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Vol. 88 No. 1 GSRS 045360 62 Pages In 5 Sections College Station, Texas Monday, August 29, 1988
38 killed as 3 jets
collide at air show
over U.S. air base
RAMSTEIN, West Germany (AP)
— Three Italian fighter jets collided
during an air show at a U.S. military
base Sunday, and one crashed into
spectators and burst into a ball of
flame. At least 38 people were killed
and hundreds injured, officials said.
Several children and the three air
craft pilots, members of a famed ae
rial stunt team, were among the
dead, authorities reported.
West German officials estimated
the size of the crowd at the air show
at 200,000, and said most were
Americans and Germans.
The ZDF television network
showed a giant fireball engulfing
spectators, many of whom ran
screaming with their clothes on fire.
It showed cars and trucks in flames
at the Ramstein Air Base 60 miles
southwest of Frankfurt.
Some people stood in shock as a
thick cloud of smoke enveloped
them, and others ran toward the
scene to administer first aid.
“We saw the fireball racing toward
us, so we first threw ourselves down
on the ground,” said Detlef Hosser,
cameraman with the ARD television
network.
The network footage had one
man frantically shrieking “Tanya,
Tanya” and thousands of others
screaming and looking for friends
and family members.
The ZDF network showed one jet
as it veered toward the horrified
crowd out of control before bursting
into flames that appeared to be at
least 100 feet high.
The network said two other
planes crashed away from the crowd
of several hundred people.
U.S. authorities said it was unclear
what caused the triple crash and the
sequence of events that cause the di
saster.
The three jets -were part of a 10-
plane Italian Air Force demonstra
tion team, “Frecce Tricolori,” that
was flying 65 yards above the
ground, ZDF said.
The “Frecce Tricolori,” which
means Tri-Color Arrows and refers
to the three-colored Italian flag, was
founded in 1930 as a school of aero
batics. Since 1956, it has been a sepa
rate unit of the Italian air force
based at Rivolto.
Ramstein Air Base spokesman
Doug Moore said “those dead on the
ground are a mix of civilian and mil
itary.”
AFN, the U.S. military radio net
work, said late Sunday the latest con
firmed death toll was 38 people.
ZDF quoted officials as saying sev
eral hundred people had been in
jured, with 60 of them with life-
threatening injuries, including
burns.
“A large number has serious
burns,” said police spokesman Willi
Hollaender in nearby Kaiserslau
tern.
David Williams, Class of ’87, waves a flag to cheer for the Aggies as eled from Nashville to New Jersey for the game,
they enter Giant’s Stadium for the 1988 Kickoff Classic. Williams trav-
Americans suspected in NATO spy ring
.FRANKFURT, West Germany (AP) —
Americans may have sold NAT O defense se
crets to Soviet t>loc agents for decades before
a former U.S. (Army sergeant became active
in a Hungarianf-linked spy ring, a West Ger
man newspaper said Sunday.
West Germany last week announced the ar
rest of former U.S. Army Sgt. Clyde Lee Con
rad, who since the late 1970s allegedly sold
classified information to Soviet bloc countries
from the Army base in Bad Kreuznach.
Officials said Conrad, 41, revealed secrets
about nuclear missile bases, pipeline systems
and troop strength to Hungarian agents, who
passed them on to the Kremlin and other So
viet bloc countries.
But the spy ring may have been receiving
NATO information long before Conrad be
came active, according to the WeJt am Son-
ntag newspaper, which quoted information
from unidentified U.S. investigators.
Conrad was in charge of safekeeping classi
fied NATO documents, which were held in a
safe at the Bad Kreuznach base.
The newspaper said U.S. security officers
believe Conrad’s predecessor at the base doc
umentation center also worked for the Hun
garian secret service. c
The report said Hungary, a Soviet bloc
ally, for years “systematically” targeted Amer
icans in West Germany and that Conrad’s
predecessor was a U.S. military officer of
Hungarian descent who sold NATO informa
tion to Hungarian agents.
It did not give his name and did not specify
how long he worked at the base.
“There is the fear that for decades top
NATO secrets have gone to the Soviet bloc
from Americans in West Germany,” the
newspaper said.
Norm Medland, the duty officer at the
public information office of the U.S. Army
European Headquarters in Heidelberg, told
the Associated Press Sunday that an investiga
tion was continuing. He would not elaborate.
Medland also refused comment on the re
port in the Hamburg-based Welt am Sonntag,
a conservative, nationally circulated Sunday
newspaper.
Investigators said Conrad reported to a
Hungarian “spymaster” living in Vienna and
that two Hungarian-born Swedish brothers
— Sandor Kercsik, 48, and Imre Kercsik, 34
— admitted working for the Hungarian intel
ligence service.
Prosecutors say the brothers acted as cou
riers in the spy ring allegedly headed by Con
rad.
The brothers were arraigned last week in
Sweden.
The Welt am Sonntag reported that inves
tigators believe Conrad was paid $1.1 million
by Soviet bloc countries for the information.
The Conrad family “had so much of every
thing,” neighbor Johanna Horst told the
unofficial U.S. military newspaper Stars and
Stripes.
Horst said Conrad’s wife, Antje, “had lots
of gold jewelry and he just gave her a new car
with her initials in gold.”
Stars and Stripes said Saturday that Con
rad, who left the Army in 1985, received a
monthly pension of $900.
West German invesigators said they believe
Conrad kept the money in Swiss bank ac
counts, according to the CBS television net
work.
Swiss prosecutors'^Friday launched an in
vestigation.
The former sergeant remains in prison
and faces espionage charges that carry a max
imum 10-year sentence.
Among other charges, he allegedly paid
another U.S. soldier “a five-figure sum” for
obtaining secret information, according to
chief West German prosecutor Kurt Reb-
mann.
No charges have been filed against the sol
dier, who has left the Army but is still in West
Germany, the Die Welt newspaper of Bonn
said Saturday.
The former soldier apparently provided
information leading to Conrad’s arrest on
Tuesday, Die Welt said.
U.S. Army officials said Conrad, of Se-
bring, Ohio, obtained a top secret security
clearance in 1978 and kept it when he left the
service.
1
Police close charities,
fear PLO association
JERUSALEM (AP) — Police shut
down a federation of 108 Palestinian
charities Sunday and accused it of
being a PLO front.
In the West Bank, an alleged Arab
collaborator with Israel was found
burned and tied to an electric pole.
The raid on the charity associa
tion followed the closing last week of
seven Arab professional associations.
The Nablus offices of a federation
of 45 trade unions aligned with PLO
Chairman Yasser Arafat’s Fatah fac
tion were also closed last week.
The crackdown was designed to
keep the Palestine Liberation Orga
nization from taking over organiza
tions that were controlled by Jor
dan’s King Hussein before he
severed ties with the occupied'West
Bank and Gaza Strip last month.
The Israeli moves were part of a
larger effort to disrupt the grass
roots organization of the 8-month-
old Palestinian uprising against Is
raeli rule.
The uprisings are based in territo
ries Israel seized in the 1967 Middle
East War.
The burned and blood-stained
body of Samih Youssef Dababsi was
found tied to an electric pole in the
Hard Sheikh neighborhood of He
bron, Arab reports and an Israeli
photographer said.
The victim was beaten on the
head and his hands were tied to his
side, the reports said.
Palestinian sources described the
victim as a collaborator with Israeli
authorities.
Police said he was a thief.
An army official, speaking on the
basis of anonymity, confirmed the
killing.
The underground leadership of
the uprising in the occupied territo
ries has demanded that Palestinians
working for Israel resign.
In the past week, Palestinians and
alleged collaborators with Israeli au
thorities have clashed at least seven
times.
Since the uprising began Dec. 8,
255 Palestinians have been killed,
most by Israeli gunfire.
Four Israelis also have died.
In Jerusalem, police raided the
Federation of Charitable Societies
after West Bank military com
mander Maj. Gen. Amram Mitzneh
ordered it closed.
Mitzneh ordered the organization
to stay closed for one year.
The charity office distributed
PLO finances “under cover of finan
cial aid and charity,” a government
statement said.
Police also closed the Maktabat El
Haya news agency for a yeAr.
The statement said the agency was
used to advance the goals of the Pop
ular Front for the Liberation of Pal
estine.
The Popular Front is a Damascus-
based PLO faction headed by
George Habash.
Ellen El Araj, deputy head of the
charity group, denied the organiza
tion had political goals and said
many of the group’s projects would
be hurt by the closing.
She said its activities include help
ing the poor and handicapped and
providing funds for youngsters to
attend pre-schools.
Araj said the federation includes
108 charities in Jerusalem that are
funded by Arab charitable organiza
tions in Jordan and by Aramco, the
Saudi Arabian oil company.
Col. Renaan Gissin, deputy army
spokesman, said the charitable
groups acted as a conduit for PLO
funds and that the trade unions
tried to recruit and organize for Fa
tah.
IRS: Bank cash from drugs?
EL PASO, Texas (AP) — Fed
eral officials say the swollen cof
fers of this city’s biggest banks are
largely a result of large deposits
by drug dealers along the Mexi
can border, an El Paso newspaper
reported.
“I can assure you a pretty big
chunk is drug money,” said Mike
Grubich, chief of criminal investi
gation for the Internal Revenue
Service in Dallas.
Fueled by such suspicion, the
IRS said it has doubled its crimi
nal investigations staff to 10 in El
Paso over the past 18 months,
and will soon add two more.
But El Paso bankers denied the
IRS contention, telling theEl Paso
Times that most of their large de
posits are made by firms involved
in legal commerce.
El Paso banks have a combined
cash surplus last year of $399 mil
lion, up 27 percent from 1986.
The surplus was the fifth-larg-
est in the nation, behind Miami,
Los Angeles, Jacksonville, Fla.,
and San Antonio, and stands in
sharp contrast to the many strug
gling banks in Texas.
Grubich and others say that
when they trace suspicious big de
posits made to El Paso banks,
more often than not they lead to
drug dealers.
“There’s no doubt that a lot of
dope comes through El Paso,”
said Ted Houghton, executive
vice president of El Paso’s largest
bank, MBank-El Paso.
Houghton also said since most
buying and selling is done else
where, it is unlikely El Paso banks
would receive much drug money.
Richard Hickson, chairman of
Texas Commerce Bank-El Paso,
said his bank obeys the federal
law requiring banks to report de
posits and withdrawals of $ 10,000
or more.
Hickson said his bank’s loca
tion near the border explains
many of the large transactions,
because Mexican companies
doing business with U.S. compa
nies must maintain accounts in
American banks.
Phil Jordan, special agent in
charge of the Drug Enforcement
Agency in Dallas, said border
banks historically have been at
tractive to the drug lords of Mex
ico.
UH graduate
at US, Soviet
space centers
HOUSTON (AP) — It may not
seem unusual that a former Univer
sity of Houston student who worked
at Johnson Space Center would re
turn to her former worksite, but
Amy Chretien’s visits are indeed
unique.
She now lives at a secretive cosmo
naut training base outside Moscow
known as Star City, regularly com
muting between the United States
and the Soviet Union.
Chretien, 25, is married to Jean-
Loup Chretien, a colonel in the
French Air Force who is also a cos
monaut. He trained as a backup
crew member for a U.S. space flight
several years ago at the space center,
where he and Chretien met.
Jean-Loup will be going up to the
Soviet Mir space station in Novem
ber for a month’s stay. While there,
he will carry out two walks in space
and then return with the two-man
Soviet crew, which will have lived in
space for a year.
She has lived with her husband at
Star City more than a year in an
apartment building inhabited by
other cosmonauts and their families.
“For me, (Star City) is very much
close to a second home,” she said.
“It’s very quiet, and you have every
thing you need. I have friends, peo
ple I see every day.”
Among their neighbors, she said,
is Yuri Romanenko, the Soviet cos
monaut who holds a world record in
space. He returned to Earth last Dec.
29, after living 365 continuous days
in the weightless environment of the
space station Mir, which means
peace in Russian.
Chretien, whose Russian language
skills are improving, says she has wit
nessed the reforms of Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev unfolding.
She regularly mingles with Soviet
space program officials with friendly
ease.
Polish strikes continue despite talks
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Com
munist leaders Sunday criticized the
government and debated economic
problems behind the strongest wave
of strikes since 1981. Solidarity
leader Lech Walesa was slightly in
jured in a scuffle with police.
Talks ended a stubborn mine
strike in the south, but 10 strikes
continued at ports, shipyards, facto
ries arid one mine. There were no
reports of police attempts to dis
lodge workers in occupation strikes.
Solidarity estimated about 8,500
people still were occupying work
places, striking for higher pay and
legalization of Solidarity, the Soviet
bloc’s only independent union fed
eration.
Police blocked about 400 protes
ters trying to march on the strike
bound Lenin shipyard in Gdansk,
where Solidarity was born in 1980.
The federation was crushed with the
imposition of martial law in 1981
and banned in 1982.
Walesa left the shipyard Saturday
to confer with advisers amid signs
that talks proposed Friday by Inte
rior Minister Czeslaw Kiszczak might
provide a way for the government to
meet with Walesa about the labor
unrest.
When Walesa tried to enter the
cordoned-off shipyard at around 7
a.m. Sunday, a police officer tried to
stop him, said a Walesa aide who
spoke on condition of anonymity.
Walesa pulled away but lost a shoe"
and scratched his hand when he
climbed over the 7-foot fence into
the yard, the aide said.
A Mass at the nearby St. Brygida’s
church drew about 10,000 worship
ers who spilled into the square in
front of the packed church.
“From this place we have the right
as free Poles to call for freedom and
the arrival of government authori
ties for roundtable talks in the ship
yard,” the Rev. Henryk Jankowski, a
Walesa adviser, told worshipers.
“Let anyone who has a package of
solutions for the current situation sit
at this table.”
After the service, about 400 peo
ple tried to walk the five blocks from
the church to the shipyard entrance,
but they were blocked by massive
lines of police in riot gear. The
crowd dispersed peacefully.
The 230-member Central Com
mittee of the Communist Party fin
ished debating economic problems
on the second day of a meeting dom
inated by harsh criticism of the gov
ernment of Prime Minister Zbigniew
Messner
“The discussions have reaffirmed
that certain justified workers’ de
mands have been ignored,” Polit
buro member Mieczyslaw Rakowski,
in charge of propaganda, said.
“Many of them could have been
sorted out before to have defused
discontent which was exploited by
out political opponents.”