The Battalion
ol. 82 No. 69 CISPS 045360 12 pages College Station, Texas Monday, December 8, 1986
otton Club
Vith Steve Duke playing Santa Claus, Scott Welch (left), Frank
fonlin, Randy Abernathy and Ron Davis spend the weekend
Photo by Doug LaRue
in front of G. Rollie White Coliseum, hoping to beat the rush
for Cotton Bowl tickets, which go on sale today.
U.S. copters
carry troops
in Honduras
Official: Reagan OK'd airlift;
U.S. not involved in fighting
dvice from State
ignored in history
Students challenge
reform bill in France
■ASHINGTON (AP) — When
Esident Reagan rejected George P.
lull/ s warning against selling arms
bian, he was following a time-hon-
Sred presidential tradition: ignoring
jivicr from secretaries of state.
: But amid the furor over the arms
ales and evidence from opinion
i»lls that most people think Shultz
raslight, Reagan may take solace in
tnowing he’s in company with
3e6rge Washington, Abraham Lin-
»ln and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
As recently as Reagan’s first term,
Hetary of State Alexander M.
laig Jr. spent 18 stormy months
ighting to be the “vicar” of U.S. for-
ign policy. After he lost the battle
agan says
istakes’
were made
WASHINGTON (AP) — Presi-
Int Reagan, adopting a conciliatory
Mamid unrelenting criticism over
Becret arms deals with Iran and
lyhients to Nicaraguan rebels, said
|u|rday that mistakes were made in
Bung out his policies and pledged
things right.”
Vet Reagan defended his policy of
Bing out to Iran.
gtWliile we’re still seeking all the
B, it’s obvious that the execution
Ithese policies was flawed and mis-
Bwere made,” Reagan said in his
Weklv radio address.
Ragan continued to deny that he
Battempted to swap arms for hos-
togesand promised that his adminis-
Bn would get to the bottom of
BU.S. arms were sold to Iran and
tome proceeds sent to Nicaraguan
“fitras.
[ "It was not my intent to do busi-
Bwith (Ayatollah Ruhollah) Kho-
Bi, nor to undercut our policy of
Mi-terrorism,” Reagan said.
^Reagan said Nov. 25, when the
^ministration disclosed that up to
■million of the money paid for
•i-S. arms shipped to Iran was sent
| l.S.-backed Nicaraguan rebels,
Bone element of the implementa-
i°n of his policy was “seriously
jaWed.” His Saturday statement was
Bfirst time he has referred to
mistakes,” but he did not outline
he errors.
Senate Republican leader Bob
Mjf! said Reagan’s concession “goes
long way toward” improving his
plbility.
T think he’s sticking by his policy
improving relations with Iran,”
1
|°le said, but added that he thinks
lagan’s reference to “mistakes” be-
3 Blade implies that he, the presi-
e nt. shares blame.
in the Democratic response,
Wse Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill
See Mistakes, page 12
and resigned, Haig wrote a bitter
memoir accusing the White House
staff of undermining him.
Secretary of State Thomas Jeffer
son resigned in 1793 when he grew
weary of President Washington tak
ing the advice of pro-British col
leagues.
Seven decades later, Lincoln con
tinuously reversed Secretary of State
William H. Seward. As presidency
expert Louis W. Koenig chronicled
in his 1964 classic, “The Chief Exec
utive,” Seward once offered to re
lieve Lincoln of the arduous task of
formulating policies. Lincoln wrote
back, in effect, “Don’t bother.”
Jimmy Carter overruled Secretary
of State Cyrus R. Vance’s advice
against trying to rescue U.S. hos
tages in Iran. Vance resigned after
the attempt ended in disaster.
In the current case, Reagan ap
parently overruled Shultz’s advice
last winter and organized a White
House-run initiative that included
selling arms to Iran at a time when
the administration was publicly
trumpeting its view that that country
was a nest of terrorists. By all ac
counts, the State Department took
no active part in the policy.
Why do presidents sometimes ig
nore the advice of men they have se
lected as the titular head of the U.S.
foreign policy establishment?
In recent years, presidents have
believed that the State Department’s
ballooning bureaucracy is too cum
bersome for action or adequate deci
sion-making. Carter, as well as Rich
ard M. Nixon in his first term, relied
predominantly on their personal na
tional security advisers to make deci
sions.
Some secretaries, appointed for
political reasons, were cut out of pol
icy making from the first day.
Henry Kissinger, who ran Nixon’s
foreign policy apparatus from the
National Security Council from 1969
to 1973, said Nixon didn’t even in
vite Secretary of State William Rog
ers to the first presidential meeting
with the Soviet ambassador to Wash
ington.
According to Kissinger, Nixon
“moved sensitive negotiations into
the White House where he could su
pervise them directly, get the credit
personally and avoid the bu
reaucratic disputes or inertia that he
found so distasteful.”
John F. Kennedy also complained
of such inertia and sent his brother
Robert on a few foreign missions.
Since Shultz took office in 1982,
there has been no evidence that he
has been cut out in such a way.
Shultz has been the leading figure in
talks with the Soviets and has gotten
his way on most anti-terrorism poli
cies. And no national security ad
viser has dominated policy in the
Reagan administration as did Kissin
ger or Carter’s aide Zbigniew
Brzezinski.
PARIS (AP) — Student protests
against a university reform bill wid
ened into a general challenge of the
conservative government Sunday as
union leaders joined students in call
ing for nationwide demonstrations.
Dozens of people clashed with
about 500 police in the Latin Quar
ter student district.
At least 68 people were injured.
Premier Jacques Chirac, faced
with one of the greatest political
crises of his nine months in office,
appealed for calm.
His interior minister, Charles Pas-
qua, promised a full investigation
into the death Saturday of a 22-year-
old student following what witnesses
said was a beating by police.
Protests against the reform bill be
gan three weeks ago but escalated in
the last few days.
The government says the bill
would make universities more com
petitive, but students say it would
make higher education elitist.
The students’ national coordinat
ing committee called for national
demonstrations this Wednesday and
invited unions and other organiza
tions to join in opposing the reform
bill and police “repression.”
The Communist-led General
Confederation of Labor, France’s
largest union federation, urged
members tojoin in Dec. 10 strikes.
Education Minister Rene Monory
said Friday that the three most con
troversial provisions of the bill
would be studied further, but that
parliamentary debate would con
tinue on the rest of the measure.
The Devaquet bill would let uni
versities set their own admission and
curriculum standards.
Universities also would be allowed
to orient students into a field of
study corresponding to the students’
aptitude, and not necessarily to their
wishes.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. he
licopters, with President Reagan’s
approval, on Sunday began airlifting
Honduran troops to within 25 miles
of a battle with about 1,000 Nicra-
guan troops that have crossed into
Honduras, a State Department
spokesman said.
Gregory Lagana said no Ameri
cans were involved in the fighting,
and they were under orders to re
main at least 25 miles away, in keep
ing with congressional restrictions
on the use of U.S. forces along the
border dividing Honduras, a U.S.
ally, from Nicaragua, governed by
the leftist Sandinistas.
A statement released late Sunday
by the State Department said on Sat
urday night that Reagan, after con
sulting with his senior advisers,
agreed to provide the requested air
lift support using U.S. military heli
copters located at Honduras’ Palme-
rola air base, near Comayagua.
The airlift began Sunday af
ternoon and will conclude sometime
today, the statement said.
In Nicaragua Sunday, Foreign
Minister Miguel D’Escoto denied
that any Nicaraguan troops were in
Honduras and claimed instead that
U.S. warplanes bombed two Nicara
guan villages Sunday afternoon,
wounding eight people.
“Today Nicaragua has been the
object of a series of air bombard
ments in the northern zone of the
country,” D’Escoto said during a
news conference in Managua. “Ev
erything indicates that the planes
that have penetrated our territory
and bombed different populations
are North American planes.”
However, Dan Howard, a White
House spokesman, discounted D’E-
scoto’s assertion, saying, “It’s not for
me to say what’s happening. It’s for
the government in Honduras to
say.”
The Honduran government has
claimed a Nicaraguan incursion.
Michael O’Brien, a U.S. Embassy
spokesman in Tegicugalpa, Hondu
ras, went further in denying D’Esco-
to’s charge, calling it completely
false.
“This is obviously another exam
ple of Sandinista disinformation,”
O’Brian said. “It’s a maneuver by the
Nicaraguan regime to distract public
attention from the Sandinista ag
gression against Honduras.”
He said that no U.S. military
plane is operating on the Nicara
guan border.
Lagana said “there had been a se
ries of harassing actions last week,
patrols moving across the border.
Then on Thursday, 200 Sandinista
troops overran a Honduran position
manned by 16 to 20 Honduran sol
diers.”
The attack came in an area not far
from positions occupied by U.S.-
backed Contra rebels, Lagana said,
“but we have no doubt that the
Sandinistas knew they were attack
ing Honduran positions.”
The State Department statement
said the Honduran government for
mally protested the Nicaraguan at
tack Friday, but “the protest was re
jected by the Sandinistas.”
The following day, the Honduran
armed forces “verified the presence
in Honduras of a Sandinista force . .
. and confirmed continuing Sandi-
. nista attacks against Honduran mili
tary outposts well within Honduras,”
the statement said.
Late Saturday afternoon, “the
Honduran armed forces launched
air strikes against Sandinista targets
within Honduras,” the statement
said, and the government of Hondu
ras requested U.S. airlift assistance.
Incursions by Sandinista forces
chasing the Contras into Honduras
are frequent, according to U.S. gov
ernment reports, but the Honduran
armed forces ordinarily stay out of
the fighting.
A Pentagon source, speaking on
condition of anonymity, said, “Their
hands were forced this time.”
One administration source specu
lated that the Nicaraguans crossed
the border “to turn up the heat on
the Hondurans, to let them know
that there is a price to be paid” for
close association with the United
States.
U.S. officials said they would not
provide further details on how many
U.S. forces or helicopters were in
volved in the airlift until “that infor
mation would no longer be of mili
tary value to the Sandinistas.”
Pentagon spokesman Col. Arnold
Williams said he was unable to say
immediately how many U.S. troops
are in Honduras.
Last March, 2,900 were there, and
the number rose to 4,600 last May.
Whiteley
honored
at funeral
By Rodney Rather
Staff Writer
A riderless horse led a funeral
procession through the Texas
A&M campus Friday as mourners
honored Dr. Eli L. Whiteley, a
Medal of Honor recipient and
A&M professor emeritus of soil and
crop sciences who died Tuesday at
72.
A 1941 A&M graduate, Whiteley
was the last survivor of eight Aggie
Medal of Honor recipients. He re
ceived the Medal of Honor for kill
ing seven enemy soldiers and cap
turing 23 others while fighting
from house-to-house in the village
of Sigolsheim, France, on Dec. 7,
1944.
The lead horse — laden with a
saddle adorned with only a pair of
cavalry boots facing backward in its
stirrups and a saber — embodies a
cavalry tradition symbolizing that
the rider no longer will mount his
horse.
Included in the procession was a
wagon carrying Whiteley’s casket,
which was accompanied by seven
riders of Parsons’ Mounted Cavalry
and a detachment of six soldiers
from Fort Hood.
About 120 people followed as the
somber parade moved from Rud
der Tower, along Lubbock Street
and Main Drive to the east entrance
of campus, where the casket was
transferred to a hearse and driven
to College Station City Cemetery
for a military interment.
At the funeral service, held in
Photo by Tom Ownbey
Members of the Fort Hood Honor Guard salute during the funeral of Dr. Eli L. Whiteley.
Rudder Theater, Whiteley was eu
logized by his daughter, Ruth
Whiteley.
“This day will serve as a re
minder that the man we are paying
tribute to, Eli Lamar Whiteley, was
dedicated to the principles that
made this nation great,” Whiteley
said.
“He was willing to risk his life, so
that this nation might live,” she
said.
She also read excerpts from
Whiteley’s writings.
“Those of us who are fortunate
enough to wear the Medal of
Honor know there is a very thin
line between life and death,” she
read from her father’s writings.
“We also know there are many
other members of the armed serv
ices who perform the deeds that
merit the medal.
“We, therefore, are the selected
few who are given the privilege of
wearing the Medal of Honor. We
must always continue to hold up the
pyramid of honor that surrounds
the Medal of Honor.”
Speaking on the behalf of A&M,
Associate Provost Dr. Jerry Gaston
also praised Whiteley’s bravery and
valor, but expressed hope that no
other Aggies will have to face the
horrors of war that Whiteley did.