The Battalion
.82 No. 143 GSRS 045360 14 pages
College Station, Texas
Friday, April 24, 1987
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'HI not lx it
ommittee confirms
unding of Contras
bvestigators trace over $1 million
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IVASHINGTON (AP) — Con
gressional investigators, relying on
Swiss bank records and other
■terial provided by businessman
Stert Hakim, have confirmed the
Hersion of more than $1 million in
. Iranian arms sale profits to Contra
Kbtls fighting the Nicaraguan gov-
Bment, sources said Thursday.
now have a way to trace the
liey from Tehran” to the rebels,
said one source, who asked not to be
identified by name.
No precise estimate of the size of
the diversion was available, although
sources said investigators have told
members of House and Senate com
mittees that the amount was over $1
million.
It was not clear whether investiga
tors have been able to confirm a di
version in the range of $ 10 million to
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■ AUSTIN (AP) — The “open
ftntainer” bill that bars drinking
■hile driving won final House ap-
loval Thursday, sending it back
t| the Senate with minor amend-
tients.
I The measure would go to Gov.
flill Clements if the Senate con-
dns in the amendments, which
Rake no substantial changes in
ftp bill as approved by the Sen-
til'’
■ Clements supports the ban on
(linking alcoholic beverages
vliile driving, and, pending a re
view of the bill, plans to sign it
into law, according to Jay Rosser,
alpokesman for the governor.
■ House members gave voice-
vote final approval to the bill
Thursday.
■ ItiflVeddy had won preliminary
House approval Wednesday.
■Under the proposed law, po
lio could issue a summons to a
di ver caught drinking an alco
holic beverage.
■ The bill is somewhat weaker
than similar measures proposed
in past years in the Texas Legis
lature. Some of those proposals
would have allowed fines for
mere possession of alcoholic bev
erages by a driver.
The bill, authored by Sen. Bill
Sarpalius, D-Amarillo, won final
House approval with no debate.
Rep. Paul Moreno, D-El Paso, re
iterated his opposition to the bill.
During Wednesday debate,
Moreno called the measure “just
another of those bills that confuse
the public.
“You know very well that un
der present law if an officer sees a
driver with a can of beer in one
hand he is going to stop that
driver and see if he is drunk,” he
said.
But bill supporter Rep. Bill
Blackwood, R-Mesquite, said,
“People who operate a motor ve
hicle have a responsibility to op
erate it in a responsible manner.
And when a driver drinks in pub
lic it becomes a public matter.”
$30 million that Attorney General
Edwin Meese III referred to on Nov.
25, 1986, when he first disclosed the
movement of funds.
The confirmation of the diversion
by congressional investigators came
as Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii,
chairman of the Senate investigating
committee, told reporters that Sen
ate investigators probably will never
be able to trace the affair’s complex,
international money trail com
pletely.
Inouye said that “on a scale of 10,
we’ve got nine.”
Inouye spoke after a closed-door
committee session at which lawmak
ers voted limited immunity from
prosecution in order to compel the
testimony of two witnesses.
He described the two as “very mi
nor figures” but refused to identify
them.
Inouye also said that a key figure
in the case, former Air Force Major
Gen. Richard Secord, may agree to
testify voluntarily at committee hear
ings.
Other principal figures, including
former National Security Adviser
John Poindexter and his former
NSC aide, Oliver North, have cited
their constitutional rights against
self-incrimination in refusing to tes
tify.
Poindexter has been granted lim
ited immunity, and investigators are
expected to begin questioning him in
private on May 2 or shortly after.
The public hearings are sched
uled to begin on May 5 and last
through July.
Hakim was questioned under a
limited grant of immunity in Paris
on Monday, and the material he pro
vided gave investigators a major
break in their effort to track money
from the Middle East to Central
America.
It was not clear whether Hakim,
in addition to providing Swiss bank
records, also handed over records
from Caribbean bank acounts where
money reportedly was placed for use
by the Contras.
Here To Spay
Fourth-year veterinary student Cindy Allen fin
ishes spaying a pet ferret. Female ferret pets often
Photo by Bill Hughes
are spayed because they may die from blood loss if
they don’t mate when they are in heat.
)ffiCi
Jpeculator pleads guilty to violating SEC laws
■EW YORK (AP) — Ivan F. Boesky, the
millionaire stock speculator whose meteoric
I Ifvk Wall Street career crashed in an insider trad-
_ ingjscandal, pleaded guilty Thursday to one
com of violating federal securities laws.
■ Hi faces penalties of up to five years in
prison and a $250,000 fine when sentenced
Aug 21 by U.S. District Judge Morris E.
I’ 1- ' Lask;r.
irentsii’-jMajkgj-, who has a reputation among de-
fensi attorneys as a fair judge but a lenient
ll - 1 ftnttncer, cautioned Boesky that in view of
^yVo iplpublicity surrounding the case and the
to starts '''
rancisBrt'i
sentencing practices of some judges at Man
hattan federal court, “I want to talk turkey.”
He then asked Boesky if he understood
that it was in the judge’s power to sentence
him to the maximum. Boesky said he did.
The 50-year-old financier, looking sub
dued and exhausted, entered his plea in a
courtroom packed with nearly 200 reporters,
sketch artists, lawyers and other defendants.
He was released without bail and, flanked
by his two lawyers, left the courthouse
tographers swarmed around the limousine
that whisked him away.
The Securities and Exchange Commission
announced on Nov. 14 that Boesky had set
tled charges that he engaged in illegal insider
trading, or the illegal use of non-public infor
mation to profit from securities trades.
Boesky, who had been the leading specu
lator in stocks of companies that were poten
tial takeover targets, settled the charges by
paying the government $100 million. He
agreed to cooperate with the continuing in
vestigation into stock trading improprieties
and to plead guilty to a criminal charge which
was left unspecified until Thursday.
The count to which he pleaded guilty
charged him with conspiring to make false
statements to the SEC.
He admitted to conspiring with others,
who were not identified, to file a false regis
tration statement with respect to purchases of
stock in the Fischbach Corp. in 1984.
The registration statement must be filed
with the SEC when an individual or an entity
acquires at least 5 percent of a company’s
stock.
M professors plan research in hot field
Superconductivity studies proposed
By Olivier Uyttebrouck
Senior Staff Writer
iat t'ott '*
' werepotj
ipaitislu"
art. If' 1 ; I At least four Texas A&M profes-
Ijcdw fors are planning research projects
Spanish, Involving the new breed of high-
Spatiish temperature superconductors devel-
)a ignsa» l! |pe<! during the last yeai‘ and con-
:ores ' iden il io be at the cutting edge of
jtyofsilt physics.
its genet. Bi, t researchers are reluctant to
tionali 1 divulge many details concerning
i in ni' Ihesr projects, citing the “highly
oi.i' competitive atmosphere” that cur-
, !< rently reigns in the field of super-
kutcanfi conducting physics.
|A&M physics professor Wiley P.
Kit said that he and professor Don-
liU. Naugle, together with a hand-
ullf gracluate students, are plan
ing to make samples of the copper
oxide material “sometime in the next
few weeks,” in a basement laboratory
- ofthe new physics building.
Ivll ■They’re going to be easy to
Itakr. Kirk said of the ceramic-like
.materials, noting that the biggest
popehft' l^t.cle they’ve encountered so far
rnoteTerras ordering the needed materials.
3U riststoif'»lt might be on the order of a
k p°n: li-and-a-lialf, two months be-
jtsl dM# re we have this all pinned down,”
t n tpelet'^ Kitk said of the measurements and
, on diet inclusions they intend to make with
sia je# ! ’he samples. “Not too long by most
■ndanls.”
jjsosijf I In a separate project, Karl T.
-itiiis F am ig Jr., associate professor of
„ r asU’^Bianical engineering said he and
= pfOclaTpliydcs professor Peter M. McIntyre
off'® ' I
-d# I
are trying to put together funding
for an experiment that could lead to
the creation of a high-current, su
perconducting wire.
“My feeling is that there’s so much
potential in this field that funding,
initially anyway, is going to be unre
stricted,” ITartwig said of his chances
of getting the money he needs. “To
approached him for information
concerning their research plans.
“I’d be glad to give you some gen
eral background on superconduc
tion,” he said. “But considering the
competitive atmosphere in this field
I wouldn’t want to make any public
statements about this project right
uperconducti vity
prove a concept — you don’t need
much money to do that.”
Hartwig said it will take six to nine
months to see if his idea is viable.
Although researchers were glad
to describe their projects in terms of
broad objectives, they were much
more guarded when it came to dis
cussing specifics.
The day after Kirk granted The
Battalion an interview, he asked that
the particulars of the project —
which he had described in detail the
day before — not be published.
Naugle, Kirk’s colleague, was even
more hesitant when The Battalion
Hartwig was also reluctant to de
scribe his ideas in detail. When asked
how he intended to overcome the
problems of fabricating the brittle
copper oxide ceramic into wire,
Hartwig replied with only a smile
and an excuse.
“I wouldn’t want to talk about it at
this point because I haven’t heard
anybody mention it as a manufactur
ing possibility,” he said. “I don’t have
the ability some other people in this
field do to try out a new idea and see
if it will work.”
In reference to discussions he has
had with McIntyre, he said, “I think
we have a good idea. In one sense I’d
be surprised if somebody hasn’t
thought of it because so many peo
ple are working on this — but you
never know.”
The event that inspired these
A&M researchers — as well as thou
sands of others around the world —
was an announcement Feb. 15 by
University of Houston professor
Paul Chu that he had fabricated a
material that lost all electrical resis
tance at 94 degrees Kelvin.
Although the phenomenon of su
perconductivity has been known
since 1906, in 80 years scientists had
not succeeded in producing a
material that exhibited the super
conducting property at tempera
tures higher than 23 K. Under these
conditions, the only effective coolant
is expensive liquid helium, with a
boiling point of 4 K.
The new copper oxide materials,
however, can be cooled with liquid
nitrogen — an inexpensive and com-
momly used laboratory coolant with
a boiling point of 77 K.
This is one reason Chu’s an
nouncement hit the scientific com
munity like a bombshell and
prompted a special conference on
high temperature superconductiv
ity, drawing thousands of physicists
to New York on March 18.
Chu’s material is in fact only one
variety in a family of superconduc
tors composed of barium, copper,
oxygen and one of several kinds of
rare earths. The rare earth Chu
used is ytterbium — a brittle, shiny
metal which is fairly abundant and
easy to extract from ores.
Kirk said ytterbium seems to be
the most successful of the rare earths
tried so far.
Basically, Kirk and Naugle are
trying to find out why Chu’s copper
oxide material works. Once they do,
refinements can be made that may
raise the critical temperature of the
material still higher.
In addition to critical tempera
ture, there are two other limitations
on the superconducting property of
materials: critical current and critical
magnetic field.
For example, the strongest exist
ing magnets, those using conventio
nal niobium superconductors such
as the one here at A&M, can create a
magnetic field of about 150,000
gauss, Kirk said. (The earth has a
magnetic field of one-quarter of a
gauss.) In stronger fields, the mag
net loses its superconducting prop
erty.
The strongest existing magnet in
the world, located at the Massachu
setts Institute of Technology in Bos
ton, combines conventional and su
perconducting magnets and
produces a field of 300,000 gauss,
Kirk said.
But recent experiments with the
new copper oxide superconductors
at the National Magnet Laboratory
See Superconductors, page 14
Dissident gets
Soviet permit
to emigrate
MOSCOW (AP) — Anatoly Ko-
ryagin, who spent six years in a labor
camp for accusing authorities of
sending sane dissidents to mental
hospitals, has been granted permis
sion to emigrate, Soviet news media
said Thursday.
The two-sentence statement by
both the English- and Russian-lan
guage service of the official Tass
news agency was believed to be the
first time the Soviet media has an
nounced a dissident’s departure.
“Anatoly Koryagin, who was re
cently released from detention, has
been allowed to leave the U.S.S.R., it
was confirmed to a Tass correspon
dent today at the U.S.S.R. Ministry
of Internal Affairs,” Tass said.
“Koryagin is leaving for Switzer
land for permanent residence,” the
statement said. It provided no other
information.
Dissident sources in Moscow said
Koryagin arrived in the Soviet capi
tal from the Ukrainian city of Khar
kov on Wednesday. But they said he
did not want to speak to reporters.
The sources said Koryagin would
leave Moscow this afternoon.
Koryagin, a 48-year-old psychia
trist, was pardoned by the Supreme
Soviet in February in a review of dis
sident cases and released from a la
bor camp where he had been impris
oned since June 1981.
He had been sentenced to seven
years in prison camp and five years
in internal exile on charges of anti-
Soviet agitation and propaganda, a
charge often used against dissidents.
Koryagin accused Soviet authori
ties in an article published in a Brit
ish medical journal of sending men
tally healthy dissidents to hospitals,
where they were treated with drugs.
Koryagin was an adviser to the
Working Commission to Investigate
the Use of Psychiatry for Political
Purposes, a dissident group formed
as an affiliate of a Moscow organiza
tion that monitored compliance with
the Helsinki accords.
The Frankfurt-based Interna
tional Association for Human Rights
reported Tuesday that Koryagin
and his family had received permis
sion to emigrate.