i
Texas oil industry pressing
for tax incentives, reforms
— Page 7
A&M tracksters look to rise
above pack at Texas Relays
— Page 12
■■
The Battalion
Vol. 83 No. 128 GSPS 075360 12 pages
College Station, Texas
Friday, April 4, 1986
ip
Elections
to be held
h B-CS
By Craig Renfro
Staff Writer
I It’s time to wipe the dust off your
■iter registration card and head to
lie polls, because Saturday is elec-
lon day and up for grabs are spots
on the College Station and Bryan
■ty councils and school boards,
j The polls open at 7 a.m. and close
|a[7 p.m. Voters should bring their
Igistration card and vote at the dis-
lict indicated on their card, says Di-
Bie Jones, College Station city secre
tary.
Also see:
♦ Ringer, Mcllhaney, page 3
^Makeup of Bryan, page 3
»Issues in CS, page 4
I Place 2, page 5
College Station polling places are:
• Precinct 8 — South Knoll El-
Imentary School
' • Precinct 9 — College Station
lommunity Center
• Precinct 10 —
Police Station
• Precinct 24 — College Hills El
ementary School
• Precinct 31 — A&M Consol
idated High School
• Precinct 32 -— College Fire Sta
tion No. 2
• Precinct 33 — Lincoln Center
• Precinct 34 — College Station
Central Fire Station
• Precinct 35 — A&M Presbyte
rian Church
Bryan polling places are:
• Precinct 4 — Carver School
• Precinct 5 — Fellowship Hall
• Precinct 6 — Edge Community
Center
• Precinct 7 — Steep Hollow
Community Center
• Precinct 11 — Crockett El-
fenientary School
1 •Precinct 12 — Sul Ross Elemen-
[tary School
( • Precinct 13 — Henderson El
ementary School
• Precinct 14 — Ben Milam El
ementary School
• Precinct 15 — Fannin Elemen
tary School
16 — Bowie Elemen-
College Station
18
19
• Precinct
taiy School
• Precinct
| tary School
• Precinct
[ Fire Station
• Precinct
| etnentary School
• Precinct 22 —
Outer
• Precinct 23 —
tary School
i • Precinct
gion Hall
• Precinct 26
i School
• Precinct 27
Baptist Church
• Precinct 28
17 — Travis Elemen-
Bryan Central
- Bonham El-
Photo by Jamie Stewart
Going Bananas
Michael Adams, a junior at Texas A&M, finishes up his banana split with a touch of whipped cream.
Arab terrorist
on jet sought
for TWA blast
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Police
in several nations said Thursday
they were searching for an Arab ter
rorist suspected of planting under
her airline seat a bomb that ex
ploded later, killing four Americans.
Police sources said the explosives
were planted under seat 10F, which
was blown out of the TWA jetliner
over southern Greece on Wednes
day. Italy’s interior minister said that
was the seat the woman had occu
pied on an earlier flight, and Greek
police sources said she may have hid
the bomb in a life preserver.
The woman, May Elias Mansur,
was a passenger Wednesday morn
ing on the Boeing 727 when it flew
from Cairo to Athens, said the
sources, who spoke on condition of
anonymity. The jet then flew to
Rome and the bomb went off during
its return trip to Athens that af
ternoon.
An airport security official in
Cairo confirmed that a Lebanese
woman using that name boarded in
Cairo.
The woman may have loaded
plastic explosives into a life pre
server under seat IGF during the
flight from Cairo, then made a con
nection to Beirut at Athens, the
Greek sources said. The bomb went
off under that seat.
The Italian news agency ANSA
quoted investigators it did not iden
tify as saying the woman was Leb
anese, but used a Jordanian passport
in the false name of May Elias Man
sur. The agency did not give her real
name.
Maj. Gen. Hosni Farag, the Egyp
tian Interior Ministry assistant for
the Cairo airport, gave this account
in Friday’s edition of the govern
ment-run newspaper Al-Ahram:
The woman completed pre
boarding procedures later than the
other passengers, and both airport
and TWA security inspected her
bags. She was a given a thorough
body search and the airline security
director took her to the plane in a
company car for luggage identifica
tion before she boarded.
Farag did not say why the woman
was delayed, subjected to a body
See Search, page 8
Nicaraguan strike called retaliatory
Army Reserve
L.B.J. Elemen-
25 — American Le-
— Bryan High
— Bright Light
_ — Peach Creek
Community Center
| • Precinct 29 — Brushy Commu-
ticllty Center
qqI I •Precinct 30 — Fellowship Hall
I •Precinct 36 — V.F.W. Hall
3k Tri-
See Elections, page 8
WASHINGTON (AP) — Last
month’s incursion by the Nicara
guan Army into Honduras was
aimed partly at retaliating against
Honduran authorities for having re
leased weapons and other supplies
to anti-Sandinista rebels, U.S. offi
cials said Thursday.
A senior intelligence official said
that several weeks before the March
22 border crossing, the Hondurans
released new assault rifles, rocket-
propelled grenades and other sup
plies to the Contras that the rebels
had acquired from undisclosed for
eign sources.
The Hondurans “opened up the
warehouses,” said the official, who
asked not to be identified.
The Contras need Honduran co
operation to gain access to the sup
plies sent to them. But Honduras,
worried about provoking the Sandi-
nistas, has often withheld the equip
ment. for extended periods. The re
bels receive non-lethal equipment
from the United States and acquire
weaponry from other sources, the
identity of which neither U.S. nor
Contra sources will discuss.
The U.S. officials here, describing
the administration’s assessment of
Nicaragua’s reasons for moving into
Honduras, said that in addition to
providing the rebels with access to
supplies, Honduras also has begun
allowing the rebels to use inf iltration
routes into Nicaragua in western
Honduras.
This area is far more strategic be
cause it is closer to the densely pop
ulated areas of Nicaragua than the
remote eastern region, where the
Contras had been given a freer hand
to cross the border, they said.
As described by the officials, the
timing of the Nicaraguan incursion
appeared to have little to do politi
cally with the ongoing debate at the
time in the U.S. Congress over
whether to resume military aid to
the Contras.
Meanwhile, the White House dis
puted statements, attributed to a se
nior Honduran official, that the
United States exaggerated the re
cent border crossing and may have
pressured Honduras into seeking
U.S.aid.
At a briefing for reporters in
Santa Barbara, Calif., where Presi
dent Reagan is vacationing, deputy
press secretary Larry Speakes said,
“We have asked the government of
Honduras for clarification.”
Speakes was asked about an inter
view, published in Thursday’s edi
tions of The New York Times and
The Miami Herald, quoting the offi
cial as saying, “The United States’ in
terest was that this situation have the
connotation of an international inci
dent. We had no interest in this.”
The official, who the newspapers
said asked not to be identified, said
Honduras denounced the attack
only after a senior American diplo
mat pressed them for a more public
reaction. He said the administration
wanted such a statement to help it
get money from Congress to arm re
bels fighting Nicargua’s leftist gov
ernment.
Asked specifically about the inter
view, Speakes said, “The allegations
of U.S. pressure reportedly made by
an unidentified Honduran official
are not true. Those statements are a
surprise to us. . . .”
Reagan
condemns
bombing
SANTA BARBARA, Calif.
(AP) — President Reagan on
T hursday condemned the bomb
ing of TWA flight 840 as a “bar
baric, wanton act of international
terrorism” and said no individual
or group has been ruled out as
the perpetrator.
White House spokesman Larry
Speakes said Federal Aviation
Administration experts in explo
sives and security have arrived in
Italy and Greece and are investi
gating the in-flight bombing that
killed four Americans.
A group calling itself the Arab
Revolutionary Cell claimed re
sponsibility for planting the bomb
that exploded aboard the plane
over Greece, Speakes said, but no
group has been ruled out as being
responsible.
Libyan leader Moammar Kha-
dafy has denied involvement in
the attack. Although the White
House indicated from prelimi
nary investigation that Libya did
not appear to be involved,
Speakes said the North African
country has not definitely been
ruled out.
“We will not speculate on who
may be responsible,” he said. “We
have heard reports from Mr.
Khadafy (denying involvement).
We do not yet know who is re
sponsible. His denials, by them
selves, mean nothing.”
Despite the attack, which killed
four passengers and injured nine
others, the United States is not is
suing any international travelers’
advisories, Speakes said.
The traveling public, he said, is
aware of the dangers of terrorism
in traveling abroad.
The International Air Lines
Passenger Association, which said
it has 30,000 U.S. members, said
Thursday it was advising Ameri
cans not to travel in the Mediter
ranean area unless necessary.
Shuttle
ds lot
commission
■ WASHINGTON (AP) — With the en-
230i- Ijhusiastic concurrence of America’s most
experienced astronauts, the Challenger
■mmission on Thursday recommended
Hat an independent safety panel oversee
ppace shuttle travel to end a “kind of Rus-
aer " In roulette” in which NASA flies without
[fixing problems.
■The safety panel, suggested by astronaut
Henry Hartsfield, was instantly endorsed
° I commission chairman William P. Rogers,
who said “all of us think there should be an
heatfl independent safety panel of some kind.”
lie commissioner said an astronaut should
0 unie | on the P anel -
■ The commission, at the mid-point of its
iilddC' four-month life, heard four of America’s
post experienced astronauts say they did
jS tue n ot know or did not realize the seriousness
^ostef 0 ^ )OOSter rocket problems. They disagreed
' ai [ovei whether an escape mechanism should
beadded to the shuttle.
iThe astronauts’ ignorance about the
rocket problems was another N example of a
communications breakdown within the Na
tional Aeronautics and Space Administra
tion uncovered by the commission, which is
trying to find the cause of the Jan. 28 explo
sion that destroyed Challenger and killed
its crew of seven, including schoolteacher
Christa McAuliffe.
Chief astronaut John Young said “The
very biggest problem that must be solved
before the space shuttle flies again is com
munications. Unless we take very positive
steps to open safety communications and to
identify and fix, early on, safety problems,
we’re asking for another shuttle accident,”
Young said he personally favored estab
lishing “an agency-wide flight safety organi
zation similar to those of many airplane
programs,” but added he would support
any better safety mechanism the commis
sion recommends.
He added, “I wonder sometimes why, if
the space shuttle is inherently risky, why we
calls for neutral safety panel
should accept additional avoidable risks in
order to meet launch schedules, and we do
that sometimes.”
Arnold Aldrich, the shuttle program
manager at the Johnson Space ^Center in
Houston and a key official in deciding
when to launch, said some communications
breakdowns figured in the Challenger acci
dent.
One breakdown was that launch-eve con
cerns about the booster rocket’s perfor
mance in cold weather were not passed to
him, and another that he was not told about
extensive NASA reviews of the booster de
sign last summer.
After hearing Hartsfield describe the
shuttle as “the most magnificent and fantas
tic machine,” commission member Richard
P. Feynman commented that it is also a
risk) machine with flaws and difficulties.
“i tried to Figure out where the difficulty
is in this system that made it go wrong,” he
said. “The problem is communication and
that communication will be fixed if you
have the safety panel, if there is a member
of the astronauts on the safety panel, be
cause then you’ll be fully aware of all the
things that are unsafe.” •
NASA practice, Feynman said, is to re
view flight problems, agonize over them,
and then decide to fly despite the problems.
If nothing fails, he said, “it is suggested
therefore that that risk is no longer so high.
For the next flight, we can lower our stan
dards a little bit, because we got away with it
last time.”
“An argument is always given that last
time it worked,” said Feynman, a physicist
who has won the Nobel Prize. “It’s a kind of
Russian roulette. There was a risk, but you
got away with it. But it shouldn’t be done
over and over again. When I look at the re
views, I find perpetual movement heading
for trouble.”
Hartsfield had said the astronauts want
an independent safety observer in launch
decisions, “somebody that’s not worried
about programmatic issues or anything, but
just thinking safety.”
Although most astronauts have said they
never heard of problems with O-ring seals
on the shuttle’s booster rockets, astronaut
Robert Crippen testified he had been told
in a formal flight review in January 1985
that a leak was detected. Crippen was rep
resenting all the astronauts in that review.
“In truth, in my perception, it wasn’t that
much of a big deal,” Crippen said, adding
that he was not aware that a waiver had
been issued which, in effect, acknowledged
that catastrophe could result if the seal
failed.
“If I had been aware of the change,” he
said, “I would have taken the problem
much more seriously.”