The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current, June 24, 1999, Image 2

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    Page 2 • Thursday, June 24, 1999
News
The 6
U.S. to review files on Oswald
Power play
WASHINGTON (AP) — Intelligence and de
fense agencies will review KGB files on Lee Har
vey Oswald that may detail Russia’s own in
vestigation of Oswald’s role in the assassination
of President Kennedy.
Officials said yesterday there is no estimate
when the public might see the material. The un
certainty over timely access to the information
troubles some advocates of public access to
government documents.
The documents — a surprise gift from Boris
Yeltsin to President Clinton — will first be re
viewed for material.sensitive to national secu
rity concerns, while also taking into account
privacy considerations.
The interagency review set up by the White
House will consist of officials from the CIA, the
National Security Council and the State and De
fense Departments, said David Leavy, NSC
spokesperson.
Kate Martin, a lawyer for the National Secu
rity Archive, a private research group and library,
believes the papers should go to the National
Archives, which oversees assassination records
and makes the records publicly available.
“This procedure they are talking about is
very troubling to us,” she said. “It’s very hard
to imagine any real national security consider
ations for withholding these documents from
the American public. ”
Leavy said the White House expects ulti
mately to make the documents public.
“/t's very hard to imagine
any real national security
considerations for
withholding these
documents from the
American public”
— Kate Martin
National Security Archive lawyer
“Our approach would be to declassify and
make public as much as possible.” he said. He
could not specify how long it would take.
About 85 papers, all in Russian, were turned
over by Yeltsin on Sunday when he met with
Clinton during the Group of Eight summit.
Oswald, a former Marine, defected to the
Soviet Union in 1959 and renounced his
American citizenship. That move attracted
the attention of the KGB, which bugged his
apartment in the Belarus capital city of Min
sk, paid neighbors to inform on him and
kept Oswald and his Russian wife Marina
under constant surveillance.
The KGB amassed a six-volume file on Os
wald’s activities in Minsk. It was sent to
Moscow after the assassination but returned to
Minsk after the breakup of the Soviet Union.
The documents handed over by Yeltsin
are thought to be the KGB files compiled in
Moscow, said John Tlinheim, former chair
of the government’s Assassination Records
Review Board.
Tlinheim said the documents could shed
light on what the KGB knew about Oswald.
“The KGB had sophisticated intelligence at
the time. They could have uncovered facts that
we didn’t get,” said Tlinheim, who was a mem
ber of a board delegation that tried but failed to
get the documents from Russia in 1996.
Seeds
Continued from Page 1
“Taste and nutrition are rarely,
though sometimes, considered by
modern breeders,” he said. “The
new maroon carrot developed at
A&M, for instance, has a high
carotene content and so it is very
nutritious. The breeder was work
ing to obtain the maroon color,
however, and the increased
carotene level in the carrot was a
happy side benefit,” Rowe said.
Frank Dainello, a professor of
horticultural sciences, said seed col
lecting is an “interesting hobby”
but has no practical applications.
“From a scientist’s standpoint, it
[seed collecting] not as important,”
he said.
He said before man decided to
alter plants’ genetic material,
plants were altered naturally by
cross-pollination and this is one
of the reasons some plants do not
exist today.
“These plants became obsolete
because their quality was not ac
ceptable and they were not disease
resistant,” he said.
Rowe said it is important to
preserve seeds because of trends
developing in the commercial
seed trade.
“[These trends] remind in
formed gardeners of the impor
tance of preserving the genetic ma
terials and characteristics of the
heirloom seeds,” he said.
Rowe said “disturbing trends”
have emerged from altering the
characteristics of certain plants.
One example is the development
of a new corn seed which has
been genetically altered to in
clude the genes of the a natural
ly-occurring microbe called Bacil
lus thurengiensis. The microbe.
which was incorporated into the
seed because it is toxic to catap-
illars, is also killing the threat
ened monarch butterfly.
Dainello said while the microbe
may threaten the butterflies, it is
also important to keep the needs of
consumers in mind, and the bene
fits of changes made to seeds usu
ally outweigh the harm.
“For example, Dr. [Leonard]
Pike is working on increasing
compounds in plants to combat
heart disease and other dis
eases,” he said. “It is important
to research nutritional benefits
through genetic alteration.”
Zoning proposal to protect Alamo NUTZ
SAN ANTONIO (AP) — The
Alamo has no skyline behind it,
and the city is taking steps to keep
it that way.
“Basically, when visitors take
photos of the Alamo or stand in
front of this historic site today,
what they see behind the church
is blue sky — well, gray sky, if it’s
raining,” Ann McGlone, the city’s
historic preservation officer, said.
The idea of preventing signs or
buildings from creeping into view
at the famous battle site was
among the recommendations for
warded to City Hall by a 22-mem
ber Alamo Plaza Study Committee
in 1994, McGlone told the San An
tonio Express-News.
McGlone said she believes
most visitors would rather not get
home and discover a billboard or
modern building in the back
ground of their snapshots of the
Alamo.
“We really need to put some
clear rules in place before some
thing happens,” she said.
City planners are working on a
special city zoning proposal that
would preserve the Alamo “view-
shed.”
“The view corridor is not as re
strictive as one might imagine,”
McGlone said, noting that even on
Bonham Street, directly behind
the Alamo, the proposed zoning
would permit structures of six or
seven stories.
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