Monday, October 27, 1986
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Texas trends focus
of A&M symposium
Millionaire says state should rely on itself
lOBocracy
lie Field falls under MOB rule during the half-
me show of Rice University’s Marching Owl Band
Iturday at the A&rM-Rice game. The band’s per-
Photo by Anthony S. Casper
formance featured a “salute to immigrants” which
included this tribute to “synchronized swimmers”
crossing the Texas-Mexico border.
By Olivier Uyttebrouck
Staff Writer
Texas needs to rely on its own
qualities and strengths to dig its way
out of the current economic slump
rather than trying to play “catchup”
with states like Massachusetts and
California, Midland businessman
Clayton Williams said Friday.
Williams spoke in Rudder The
ater as part of the “Texastrends”
symposium sponsored by the Memo
rial Student Center’s Great Issues
Committee.
“I believe we have to take what we
have — which is agriculture and
entrepreneurship — and move with
that, rather than playing copycat,”
said Williams, who earned an animal
husbandry degree at A&M in 1954.
“The role of higher education is
absolutely critical, but it alone can’t
carry the burden of bringing Texas
out of the slump,” Williams said.
He said entrepreneurs will play a
key role in diversifying the state’s
economy, as they have in other
states.
“They (Massachusetts) have made
that move to high-tech and I’m sure
that MIT and Harvard helped, but
there were a lot of other things hap
pening there,” he said.
Williams referred to himself as a
microcosm of Texas since his diverse
business enterprises represent many
of the state’s major industries, in
cluding oil and gas, banking, real es
tate, and agriculture. For this rea
son, his own business experiences
are representative of the state’s
economy as a whole, he said.
“For a period of time I really be
lieved . . . that I was going to build a
major oil company,” he said. “My
production reached 15,000 barrels a
day very quickly. I had several hun
dred thousand other acres under
lease and I thought it was all going to
produce. ... I thought I was 6-foot-2
and handsome.
“I doubled my assets every year
for 25 years. If you’re not careful, in
those 25 years you can be fooled into
thinking you know what you’re
doing.”
Williams said he’s kept his compa
nies profitable by scaling down his
Photo by Tom Ownbey
Clayton Williams, speaking at the Texastrends Symposium Friday,
jokingly prays for the intelligence to keep him out of the banking
business in the future. “I got into real estate and banking by mis
take,” he said, “and I admit it, God, and I’ll never do it again.” See
related stories, page 6.
business six times in the past four
years and by moving into new, more
promising ventures such as commu
nications.
Williams first got into the long
distance telephone business to solve
a problem that arose in one of his
real estate ventures, he said. In the
early 1980s, Williams built a large of
fice complex in Midland, but it
would have taken six months for
AT&T to hook up the plaza for
long-distance telephone service, he
said.
In the meantime, the office com
plex stood empty at a cost of $4,500
a day. One of the younger men in
the company suggested the company
buy its own long-distance equip
ment. The complex was ready for
occupancy within three months.
A short time after that, Williams
built the first digital system between
Midland and Dallas to cut down his
company’s communications ex
penses. Today, communications is
the fastest growing of Williams’
many business interests and it is
challenging AT&T and other large
telecommunications companies for
new business.
“That company grew 20 percent a
month in the first year through the
toughest times Texas has seen,” he
said.
The company now has 51,000 cus
tomers and continues to grow at a
rate of 10 percent a month, he
added.
“We had a company that had to
find its niche in a changing world,”
Williams said. “With the deregu
lation of AT&T you had many,
many'opportunities open up.”
Williams’ stance on university
funding is not one that will endear
him to educators, however. In the
past he has refused to lobby for
continuing large-scale university
budgets, especially in the area of ge
osciences, he said.
“Nobody should be exempt from
what I’ve been through,” he said.
Williams now has nearly as many
employees as he did at the height of
the oil boom in 1981, but less than
half as many are working with oil
and gas now, he said.
•pe calls
irldwide
ice today
PERUGIA, Italy (AP) — Pope
John Paul II, greeted Sunday by
thom nds of people singing “We
Shall theirome,” said his call for a
worldwide truce today may seem
utppian to some people, but not to
those who believe in God.
||Th( pope condemned what he
called the “culture of contempt”
which regards other cultures as
primitive, insignificant and unwor-
thy. Such an attitude, he said, leads
toa‘culture of death, a culture of vi
olence and a culture of evil.”
^He pope has called on warring
factions everywhere to lay down
pjgtjarms for 24 hours today.
was scheduled to spend today
inijss.si, 15 miles from this central
city, to pray and fast for nine
houife along with leaders of 1 1 other
religions.
Perugia, a historic city adorned
with medieval buildings and
iafciu s, thousands of people lined
thesireets Sunday to hear the pon-
tiff.
Ini the central Piazza IV No-
rembie, the pope was greeted by
about 8,000 people waving handker
chiefs in various colours. A group of
American students led the crowd in
singing the song,“We Shall Over-
in English.
!“No one can hide the great diffi
culties of our time . . . holding entire
humanity in bondage of great fear,”
said |he pope, standing under a can-
apy pn the steps of the Cathedral of
San Li trenzo overlooking the square.
r“T1)c prayer gathering in Assisi is
for dialogue, peace and hope,” he
said. Tt may seem as utopian to
some, but it is not so for all those
whoftjelieve, for those who take God
tnd his words seriously.”
He stressed the church’s commit
ment to promoting “an authentic
spomaneous and true dialogue.”
Vatican officials, meanwhile, said
they were heartened by the re
sponses from governments and in
surgent groups to the pope’s call for
in international truce.
Paper: Syrian worked undercover at embassy
LONDON (AP) — A newspaper
reported Sunday that an undercover
Syrian agent worked as a clerk for 20
years in the British Embassy in Dam
ascus and tricked a diplomat there
into signing a visa for Nezar Hin-
dawi.
Hindawi was convicted Friday of
planting a bomb in luggage his girl
friend tried to bring aboard an Is
raeli airliner April 17.
Britain accused Syria’s govern
ment of aiding him and broke diplo
matic relations.
The Sunday Times said Syrian in
telligence placed a Palestinian man
in the British Embassy’s visa section,
and that he persuaded embassy sec
ond secretary Anthony Arnold to
sign Hindawi’s visa “as a matter of
routine-.”
It said the man’s role was revealed
by a Foreign Office investigative
team that went to the British Em
bassy in Damascus after Hindawi’s
arrest.
The report did not identify its
sources.
In Tel Aviv, meanwhile, an Israeli
expert on Syria said Hindawi was
under orders from Syrian air force
intelligence chief Gen. Mohammed
el-Khouli to blow up the Israeli El A1
plane. El-Khouli reports to Syrian
President Hafez Assad.
The Israeli expert, Yossi Olmert,
spoke on Israel radio and said his in
formation came from evidence sup
plied to Britain and Hindawi’s own
testimony. He did not elaborate.
The Sunday Times did not iden
tify the Palestinian clerk who alleg
edly worked for Syria, but said he
was a senior assistant in the visa sec
tion.
It said he was about 50 years old
and had gone to Syria as a child.
After Hindawi was arrested in
April, the Palestinian disappeared
from his job and now may be in the
United States, the newspaper said.
When he disappeared, so did the
embassy’s records of Hindawi’s visa
applications and those of several
Syrians who were given British visas,
the paper said.
The British Foreign Office con
firmed that the senior assistant and a
receptionist quit their jobs at the em
bassy after Hindawi’s arrest, but re
fused to comment on the circum
stances.
Employee held hostage in 7-11 store
A&M student ‘feared for life’ in robbery
By Mike Sullivan
Staff Writer
A Texas A&M student held hos
tage for more than 20 minutes dur
ing the robbery attempt early
Wednesday morning of a College
Station 7-11 store said he feared for
his life throughout the ordeal.
Jeff Mukogosi, a senior mechani
cal engineering student from Kenya,
said he was training for a night posi
tion at the 7-11 at 101 Southwest
Parkway when the robbery took
place.
Mukogosi said a gun was held to
his head by one of the three masked
intruders throughout most of the
robbery and that the intruders
threatened to “blow his brains out”
several times.
He also said that he was nearly
shot by police officers at three dif
ferent times.
“I just came out of it miraculously,
and thank God I’m here,” Mukogosi
said.
The robbery ended after two Col
lege Station police officers shot and
killed one intruder and wounded
the other two. Three hostages were
taken by the intruders, but none
were harmed.
Mukogosi said he credits the
A&M student who saw the robbery
in progress and called College Sta
tion police for helping save his life.
Mukogosi said he learned later at
the police station that the student
stopped at the 7-11 on his way home
from the library and saw the robbery
in progress.
The student left the scene, went to
his apartment and called the police,
Mukogosi said.
College Station Police Capt. John
Kennedy said police are not releas
ing the name of the student because
he is a witness.
Kennedy said the department is
also withholding the names of the
two officers who did the shooting so
they won’t be disturbed.
He said the officers were given
several days off to recuperate.
Mukogosi said the robbery began
about 2 a.m. when three masked
men, one carrying a shotgun, one
holding a machete and one un
armed, walked into the store.
He said the intruders ordered
him and the manager, Coleman
Conner, the only people in the store
at the time, to lie on the floor at the
back of the store.
“At that point he (one of the in
truders) went into my pockets and
he picked out my wallet,” Mukogosi
said.
He said the intruder took five dol
lars out of his wallet and then threw
the wallet and the papers in it on the
floor.
Then, Mukogosi said, one of the
intruders made him get up and go
into the walk-in cooler where the in
truder made him lie on the floor.
“All this time he had his gun di
rectly above my head,” Mukogosi
said. “He kept telling me that if I
made any move, he’d blow my brains
out.”
While this was happening, Con
ner said he was at the front counter
being ordered by the other two in
truders to empty the cash register.
As he was emptying the register, a
customer pulled up to the store and
came in, Conner said.
He said that before the customer
came into the store, the two intrud
ers hid. One ducked below the coun
ter and the other slipped behind an
office door, Conner said. He said the
man behind the office door had a
gun pointed at him.
The customer, James F. Crouch
of Millican, said he was coming
home from his job at St. Joseph Hos
pital when he decided to stop and
get a cup of coffee.
Crouch said he went to the back of
the store to pour himself a cup of
coffee and then noticed Mukogosi’s
wallet and papers strewn on the
floor.
“I turned around and told the
manager there was a billfold laying
there, and he asked me if I would
bring it to him,” Crouch said. “I was
down there picking it up, and the
next thing I knew there was a gun at
the back of my head.”
Mukogosi said one of the intrud
ers put Crouch in the walk-in cooler,
and both he and Crouch were forced
to lie on the cooler floor as one in
truder guarded them.
Conner said one of the intruders
was taking beer and cigarettes out of
the store and loading it into his car
when the police pulled up.
The two intruders ran to the back
of the store, and that’s when Conner
said he was left alone and locked
himself in the office behind the
counter.
Mukogosi said the two intruders
came into the walk-in cooler at that
point and began speaking with the
third intruder in Spanish.
Crouch said the intruders took
him and Mukogosi out of the cooler
and used them as shields as all of the
men walked down a short, narrow
hallway toward the back door of the
building.
Crouch said he couldn’t tell
whether the intruder had a gun on
him or not, but he could see that one
of the other intruders was holding a
shotgun to Mukogosi’s head.
When the intruders realized the
building had been surrounded by
police, Crouch said, the intruder
holding him pulled him back into
the main area of the store and
started pushing him toward the
front door.
“He (the intruder) was trying to
use me as a shield,” Crouch said. “I
Figured the officers weren’t going to
shoot me to try to get him (the in
truder) so I pulled a fainting stunt
on him (the intruder) and hit the
floor.”
At that time the intruder holding
Crouch ran to the hallway area at the
back of the store where the other
men were, and two police officers
came in through the front door,
Crouch said. Crouch said he ran out
the front door at that point.
Mukogosi said he was the only
hostage left with the intruders, and
the intruders were still trying to get
out the back door.
“This is one point w'here I just
missed death because I was the one
who pushed open the back door,
and the officers were out there just
ready to shoot whoever they saw,”
Mukogosi said.
He said that later at the police sta
tion the officer who almost shot him,
came up and hugged him and apol
ogized.
Mukogosi said, “He came and
hugged me and said ‘I don’t under
stand why I didn’t shoot, I almost
shot.’ ”
Mukogosi said the officer said he
thought Mukogosi was one of the in
truders.
After that, Mukogosi said, the in-
See Hostage, page 12