Texas A&M ■ % m a m •
The Battalion
Vol. 88 No. 23 USPS 045360 14 Pages College Station, Texas Wednesday, September 28, 1988
Contra indictments avoid
links to Reagan, drugs
pJy
feci
MIAMI (AP) — Two long-awaited
indictments accusing a private net-'
work of illegally supplying mercena
ries and arms to the Contras steered
clear of thorny questions about the
group’s links to the Reagan adminis
tration or drug trafficking.
The indictments also left other
questions unanswered.
Thirteen men are accused of hav
ing violated the U.S. Neutrality Act
by mounting an illegal campaign to
help the Contras overthrow the
Sandinista government of Nicara
gua.
The defendants include the
brother of a top Contra leader, the
head of the group called Civilian
Materiel Assistance, and at least two
men reputed to have drug ties.
The latest development in the
case is the government’s response,
filed Sept. 16, to defense contentions
that the Neutrality Act does not ap-
because the United States was ef-
ectively at war with Nicaragua.
But the U.S. attorney’s office
avoided confronting that issue di
rectly in its response, saying the mat
ter should be decided in trial, not
during a special hearing requested
by the defendants.
Other unresolved issues include
possible Reagan administration
oversight of the illegal activities, the
question of drug ties to the opera
tion, the absence of key figures
among those indicted and the slug
gish pace of the investigation, which
covered events in 1984 and 1985.
“The biggest question is who were
the people not indicted,” said Jack
Blum, special counsel to the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, which
is preparing a report on a parallel in
vestigation.
“They are prosecuting the wea
kest players who, by and large, were
not the movers," Blum said. For ex
ample, he notes, testimony from his
committee traced connections be
tween CMA, former National Secu
rity Council aide Oliver North and
military intelligence, but the indict
ment stopped with CMA head Tom
Posey.
Two of the men who were in
dicted, ex-mercenary Jack Terrell
and Joe Adams, were the most can
did witnesses before prosecutors and
congressional committees, he said.
They and other defendants claim
they were working with the knowl
edge and cooperation of the govern
ment.
Interim U.S. Attorney Dexter
Lehtinen has indicated that issues in
volving North and other higher-ups
in the Reagan administration are in
the hands of the Independent Coun
sel’s office in Washington.
I phtinen’« assistant, Richard Gre-
gorie, said that when some names
came up in their investigation, the
special prosecutor told the Miami of
fice that the subjects had immunity.
Jim Wieghart, Washington
spokesman for Iran-Contra special
prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, con
firms their investigation continues,
although by law he cannot comment
on its targets. He noted that Walsh’s
mandate does not include Neutrality
Act violations, the basis of the Fort
Lauderdale indictments.
A key figure missing from the in
dictment is John Hull, a U.S. citizen
whose Costa Rican ranch was identi
fied by congressional witnesses as a
base for military operations against
neighboring Nicaragua — as well as
a waystation for cocaine traffickers.
Jury: Teen-ager
fabricated story
of sexual abuse
NEW YORK (AP) — A months-
long investigation of an alleged rape
and abduction that led to repeated
charges of racial discrimination and
several protest demonstrations be
gan with a teen-ager’s fabricated
tale, the New York Times reported
Wednesday.
A special state grand jury decided
not to indict anyone after finding
overwhelming evidence that 16-
year-old Tawana Brawley of Wap-
pingers Falls lied and helped create
the conditions in which she was
Laboratory tests show
Shroud not of Christ
ROME (AP) — Laboratory
tests show the Shroud of Turin
was made in the 14t h century and
could not be the burial cloth of
Christ, the scientific adviser to the
archbishop of Turin said he
learned on Tuesday.
Professor Luigi Gonella said he
has not yet seen the official report
from the three laboratories that
conducted the carbon-14 dating
tests, but that all the leaks to the
press dated it to the 14th century
and "somebody let me under
stand that the rumors were
right.”
“It is quite evident somebody
sold out to the press,” Gonella
said in an interview from his
home in Turin.
He refused to identify who had
told him about the results of the
tests at Oxford University, the
University of Arizona and the
Swiss Federal Institute of Tech
nology at the University of Zu
rich.
The shroud — 14 feet, 8 inches
long and 3 feet, 7 inches wide —
bears the faint, blood-stained
image of a whipped and crucified
man. Some have maintained the
herringbone patterned linen is
the burial cloth of Christ, while
others have dismissed it as a
clever forgery.
“We are certainly disappointed
in knowing that the shroud has a
medieval cYate, but this is because
it is a cherished object, Gonella
said.
“ It’s like having a portrait in
your attic that turns out not to be
a picture of your grandfather.
But you don’t love him less,” Go
nella was quoted as saying to Brit
ain’s domestic news agency, Press
Association.
T he shroud was removed April
21 from the silver chest where it is
kept wrapped in red silk on an al
tar in the cathedral in Turin.
A strip — four-tenths of an
inch by 2.8 inches — was cut from
the cloth and then divided into
three smaller pieces for the labo
ratories, each of which, in addi
tion to another piece of cloth of a
known age, was used for testing.
found, dazed, wrapped in a garbage
bag and smeared with excrement,
the Times reported.
The black teen-ager claimed she
had been kidnapped by a gang of
white men on Nov. 24 and subjected
to four days of sexual abuse.
But the grand jury, in Pough
keepsie, concluded after more than
100 witnesses and a variety of evi
dence that she had chosen not to re
turn home and hid for four days in
an apartment from which her family
had recently been evicted, the Times
said.
The grand jury speculated she .
may have feared punishment from'
her mother’s boyfriend for her late
nights out, and that drugs and her
relationships with shady characters
may have played a role, the Times
said.
Brawley’s story attracted national
attention, especially when she re
fused to testify on the advice of fam
ily lawyers and advisers, who then
repeatedly accused the state of a
cover-up and leveled charges against
public officials and the news media.
The grand jury subpoenaed
Brawley but eventually abandoned
hope of ever hearing her story firs
thand and rescinded its vote to sub
poena her, the Poughkeepsie Jour
nal reported Tuesday.
Prominent people who spoke
sympathetically of her plight in
cluded heavyweight boxing cham
pion Mike Tyson and actor Bill
Cosby, who put up a $25,000 re
ward.
One of Brawley’s advisers, the
Rev. A1 Sharpton, said Tuesday that
he would not be surprised if the
grand jury concluded, as reported,
that Brawley fabricated her claims.
“We said from the beginning the
grand jury would not come back
with anything,” he said.
Stairway to heaven ...
Walter Kruger, assistant foreman in the paint
shop, carries his drywall plaster tools to the second
Photo by Jay Janner
floor of the Forsythe Center in the MSG T uesday.
The Center should be completed in November.
Jury finds first suspect guilty
in San Diego gang rape trial
SAN DIEGO, Texas (AP) — The first man tried in
this community’s “crime of the century” was convicted
Tuesday of sexual assault and given the maximum
prison term of 20 years, bringing a sigh of relief from
the i 9-year-old woman who says she was gang raped.
“It was right, because I don’t want him to go and do it
to somebody else,” the woman said in an interview in
Corpus Christi Tuesday afternoon, hours after 24-year-
old Orlando Garza was convicted and sentenced for
raping her.
“I’m relieved, too, because now it will take off some
of the stress and the pain that I had,” she said, adding
that she is prepared to testify against the other men ac
cused in the gang rape.
The woman accused Garza of helping abduct her
and being the first of as many as 23 men to rape and so
domize her the night of March 26-27 at a ranch near an
illegal cockfight and in two other places.
“Orlando Garza was the head dog,” Assistant District
Attorney Rodolfo Gutierrez told the six-man, six-
woman jury before it began deliberations about 2:10
a.m. Tuesday. “He was the one who brought the meat.”
The woman testified during the week-long trial that
Garza also had raped her three days before the alleged
gang rape.
He was the first of 10 men charged in the case to face
trial, which ended six months to the day the alleged
gang rape took place.
Co-defense counsel Nago Alaniz called the case “the
crime of the century” for the community, because of
the attention it has brought the South Texas commu
nity of 5,000, many of whom are related to each other.
Garza, who faces a later trial on an aggravated kid
napping charge, claimed the woman insisted on having
sex with him twice outside the cockfight. But she testi
fied Garza and the other men held her down on the
hood of a car and took turns sexually assaulting her.
Defense attorneys characterized her as an immoral,
adulterous liar who was “cleaned up” by the prosecu
tion for the trial. 1
“To me, it’s devastating that a young woman placed
herself in a situation where something just extraordi
nary may have happened,” defense attorney Albert
Pena said in his final argument to the jury early Lues-
day.
“She went out there to that cockfight because she
wanted to be with this man here,” Alaniz told the jury
during final arguments as he pointed to Garza.
Garza’s calm expression did not change as the verdict
and stiff sentence were read in the 229th District Court
in Duval County.
Formal sentencing was scheduled for Oct. 17. The
next trial in the case also is scheduled for that date, but
attorneys do not know who will be the next defendant.
Gutierrez said plea bargains from the others accused
in the case were more likely because of the conviction.
Researchers say AIDS
will escalate
A
Editor’s note: This story is the last
in a three-part series about acquired
immune deficiency syndrome. Staff
writer Kelly Brown attended a state
conference on "AIDS and the Col
lege Campus — Policies and Per
spectives" earlier this month.
By Kelly S. Brown
Staff Writer
Since the first reported case of
AIDS in the United States in 1981,
the number of people with AIDS has
risen to 68,000. Without a known
cure, researchers say that number
will continue to escalate with the
same ferocity and mystique that it
has been scouring the country with
for the past eight years.
Some people think AIDS is non-
exsistent in Bryan-College Station.
The patients who have it wish it was.
The Texas Department of Health
has reported 20 cases of AIDS in
Brazos County since 1981. Eighteen
of those patients have died.
Stewart Gallas, coordinator for
the Brazos Valley AIDS Helpline,
said that many more cases have not
been reported.
“There are cases where the indi
vidual lives here but has been diag
nosed in another city, and it’s never
reported in Brazos Gounty, so it’s
hard to have solid statistics.”
The statistics change quickly, too.
Dr. John Moore, a staff member
at the A.P. Beutel Health Center,
said that several AIDS cases have
been diagnosed at the Health Cen
ter, and referred elsewhere for spe
cialized treatment.
“I’m not certain on the amount of
patients who have been diagnosed
with AIDS here because there are
different doctors working with dif
ferent patients. However, next year
we should have a computerized sys
tem and accurate statistics will be
made available then.”
Diagnosis of AIDS depends on
whether opportunistic infection is
present.
Opportunistic infections are mi
croorganisms that usually do not
cause diseases in a healthy person,
but do cause disease in those whose
immune systems have failed.
The presence of opporutunistic
diseases and testing positive for anti
bodies to HTLV-III (the virus that
causes AIDS) can make a diagnosis
of AIDS possible.
When individuals 18 years and
older donate blood, they automat
ically are tested for AIDS. If the test
comes out positive, they are con
tacted.
Michael Gardner, assistant coordi
nator for the Brazos County AIDS
Helpline, said that although the
Health Center does offer a free and
confidential blood test for the HIV
antibody, he does not recommend
that anyone be tested there.
The Health Center does not in
clude the results in a patient’s official
medical record — the results are put
in a locked file instead.
Gardner said such a procedure is
risky.
“Assuming that the records are
completely inaccessible, there is still
the risk of a court-ordered subpoe
na,” he said. “In that event, the staff
would have no legal choice but to
turn over the records.”
“The local branch of the State De
partment of Health offers anony
mous testing, which assures that no
where, not even under lock and key,
is there a record with your name on
it,” Gardner said.
The HIV test results don’t always
mean much.
The American College Health As
sociation says that the presence of
HTLV-III antibodies means that a
person has been infected with the
AIDS virus, but it does not tell
whether the person is still infected.
Also, not everyone who is exposed to
the virus develops AIDS.
The antibody test screens donated
blood and plasma and helps to pre
vent AIDS cases which result from
blood transfusions or the use of in
fected blood products.
The AC HA says that there is not a
danger of contracting AIDS by do
nating blood. They emphasize that
the need for blood is acute, and indi
viduals who are not at risk for hav
ing AIDS are urged to continue do
nating blood.
Donating time and energy, re
searchers continue to search for a
cure for AIDS.
Gardner said that transmission is
possible only through contact with
infected blood, semen, vaginal secre
tions, feces and urine with blood.
The ACHA says that drugs have
been found that inhibit the AIDS vi
rus, but they do not lead to clinical
improvement. Although treatment
to restore the immune system of an
AIDS patient has not yet been dis
covered, they say doctors have been
successful in using radiation, drugs
and surgery to treat some of the ill
nesses individuals with AIDS have.
Eventually, the ACHA says, an ef
fective therapy may be a combina
tion chemotherapy to be used to
combat the virus and restore proper
functioning of the immune system.
Until a vaccine is discovered to
prevent infection by the AIDS virus,
everyone should take preventative
measures, the Public Health Service
says.
The Service recommends the fol-
Graphic by Kelly Morgan
lowing steps to prevent the spread of
AIDS:
• Do not have sexual contact with
persons known or suspected to have
AIDS.
• Do not have sex with multiple
partners or with persons who have
had multiple partners.
• Persons who are at increased
risk for having AIDS should not dor
nate blood.
• Physicians should order blood
transfusions for patients only when
medically necessary.
• Don’t abuse intravenous drugs.
• Don’t have sex with people who
abuse IV drugs.