hawkins Field
in east Texas — plus interest.
Both government lawyers and
attorneys for Exxon said they be
lieve the judgment is the largest
, ever against a single defendant.
“I’ve never heard of a larger
one,” said Larry P. Ellsworth,
deputy chief counsel for the En
ergy Department’s Economic
Regulatory Administration and
the chief government attorney in
the case.
The three-judge panel of the
Temporary Emergency U.S.
Court of Appeals agreed with the
Reagan administration that it is
impossible to trace the Exxon
overcharges to ultimate consum
ers who were harmed by the over
pricing.
Therefore, it ordered Exxon to
pay the amount to a special ac
count in the Treasury, from
which it will be disbursed to the
50 states for energy conservation
programs.
Though Exxon’s overcharges
totaled $895.5 million, interest on
that amount is building at a rate
of $500,000 a day will bring the
total to more than $2 billion. Ex
xon estimated in its latest annual
report that accrued interest
alone, as of the end of 1984, to
taled $1 billion.
Associated Press
WIESBADEN, West Germany —
Thirty-nine Americans spent Mon
day with their loved ones, safe at the
end of a terrible voyage that began
as a routine flight home and turned
into a horror of beating and killing
on a captive jetliner.
They embraced their families,
caught up on the news from home
and went shopping, just like other
f >eople. Gone were the guns, the
ear, the vermin-infested hovels in
which they had spent most of their
time since Shiite Moslem extremists
hijacked the TWA jet on June 14 be
tween Athens and Rome.
The hostages arrived here shortly
after dawn after a trip overland
from Beirut to Damascus, Syria, and
an all-night flight in a U.S. military
plane to Frankfurt, 24 miles east of
here.
Vice President George Bush and
his wife, Barbara, led the welcoming
crowd.
Robert Brown, 42, of Stow, Mass.,
told reporters the hijackers beat and
kicked some of the passengers while
the Boeing 727 flew back and forth
from Beirut to Algiers, eventually
releasing most of the 153 people
aboafd.
WtJWlf held in Beirut
Associated Press
^Wasmimcton
of seven Americans still held in
Lebanon said Monday they felt
let down became the kidnap vic
tims had not been freed along
with the TWA hostages. And they
expressed fear that talk of U.S.
retaliation could bring harm to
the captives. y,-lA y
" “l am depressed,” said Carol
Weir, wife of hostage Rev, Benja
min Weir, “I don't believe theyVe.
made the same effort for my hus
band and the others, I feel like
the administration bad a perfect
opportunity to seek the release of
the forgotten seven, and 1 feel
like they missed that opportu
nity.’'
; Peggy Say, whose brother,
Terty Anderson, was kidnapped
in Beirut on Match lb, said she is
planning to go to Syria as soon as
President Hafez Assad “or some
one very close to him agrees to
see me. ”
“It’s obvious to me by this dme
that my government's not going
to help me, so perhaps President
Assad will,” she said in an inter
view on Cable News Network. “I
am praying to God President As
sad will make time for me.”
Anderson’s Father, Glenn, ap
pearing on ABC-TV’s “Good
See Hostage, page 4
They also beat and killed Robert
Dean Stethem, 23, a U.S. Navy petty
officer from Waldorf, Md., and
threw his body from the plane dur
ing a stop in Beirut.The director of
the U.S. Air Force Hospital here de
clared said all 39 Americans were
“excellent physical and mental con
dition” despite their ordeal.
• Scores of relatives flew to West
Germany during the day. Some of
the hostages avoided questions on
the advice of U.S. officials con
cerned about the fate of seven
Americans who have been kidnap
ped in Lebanon since March 1984
and still are missing.
Most of the former hostages used
a bank of free telephones to chat
with relatives back home. Many
didn’t go to bed, despite the long
journey that will resume later this
week with the last leg home.
Several were taken by bus to the
local PX to buy new clothes.
“I’m wearing a pajama shirt and
the same pants I’ve had on for two
weeks,” Arthur Toga, 33, of St.
Louis told reporters.
Asked about Shiite leader Nabih
Berri and others who helped nego
tiate the release, Toga said: “When a
man brings you food every day you
learn to like him.”
The extremisi Shiite hijackers are
believed to be members of the fun
damentalist group Hezbollah (Party
of God). They turned all the hos
tages except Brown and three others
over to Bern’s Shiite militia Amal af
ter they were taken off the plane
June 17.
A hearty American-style breakfast
began the day for the former hos
tages, with the added German touch
of Rhine wine. Monday ended with a
festive dinner.
High court denies retarded special protection
' till r T- 11. I ■ ..nw ii m 11. ■ ■ ■ m , , v-c ^ . .. w 1 ^(=> 1 lAr^m C
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Su
preme Court on Monday refused to
Jive mentally retarded people the
»ame special legal protection blacks
and women enjoy against discrimi
natory treatment by state and local
governments.
The court, by a 6-3 vote, reversed
a ruling that would have required
the nation’s courts to review more
stringently any law or government
policy that singles out mentally re
tarded people for different treat
ment.
Justice Thurgood Marshall, the
court’s only black, led the three dis
senters in decrying “segregation and
degradation (of the mentally re
tarded) . . . that in its virulence and
bigotry rivaled and indeed paral
leled the worst excesses of Jim
Crow.”
Marshall, writing for himself and
Justices William J. Brennan and
Harry A. Blackmun, accused the
court of playing down “the lengthy
history of purposeful unequal treat
ment of the retarded.”
But Justice Byron R. White, writ
ing for the majority, said “mental re
tardation is a characteristic the gov
ernment may legitimately take into
account in a wide range of deci
sions,” laws based on it should be
judged more leniently as those based
on sex or race.
The court was unanimous, how
ever, in striking down a Cleburne,
Texas, zoning ordinance that re
quired group homes for the men
tally retarded to get special permits
before locating in the same resi
dential neighborhoods where apart
The Supreme Court struck down a Cleburne, Texas,
ordinance requiring group homes for the mentally re
tarded to get special permits before locating in the same
residential neighborhoods where apartment houses,
public schools and nursing homes need none.
ment houses, public schools ^ and
nursing homes need no permits.
White said the Cleburne ordi
nance “appears to us to rest on an ir
rational prejudice against the men
tally retarded.”
The decision said the Cleburne
ordinance violated the equal-protec
tion rights of the mentally retarded
people who wanted to live in a group
home.
In most equal-protection lawsuits,
courts look to see if there is a ratio
nal reason for the discriminatory
treatment. Almost always the chal
lenged law or government policy is
upheld.
But when the challenged law or
policy discriminates based on race or
national origin, courts traditionally
have upheld it only if government
can show it has been “precisely tai
lored to serve a compelling govern
mental interest.”
More often than not, laws and
government policies studied by
under such so-called “strict
scrutiny” have been overturned.
In 1976, the Supreme Court, cre
ated a middle tier of scrutiny for
equal-protection cases involving dis
crimination based on sex. In those,
government must prove the chal
lenged law or policy is “substantially
related to important governmental
objectives.”
Equal-protection lawsuits based
on sex are more difficult to win than
those based on race or national ori
gin, but easier than those based on
all other “economic and social” clas
sifications.
In the Cleburne case, the 5th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals became the
first court in the nation to rule that
laws treating the mentally retarded
differently must be judged as those
treating the sexes differently.
The Supreme Court said Monday
that “heightened scrutiny” is not
necessary in such cases.
White said, “We conclude for sev
eral reasons that the court of appeals
erred in holding mental retardation
a quasi-suspect classification calling
for a more exacting standard of judi
cial review that is normally accorded
economic and social legislation.”
White added that mentally re
tarded people are not left “entirely
unprotected from invidious discrim
ination.’
But, he wrote, governments “may
not rely on a classification whose
relationship to an asserted goal is so
attenuated as to render the distinc
tion arbitrary or irrational.”
The court — all nine justices —
found that Cleburne’s zoning ordi
nance created such an irrational clas
sification.