Bell blocked probe of FBI officials
WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney Gen
era! Griffin Bell undermined the Justice
Department’s investigation of the FBI and
blocked possible indictments against eight
middle-level FBI officials, the man who
headed the probe said Thursday.
William Gardner told a Senate appropria
tions subcommittee that Bell effectively
halted the probe by refusing indictments
against an unspecified number of FBI offi
cials who the task force believed were lying.
Without the threat of perjury charges,
Gardner said, his task force had no lever
age with which to force agents to tell the
truth about allegedly illegal FBI activities.
Gardner said Bell also refused to let pro
secutors seek indictments of eight mid
level officials on charges of wiretapping,
mail theft, break-ins or black bag jobs, per
jury and false statements to a government
agency.
He said the officials, some of whom still
work for the FBI, included three squad
leaders, four special agents in charge of
divisions and one assistant director.
Gardner, who resigned as head of the
investigation task force last December, did
not name any of the officials. Bell had no
immediate comment.
Gardner, who is still with the Justice De
partment, said the task force not only found
FBI agents involved in burglaries but also
turned up a class in breaking and entering
that was given by a “guest lecturer” at the
FBI training academy in Quantico, Va.
Another former member of the task force,
Stephen Horn, told the subcommittee Bell
pleaded with the FBI official to recant his
testimony after the task force told the attor
ney general it wanted to indict the official for
perjury.
“He told him he did not want to prosecute
him because he was an FBI agent,” Horn
said of Bell. “He said it would be a disgrace
to the FBI.”
The statements by Gardner and Horn,
and by two other task force members who
resigned last year after a dispute with Bell,
prompted Sen. Lowell Weicker, R-Conn., to
question Bell’s fitness for office.
-World at a glance-.
From Associated Press reports
Study reveals military spending
STOCKHOLM, Sweden —The world is spending almost $1
million a minute on arms, 20 times more than industrialized na
tions spend to help poorer countries, the Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute said Thursday.
Current worldwide military expenditures total $400 billion
and "with the current rate it will top $1 trillion by the end of the
century," SIPRI Chairman Dr. Frank Barnaby said in releasing
the group’s 1978 edition of "World Armaments and Disarma
ment.” '
Barnaby, who is British, said worldwide military spending is
twice as high as the yearly gross domestic product of the whole of
Africa, about the same amount as the gross domestic product of
all Latin America and 20 times more than the total annual de
velopment assistance given by industrialized nations to the de
veloping world.
The two great superpowers account for more than half the
world s military spending. In 1977, the U.S. defense budget was
$98 billion, compared with a CIA estimate of $130 billion—at
American prices—for the Soviet Union.
Grandmother shoots janitor
DALLAS — A 56-year-old grandmother allegedly shot a school
janitor to death Wednesday, apparently because he had spanked
her grandson, police said.
The vicitm was identified as Woodrow Porter Jr., 38. Police said
he died at the scene from .38-caliber bullet wounds in his neck
and chest.
Police said that according to school officials, the woman came
to the school about 3 p.m. and asked to speak to Porter. She
reportedly had been told by her granddaughter that the man had
spanked her 6-year-old grandson.
Porter was called to the administration office and admitted
spanking the woman’s grandson after he caught the boy bending
the antenna on his car at his home Wednesday morning, police
saidl.
Jack Castle, the school’s head custodian, told police he
thought the argument between the grandmother and Porter had
ended after they met in the school office.
Workers dead after
scaffolding collapse
ST. MARYS, W. Va. (AP) — All
51 workers atop a scaffold inside a
power company cooling tower
were killed Thusday when the
construction framework collapsed
and the crew fell 168 feet to the
ground in a twisted mass of steel
and rubble.
Scott Widmeyer, press aide to
Gov. Jay Rockefeller, said hours
after the accident, “There are 51
confirmed dead."
Rescuers had to pull many of
the victims from under the debris
inside the base of the huge circu
lar concrete tower.
A local fire station was pressed
into service as a temporary mor
gue where relatives came to iden
tify the dead, including eight
members of one family working at
the site.
John Peppier, a laborer stand
ing on the ground in the middle of
the tower when the disaster occur
red, said the scaffold, wrapped
around the inside of the tower,
began peeling away and then fell.
Peppier, 38, said, "The first
thing I heard was concrete falling I
had just sent a basket...up. I
looked over my left shoulder and I
could see it falling. I could see
people falling through the air and
everything falling.”
"They just fell like dominoes," a
witness said. “I looked up and
men were screaming and holler
ing.”
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Afganistan rebels claim
coup after air, armor battle
NEW DELHI, India (AP) —
Rebel forces in Afganistan
claimed Thursday to have over
thrown the authoritarian govern
ment of Pres. Mohammed Daoud
aiuay reveais
federal waste
WASHINGTON (AP) — Pres.
Carter was told Thursday that the
government spends at least $500
million a year on audio-visual ac
tivities marked by'“waste and
questionable procedures.”
The White House released a
year-long study that Carter had
ordered in an effort to search for
federal waste and inefficiency.
The study, which cost $82,000,
concludes that the government’s
production of films, videotapes
and slides, television spots, radio
recordings and film strips costs
enough to run the State Depart
ment for six months.
The study turned up evidence of
“a pattern of waste and question
able procedures.” As a result, the
Office of Management and
Budget has set forth
government-wide rules aimed at
ending waste, duplication of effort
and inefficiency in audio-visual
programs.
One of the new rules even bars
federal officials from succumbing
to the temptation to become “ham
actors” in their own films.
Here are some of the “horror
stories” cited in the summary find
ings of the study, directed by
former network television pro
ducer Robert Lissit:
• “An agency spent $125, 000
on a motion picture, but has lost
track of the film. There is no record
of where the film went, or whether
anyone saw it.”
• “It is impossible to develop an
accurate count of the number of
government television studios in
the Washington area.”
• A television station represen
tative told the study group that if
given a choice between broad
casting a government-produced
program and color-bar tests, he
“would run the color bars.”
- SUE
PARIS
is now at
HAIR FAIRE
after armor and air attacks on the
presidential headquarters and
other government buildings in the
capital of Kabul.
The rebel claim, broadcast on
Kabul Radio, could not be im
mediately confirmed — many
lines of communication were cut
to the landlocked, mountainous
nation. But in London, diplomatic
dispatches and reports of moni
tored radio broadcasts from the
Afghan capital said the armed
forces had seized control and
“wiped out” Daoud’s family.
Many bodies were seen in
Kabul’s streets after several hours
of heavy fighting, said diplomatic
sources here in contact with
eyewitnesses in Kabul.
Gen. Abdul Qadir, who de
scribed himself as chief of de
fense forces, said in the rebel
broadcast monitored here that a
military revolutionary council had
taken control of the Texas-sized
nation of 20 million people,
wedged between Pakistan, Iran
and the Soviet Union.
“For the first time power has
come into the hands of the peo
ple," he said. “The last remnant of
imperialism and tyranny of the
Mohammedzai has been put to an
end.”
The Mohammedzai is the clan
of both Daoud and former King
Muhammed Zahir Shah, who was
overthrown by Daoud in 1973.
Western diplomats here said
the broadcast might indicate the
coup leaders are politically to the
left of Daoud. They said Qadir
previously had been known as
vice commander of the air force.
Qadir declared the new regime
would follow a foreign policy of
“strict" non-alignment. Afghanis
tan traditionally has maintained
dose ties with the Soviet Union, its
major trading partner, but also has
received aid from the United
States.
In Washington, the State De
partment and U.S. Ambassador
Theodore Eliot ordered the 1,300
American residents of the Afghan
capital to stay inside their homes.
Department spokesman Hodding
Carter said there was no report
any Americans had been hurt.
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