The Battalion
Vol.82 Mo.84 GSPS 045360 12 pages College Station, Texas Monday, January 26, 1987
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Card Shark
Tory Gattis puts the finishing touches on a card
bridge during a contest held this weekend by the
Photo by Lucy Bowen
Society of Women Engineers to interest high
school students in engineering.
Iranian group claims
it abducted teachers
Military action urged
in Beirut kidnapping
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) — An
anonymous caller Sunday claimed
the weekend abduction of three
American teachers and an Indian
professor in the name of an under
ground group linked to Iran and
threatened to kill them if the United
States helps Iraq.
An earlier caller, also claiming to
speak for the Organization of the
Oppressed on Earth, said the educa
tors were grabbed on Saturday to
prevent the extradition from West
Germany to the United States of Mo
hammed Ali Hamadi, a Lebanese
man sought in a 1985 TWA hijack
ing.
Twenty-three foreigners now are
reported missing and believed kid
napped in Lebanon, including eight
seized since Anglican Church envoy
Terry Waite arrived in Beirut on
Jan. 12 on a mission to seek the re
lease of hostages.
The Christian Voice of Lebanon
radio station said it received the two
calls Sunday, but it was not clear if
they were made by the same man.
The calls could not be authenti
cated. The extremist Shiite Moslem
group usually delivers statements to
local newspapers or Western news
agencies when it wants to publicize a
claim, and the Voice of Lebanon has
been known to be inaccurate on
Moslem-related affairs.
The first caller said the group
would kill a hostage if Hamadi, 22,
were extradited to the United States,
where he is wanted on charges of air
piracy and murder in the June 1985
TWA hijacking to Beirut.
In the second call, a man said a
hostage would be killed if Hamadi
were not released by midnight (5
p.m. EST). It was not clear if the
caller referred to an American or to
other hostages.
The second call also said the hos
tages would be killed if the United
States provided support for Iraq, at
war with Iran since September 1980.
“We ask U.S. President Ronald
Reagan not to intervene in the Gulf
War and not to provide assistance to
the Iraqi authorities,” the man said
in Lebanese-accented Arabic. “The
(American) hostages will be wasted if
he fails to do so.”
The three Americans kidnapped
from Beirut University College on
Saturday night by gunmen disguised
as police were Alann Steen, 48, a
WASHINGTON (AP) — The
chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee said Sunday
that President Reagan should
consider military action in the lat
est kidnapping of three Ameri
cans in Beirut if the hostage-tak
ers carry out a threat to kill the
U.S. citizens.
Sen. Claiborne Pell, D-R.L,
said Reagan should take “pretty
hard” action against Iran if there
is “clear evidence” that Iran is be
hind the latest kidnapping, which
occurred Saturday. However, Pell
added, “if it’s a group without any
government connection, then . . .
there really is no good solution.”
Both Pell and Treasury Secre
tary James Baker also said they
think any Americans remaining
in Beirut should leave.
journalism professor who formerly
taught at three northern California
colleges; Jesse Turner, an Idaho na
tive, assistant instructor of math
ematics and computer sciences; and
Robert Polhill, 53, assistant profes
sor of business studies.
The Indian was identified as Mi-
thileshwar Singh, chairman of the
business studies division and a legal
resident alien of the United States.
Waite, personal emissary of Arch
bishop of Canterbury Robert Run-
cie, remained out of sight Sunday
for a sixth day. He was negotiating
in secret with Islamic Jihad, captors
of two Americans held in Lebanon
since 1985 — Terry Anderson, 39,
chief Middle East correspondent for
the Associated Press, and Thomas
Sutherland, acting dean of agricul
ture at the American University of
Beirut.
The Church of England said in
London on Sunday that Waite was in
“good hands” and pursuing his ne
gotiations.
U.S. Ambassador John Kelly held
crisis talks Sunday with senior aides
in Christian east Beirut. He also had
Pell, appearing on ABC-TV’s
“This Week with David Brink-
ley,” said there’s not much that
Reagan can do to win the release
of the three new hostages, who
were abducted from the campus
of Beirut University College.
“I don’t envy the president, the
situation he’s in now,” Pell said.
Baker, a member of the Na
tional Security Council, said on
NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press,”
there was no clear reason for the
kidnapping.
“We’re not sure who took
them,” he said. “No one has yet
claimed responsibility for it.”
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., in a
telephone interview Sunday,
agreed with Pell that “we’ve got a
terrible anti-terrorist policy. It’s
in a shambles.”
met them late Saturday after the ab
ductions.
The kidnappers claimed to be po
lice assigned to protect the foreign
staff at Beirut University College.
They assembled the foreigners in a
ground-floor office, picked the four
men and forced them at gunpoint
into a jeep that sped away.
The university, which has about
3,000 students, announced Sunday
that classes would be suspended un
til further notice.
Anonymous callers claiming to
speak for the Organization of the
Oppressed on Earth claimed respon
sibility for kidnapping two people
from west Beirut on Friday, saying
they were West Germans.
But police said Sunday the two
men abducted were Armenian Leb
anese who may have been mistaken
for foreigners because of their blond
hair and fair skin.
The foreigners missing in Leb
anon are eight Americans, six
Frenchmen, two Britons, two West
Germans, one Irishman, one Italian,
one South Korean, one Saudi Ara
bian and one Indian.
&M student dies in San Antonio hospital
in ran
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By Sue Krenek
Staff Writer
A Texas A&M student who was
seriously injured in a Jan. 17 car ac-
Kident in Fredericksburg died Fri-
; May. hospital and Department of
M’ublic Safety officials said Sunday.
I Gregory Treibs, 22, a senior bi-
HKimedical science major from Fred
ericksburg, was pronounced dead at
3:48 p.m. Friday at St. Luke’s Hospi-
v tal in San Antonio, DPS trooper Ray
mond Krauss said.
Two other A&M students and a
former student were killed in the ac
cident and one student was injured.
Erwin James Montgomery, a
sophomore business administration
major who was injured in the acci
dent, was released from Hill Coun
try Memorial Hospital Thursday, a
hospital spokesman said.
A&M students Kevin Frank
Boeck, a senior agricultural econom
ics major, and Mark Werner Eberle,
a sophomore business administra
tion major, were killed in the acci
dent.
The car’s driver, Gregory Scott
Sultemeier, also was pronounced
dead at the scene of the accident.
Sultemeier last attended A&M in
Fall 1984.
Two non-students also were in
jured in the accident.
Gail Jung remains in stable condi
tion at Hill Country Memorial Hos
pital in Fredericksburg, a hospital
spokesman said, and Tina Hartman
has been released.
DPS reports show that the acci
dent occurred on Jan. 17 when a
GMC Jimmy driven by Sultemeier
ran off State Highway 16 north of
Fredericksburg and struck a tree.
The report said the weather —
heavy fog mixed with light rain —
contributed to the accident.
Krauss said funeral arrangements
will be made through the Schaetter
Funeral Home in Fredericksburg.
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Fire school dropped from cleanup list
A&M landfill gets monitoring wells
By Olivier Uyttebrouck
Senior Staff Writer
The Texas A&M Brayton Fireman Training
(Field has not made the final list of state Super
fund sites and is no longer being considered for
cleanup by the Texas Water Commission, state
jfficials have said.
In a related development, five monitoring
wells were completed Wednesday in the vicinity
of a toxic waste landfill on the fire school
'grounds, school officials said.
The wells, ranging from 35 feet to 50 feet in
depth, will allow water samples to be drawn from
soil beneath the landfill, school training specialist
. om Foster said.
Texas Water Commission records note that
the landfill consists of 13,000 cubic yards of con
taminated soils dredged out of the school’s drain
age pond system in 1980 after a variety of toxic
substances, including such carcinogens as ben
zene, toluene and PCBs, were found in pond wa
ter and bottom sediments.
Now that the wells are in place, however, it
isn’t certain when, or if, samples will be drawn
from the wells and tested. Neither the Texas Wa
ter Commission nor the training school has any
immediate plans to make use of the new wells.
“There’s no sampling schedule — no require
ment that we take weekly samples, monthly sam-
Iples or anything like that,” said Milton Radke, as
sociate director for programs of the Texas
engineering Extension Service. “The wells were
)ut in so that if the water commission wants to
come down and take samples from them, it can.
I “There’s been no commitment on the part of
Neither party — the water commission or ours —
to sample on a regular basis. We’ll probably pull a
sample on an irregular basis.”
To fulfill its permit requirements with the
Texas Water Commission, the school has to test
the water it discharges from its pond system into
White Creek, a tributary of the Navasota River.
For this purpose, A&M employs Aqua Tech, a
Hearne company, to test the school’s discharge
water.
But Radke says he has no plans to have Aqua
Tech test samples from the new monitoring
wells.
“We may ask them (Aqua Tech) to do it,” he
said.
Christy Smith, section chief of the Texas Wa
ter Commission’s Superfund section said that on
the basis of tests the state conducted at the school
in October 1985, the school doesn’t rate as a haz
ardous waste site as defined by her office.
“Only heavy metals and ignitable substances
are considered hazardous,” Smith said. “PCBs
are not hazardous waste.
“We did some detailed sampling at the site and
did not confirm the presence of hazardous waste
from the samples taken previously both by us
and A&M.
“If we can’t confirm there’s hazardous waste at
the site, its not within our legal authority to con
tinue looking at the site.”
State records show that no testing was done for
PCBs in the soil and water samples taken at the
school in October 1985. The October tests were
conducted by a Dallas firm contracted by the
state.
“If toluene or benzene are found in the
groundwater, then the Texas Water Commission
has the authority to look at that,” Smith said.
Toluene and benzene are two of the other
toxic substances the state found in the school’s
pond water and bottom sediments in 1979.
In July of that year, an equipment failure at
the school caused 200 gallons of fuel oil to spill
into White Creek, resulting in a large fish kill.
In the investigation that followed, the now-de-
funct Texas Department of Water Resources
found low concentrations of PCBs, benzene and
toluene in the waste oils the school was burning
in its fire-fighting exercises.
At that time, the school accepted waste oils do
nated by various Gulf Coast refineries, news sto
ries reported. The stories noted that officials
conducting the investigation suggested that the
companies may have used the donated oils as a
conduit for the illicit disposal of hazardous waste.
The school no longer accepts donated waste
oils, Radke said.
As a result of the investigation, 13,000 cubic
yards of contaminated soil was dredged out of
the school’s three drainage ponds and buried on
school grounds, Texas Water Commission re
cords show.
The landfill was built according to the specifi
cations of the Texas Department of Water Re
sources.
Also, 18,000 gallons of oil were siphoned off
from one of the school’s three drainage ponds
and stored in a tank on the school grounds,
Texas Water Commission records note. The re
cords show that although A&M hired a Houston
firm, Detox, to treat the oil to remove the PCBs,
other toxic substances persist in high concentra
tions in the oil.
See Wells, page 12
Chinese accuse
student of giving
data to journalist
PEKING (AP) —- Authorities
arrested a student accused of giv
ing information to an American
reporter in what appeared to be
the first move against the press in
China’s anti-Westernization cam
paign, the official news media
said Sunday.
The official Xinhua News
Agency said Lin Jie, a student of
Tianjin University, was arrested
for “his secret collusion with and
providing intelligence to” Law
rence MacDonald, reporter for
the French news agency Agence
France-Presse.
The report said conclusive evi-.,
dence was obtained by the Tian
jin office of the State Security Bu
reau, a secretive organization
responsible for China’s external
security.
The French news agency’s Pe
king bureau issued a statement
saying, “Agence France-Presse
states that it knows nothing about
all accusations against Mr. Mac
Donald and only learned about
this from a dispatch from the
New China (Xinhua) News
Agency.”
A U.S. Embassy official also
said he had heard nothing about-
criminal case involving the re
porter.
Lin could get up to life in
prison if convicted of passing
state secrets to an enemy of the
state.
MacDonald, 32, from Califor
nia, was in Hong Kong on Sun
day. He has reported extensively
on student activism that has led to
the massive campaign against
“bourgeois liberalization,” the
trend of favoring Western cul
ture and capitalism over socialism
and the Communist Party.
The report did not say if Lin
was involved in recent demon
strations, but the arrest appeared
to be a clear-cut warning to West
ern news organizations and their
Chinese sources.
The official press on several
occasions has criticized Voice of
America, the U.S. government-
funded radio station, for its “in
flammatory” reporting on stu
dent unrest.
The Western press also was
charged with egging on Peking
University students who this
month burned copies of the Pe
king Daily which contained com
mentaries highly critical of their
democracy movement.
The last foreign reporter to be
come involved in an investigation
of the State Security Bureau was
New York Times correspondent
John Burns, who was held for six
days on suspicion of intelligence
gathering before being deported
in July. He was never formally
charged.
The official press Sunday also
published one of the most scath
ing articles of the monthlong
campaign against Western liberal
ideas, saying the Communist
Party has serious discipline prob
lems and that some party mem
bers had become involved in
criminal activities.
The article did not mention
names, but appeared aimed at
Hu Yaobang, who was ousted as
party general secretary Jan. 17,
reportedly because he failed to
stem the growing trend of West
ernization and student unrest.
Hu’s downfall has not been ex
plained officially, although reli
able sources said he was specif
ically criticized in a major party
directive written by Bo Yibo, vice
chairman of the Central Advisory
Commission.