The Battalion
Vol. 87 No. 116 (ASPS 045360 8 Pages
College Station, Texas
Tuesday, March 22, 1988
ustice Department
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■ WASHINGTON (AP) — In a
■ove that reportedly shocked Attor-
nr\ General Edwin Meese III, the
Jlistice Department’s No. 2 official
•y ami the head of the department’s
iminal division abruptly resigned
[uesday amid a nearly year-old
iminal investigation of Meese.
Deputy Attorney General Arnold
Burns said in a letter to President
■eagan that “Unfortunately, I have
Mgretfully concluded that I must re-
||Wrn to private life at this time.” He
di I not elaborate.
Mili William Weld, who as an assistant
ittorney general oversees all federal
liminal investigations, resigned ef-
Bktive at the close of the business
■iy Tuesday, despite a personal plea
■om other department officials that
k remain on for several weeks.
■ Two of Burns’ aides and two of
■eld’s aides also quit simulta-
Ineously.
■ The decision by Burns and Weld,
! who refused to say why they are re-
■fning or to discuss their plans,
Kves a gaping hole in the lead
ership of the Justice Department.
I Meese’s continuing legal problems
have “everything to do with” why the
:two men quit, said a department
■urce familiar with the reasons for
■e resignations who spoke on con
dition of anonymity.
■ The unexpected resignations
■ere the result of the fact that “ma
jor things aren’t getting done at the
Justice Department, nothing’s mov
ing because Meese is under this
cloud,” said another informed de
partment source.
Meese first learned the two would
step down when Burns and Weld
walked into the attorney general’s
office at 8 a.m. Tuesday and in
formed him of the decision.
The two men conveyed to Meese
the sentiment that “it’s nothing
against you personally, Ed,” but “we
want to go home,” said one depart
ment source familiar with the dis
cussion. Several department sources
characterized Meese as “absolutely
shocked” by the decision.
Meese’s chief spokesman, Terry
Eastland, said the attorney general
“expressed appreciation for the job
these two men have done” and
“wished them well in their future en
deavors.” Both had served in their
current jobs since Oct. 17, 1986.
White House spokesman Marlin
Fitzwater said President Reagan ac
cepted the resignations “with regret”
and thanked Burns and Weld for
serving “with distinction.”
Fitzwater said Reagan continues
to have “full confidence” in Meese
and the Justice Department and that
the resignations did not cause any
particular concern among the presi
dent and his advisers. “We have peo
ple resigning all the time, especially
late in the administration,” he said.
Meese has been under investiga
tion for nearly 11 months by inde
pendent counsel James McKay, who
last May 11 began looking into
Meese’s involvement with the scan
dal-plagued Wedtech Corp. The in
vestigation has expanded to include
his involvement in a $1 billion Iraqi
pipeline project.
Meese has predicted repeatedly
that he won’t be indicted and has
said he won’t resign.
The resignations weren’t
prompted by any new knowledge on
the part of Burns or Weld that
Meese is about to be indicted in the
probe or that McKay has uncovered
new evidence of possible culpability
by the attorney general, several de
partment sources said.
But they said both men believe
that major issues in the Justice De
partment aren’t being resolved and
that the attorney general is increas
ingly preoccupied with the criminal
investigation.
Burns has taken a central role in
day-to-day operations of the depart
ment, while Meese’s time increas
ingly has been taken up in meetings
with his lawyers arid grand jury ap
pearances.
Burns and Weld arrived at the de
cision to resign independently of
each other but agreed to quit during
conversations Monday, said two
sources who demanded anonymity.
Guarding a cause
Members of Students Against Apartheid, Derek
Kalahar, a freshman psychology major, Jeff Dyess,
a junior political science major, Karen Ellington, a
freshman journalism major, and Michael Bur-
Photo by Jay Janner
guieres, a freshman accounting major, guard the
apartheid shack early Tuesday morning. The
group was protecting the shack from vandals. Stu
dents will disassemble the shack on April 4.
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By Jeff Pollard
Staff Writer
Mexican-Americans need to un-
Jerstand where they are going as a
jroup before they will have any ef-
ect in the political community, For
tier New Mexico Governor Toney
\tiaya said at the MSC on Tuesday.
Anaya, who was introduced by Pe-
Iro Ruiz Garza (class of ’67) as lead-
ng the race to become the first His-
tanic presidential cabinet member,
old participants in the two day
\merican Culture Conference ’88 to
tever loose sight of where they have
:ome from and to use their educa-
:ion to continue their progress.
I “We Hispanics share a common
Hanguage and common goals,”
■Vnaya said. “We need to know
lyhere we are going before we can
figure out how to get there.”
I As far as population is concerned,
the Hispanic community is going up.
bile the United States as a whole
only grew by 6 percent between
980 and 1986, Anaya said the num-
ier of Hispanics grew by more than
10 percent. He said projections show
ispanics soon becoming the largest
linority in the United States.
“In 50 years, Hispanics will be the
tajority in the state of Texas,”
naya said.
Even in Illinois and other parts of
be Midwest, Anaya said, people are
Surprised to find pockets ofVlispan-
Bcs who never became involved in the
lolitical arena. He said these people
re looking for ways to improve
their standing and develop their
growing strength.
“It doesn’t mean a thing if we
don’t start using this power,” Anaya
said. “It is only through politics that
we can make the kinds of changes
that need to be made.”
Hispanic leaders are not the only
ones to recognize Hispanic growth.
Anaya said Congressmen have no
ticed, too, and they are worried. He
said the English-only movement and
the Immigration Act of 1986 are “. . .
continuing steps in an on-going bat
tle against Hispanics. . . .”
“The representatives in Washing
ton have the attitude that they need
to put immigrants back in their pla
ce,” Anaya said.
In support of the Immigration
Act, Congress cited a “Tidal Wave”
of immigrants with over 40 percent
coming from Latin American coun
tries. Anaya argues that, compared
to numbers at the turn of the cen
tury, the “Tidal Wave” is more like a
trickle.
“The immigration law was aimed
first at Hispanics and then at Asians
who want to live in this country,”
Anaya said. “This fear of foreigners
is ridiculous when we all live in a
country that was founded by for
eigners.”
On the topic of English-only,
Anaya said no Hispanic leader in the
country fails to understand the need
to know English. He said this does
not mean Hispanics need to be
stripped of their bilingual ability.
Speaker: Mexican-Americans need political influence
By Joe Jimenez
Reporter
Mexican-Americans need to find ways to get
involved with and influence local politics, the di
rector of the Texas Inferfaith Network said Mon
day afternoon at Texas A&M.
“I grew up in a city (San Antonio) that was
over 53 percent Mexican-American,” Ernesto
Cortez, Class of ’63, said. “Besides the occassional
glance of opportunities for leadership, like then-
Sen. Henry Gonzales, there was little partici
pation by people in the Mexican-American com
munity in the local political activities.”
The speech, titled “Local Politics and the Mex
ican American Community,” was part of a con
vention sponsored by the MSC Committee for
the Awareness of Mexican-American Culture.
In 1960, the University of Texas Bureau of
Business Research did a study of the Mexican-
American population and concluded that the
population had an average education level of
about fourth grade, Cortez said. Also, it found
that 85 percent of 25-year-old Mexican-Ameri
cans had never been inside a high school, he said.
“The educational level was reflected economi
cally, politically and socially,” he said. “As things
have changed, although not a whole lot, the con
ditions have changed.”
Although poverty was a factor, Mexican-
Americans did not participate politically because
they did not have any power, Cortez said.
The pressures on Mexican-Americans were in
stitutional in nature. Pressure was coming from
corporations or financial institutions that had ex
perts and networks working for them, Cortez
said.
“There is some connection between money
and power,” he said. “To simply put it, power in
America comes in two forms: organized people
or organized money.”
The strategy for building a broad based power
organization was to have an ideology. People get
excited when problems affect their particular in
terests. It is hard to sustain people’s energy in
civic activities, Cortez said.
“The problem was how you sustain people’s
energy,” he said. “There has to be something that
cuts into their vision of what the world is all about
or what they are all about. For the top leaders, it
had to be more than Fixing drainages or streets, it
had to do with something about their own devel
opment as people.
“There has to be a focus of w'hat these organi
zations are about. You Organize people around
their own interests.”
He then proposed to the audience the ques
tion, “How no you do it?”
Before citizens organized for public service in
San Antonio, the city was dominated by the polit
ical-economic power structure. Today it is a city
that allows participation, he said.
“We began to organize people one on one, in
dividually,” Cortez said. “Organizing them on
small issues in the beginning. We gradually got
them to see that if they won issues on drain fights
or street fights, they could get in to larger ques
tions, like setting the city budget.”
Catherine M. Valenzuela, chairman of
CAMAC, said the committee plans to make the
conference an annual event.
“We chose local politics as the subject of this
year’s conference because this is an election
year,” she said.
“The U.S. is trying to compete
with countries who teach their chil
dren English as a second language,”
Anaya said. “They ensure that their
people become bilingual while
America does the exact opposite.
This is one reason why we are losing
out in the world market.”
Anaya said the U.S. needs to turn
its attention to Latin America and
develop a foreign policy that will
work.
“We developed a strong Euro
pean policy because that’s where
Americans are from,” Anaya said,
“but we’ve never looked south of the
boarder and tried to understand the
relationship that we need to have.
“There have been small
movements in that direction, but, if
we limit our people’s ability to speak
Spanish, we are only hurting oursel
ves.”
Anaya pointed out problems stu
dents could address on campus. He
asked students to learn why only 6
percent of the A&M campus is His
panic and what opportunities need
to be provided to attract more His
panics to A&M. He said it comes
down to two questions: “What is the
problem?” and “What is the solu
tion?”
“As we look ahead,” Anaya said,
“we find many reasons to be opti
mistic.
“The challenges are out there and
they are ours to become involved in.
All we want to do is be a part of the
action.
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By Todd Riemenschneider
Staff Writer
The space program is the hope
for the future of mankind and
America needs to lead the race, a so
viet magazine reporter and engineer
said Tuesday.
Alexander Kharkovsky, spon
sored by the MSC Political Forum,
spoke on the importance of the U.S.
space program.
Kharkovsky, who covered the So
viet space program for a leading So
viet magazine for over 20 years, said
he believes that Congress should
give more money to the space pro
gram.
“America is the last hope of the
human race,” he said.
“If we want to have some hope for
democracy and freedom, we have to
go into space,” he said.
Kharkovsky, who has been a
United States citizen for six years,
said there is definitely a need for a
functional space station for the
United States to better put the shut
tle to use.
“We made a spectualar show of
the shuttle, but it failed,” he said.
“The shuttle became a tool,” he
said. “It is a plane that goes nowhere
without a space station.”
Along the same line, Kharkovsky
said that he believed the Skylab
crash was and extremely unfortu
nate incident.
“It was a crime to down this great
orbit station — it is a pity,” he said.
Kharkovsky said that another
crash, the Challenger accident, was
also unfortunate.
But the United States seems to be
at a standstill where the Challenger
is involved.
“It has been two years since the ac
cident and now we are sitting and
waiting,” he said. “What are we wait
ing for?”
Kharkovsky talked about the ex
citement caused by launches at
NASA, comparing them to a circus
coming to town, saying, “The circus
is coming! The circus is coming! It is
interesting, spectacular; they are
launching their rockets.
“What is between the launches?
They work in Houston between the
launches.”
Kharkovsky said he thinks Con
gress does not know where money,
which is appropriated to the space
program, is spent.
“These people in Congress think
we spend our $20 or $30 billion on
the moon,” he said.
“It is not true, we spend our
Elders order Swaggart
out of ministry for year
Photo by Russell James
Alexander Kharkovsky speaks about the Soviet space program
Tuesday night as part of a program sponsored by the MSC Political
Forum. He covered the Soviet space program for over 20 years.
money in Houston,” he said.
The money appropriated is spent
on research and development of
equipment. The journalist and engi
neer also brought out a subtle point
that many people do not attribute to
the space program, but that is a re
sult of that research.
“Our personal computers fell
from the moon, they are a spinoff of
the space progam,” Kharkovsky
said.
Kharkovsky said the space pro
gram is important to the future of
Texas.
“Texas is the center of the Ameri
can space program,” he explained.
“It is your future (people living close
to Houston) and you have to invest
in your future. But now, even in an
election year, it is not even an issue.”
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) — Fi
ery evangelist Jimmy Swaggart was
ordered Tuesday not to preach from
the pulpit or his television show for
at least a year while he is rehabilitat
ing from “moral failure” that report
edly included paying a prostitute to
pose nude.
In announcing its decision, the
Assemblies of God elders disre
garded a more lenient three-month
suspension recommended by the
church in Louisiana. The national
church included provisions for two
years of rehabilitation and counsel
ing to begin when Swaggart has
agreed to rehabilitation in writing.
Louisiana district officials refused
comment, as did the Jimmy Swag
gart Worldwide Ministries in Baton
Rouge, La. But a spokesman said
Swaggart’s ministry would have a
statement Wednesday.
“It is hoped that Jimmy Swaggart
will agree to this program of rehabil
itation and that such program will be
redemptive and restorative in the
life and ministry of our brother,” the
Rev. G. Raymond Carlson, the
church’s general superintendent,
said in a statement.
People approved by the church
would supervise the rehabilitation,
Carlson said. He provided no other
details.
“If he does not accept, then the
Executive Presbytery would take ac
tion to dismiss him,” Carlson said at
a news conference.
Under the terms of rehabilitation,
Swaggart would be barred from his
pulpit for at least a year and would
have to stop distributing videotaped
services that have enabled him to
build a worldwide congregation.
Church officials say Swaggart con
fessed to them in detail but they
have refused to make his transgres
sion public. Reports have linked him
to a prostitute who says he paid her
to pose naked.
Swaggart has 30 days to appeal to
the 13-member Executive Pres
bytery, which serves as a board of di
rectors and which set the terms of
rehabilitation.
The Louisiana district had recom
mended that Swaggart be barred
from preaching for three months.
National officials say every other As
semblies minister who has confessed
to moral failure has been barred
from preaching for at least a year.
The Louisiana district refused re
quests from the Executive Presbytery
to reconsider, and apparently also
questioned the national leadership’s
authority to determine discipline.