The Battalion
WORLD & NATION 8
Thursday, April 20,1989
North case lies in jurors’ hands
Defense closes case by asking jury to ‘set him free’
WASHINGTON (AP) — Oliver North’s law
yer, in an emotional final argument Wednesday,
portrayed the former White House aide as a sac
rificial lamb, a scapegoat and a hostage, and im
plored jurors in his trial to “set him free.”
“Oliver North never wanted to be a hero,” said
Brendan Sullivan. “He just wants to go home.”
But prosecutor John Keker, having the last
word, asked the jury to “return a verdict of guilty
in each and every one of the 12 charges.”
With that, the nine women and three men who
will decide North’s fate were sent to deliberate.
They will return Thursday to begin their deliber
ations after instructions from U.S. District Judge
Gerhard A. Gesell. During deliberation, the jury
will be sequestered for the first time since the
Iran-Contra trial began.
In his hour-long rebuttal, Keker said it had
been an “unhappy, unpleasant, miserable crimi
nal trial,” and dismissed Sullivan’s closing argu
ment with a Shakesperian touch: “It was all
sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
“You have heard a lot about courage at this
trial,” Keker said. “There’s another kind of cour
age: courage to admit when you are wrong, co
rage to admit personal responsibility, courage to
admit guilt where appropriate. He (North) has
not admitted any of those things; it’s time for you
to do it for him.”
Oliver North never wanted to be
a hero. He just wants to go home.”
— Brendan Sullivan,
Oliver North attorney
It was the end of two tough days for North, a
former Marine lieutenant colonel whose power
while he was at the National Security Council was
substantial. His face paled and he busied himself
with writing while Keker denounced him; he
looked at the jury while Sullivan pleaded for him.
“The government has not shown criminal be
havior,” Sullivan said. “The man who held the
lives of others in his hands now puts his life into
yours.” The reference was to North’s protecting
names of people he dealt with by shredding or al
tering documents, which Sullivan saw as “a rea
sonable thing to do.”
Keker had another explanation: “He was de
stroying documents deliberately so they wouldn’t
find what he didn’t want them to find.”
After the arguments, North’s mood bright
ened and he joined his wife, w ho was speaking
with a minister in the front row' of spectators.
Sullivan, choked with emotion throughout
much of his three-hour closing argument, men
tioned President Reagan’s telephone call on the
day North was fired, a call in which the president
called North “a national hero,” and also a post
card North got from then-Vice President Bush
thanking him for his work.
“All these people who went to Ollie North for
help, where are they now?” Sullivan asked.
Parents fetch kids after child-theft rumors
MATAMOROS, Mexico (AP) —
Rumors of child-stealing by fugitive
leaders of a bloody cult that dealt in
drugs and ritual killing sent worried
parents to pick up their children at
schools Wednesday, officials said.
Traffic on the two Rio Grande
bridges connecting Matamoros to its
Texas sister, Brownsville, was again
less than normal Wednesday, al
though a Matamoros Chamber of
Commerce official said it was “begin
ning to pick up again.”
Fear, created by the discovery of
13 bodies at a ranch nearby and the
arrest of five members of the sect,
persists in this city of nearly 500,000.
Cult leaders Alfonso de Jesus
Constanzo, a Cuban-American, and
Sara Aldrete, a “priestess” from
Brownsville, were still at large along
with at least three other companions,
authorities said.
Reports that cult leaders had
threatened to kidnap children for
sacrifice if fellow cult members were
not freed sent the parents to schools
to pick up their children. Police said
the threatening calls w'ere a hoax.
“They (news media) are creating
the psychosis with all these rumors,”
said a telephone operator at the Fed
eral Police office. “We have hun
dreds of people calling to ask if the
rumors are true.”
Regional police commander Jesus
Urquiza Martinez said special guards
were being posted, especially at out
lying schools.
“We cannot hide reality,” Cham
ber of Commerce director Andres
Cahuigh told the Associated Press.
“This happened here, but it could
have happened anywhere. We must
now start showing again the good
things about Matamoros, and we
must remind our visitors that this is a
good city, quiet, with a healthy so
ciety.”
The Matamoros area has long
been known as a corridor for drug
smugglers, but the city clings to old
Mexican traditions, including the
Sunday and Thursday night con
certs by the municipal band before
thousands in the main plaza.
Cahuigh said traffic and trade
were beginning to pick up following
a sharp drop last week. Officials said
cross-border traffic dropped 80 per
cent in March after the disappear
ance of Mark Kilroy, a‘21-year-old
U.S. college student kidnapped and
killed by the sect.
Federal investigators said the
search for the missing sect members
continued and was being coordi
nated by the Mexico City office.
The five men arrested here were
arraigned before a federal judge
Tuesday and were read the prelimi
nary statements they had made be
fore the district attorney, but they
refused to make additional
statements, saying their attorney was
not present. They declined the serv
ices of the court-appointed attorney.
The federal judge has 72 hours to
decide whether they should be kept
in jail for trial or released for lack of
evidence.
Bush administration
asks Supreme Court
to ban ‘dial-a-porn’
WASHINGTON (AP) — The
Bush administration urged the
Supreme Court on Wednesday to
protect the nation’s children by
upholding a federal law that
would shut down the $2 billion
“dial-a-porn” industry.
Congress was justified when it
passed a law last year banning all
sexually explicit telephone dial
up message services to “protect
children from hearing patently
offensive speech,” Justice Depart
ment lawyer Richard Taranto
contended.
But Harvard law professor
Laurence Tribe, representing a
major purveyor of dial-a-porn
services, said Congress went too
far.
Saying most attempts by chil
dren to reach the 976 numbers
used by dial-a-porn companies
can be frustrated by technological
safeguards. Tribe said, “Their
availability makes this fiat ban il
legitimate.”
The 976 exchanges also are
used for other, non-controversial
types of messages such as sport
scores, time checks and weather
reports.
The total ban on dial-a-porn
never was imposed because a fed
eral judge in California ruled that
the 1988 law could be applied
only to obscene, not merely inde
cent, phone messages.
U.S. District Judge Wallace Ta-
shima in Los Angeles said outlaw
ing non-obscene messages, even
though they may be inappro
priate for minors, violates the
free-speech protections of the
Constitution’s First Amendment,
The government appealed the
ruling to the Supreme Court.
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor
said Wednesday she doubted
whether the proposed ban meets
the “least restrictive means” test
the court has used when scruti
nizing governmental interference
based on speech content.
She asked the governments
lawyer why technological safe
guards such as scrambling devices
or access codes could not provide
“a feasible and ef fective way to
preserve the states’ compellingin-
terest in protecting children
while allowing adult access to
such services.
Taranto answered that the va
rious safeguards contain “signifi
cant loopholes.”
Senate OKs record $157 billion bailout of S&Ls
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate on
Wednesday approved a record $157 billion bail
out and reform bill for the savings and loan in
dustry after toughening provisions that would
require S&L owners to put more of their own
money at risk to stay in business.
The 564-page bill was approved on a 91-8 vote
two months after President Bush called for emer
gency legislation to stop the hemorrhaging of the
federal S&L insurance fund from the failure of
500 thrifts, more than 200 of them in 1988, and
another 350 at or near insolvency.
The legislation will be the biggest government
financial rescue in history, dwarfing five times
over the combined costs of the New York City,
Penn Central, Chrysler and Lockheed bailouts of
the 1970s and early 1980s.
Similar S&L legislation is moving through the
House but at a slower pace.
Final congressional action is expected before
.My-
Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio, had
threatened to delay passage and force the Senate
to cut short its 11-day recess for Passover if it did
not adopt a tougher capital standard and man
date that banks and S&Ls provide a series of free
and low-cost consumer services.
After lengthy negotiations, members of the
Senate Banking Committee agreed to make S&Ls
have at least 1.5 percent so-called “tangible” capi
tal in relation to their total loans that could be
seized in the future before federal insurance
funds are tapped to pay off depositors in failed
thrifts.
Bush’s proposal would have required S&Ls to
double their capital-loan ratio from the currently
required 3 percent to 6 percent by 1991. Bulk
would have allowed thrifts to meet the new re
quirements entirely through the use of an ac
counting technique that allow-s non-money “good
will” as capital.
The new 1.5 percent requirement for “tan
gible” capital — cash, stocks and property that
easily could be converted to cash — also was
adopted by the House Banking Committee's fi
nancial-institutions subcommittee last week.
But the House panel severely weakened other
capital requirements in Bush’s proposal.
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