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The Battalion
Vol. 87 No. 32 USPS 045360 10 pages
College Station, Texas
Wednesday, October 14, 1987
Missile strikes
Iraqi school;
blast kills 32
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — A mis
sile fired from Iran exploded at an
I elementary school Tuesday morning
as pupils filed into the building for
dasses, killing 32 people and wound
ing 218, nearly all of them children,
I officials said.
Shrapnel, shattered concrete and
I shards of glass flew through the
j playground of the Monument of
Martyrs school, witnesses said. Text
books and schoolbags lay strewn
I about.
The force of the explosion blew
1 down parts of the building, Principal
Ismael Ghetan Jassim said, but
“Thank God it didn’t hit the class
rooms complex itself or casualties
[would have been much higher.”
Neighbors said 12 members of
lone family were killed in the house
on which the missile made a direct
| hit.
Baghdad radio said the missile de-
[stroyed 16 other buildings in the
I heavily populated area when it
[struck just five minutes before the
school bell, but only three of those
killed were adults. All but 22 of the
wounded were children, the radio
said.
It was the fourth Iranian missile
to strike the Iraqi capital since Oct. 4,
the first to cause major casualties. It
spurred fears of a new round of the
War of the Cities that killed thou
sands of people on both sides in its
seven years of existence.
Iran has lobbed more than 30 mis
siles into this city of 5 million people
and dozens more have hit other cit
ies.
The official radio quoted a mili
tary spokesman as saying: “It is our
right and duty to respond to this
ugly crime.” He said Iran had “de
clared a war of the cities and so it
shall be. It is time for revenge.”
Iran’s official Islamic Republic
News Agency said the missile was
aimed at the Iraqi Defense Ministry
in revenge for an air raid Monday in
Lorestan, a western province where
it said a school was bombed.
Photo by Sarah Cowan
How much wood...
Several outfits in the Corps have begun “swamping” logs to prepare cutting buds and branches off so the logs will be ready when the actual
them for stacking. Swamping entails arranging logs by their sizes and building of the bonfire begins.
Texas corporation puts B-CS Eagle up for sale
Rv la net floorie • i. . , ,
By Janet Goode
Staff Writer
The Bryan-College Station Eagle, owned
I by the Harte-Hanks Communications Inc.
i since June 1967, went up for sale Tuesday.
The San Antonio-based company also
[plans to sell two other Texas newspapers,
[the Denison Herald and the Herald Banner
[in Greenville. Seven cable television sys-
|terns, two televisions stations, a non-daily
[publicaton and a direct marketing opera-
Jtion also are up for sale.
“The Eagle is up for sale, it’s not that we
are selling it — there’s a difference,” Gerald
Garcia Jr., publisher of the Eagle, said.
“The Harte-Hanks company has 14 op
erations for sale,” Garcia said. “If a pro
spective buyer and a fair market value are
found, then it may be sold. If not, then the
Eagle may remain part of the corporation.”
Bob Marbut, president and chief exec
utive officer of Harte-Hanks, said the for
mer publicly-owned and now indepen
dently-operated corporation is selling the
jers to generate profits and pay off
)ts.
pape
debt
“There’s no question that the proceeds
from all of this will be used in part to pay
off debts — mostly debts due to a relatively
high rate of interest,” Marbut said.
Selling the operations also is necessary
because of the economic environment and
today’s media prices, he said.
“We are selling the various operations in
hope that we can remain an independent
company and increase flexibility to stimu
late growth in our company,” he said. “This
will allow us to focus on a smaller number
of relatively larger operations.”
Marbut said this will help Harte-Hanks
to become more “customer oriented.”
John Morton, a newpaper analyst with
Lynch Jones 8c Ryan, a brokerage firm, re
cently listed the typical bid on newspapers
at $1,000 per subscriber.
The £ag-/e's circulation is 26,310. If sold,
the paper could bring in over $20 million
for Harte-Hanks.
Marbut said the £agfe just happens to be
one of the smallest papers owned by Harte-
Hanks.
“It’s not one of our most profitable pa
pers simply because it’s not one of our larg
est,” he said.“But in relative terms, it always
has been profitable and always has been a
great contributor.
“Of the three newspapers we are selling,
it’s no coincidence that three of them are
our smallest papers.”
Marbut said although he has no idea at
this point about prospective bidders, he has
received many phone calls from various
qualified companies.
Survey shows Texas
deficient in services
for mentally retarded
ARLINGTON (AP) — Texas
and New York lead the nation in
verifiable shortages of services
for the mentally retarded, and
the problem is only growing
worse, a national survey has
found.
About 21,900 requests for help
for mentally retarded people
have gone unanswered in Texas,
perching the state on top of the
Association for Retarded Citizens
list of troubled states.
The Arlington-based national
advocacy group found in its year
long survey that there are 1,900
mentally retarded people in
Texas on waiting lists for resi
dential services, such as place
ment in group homes.
Another 20,000 are unable to
find placement in day programs
such as supervised activities, and
the Arlington-based advocacy
group said Monday that some
mentally retarded people have to
wait just to get on waiting lists.
Researchers said they based
their estimates on the official
waiting list for placement in state
schools and a survey of other
public and private facilities for
the state’s retarded.
“The service sytem has not
been able to cope with increased
numbers of people leaving insti
tutions, a new generation exiting
school special-education pro
grams and the growing number
of older families who have kept
family members at home for
years, but who now need serv
ices,” the report said.
Experts said the long waiting
lists are discouraging others in
need of services from applying
and indicate that thousands of re
tarded adults are sitting idle at
home and regressing in behavior.
Texas is required under a fed
eral court order to reduce the
population of its institutions, and
private-sector institutions have
been unable to pick up the slack,
officials said.
The association’s research di
rector, Sharon Davis, said many
states put the same people on dif
ferent waiting lists, making the
numbers appear larger.
But she believes Texas and
other states also underestimate
the number of retarded citizens
whose names do not appear on
lists.
“In some states, people are not
counted as waiting for services
until they have had a comprehen
sive evaluation,” Davis said. “This
service often has a waiting list as
well. Thus, people wait to wait.”
Nationally, the group reports,
as many as 130,000 mentally re
tarded people are on waiting lists
for residential and day programs.
Several states, including Okla
homa, Rhode Island, South Da
kota and Wyoming, compile al
most no statistics on requests for
service for the retarded, the study
shows.
'-reshmen elect Wehrheim
is class president in runoff
Admiral says president ignored
‘normal channels’ in arms sales
WASHINGTON (AP) — The
Reagan administration bypassed
normal Pentagon channels when it
decided to sell weapons to Iran and
failed to get the military’s assessment
on the impact of those sales on the
Iran-Iraq war, the nation’s top uni
formed officer has told Congress.
Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., chair
man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said
he did not learn about the arms sales
until at least five months after Presi
dent Reagan approved them in Jan
uary 1986.
When he eventually asked De
fense Secretary Caspar Weinberger
about the sales, Crowe said, Wein
berger replied that “it was his under
standing that a conscious decision
had been made that it was not a mili
tary matter, so it was not necessary to
bring in the military.”
The weapons were transferred
from Defense Department stocks to
the CIA, which helped get them to
Iran.
The admiral made the statements
to congressional Iran-Contra investi
gators in a deposition last June. It
was made public Tuesday by the
Iran-Contra committees, now pre
paring to issue their report on the
affair later this month.
Crowe said he and Weinberger
“both agreed that the . commander-
in-chief of the United States can do
what he wants to do . . . Whether it is
wise or not is a separate question.”
Crowe said, too, that no active-
duty military officer should lead the
National Security Council. He did
not refer by name to newly retired
Rear Adm. John M. Poindexter,
who, as Reagan’s national security
adviser, headed the council during
much of the Iran-Contra affair, in
which profits from the Iran arms
sales were diverted to support Nica
raguan rebels.
But Crowe added there was no
way to write rules that could offer an
ironclad guarantee against future
problems.
Crowe said he had concerns about
military personnel willing to provide
advice in order to keep a covert ac
tion restricted to a closed circle of
people. He said those officials rep
resented themselves as defense ex- .
perts but “didn’t have the means” to
give solid or complete advice.
“That is a very prejudiced view,”
Crowe conceded, “because as the
chairman, I think if you want a mili
tary bias in the sense of the chiefs,
you should go to the chairman, not
to the NSC adviser.”
Before U.S. sales of TOW anti
tank missiles and Hawk anti-aircraft
missiles to Iran, no analysis was
made of the impact of the sale on
U.S. weapons stocks or on their pos
sible impact on the Iran-Iraq war, in
which the United States was offi
cially neutral, Crowe said.
While those weapons in the long
run may have proven not to have
profoundly influenced the military
balance in the war, the U.S.
judgment prior to making the sale
“was an intuitive one, not an analyti
cal one,” he said.
Crowe added that he did not be
lieve the decision to avoid using the
normal system of military notifica
tion for covert actions was made by
Reagan himself, but was made by
subordinates “to keep dissent out of
the decision-making calculus.”
The investigators said the sales to
tally depleted U.S. inventories of 15
kinds ol replacement parts for Hawk
missiles and 31 other parts were sig-
nificandy depleted.
Crowe also told the investigators
that he occasionally saw intelligence
that indicated the existence of a pri
vate arms supply to the Contras
fighting Nicaragua’s leftist govern
ment. But he said he did not know at
the time that retired Air Force Mzy.
Gen. Richard Secord was involved in
the operation or where the private
suppliers obtained the money for
the weapons.
Arias wins Nobel Peace Prize for plan
to restore order to Central America
Steven Wehrheim, a political sci
ence major from Boerne, was chosen
Treshman class president Thursday
in a runoff election against Heather
Menn.
Wehrheim had received the most
votes in the initial election for class
Officers last Monday.
B He received 67.4 percent of the
votes cast Thursday.
■ Jason Wilcox, a general studies
major, defeated Steve Miller by a
thin margin for the vice president’s
Office.
Wilcox received 55 percent of the
649 votes that were cast for vice
president.
In the initial election, voters gave
Miller eight votes more than Wilcox
received.
A computer breakdown Friday at
the measurement and research serv
ice delayed the counting of the bal
lots, so the four candidates in the
runoff election were not informed
of the outcome until Monday.
The 653 votes Thursday were 246
fewer than those cast in the initial
election.
OSLO, Norway (AP) — President
Oscar Arias of Costa Rica won the
Nobel Peace Prize on Tuesday for a
Central American peace plan that he
fashioned and persuaded the re
gion’s other leaders to adopt.
Selection of Arias was a surprise,
and unusual because the choice was
based at least partially on accom
plishments after nominations closed
Feb. 1. There were 93 candidates,
including 15 organizations.
President Reagan, who has called
the Arias plan “fatally flawed,” said
Tuesday: “President Arias fully de
serves the Peace Prize for having
started the Central American region
on the road to peace.”
The Norwegian parliament’s No
bel Committee cited Arias, 46, as
“the main architect” of the plan the
five Central American presidents
signed Aug. 7 and are putting into
effect.
Committee Chairman Egil Aarvik
told reporters the award was meant
to add impetus and be “a support for
the democratic process in the whole
region.”
Asked whether the committee was
trying to influence the peace proc
ess, he replied: “it is our sincere wish
that it will do so.”
world are fixed on Central America,
that this little geographic part of the
world has suffered,” he added, call
ing for an end to the civil wars in Ni
caragua and El Salvador.
Aarvik said his five-member com
“We must not forget that in this moment, in which the
eyes of the world are fixed on Central America, that
this little geographic part of the world has suffered, ”
— Oscar Arias, Nobel Peace Prize winner
Arias, reached on vacation at a
Costa Rican beach resort, said the
award was “incredible.”
“I accept it for Costa Rica, for
E eace, and not only for Costa Rica
ut for Central America, where 25
million human beings deserve to live
in peace, with optimism, with some
hope of progress,” he said, speaking
in English.
“We must not forget that in this
moment, in which the eyes of the
mittee did not decide until late Sep
tember who should get the Peace
Prize, which like the other 1987 No
bel awards includes a cash payment
of $340,000.
The Central American peace plan
is intended to end guerrilla wars in
Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guate
mala. It requires cease-fires, amnes
ties and measures bringing greater
democracy to be arranged by Nov. 7,
when each nation is to report on its
progress.
compliance with the plan by Jan. 7,
four months after it was signed in
Guatemala City by the presidents of
Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala,
Honduras and Nicaragua.
The Reagan administration sup
ports both Contra rebels fighting the
leftist Sandinista government in Ni
caragua and the centrist government
of El Salvador, where a civil war with
leftist guerrillas began eight years
ago.
Administration officials have crit
icized the Arias plan, which would
require an end to all outside support
for rebels, because it does not pre
scribe penalties for non-compliance.
Arias has not permitted Contras
to operate from Costa Rica, which is
Nicaragua’s southern neighbor and
has no army.
He proposed the peace plan after
taking office in May 1986, but
needed another 15 months to over
come objections, mainly from the
Sandinistas in Nicaragua.