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Show Mow Albapimit Hit? Do you think President Carter made the right move in trying to rescue the hostages? Craig Byrne Yes I do. It's getting ridiculous. He's got to do something about it, and this is a little more subtle than war. Pag'e 2 Thursday, May 1, 1980 IEidlfiitawrfial I i .q xt - 'I ... ti. ! frfune wnBODnnQil; QEssai JLi Report Facts, F 'ar k City is in the news. Stories about the investigation being conducted by the SUimmit County Attorney's office have run in both Salt Lake City dailies and at least two television stations. The probe vas the top local item on KUTV at 6 p.m. Monday, and was r lot f ai down the list on KSL-TV. How ever, it is not the priority given these reports but their substance which has concerned many local officials. Using words like "criminal" and "felony," one broadcast relied on unnamed sources to suggest that charges would be filed by the end of the week. Another story said the probe had b( sen narrowed to four city officials. As f ellow members of the press, we think we know fishing exped it ions when we see them. It is one thing to lead on a potent. ial source by pretending that you know more than you do; it is another thing to represent speculation as fact with t he hope that some of it may be accurate. The investigation has sent the rumors flying around Park City t his week. We have heard plenty of them, and have check ed out as many as we could. Those that could not be verifi ed are not being reported in The Newspaper, and we "Did you hear there were died laughing!"' Weekly U.S. Allies Meet in Secret, Talk of Hostage-Aid Plans Washington The United States' European allies have been holding secret, urgent meetings to consider how they can help President Carter resolve the Iran crisis. The allies temporarily called their ambassadors home from Tehran. They have also brought other diplomatic-pressures diplomatic-pressures on Iran behind the scenes, and now they have joined the United States in applying economic sanctions. Carter sees the allied moves as evidence that he has finally persuaded them to cooperate. The president is well-meaning but naive. Here is what has really been going on behind his back : Our allies have lost confidence in Carter's leadership. He has waffled back and forth on the issue of using military force to resolve the crisis. Most of our allies believe Carter was too timid, too uncertain at the begin'" ning. -" Now they fear he may do something 'reckless under political pressure. They are worried he may take drastic action to save his own political skin. Thus, the allies are anxiously discussing how to save Jimmy Carter from himself. They are pressuring Iran to release the hostages in the hopes that this will prevent Carter from doing something desperate. Intelligence analysts, meanwhile, have begun to have some secono. thoughts about Iran s president, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr. He had been represented as a moderate who was eager to settle the hostage crisis. But now intelligence experts suspect that Bani-Sadr was simply trying to lure President Carter into making humiliating concessions. The CIA has been studying Bani-Sadr and has come up with a psychological profile which describes him as "a self-styled ideologue of the revolution" and "a dangerous religious fanatic." Not Speculation feel confident that The Park Record is taking the same attitude. at-titude. It is difficult for us to believe that any Park City official, elected or appointed, has been involved in any attempt to defraud the taxpayers. However, if charges are filed, we shall try to be the first to report them. We respect the attempts made by Assistant County Attorney At-torney Terry Christiansen in trying to protect the innocent. But we must point out that withholding too much information infor-mation can lead to more speculation, and more rumors. The impact of the investigation among city employees and officials is already obvious. They are tired of being hassled by the press. They don't like being grilled by Christiansen. And they are in the uncomfortable position of being seen either as "suspects" or "informers" in the case. It is in everybody's best interests thai this investigation be concluded as quickly and as efficiently as possible. Only then w ill things return to normal. If things ever are normal in Park Cil l)H four Iranian fatalities during the by So the analysts suspect that Iran's Revolutionary Council, perhaps including in-cluding Bani-Sadr, has been trying to make a fool of Uncle Sam. For example, exam-ple, one intelligence report warned that the Revolutionary Council never had any intention of removing the hostages from the custody of the militants even if Carter had made all the conciliatory gestures that have been demanded. The council would merely have assumed responsibility for the hostages' health and safety. In a related event. Defense Secretary Harold Brown has written a secret memorandum to the president urging that U.S. military power in the Persian Gulf be bolstered. The United States now has 30 warships and 1.800 Marines in the crisis zone. But Brown also wants enough supplies in the area to support --10.000 Marines. "This logistical force could sail to a designated Persian Gulf area port in about live days." wrote Brown. There, it would be met by the combat troops who would have arrived by airlift." Wily Walter: Vice President Walter Mondale may not be holier than thou, but he is probably a bit craftier. He managed to take advantage of the loophole in the tax taws that enabled him to get a refund from the Internal Revenue Service last year of nearly $4,000. We reported last year that Mondale had routinely returned the unspent portion por-tion of his modest $10,000 expense account ac-count to the U.S. Treasury. What we didn't know then and do know now is that Mondale declared $6,070 of the taxpayers' tax-payers' money that he gave back as a charitable contribution on his tax return. Even though expense money is not considered taxable income, a loophole in the tax laws enables the vice pecfial1S rescue attempt ? - They Jack Anderson ar president and other public officials to give back public funds they don't spend and to receive tax credits. In other words, Mondale managed to use public money for his own private tax benefit . j According to the IRS, what Mondale did is completely legal. But surely there is something wrong when government officials can use public money for private gain. ',; First-Family Favors: When congressmen borrow potted plants from the nation's botanical gardens to decorate party rooms, they are charged a nominal $20 rental fee. But when the plants were used for a luncheon in honor of First Lady Rosalynn Carter the $20 fee was waived. , j Watch On Waste: The bureaucrats a( the Office of Education recently gave nearly $30,000 to the Community College of Micronesia in the sunny south Pacific to find out why local students dropped out of college. Of course, the balmy climate of Micronesia is perfect for year-round swimming and surfing; so it's not difficult dif-ficult to figure out that the students would rather be at the beach than at school. Perhaps the $30,000 would have been better spent on those students who were anxious to go to college, but were unable to. "The Coast Guard is planning to spend $10,000 on showers and lockers at its headquarters building even though a Transportation Department facility is available 20 minutes away. The Coast Guard, of course, is part of the Transportation Tran-sportation Department, whose gym offers of-fers eight exercise classes for employees, em-ployees, free of charge. The annual cost of $120,000 includes the salaries of four exercise physiologists and the administration ad-ministration of stress and neuromuscular neuro-muscular tests. (c), 1980, United Feature Syndicate, Inc. 1 I think he made the right move, because apparently negotiations were going nowhere. But I'm apalled that, with the facilities at his command, the mission should fail because of the mechanical failure of a couple of helicopters, If they're going to take a one-time shot, it would seem they would take that shot with 100,000 men and 500 planes whatever it would take to insure that the mission came off . it, t vi , Scott Mundy I think he made a great move, but about 160 days late. I think if we had done something immediately, it might have been more effective. H anything kick their It didn't turn out, I f "V ' ": " ( 1 - by Stanley Karnow Ilmteippipeit iw MepdDip Big Stick Really a Twig Washington. D.C. President Carter's attempt to deprive the Soviet Union of sophisticated technology has plainly failed, thereby proving once again that his big stick is really a twig. The sanctions, announced three months ago, were contrived to penalize the Russians for their invasion of Afghanistan. But since then, the embargo's main casualties have been U.S. corporations hoping for contracts with Moscow and America's credibility credi-bility in the world. A lesson to be drawn from the effort, therefore, is obvious. Measures that cannot be enforced are probably worse than no measures at all. In the first place, trade boycotts almost never work. The United States cut off commerce with Communist China for decades, for example, but Peking nevertheless acquired the means to build nuclear weapons. The illegal government in Rhodesia survived sur-vived economic isolation, and so has Fidel Castro. . Moreover, the Carter administration's move to halt technology sales to the Kremlin was something of a bluff from the start, since there was very little to block. Total U.S. exports of manufactured manufac-tured goods to the Soviet Union last year amounted to only $600 million, a high technology accounted for a mere third of that figure. The embargo is weakened further by the fact that it is filled with loopholes. For instance, it contains no ban on technology sales to Eastern Europe which means, quite clearly, that the Russians can obtain American equipment equip-ment through Poland or Hungary or any of their other satellites. It also is difficult for the Carter Newspaper Subscription Rates, $6 a year in Summit County, $12 a year outside Summit County Published by Ink, Inc. USPS 378-730 Publisner Jan Wilking Edltor Bettina Moench Advertising Sales jan wilking. Bill Dickson General Manager Terry logan Business Manager Rick Lanman Graphics Bobbye Jean Mueller, Donna Pouquette Reporters Conrad Elliott, David Hampshire Photo Editor phvlis RUbenstein Typesetting ...Kathy Deakin. Dixie Bishop Subscription & Classifieds nn Kono Entered a second-class matter May 25, 1977, at the post office in Park City, Utah 84060, under the Act of March 3, 1897. Published every Thursday at Park City, Utah. Second-class postage paid at Park City. Utah. Unsolicited manuscripts and photographs are welcome and will be considered for publication, however The Newspaper will assume no responsibility for the return of such material. AH news, advertising and photos must be received prior to the Tuesday noon deadline at our office 419 Main Street in Park City, by mail P.O. Box 738. Park City, Ut. 84060, or by calling our office (801)649-9014. Publication material must be received by Tuesday noon for Thursday publication. James Dennis Martz It didn't work, so I guess he didn't make called 20-20 hindsight. Jed Dudek Yes. but I'm iust sorry that the attempt drastic with the hostages now, we butts. Dan Broersma but I've got to give him credit for going in there and doing something, finally. administration to control West European Euro-pean intermediaries, who can transfer U.S. merchandise to the Soviet Union through a complicated network of go-betweens. But the biggest obstacle to the imposition of sanctions comes from the fact that America's industrial competitors competi-tors in Western Europe and Japan are able to furnish the Russians what they cannot get from the United States. And there is no sign that these nations, despite their professions of friendship for America, are going to pass up business. An Italian businessman, quoted by the Financial Times of London, summed up the West European attitude: "Sanctions "Sanc-tions are all very well if everybody applies them. But we are certainly not going to risk seeing an important contract which we have been negotiating negotiat-ing for many months going to a competitor." To illustrate the point, a $350 million Armco deal to build an electric arc steel complex south of Moscow is likely to be taken over by Creusot Loire, the French corporation. The Russians also recently awarded contracts worth $118 million to two French firms to construct oil rig facilities for the Caspian Sea. The United States is trying to tighten the screws on its allies through the Consultative Group Coordinating Committee Com-mittee (COCOM), at which representatives representa-tives from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Japan seek to shape a common policy on exports to Communist Commun-ist countries. But the mechanism is becoming increasingly toothless, primarily because be-cause the West Europeans and Japanese Japan-ese refuse to sacrifice their growing Kilby the right move. That's failed. I think if they do should go over and money-making opportunities. French trade with the Soviet Union, which went up more than 30 percent last year, has tripled since 1975, and it is scheduled to triple again in the next five years under an accord signed not long ago. Thus the prospects of France subscribing to Carter's sanctions are dim. West Germany, the Soviet Union's largest non-Communist trade partner, is in a similar position. Its exports to the Russians were up by 36 percent last year, and besides, West German banks are heavily committed to financing sales of industrial equipment to the Soviet Union. Italy has been even more blatant in defying Carter's appeals for allied solidarity. Last month, during a visit to Rome by a senior Russian trade official, the Italians concluded a $1.5 billion agreement to build the Soviet Union a series of chemical plants over a 10-year period. All these deals, of course, are of military value to the Russians either because they can be directly used to turn out defense equipment or because they release resources. It is tempting to suggest that President Carter's original embargo ploy was essentially a grandstand play, designed to project his new image of toughness. But whatever its motives, it has hardly lived up to expectations. Indeed, it has backfired to the extent that it has wounded his reputation more than it has hurt the Russians, whose arrogance is always strengthened by the feebleness-of their adversaries. Released by The Register and Tribune Syndicate, 1980 ; . 'W St , ... z rsym , |