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About What's happening. (Eugene, OR) 1982-1993 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 6, 1987)
P * 7 £ ON ASHES and DIAMONDS 4 by Alexander Cockburn f Follow the Money Half choking amid the toxic fog caused by smoking guns introduced into the Iran/contra hearings, Rep. Les Aspin of Wisconsin advanced cautiously along the trail of truth on July 21, as Admiral Poindexter faced the increasingly incredulous com mittee. “I have come to the conclusion,” said Aspin, “that we’re missing something—that there’s got to be another source of funding for the con tras.” He then said he had made a spreadsheet of known funds going to the contras from congressionally ap proved sources, appropriated money, countries such as Saudi Arabia, pri vate donations and the “diversions” or “residuals.” The results, Aspin said,, “are very interesting” since they show a big gap in funding. Whereas the con tras had been getting by on $3.4 million a month until February, 1986, “then for the next eight months the money drops off precipitously and from all sources . . . you’re talking about . . . less than $3 million from all sources ... for a total of an eight month period.” Two obvious sources come to mind and to put the question on one of them Aspin would have had only to turn in his chair and address one of the com mittee’s senior investigative staffers, Tom Polgar. Polgar would have told him smoothly that according to the committee’s investigation the CIA had most definitely not been giving secret funds to the contras. But then that is what Polgar would have been likely to say, since Polgar was a career offi cer in the CIA, most notably in Sai gon during the Vietnam war. The hir ing of Polgar—pressed by Senator Warren Rudman—made it plain from the start that the Iran/contra com mittee was going to be circumspect and ever mindful of the paramount importance of not looking more than a few inches beyond the end of its own nose. Even so, Aspin could have then headed down the corridor to the two separate Congressional hearings into allegations of contra drug smuggling. Here he could find an answer to this interesting question of how the con tra leadership kept going, either in the field or in their other main sphere of operations—the real estate market in southern Florida. The latest New York Times/CBS poll showed that contra aid is still op posed by 51 percent of all Americans, down somewhat from the days before the hearings became a contra-aid tele thon. But as the Ollie craze subsides, an increasingly high profile to the drug/contra connection could erode the chances of the next contra mili tary aid package going through con gress in the fall. The way things are at the moment, enough Democrats will vote for it unless given an unim peachable reason not to. Killing Nicaraguan civilians is not regarded as sufficient cause for these swing Democrats to withhold funds. Putsch Plans The disclosure that Colonel Oliver North worked with the Federal Emer gency Planning Administration on a secret executive order to suspend the constitution and run the country under martial law was received with con siderable shock as evidence of a put schist mentality new in American history. The thing to remember is that the governing elites always tend to look on the dark side and to fear that the authority of the state rests on sand. Among the emergencies against which North and FEMA urged mar tial law was domestic protest over a U.S. invasion of a foreign country, i.e. Nicaragua. Back at the time of the Vietnam war there were undoubted ly similar contingency plans. In 1967 Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was already gloomily warning of im mense domestic unrest and the need to make major provision against it. Then, after the Tet offensive, the Joint Chiefs of Staff opposed the dispatch of 200,000 extra troops to Vietnam, arguing that they would be needed in the U.S. to quell insurgency on the home front and maintain law and order. The feet that these troops were withheld from Vietnam is one of the great achievements of the antiwar movement. Drug Test at ABC On July 9 Capital Cities/ABC alert ed all its employees in a memorandum from the company’s top executives. Tom Murphy and Dan Burke, that as from late August of this year all final candidates for full-time employment would be asked to pass a drug test. Anyone failing the test would be con sidered unsuitable for employment for six months thereafter. A three-page addendum addressed itself to some obvious questions. The test will screen for marijuana, co caine, opiates such as heroin and co deine, benzodiazepines such as valium and librium, barbiturates, PCP, amphetamines and quaaludes. The testing process will be two-stage, with a positive first result confirmed by the gas chromatography/mass spectrometry process. Murphy and Burke note carefully that “nearly 40 percent of the Fortune 500 companies have instituted pre-employment testing," and say that in the case of Capitol Cities/ABC “the subject of drug abuse has been important to us as a company and we have had an anti-drug policy in effect since 1984 ... in response to several unfortunate incidents involving drug use on com pany property. . . . We have inten sified our education and rehabilitation program for existing employees [who will—as yet—not have to submit to the testing program, A.C.] Never theless we know we are often not reaching everyone who needs help because the denial factor is so strong with drug abusers. “This fact is made more apparent by the results obtained by another media company that began pre-em ployment testing over a year ago. Though their policy was known and understood by all applications, 17 per cent failed the drug screen. Our testing process will help us by not hir ing additional drug users while we're trying to aid current employees who need help.” As someone at one of the Capitol Cities/ABC subsidiaries remarked to me, “This all seems an invasion of privacy. How would such a test help workers currently employed here? By screening out people who smoked marijuana at a party days before their job interview, or people who took valium from a friend to calm down at an exceptionally stressful time? How about high-salaried executives here who can best afford certain controlled substances like cocaine? What about the greatest hypocrisy of all—the abuse of alcohol and cigarettes which is a far greater threat to the health of much larger percentages of Cap Ci ties/ABC workers than any of the sub- 1 stances mentioned in this memo?” Another thing the testing program won’t help is the fanatical addiction of Cap Cities/ABC owners and execu tives to the drug called “money.” Features of “money addiction” in clude the irresistible urge to shovel shit on a nightly basis into the face of the American viewer in order to in crease advertising revenue and thus earn more profits which can then jus tify increasing the already vast salaries of the senior executives. The Shoopley-Hartheim “money addict profile" includes hyperventilation on a seasonal basis around the time of the quarterly earnings report, progressive dilatation of the cerebral shame sup pressors, absence of all emotions of taste, humanity, compassion. Profes sor Shoopley notes that “money addiction is a marked feature of late capitalism, in which the act of ac cumulation subsumes all other indi ces of achievement.” Madman in the old days newspaper tycoons were a ghastly lot, but at least more colorful in their eccentricities than the present gang, who spend half their time talking to stock analysts on Wall Street and the other half answering letters from Phyllis Schafly and Reed Irvine. It’s a measure of how dull things have gotten that probably the most colorful major newspaper execu tive is the unalluring Allen Neuharth, chairman of the Gannett chain and, with an annual salary of about $1.3 million, a confirmed money addict. The Gannett chain is mostly made up of small boring papers—about 90 —in monopoly situations, specializ ing in the “local news” that is New harth's recipe for keeping advertisers happy and readers undisturbed by in timations of the dangerous world that lies beyond the county line. To cap a career dedicated to mediocrity Neuharth founded USA Today, hurl ing money at the project in a desperate attempt to keep it afloat since its launch in 1982. USA Today is now supposedly on sound footing and Neuharth spends some of his time trundling around the country in a sumptuously appointed bus, keeping his finger on die American pulse. When it looked as though USA To day might fail, Neuharth summoned top managers to his home, called “The Pumpkin Center” in Cocoa Beach, Florida. He told them costs had to be cut and advertising and cir culation improved if the paper was go ing to make it. After this urgent homi ly Neuharth invited the executives to join him in a “Last Supper." The din ing room table was laid out with Manischewitz wine and unleavened bread and Neuharth stepped from behind a curtain wearing a crown of thorns. He stood in front of a wooden cross and intoned, “I am the cruci fied one.” Then he told the gape mouthed audience that they would all be “passed over” if USA Today fail ed. For further details about Neuharth and USA Today consult The Making of McPaper Peter Prichard. She Said It “Nazis like Klaus Barbie and Adolf Eichmann claimed that not only were they obeying orders from the govern ment, but that their obligation to obedience had no limits. Their prosecutors—at Nuremberg, in Je rusalem, in Lyons and wherever the Nazis were tried for such crimes—ar gue that there are some things no gov ernment has the right to require and some things every citizen has the obli gation to refuse: the cold-blooded murder of civilians, the elimination of inferior races. Such acts cannot be excused or justified—not during war time or by oaths of obedience. A citizen is neither obliged nor per mitted to commit “crimes against humanity.” This was Jeane Kirkpatrick in her syndicated column. She should read it to Oliver North, who said he would stand on his head if ordered to do so by his commander in chief, and who planned and paid for the cold-blood ed murder of civilians. WHAT'S HAPPENING Weekly News, Arts, Entertainment Published Every Thursday Publishers: Elisabeth Lyman, Lucia McKelvey, Sonja Ungemach Editors: Lucia McKelvey, Sonja Ungemach, Elisabeth Lyman Advertising Manager: Elisabeth Lyman Production Manager: Sonja Ungemach Office Manager/Production: Sheri Longobardo Assistant Editor: Deborah McCee Account Representatives: Susan Brokaw, Kathryn Carnhart, Ken Hof, Martha Wagner, Carde Wells Cover Design: Melanie Pratt Contributing Writers: Deborah McCee, Jim Stiak, Lois Wadsworth, Martha Wagner, Carde Wells Distribution: Daybreak News Co. Typesetting: ProtoType. Camera Work: Graphics Unlimited. Printing: Springfield News 335 West 20th Avenue Eugene, Oregon 97405 (503) 484-0519 © Copyright 1987 What's Happening. All rights reserved. /zli5£%" LE0E//AVEELLENEDR/ SUPER SALE 3RD ANNUAL • SUMMER CLOSEOUT SDAXSONEf I FRIDAY AUGUST 7, NOON-8 PM SATURDAY AUGUST 8,10 AM-7 PM SUNDAY AUGUST 9, U AM-4 PM EXAMPLES: GLOVES- as low as $4.99 27” TUBES— CATEYE SOLAR from $1.50 COMPUTER MODEL CC-2000— $39.95 STOCK UP ON TIRES AND TUBES NOW! MANY ITEMS ON SALE FOR BOTH ROAD AND MOUNTAIN BIKES. COME IN DURING SALE FOR COMPLETE PRICE LIST.
