Wednesday, January 20, 1988/The Battalion/Page 3
State and Local
|/Vright regrets series of letters
mailed to news organizations
^WASHINGTON (AP) — House
^Speaker Jim Wright is distancing
himself from a series of angry letters
a newly hired press aide sent to news
organizations that included charges
of possible plagiarism and a refer-
epce to the Mormon religion of a
i of columnists.
right said he was sorry the let
ters were sent and that he did not see
or pass judgment on the content be-
foi e they were sent out.
“I regret very much any intem-
Hrate or unjustified remarks the
letters may have contained,” the
Texas Democrat said in a statement
Monday.
^■The letters, complaining of the
treatment Wright had received in
the news media, were written by
George Mair, who was hired in De-
^ cember to help improve the speak-
O er’s image.
^»Mair is a former Washington col-
^ unmist for the Los Angeles Times
Syndicate and former editor and
publisher of the Alexandria Gazette
in suburban Virginia.
HOne letter sent last w-eek to syndi-
Hted columnists Jack Anderson and
A „ Dale Van Atta was critical of a recent
an
“J regret very much any intemperate or unjustified re
marks the letters may have contained, ”
— House Speaker Jim Wright
column and ended with the com
ment that. “The Church of the Lat
ter Day Saints must be particularly
pleased.”
Anderson and Van Atta are mem
bers of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, or the Mormon
Church, and have written extensi
vely about Wright’s involvement
with the shaky Texas savings and
loan industry.
“We both kind of looked at each
other and asked, was it anti-Mormon
the same way an anti-Semitic com
ment is anti-Semitic,” Van Atta said
Tuesday.
The letter attacked a Jan. 4 col
umn, saying Anderson and Van Atta
“had been suckered,” that it was “a
poor cut and paste job” and that they
had stolen the information from un-
reputable sources in desperation.
“There is a view that the Mormon
Church is conservative, and I won
der whether he was trying to say we
were part of a Mormon plot to get
Jim Wright, which is insane,” Van
Atta said.
“The initial thought of both of us
was that this must be a fraud. We
thought somebody must be pulling a
joke on us,” he said. “Of course, our
statements are extremely accurate
on Jim Wright.”
Earlier reports of Mair’s strongly
worded letters to the Los Angeles
Times, Wall Street Journal, News
week and U.S. News and World Re
port prompted Wright to issue his
statement Monday about the letters.
“The letters written by George re
flected the anger and frustration
which, as an experienced newspa
perman, he felt over some of the in
accurate and unfair news coverage I
have received as speaker,” Wright
said.
“While I am as concerned as
George over lack of balance in some
of this coverage, angry letters ob
viously do little to correct it,” he said.
Mair defended the letters in an in
terview with the Fort Worth Star-
Telegram, saying: “It’s my feeling
that we’ve got to correct any inaccu
racies about the boss because they
get set in stone . . . and wind up in
somebody’s clip file.”
In a letter to The Los Angeles
Times, Mair said a Jan. 4 article as
sessing Wright’s first year in office
was “badly researched, poorly writ
ten and possibly plagiarized.”
The two reporters who wrote the
story interviewed Wright and the
newspaper denied any assertion of
plagiarism.
In a letter to the Wall Street Jour
nal, Mair wrote: “It will not surprise
you that the December 4th article on
my boss leaves me surprised and
pained because it is marbled
through with innuendo that is so far
beneath the professional standards
one used to expect from the Wall
Street Journal.”
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Parents of two Challenger victims
settle claims with Morton Thiokol
HOUSTON (AP) — Morton
1 die Ttiiokol Inc. has agreed to settle
cider wrongful death claims lodged by the
ithor. Pa rents of two astronauts killed in
n th< space shuttle Challenger explo-
Stpn, an attorney said Tuesday.
■ The amounts agreed on by Mor-
a ton Thiokol, Sarah Resnik Belfer,
Id 1 mother of mission specialist Judith
I to Resnik, and Bruce Jarvis, father of
t war pavload specialist Gregory Jarvis,
(|[m are confidential, Houston attorney
Ronald Krist said.
» 'ifl He said the National Aeronautics
lU 1 and Space Administration is not con-
ii thu tributing to the settlements.
■fall' • I “We filed a claim (against NASA)
Vesuri for Bruce Jarvis, but it’ll be resolved
, ut c j ir| this," Krist added.
The attorney said Tuesday that al
though no formal lawsuit was filed,
he and Morton Thiokol attorneys
negotiated the same as if there had
been a lawsuit filed.
“There were claims asserted,” he
said. “We threatened a lawsuit.”
Morton Thiokol officials in Chi
cago would neither confirm nor
deny the reported settlement on
Tuesday.
“We have no comment,” said a
Morton Thiokol secretary who
would not give her name.
Mrs. Belfer said Tuesday she
would not comment on the set
tlement. Jarvis could not be reached,
and Krist said he would not talk
about the agreement either.
“They were satisfied relative to
the amounts of money involved, al
though you can’t replace human life
with money,” Krist said of his two cli
ents.
The Challenger exploded Jan. 28,
1986, killing all seven crew members
on board. The disaster was blamed
primarily on the solid rocket booster
assembled and manufactured by
Morton Thiokol.
NASA and Thiokol shared the
cost of settlements reached in De
cember 1986 with survivors of astro
naut Francis R. Scobee, astronaut El
lison Onizuka, payload specialist and
New Hampshire teacher Christa
McAuliffe, and Jarvis’ wife.
The four families settled for a
combined total -of more than
$750,000, according to the U.S. Jus
tice Department, but the precise
amounts have been kept secret.
Krist said he viewed the lump
sum settlements this week as very fa
vorably comparable with the original
four.
Last May, Krist settled a lawsuit
filed against Morton Thiokol by
Challenger astronaut Ronald E. Mc
Nair’s widow, Cheryl.
Since the facts about the explosion
were presented in the McNair law
suit, Krist said it was not necessary to
go through the same long process
again with the Jarvis and Belfer
cases unless Morton Thiokol had re
fused to settle.
t'and:
Research grant
to Houston firm
aids University
By Mary-Lynne Rice
Staff Writer
The Houston area-based
Texas Accelerator Center’s ac
ceptance of a $3 million federal
appropriation has opened up
new research and development
opportunities for Texas A&M ac
celerator physics researchers
working at the center.
The Department of Energy re
cently awarded the grant to the
TAG, which is a division of the
Houston Area Research Center.
A&M, as well as Rice University,
the University of Houston and
the University of Texas, staff and
support the HARC research con
sortium.
A&M faculty and students
have a “very vigorous role” in the
TAG, said Peter McIntyre, A&M
physics professor and scientific
spokesman for the center. About
40 percent of the staff is from
A&M, he said.
McIntyre said the appropria
tion would allow the TAG to
move past pure research to prac
tical application of accelerator
physics principles.
“There’s a number of real-
world applications becoming very
important, as well as the technol
ogy essential to the future of
high-energy colliders,” he said.
With the $3 million in DOE
funds, he said, the TAG also will
be able to expand its research
base.
“The funds were appropriated
in a direct action of Congress to
assist the TAG in broadening its
research focus,” he said.
Development of medical inno
vations, including magnetic reso
nance imaging, will benefit from
the funding, McIntyre said.
“(Resonance imaging) is the
newest diagnostic method avail
able to medicine,” he said.
The process uses supercon
ducting magnets in the place of
radiation in producing images of
the body.
In addition to funding basic ac
celerator physics research, the ap
propriation will be put toward re
search and development of
superconducting magnets and
another particle accelerator, a
synchrotron light source used in
manufacturing microelectronic
chips.
Acid spill brings injury,
resident evacuations
AUSTIN (AP) — A 2,000-gallon
hydrochloric acid spill at a chemical
distribution plant caused nearby res
idents to be evacuated for several
hours Tuesday, a fire official said.
Several minor injuries were re
ported, but none of those injured re
quired medical treatment beyond an
examination by emergency medical
service staff at the scene, Mike Van-
Blaricom of the Austin Fire Depart
ment said.
Most clean-up efforts were ex
pected to be completed Tuesday
night, he said. Residents evacuated
from 20 to 30 houses in a one-block
radius of the Central Texas Chemi
cal plant were expected to return
home by evening.
The hydrochloric acid was almost
100 percent concentration and gave
off fumes, VanBlaricom said.
Officials were using lime to absorb
the acid and planned to store the
mixture in containers that would
later be taken to a disposal site, Van
Blaricom said.
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