TexasA&M
The Battalion
Tuesday, Nov. 1, 1988 _ College Station, Texas Vol. 88 No. 47 USPS 045360 12 Pages
Hostage Anderson on tape:
Reagan has blocked release
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) — American
hostage Terry Anderson, in a videotape
released Monday by his kidnappers, read
a statement that accused the Reagan ad
ministration of blocking his release and
urging the next president to do more.
President Reagan denied interfering
with efforts to free Anderson, and his
chief spokesman. Marlin Fitzwater, de
nounced the tape as “a cynical attempt”
to influence the Nov. 8 election.
Copies of the 2-minute, 35-second
tape were delivered to two Western news
agencies in Beirut four days after Ander
son, 41, marked his fourth birthday in
captivity.
Statements from the pro-Iranian Is
lamic Jihad, which holds Anderson, ac
companied the tapes.
“On the occasion of Terry Anderson’s
birthday and in response to your letters,
and according to his desire to send you a
recorded message, we hereby enclose
with this statement the recorded message
on videotape,” the kidnappers said.
Anderson, chief Middle East corre
spondent for the Associated Press, began
the message by identifying himself and
saying the date was Oct. 30.
“Once again I’m being given a chance
to speak to my family, to my friends and
to the American people,” he said.
Anderson said his spirits were boosted
by the birthday greetings he received.
“But as my fourth birthday in captivity
passes and as the end of my fourth year
(in captivity) approaches, I find it diffi
cult to keep my hopes and my courage
high.”
“I’ve been very close to being re
leased several times over the past two
years. But each time it seems that the
U.S. government uses its influence to
stop any agreement from being made.
And I don’t understand this.”
In Los Angeles, Reagan told reporters
his administration had done everything
possible to win the hostages’ freedom.
“I don’t think that was Terry speaking,”
he said. “I think he had a script that was
given to him. ”
Almost heaven
Photo byPhelan^^Ebenhack
Agriculture communication workers Michele LeNoir , Lana Graves and Helen Hahn dressed as Chuck’s Angels for Hal
loween. The three were seen walking by the Blocker Building Monday.
When asked about the statement on
the tape that the U.S. government inter
fered when the hostages were about to be
released, Reagan said, “That is absolu
tely not true, but let me point something
out: Terry Anderson in that terrible con
finement at the hands of those barbarians
— any information he has has to have
come from there; there is no contact with
the outside world.”
“We have been doing everything we
can for the release of the hostages, and
the very simple answer is, for those peo
ple, to let them go,” the president said.
Anderson urged the next president to
use his influence “in a positive way, not
a negative one,” to end his plight.
Of the two candidates, Anderson sin
gled out Vice President George Bush.
“I’m not asking President Reagan to
deal with terrorists, although both he and
Mr. Bush did so in the Iran-Contra affair
and the TWA hijack,” the message said.
Bush has not been named previously
as a negotiator in the 1985 jet hijacking,
in which Shiite Moslems demanding
freedom for Shiite prisoners held 39
Americans for 17 days and killed a U.S.
Navy diver.
The vice president has minimized his
role in the sale of arms to Iran. The deal
became known as the Iran-Contra affair
when it was revealed that money for the
arms was funneled to Contra rebels in
Nicaragua.
Fitzwater said the comments about
Bush were incorrect.
It was the third videotaped message
from Anderson released by the Islamic
Jihad, which kidnapped Anderson on
March 16, 1985. He is the longest-held
of the 14 foreign hostages. Nine are
Americans.
In addition to Anderson, Islamic Jihad
holds Thomas Sutherland, 56, of Fort
Collins, Colo.
Silver Taps ceremony
will not be held today
Silver Taps, normally held on the
first Tuesday of each month to honor
Texas A&M students who died since
the previous Taps, will not be held to
night.
No A&M students have died since
Oct. 4, so the ceremony is unneces
sary, A&M Department of Student
Affairs officials said Monday.
The ceremony is normally held the
first Tuesday of each month from
September through April, when nec
essary. The names pf the deceased
students are posted at the base of the
flag pole in front of the Academic
Building, and flags on campus are
flown at half-staff the day of the cere
mony.
Israeli election day
linked to violence
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israelis vote
today in an election, which is tied to 11
months of violence that has cost the lives
of more than 300 Palestinians and 10
Jews, including a rabbi’s daughter and
her three children killed in a weekend at
tack.
Sunday’s firebomb attack on a bus that
killed 27-year-old schoolteacher Rachel
Weiss and her children was expected to
boost the chances of Prime Minister
Yitzhak Shamir of the conservative Li
kud bloc, who advocates tougher mea
sures against the Arab uprising in the oc
cupied lands.
Daniel Elazar, a political analyst of the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
said, “There’s no question it will help
Likud. For most voters, this will only re
confirm their beliefs, but for those voters
sitting on the fence, something like this
could push them off to the right. ”
Zeev Eitan, a political analyst at Tel
Aviv University’s Jaffee Center for
Strategic Studies, said, “In this election,
that could be the difference between a
clear victory by one party or a tie.”
Polls taken before the attack and pub
lished Monday in the newspaper Maariv
either gave Likud the edge or indicated a
dead heat similar to the one that forced
Likud and the center-left Labor Party
into a “national unity” coalition in
1984.
Four different polls indicated Labor,
led by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres,
and its left-wing partners would win 47-
55 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, with Likud
and its allies getting 56-65.
Some seats are expected to be taken by
three Arab-oriented parties whose strong
support of the Palestine Liberation Orga
nization make them unacceptable in ei
ther major party’s coalitions.
To guard against violence on election
day, authorities ordered 14,000 police,
border guards and other security person
nel into the 17 election districts, which
have 5,000 polling places.
Final results were not expected before
Wednesday and days may be needed to
determine a clear winner, if there is one
in Israel’s complicated coalition politics.
A 48-hour travel curfew confined the
1.5 million Palestinians in the occupied
West Bank and Gaza Strip to their
homes. It began at 11 p.m. Monday and
also barred press coverage without army
escort in the territories, where Palestin
ians have been in revolt since Dec. 8
against 21 years of Israeli occupation.
Presidential candidates
start final campaigning
Associated Press
The Republican ticket of George Bush and Dan Quayle
snickered Monday at Michael Dukakis’ late campaign declara
tion of liberalism in the race for the White House. Dukakis
was running as heir to a great Democratic tradition of “caring
government” as he struggled to gain ground.
“Miracle of miracles,” taunted Bush, who has waged a
campaign-long effort to depict Dukakis as a liberal outside the
mainstream. Quayle said he was glad the Massachusetts gov
ernor had resolved his political “identity crisis.”
Dukakis invoked the names of Roosevelt, Truman and Johrt
F. Kennedy as he campaigned in California, saying those
Democrats stood for “caring government and caring political
leadership. That’s the kind of president I want to be. ”
Public polls continued to show Bush-Quayle the solid lead
ers in the race over Dukakis and running mate Lloyd Bentsen,
with one week and one day to go to judgment day.
Democrats said their own private surveys showed late gains
for their side, but Bush advisers said their man was leading in
virtually all the large states that Dukakis would need to carry
to forge an upset. A survey in Missouri gave Bush a 14-point
margin.
Bush and Dukakis threw themselves into the frenzied final
week of campaigning while carpenters at work outside the Ca
pitol in Washington, erecting the inaugural stand where one of
the would-be presidents will stand on Jan. 20 and take the oath
of office.
The battle of television commercials entered their latest
phase, as well.
Dukakis charged the Republicans with “running for the
highest office in the land by waging the lowest level campaign
in modem history” in a five-minute network commercial to be
aired Tuesday night. In a bid to steal one of Bush’s most
memorable campaign lines, he said his values — not the vice
president’s — would make America “a kinder, gentler na
tion.”
Bush’s latest commercials included one depicting Dukakis
as an incorrigible tax raiser, saying he increased levies on in
terest, dividends, meals, corporate, payroll and state income
and had signed a sales tax on items “never taxable before.”
“And now he wants to do for America what he’s done for
Massachusetts,” says a narrator. “American taxpayers can’t
afford that risk.”
Bush was in Missouri and Kentucky, and he waved a 347-
page book that was a compilation of position papers and
speeches to buttress his campaign that he’s run a campaign
based solidly on the issues.
Dukakis aimed his California appeal at women, listing his
support for comparable wages, affordable child care, parental
leave laws and a woman’s opportunity to have an abortion.
He shook his head as he said Quayle had told a 12-year-old
girl last week that the law should require her to bear a child if
she were raped by her father and became pregnant. Quayle
last week told an 11-year-old girl in Illinois that in such a cir
cumstance, she should have the child rather than an abortion.
But Quayle made no mention of such a law.
Texas A&M examines possibility
of purchasing supercomputer
By Juliette Rizzo
Staff Writer
During the next several months, Texas
A&M will begin researching the possi
bility of installing a supercomputer to in
crease the University’s edge in compet
ing for grants and top quality faculty.
A&M will evaluate supercomputer
products and then submit a proposal for a
supercomputer on campus.
About two years ago, supporters for a
supercomputer began arguing that, with
out access to a supercomputing re
sources, a university could not compete
for research grants and could not effecti
vely compete for top quality faculty and
graduate students.
Supercomputers are large, fast com
puting devices that can process informa
tion faster than A&M’s current computer
system.
They are becoming commonly ac
cepted tools for top quality research and
graduate instruction on major college
campuses.
Dr. John J. Dinkel, associate provost
for computing, said supercomputers are
used in a variety of projects and in re
search that tends to focus on engi
neering, chemistry, physics and geosci
ences.
“Without the use of a supercomputer,
it is very difficult to compete in the re
search arena,” Dinkel said. “We, as a
leading research university, are rapidly
approaching the need to have one of our
own, or we will not continue to maintain
the level of competition that we currently
have in the research and graduate study
arena.”
One of the earliest uses of such com
puters was in meteorology. The comput
ers were used to model and to predict the
weather, but calculations were not being
completed in time for the next day’s
forecast. Supercomputers were imple
mented to process all of the data and still
get the results back in time.
About four years ago, the National
Science Foundation decided the United
States was losing its ability to compete
for the national use of large scale com
puters, so it built a series of five national
supercomputers scattered across the U.S.
Linked by a network, the computers
were made readily accessible to re
searchers.
“What that did was stimulate the use
of supercomputers on campus,” Dinkel
said.
Since the original five were installed,
at least a dozen have been purchased by
universities for use on campuses nation
wide. The demand on campus is a direct
result of the national demand that cannot
be met by the five national centers alone,
because there isn’t enough computer
power available.
Jayne Waggoner, consultant at the San
Diego Supercomputer Center, said that
the computers are assets to any univer
sity because they process information
and do enormous amounts of calcula
tions at such fast speeds in very small pe
riods of time.
“What takes eight hours on a Macin
tosh or an IBM-PC takes 20 seconds on a
university’s mainframe but, with the use
of a supercomputer, the time can be cut
to less than two-tenths of a second,” she
said.
The use of the computer on campus
would be spread across many academic
disciplines.
Dinkel said, “There are even people in
the liberal arts who use them, which
might seem a bit surprising, but where
ver there are large amounts of data or in
formation in need of processing, the su
percomputer is the likely source.”
In comparison with the IBM 30-90,
the mainframe computer now used on
campus, the supercomputer is highly
specialized. For the most part, it would
handle large-scale numerical calcula
tions, he said.
Luther Keeler, director for user serv
ices with the University of Texas sys
tem’s Center for High Performance
Computing, said the supercomputer al
lows scientists to do research that really
cannot be done as effectively by any
other machine. He said the use of the
computer for the last two years on the
UT campus has had tremendous benefits
not only to researchers but to those who
sponsor research and grant research
funding to the university.
“The advantage of having supercom
puting equipment is. that it puts the uni
versity in a better position to compete for
research money,” he said. “It takes a
while to get into the public notice, but
once people see the tremendous produc
tivity from the computer, it’s easier to at
tract sources of research funding.”
$5 million bail set
for Imelda Marcos
NEW YORK (AP) — Imelda Mar
cos pleaded innocent Monday to
racketeering charges for allegedly
helping her husband, deposed Phil
ippine President Ferdinand Marcos,
plunder $ 100 million from their coun
try’s treasury.
U.S. District Judge John F. Kee
nan set baiTfor Mrs. Marcos at $5
million and said she and her ailing
husband could not return to Hawaii
until details of the bond are worked
out.
Mrs. Marcos, 59, famous for her
opulent lifestyle as first lady of the
Philippines, arrived at the federal
courthouse by limousine accompa
nied by an entourage of at least a
dozen people.
She wore a full-length, chiffon
aquamarine gown with traditional Fil
ipino butterfly sleeves, pearl earrings
and black pumps, and her queenly ap
pearance stunned the crowded court
room into silence.
Mrs. Marcos later found herself
blinking back tears when the judge
refused to allow her to return right
away to Hawaii, where she and her
71-year-old husband have lived since
he was forced out of the Philippines
in February 1986.
“I’m not going to let the lady go
back to the Hawaiian Islands until
I’m certain the bail is set,” Keenan
said as a glum Mrs. Marcos brushed
away a tear.
He ordered her to return to court
Thursday with her lawyers if they had
not worked out a bail package by then
with prosecutors.
After being fingerprinted and pho
tographed by federal marshals, she
was released temporarily without bail
and told not to leave the New York
area. Mrs. Marcos, who arrived Sun
day, is staying at the posh Waldorf
Towers in a suite reportedly costing
$1,800 a night. Aides said the bill
would be paid by Marcos friends they
would not identify.
The Marcoses were indicted Oct.
21 by a federal grand jury in Manhat
tan for a racketeering scheme that al
legedly plundered the Filipino trea
sury of some $103 million.
The money allegedly was spirited
out of the Philippines to foreign bank
accounts and then used to buy prime
Manhattan real estate and art objects.
J