THE ATLANTA CONSTITUTION Keg Murphy For 105 Years the South's Standard Newspaper The Toughest Man ou Ever Met? JACKTARVER, President REG MURPHY, Editor The crowd was telling stories about the toughest men they ever met. Somebody claimed he knew a stock have resigned long before now. Nixon and his staff say over and over that he has no intention of resigning. Perhaps he doesn't even consider it a possibility, though his daughter said he discussed it with the family. PACE 4-A, TUESDAY, JAN.
29, 1974 Gas Rationing began to leave the White House for Camp David or Florida or California all the time. He had to dismiss his most trusted advisers, and he went into deeper seclusion. But he didn't ever stop trying to mount one program after another. One week he would say he was working on international affairs, and the next week he would launch Operation Candor. His staff was being indicted, pleading guilty, going off to Somehow he found the strength to keep going every day.
It proved he had an inner sense of control that virtually nobody else could have mustered. It must have taken a fantastic act of will to keep it going. car driver that was brave enough to laugh at death. Somebody else insisted that he knew a mountaineer who didn't understand fear. And I presented my candidate for the toughest man in history: Richard M.
Nixon. If people had listened to him earlier, they would have known that would happen. He has said repeatedly what he thinks of himself: As events become more difficult, he gets cooler. He has said that the key to any public figure's success or failure is to be firm in crises. And the events of the past year certainly prove that his self-assessment was accurate.
When the Watergate scandals came back to the public consciousness in the winter of 1973, Nixon was thinking of other things. He thought China might be ready to negotiate, and he was headed for Russia. He had the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT) goirt, and some domestic programs were developing. Since then, much of his time has been spent trying to dodge the impeachment bullets and pretend things were going along as normal. The strains obviously got to him.
He Admire him or not, Nixon has lived through the toughest time any president is likely to endure. He has been able to do it, I am convinced, because he has a cast-iron stomach and an incredible capacity for absorbing criticism. Many others would have crawled into the bottle. Some would have suffered nervous breakdown. Some would Whatever the truth, it is clear that the President considers it necessary to guard himself from any further probing or questioning.
He would make a monk seem open and communicative by He would make a boxer seem unaggressive or a football player undisciplined. No matter what anybody claims friend or foe-he has to be the toughest man this nation has seen in years. Whether that is good or bad is-another question altogether. James J. Kilpatrick The Media And Truth WASHINGTON For the past couple of years, the watchword around town, has been "credibility." Some- When Sen.
Henry Jackson makes pronouncements concerning the present energy crunch, it's worth paying attention. It is worth paying attention because he is one of the few, the very few, figures on the national scene who has been saying the same things on this issue publicly and accurately-for the last couple of years. Jackson talked of the possible energy shortages facing the United States during his unsuccessful bid for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination. It is an area which Jackson has studied; he has become probably the Senate's leading expert. Only last week he presided over thr ee days of hearings on the energy crisis.
So, it is worth noting that Jackson said Sunday that gasoline rationing maybe necessary by the spring of this year. "I believe the present situation clearly indicates that, in the second quarter we're going to be in a pos-- tHre where gas rationing may well be a reality. I don't think there's much doubt about it unless there are some developments overseas which indicate that we will get extra crude material," said the Washington Democrat. That reference to getting extra crude material pretty clearly ties us again into what happens in the Middle East. And, though there seems real hope for progress towards a peaceful settlement there, it is far from clear that the Arab oil barons are willing to up their oil production to suit our convenience.
There has been so much confusion and doubletalk about the effects of the energy crisis that Sen. Jackson's forthright comments are helpful. Maybe in the end it won't be necessary to have gas rationing this spring, but Jackson has generally been accurate in his predictions on these matters. Frankly, on the basis of track record we tend at this point to put more stock in Sen. Jackson's analysis than on the most.
I I 1 1 13'. I I I I 1 Kltl I i i fefo; A Mess EE XCX I 7 JSP to federal agencies, sometimes to candidates for president; mostly it applied to the credibility of Mr. Nixon. But within the media, we very seldom have applied the watchword to us. Credibility to A 1 The garbage dilemma in DeKalb isttill pretty messy.
Early this year DeKalb Countians began paying more money for less service. Instead of continuing to pick up garbage in yards, the crews picked out on the streets where citizens most citizens had to carry it out once on twice a week. Good exercise for the citizens, but they were charged a pretty penny for it. Some objected. And some, such as disabled people, were unable to comply.
So the higher echelons decreed that backdoor pickups might be made available to those who would pay double the already greatly increased fee. They hoped there would be few takers. So far there haven't been. The most noticeable response to the new garbage system is distress over the unsightly cans lining residential streets and early morning backache. Our own belief is that government on any level ought not offer one service to the affluent and a lesser service to poor oiks.
The lack of response suggests that many DeKalb citizens feel the same way. the press is not exactly like chastity Rejection Slip C. L. Sulzberger Time to Spook the Spooks MILAN, Italy The role of intelligence in modern societies is now increasingly questioned as the result of can say one thing about the present administration in Washington. It, is highly literary.
President Nixon wrote a best seller, "Six Crisis." His daughter Julie has written a children's story about a White House pooch. E. Howard Hunt, once on the payroll, wrote 40 or more spy novels before he was caught spying himself. And now it is that Spiro Agnew, the former vice president, is writing a novel. We didn't shed a tear when Agnew lost his job as vice president.
But he has our full sympathy in his latest disappointment. Random House has taken a look at the outline of his novel and has sent the former vice president a rejection slip. For a budding author, a rejection slip is a traumatic, soul-rending experience. Some hardy souls recover and resubmit their manuscripts, and may eventually find a publisher, but others are devastated by a rejection slip and begin to think in terms of ditch digging or stock broking or some other unromantic occupation. Random House said Agnew's novel, about a vice president who is "programmed for disaster by the Communist Chinese," was not suitable for their list.
That shows they are not with it. Here is a man from an administration that opened up Communist China, and anything he has to say might well be worth listening to. Our own reaction to the brief synopsis was: Darned clever, these Chinese. But they overlooked one thing. In the United States the vice presidency is a disaster, it doesn't have to be programmed.
Maybe that's the weakness Random House spotted. Anyway, our advice to Agnew is to persist. There are publishers aplenty who will publish anything provided there is something, if only a famous name, to exploit. And Spiro Agnew, during his years in office, did manage to become a household word. scdiiuais, wire -tappings, failures to evaulate correctly what special services report, or inexcusable political interntions like the recent CIA.
case in Thailand. Thus, in the United States and France. there III tr" mmm fni it" have been flamboyant bueeine inci brand new fields of espionage, fields that remain closed to small, poor undeveloped countries. Indeed, it is increasingly obvious that pooled intelligence among allies 9 is sensible even for rich and powerful nations. A former French Minister of Defense wonders whether France (whose intelligence services have been smudged with scandal) requires such agencies in peacetime.
He says: "France is not an important enough country to require a peacetime intelligence service anyway. All it needs is to have good relations with its allies and enough of a new intelligence service to be able to function should there be a serious threat of war." The question of "intelligence policy" is pondered by Stevan Dedijer, a Yugoslav-born Swedish citizen now on the faculty of Lund University, Sweden Dedijer has special expertise since he admits having worked successively for the Soviet N.K.V.D. (now M.G.B.). the american O.S.S. (precursor of the C.I.A.), then in "intelligence activities" for Yugoslavia-before moving to a Swedish ivory tower.
Mr. Dedijer reaches the novel conclusion that courses in "intelligence" should be given in universities where everything from hotel management to embalming is now taught. He says that despite a broad literature of case histories and spy novels, there are "very few systematic social studies" on the subject. Yet there exists a contradiction between "the need to democratize intelligence and to control it on the one hand, and its secrecy and illegality requirements on the other." He points out that mass media and other groups "are making intelligence questions objects of public debate and political problems," adding "The demands for the democratization of intelligence policy and its control are being raised." He suggests examination of the following: "Is a wider and greater public control of the intelligence production system management system and policy-system necessary, desirable and possible? What does intelligence cost us? How many are engaged in it, who and where are they and how is the return on our investment, in intelligence? How much waste and. abuse is involved: Is the intelligence community subverting our basic national balues and quality of our life?" Mr.
Dedijer concludes: "We are learning that intelligence is too important to be left to professional intelligencers. Intelligence, as all other key functions and institutions, has to be on top but not on top of society." He believes: "The basic intelligence goal for individual countries is changing from intelligence for national existence and security to intelligence for national growth and development." There is much to be said for his fresh approach to a field hitherto cloaked in dark suspicion and speckled with gaudy romance. Surely, for a subject so vital to contemporary societies, there should be public discussion and even intellectual courses examining the needs and methods of what used to be an unmentionable trade. Streakers dents which threaten to topple leading officials. Greece's own central intelligence agency K.Y.P., has allegedly been at the heart of two successive pushes.
And Israel's highly exert spook apparatus produced correct information that war was coming last October yet the Government ignored these warnings. Many security organizations have acquired unsavory reputations. Both Britain's secret intelligence service Kim Philby) and the Soviet services Colonels Penkovsky and Popov) have been demonstrably penetrated by their adversaries. Moreover, the ancient business of intelligence has been totally revolutionized by technological revolutions. The computer plays an enormous role in analyzing the information of spies and special agents.
And electronic eavesdropping plus space satelite photography combine to open Actually, we sort of sympathize with the fellow who appeared in a three-column picture on Page One of the The Atlanta Constitution the other day. There he was, running down the street buck nekkid. He represents a growing if slightly disconcerting fad now now being unveiled in various places across the land including Atlanta. Streakers. Folks-wh6 take their clothes off and streak down the street.
Our main objection is that streaking at this time of year is premature and serves no purpose. If these folks would wait until around income tax collection time, not only would they find the weather more congenial but they would make a definite symbolic point. After all, at that time of year, most of us readily admit that we've lost our shirt. And if taxes keep going the way they generally go, most of us will end up economically "buck" 10 a woman, tor creamuity, once lost, may perhaps be regained. But the analogy is not far wrong.
When we lose credibility, we lose virtue. It is an old-fashioned word. And when the Harris Survey tells us that only 30 per cent of the people have "a great deal of confidence" in the press, it may be time for journalists, once they have put their papers to bed, to do some sober thinking about credibility and virtue. Toward the end, let us consider the village that wasn't, and the goodies that never got buried. There are morals here.
On July 10, 1973, the Times of London carried a long article by a Catholic priest, Father Adrian Hastings, describing a massacre by Portuguese troops at the village of Wiriyamu, in Northern Mozambique. The piece ran to some 40 column inches. In grisly detail, the story chronicled the slaying of 400 natives on Dec. 16, 1972. It named names of victims.
It fairly vibrated with vivid writing: "One woman called Vaina was invited to stand up. She had her child in her arms, a boy of nine months. The woman fell dead with a bullet shot. The child fell with his mother and sat by her. He cried desperately, and a soldier advanced to stop him crying.
He kicked the boy violently, destroying his head. 'Shut up, the soldier said." The Times' story leaped the Atlantic. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post gave it substantial play. The article provided a fine mouth-watering tidbit for pobtical parsons prepared to believe anything bad about the Portuguese. And there was but one trouble with the piece: There was scarcely a word of truth in Within a month after the Times story appeared, the London Economist exposed the tale as so much Communist propaganda contrived by Czechoslovakian agents who had fed it to a pair of gullible Spanish priests.
The priests fed it in turn to Father Hastings. He fed it to the Times. There was no such village as Wiruyamu, and no massacre. A Washington-based organization, Accuracy in Media, confirms the fabrica tion. So much for this one.
On Aug. 15, 1973, the Washington Post carried a long story by reporter William Claiborne, having to do with the literal burial of valuable military goods at the Air Force base in Charleston, S.C. The article began on page one and jumped for more than a column inside. The substance of the piece was that in an effort to deceive Air Force inspectors, certain officers at Charleston had ordered great quantities of electrical equipment, steel cable, even desks and chairs, buried in a pond and a dump. The article added its bit to the collected horror stories of Pentagon waste.
The Los Angeles Times, swallowing the story whole, asserted editorially that "punishment is in order." But, again, there was but one trouble. The reports were untrue. Air Force inspectors drained the pond and dug up the dump. They found nothing to support the Post's account Robert Heinl of the Detroit News, one of Washington's finest reporters, has exposed the whole business. In both cases, unless I am badly mistaken, the stories were published because writers and editors were subconsciously ready to believe rumors about unpopular institutions the Portuguese in one instance, the mlitary establishment in the other.
Facts weren't sufficiently checked; and the stories appeared. The moral for my brothers of the press who worry about Mr. Nixon's credibility Is found In Matthew 7. We truly ought to read tha first five verses more often. Other Voices Removal From Political Office Additional reforms in Georgia's legal system and general government will be sought during the 1974 session of the General Assembly One of these, we understand, is a proposal to adopt a law which would provide for the automatic removal of a public official convicted in court until final disposition of the case.
A number of states already have removal laws, and Florida has used such a law on several occasions where public officials have betrayed the trust placed in them by the voters. In the light of events which have been occurring for several years in this country's political climate, public confidence in government has reached a low ebb. The Watergate case and a number of other scandals have added additional fuel to the fire. Nothing, however, destroys the confidence of the citizens in government and its various agencies more than for a convicted official to remain in office after a jury of his peers has found him guilty of a crime-or ho has pleaded guilty or nolo contendre to criminal charges. Suppose, for instance, that Vice President Agnew had refused to resign from the vice presidency after admitting guilt and being fined.
It would have been a terrible blow to public confidence in government and public officials. Some legislators may feel that an automatic removal law is aimed personally at political enemies. However, we believe the need for a strong law to protect the public interest is so great that the General Assembly should act during the current session. We must protect the integrity of government and restore public trust. If it takes stringent laws aimed at public officeholders, then so be it.
Otherwise, we may lose that which we cherish most-our system of government and citizen participation in choosing our public officers. The Moultrie Observer Disclosure Law Why do the politicians object to their contributions being made public? Why do the politicians object to their personal business alliances, their corporate interests, their economic resources being made public? They hold public office. They are the servants of the people. They are in office for the benefit of the people, are they not? Then why do they object when Gov. Jimmy Carter proposes a bill to make their political contributions public? Why do they shroud themselves in secrecy when they are conducting the public's business? Why do thty keep so many of those millions in contribu tions so secret? We all know why.
The average politician, like the average person, has his own special interests. Those special interests often never see the light of day. The business of the people often is decided by a blank check from this lobbyist or that one, to protect other special interests. We have been able as a people to tolerate the politician in the past who sold out the public trust for a mess of porridge or for a few shekels of silver. We cannot tolerate that In this period of our.
history any more. We must have full financial disclosure from all politicians. We know that there will be objections. The major objection is that a man will not disclose his net worth or his financial standing to the public for fear that it will hurt him in the present or in the future in some way. Others will find it objectionable simply on the basis that their finances are their own personal business.
This once could have been a valid objection. However, with the development of the major fund-raising cam-pains which now are necessary to support this candidate or that one in just about all major elections, those considerations must be sacrificed for the good of the cleansing of campaign contributions and expenditures. The Camilla Enterprise. i 1 I.
