The Daily Spectrum from Saint George, Utah • 5

DAILY SPECTRUM FRIDAY, JANUARY 13. 1984 PACE 5 Latins have killer politics WASHINGTON Operating at the subterranean level of Latin American politics is a far-flung network of affiliated death squads. Their purpose: to intimidate suspected leftists and deter movements that threaten the status quo throughout Latin America. Their methods: kidnapping and assassinations, secret pacts, intrigues, terrorism and blackmail. In Our Opinion Space Force development needed now jll984 Copley NwSb.I ThII Sga Potomac Tape Bug Hard to stop on secret road Should the United States have a Space Force as the fourth branch of its armed services? After reviewing the progress that has been made in space technology in recent years, C.

Richard Whelan, a California military and aerospace consultant, thinks the time has come for establishing a U.S. Space Force. In a study for the Heritage Foundation, Whelan says that an American Space Force, with a mission restricted to defense, could destroy missiles if they are ever launched against the United States and protect U.S. satellites from enemy action. Whelan points out that present space policy is hampered by outdated U.S.

strategic policy. "That policy known as Mutual Assured Destruction relies solely on deterrence through massive retaliation with no contingencies for defending America from nuclear attack," writes Whelan. There is no evidence that the Soviet Union ever subscribed to MAD, says Whelan, "While the United States all but abandoned devel opment of ballistic missile defense systems, the Soviets upgraded ABM defenses" and "have been striving for nuclear superiority. The MAD concept has not worked." Nevertheless, U.S. military space policy is still tied to MAD.

The present anti-satellite program, for example, is aimed at "deterrence by retaliation" and provides only "very limited defense of U.S. satellites in space." Whelan is right in calling for the rejection of the MAD doctrine. It is, as he says, "a corrupt concept, based as it is on the threat of nuclear annihilation." The time to organize a U.S. Space Force is now, so that it can go ahead with plans for defending Americans from possible nuclear attack and building weapons of mass protection rather than weapons of mass destruction. Under the present setup the chances of developing an effective space defense in the near future are poor due to the skepticism and foot-dragging that space defense is meeting in the Pentagon and in the Air Force.

turns the machine on. No longer is he taping to refresh his memory, but he decides he's doing it for future generations of Americans who want to know how he arrived at so many momentous decisions." "I can understand a person wanting to secretly tape his official calls. But why would he record his conversations with friends?" "Because by now he has become a compulsive taper. He has to tape whether he wants to or not. If the Dictaphone stops whirring he can't talk on the phone." "Couldn't he tell his friends that he was recording the telephone call?" "If he did he wouldn't have friends for very long.

How would you like to tell Walter Annenberg he was being taped?" "I wouldn't have the heart," I said. "The worst thing about having the Potomac Tape Bug is that even if you stop, no one will believe you. Once the secret is out that you have been taping people's conversations without their knowledge, no one will call you again. It will be pretty hard for someone like Wick to run the world's largest propaganda machine when everyone in and out of the country will now put him on HOLD." "Didn't anyone ever tell him about "We tried io, but all he said 'Let Poland be he can refer to the transcripts in case someone takes something he said out of context. At the beginning he only pushes the record button when he's talking to the press." "Is that fair?" "The government will never object to you recording conversations with the press," my friend said.

"Especially when you have to assume the press is recording its conversation with you. But when you start down that secret taping road it's hard to stop. The Dictaphone is there and pretty soon you automatically turn it on when you're talking to a subordinate on business. It is very helpful when you're making out his or her fitness report." "So far the official is keeping his secret taping within the bureaucratic ballpark," I said. "Now this is where the guy goes off the track.

He figures if he can tape his subordinates without their knowledge, there is no reason why he can't tape his equals in other departments of the government without telling them. Pretty soon he has a stack of taped conversations with White House staff, Cabinet members, senators and leading citizens in the country." "They could have historical value," I said. "That's what the official talks himself into believing every time he These protesters oan't at home But what is truly appalling is the possibility that the idea of an anti-communist Murder Inc. was germinated at CIA headquarters. Sources familiar with the secret history including a former covert operations specialist for the CIA say the death squads were first formed under agency sponsorship in 1954.

This is denied by CIA officials. Whatever their origins, the death squads clearly got out of control. Dedicated to the physical elimination of suspected leftists, they recruited assassins from the military services, police forces and security agencies of right-wing governments. Today, the death squads are most active in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Dormant death squads exist in almost every other Latin American nation.

In all these countries, they are protected by high-level military and government officials. Their activities are loosely controlled and coordinated by a sinister international organization, known as La Mano Blanco (The White Hand). "Our movements are all coordinated out of Mexico City," said a leader of the Honduran death squad. "The name of the front group there is CAL Latin American Anti-Communist Confederation." CAL is the Latin American affiliate of the World Anti-Communist League, a right-wing organization linked to ultra-conservative groups in Asia, Europe and the United States. A Mexican intelligence source said CAL was founded by a neo-Nazi splinter group after World War II.

"CAL is also called The White Hand, The White Force and the White Brigade," said the source. My associate Jon Lee Anderson, working through a contact in the Honduran secret ipoiice.ta'Craiiged a ran death squad leader I'll call him El Lobo, which means'IaUiajVolf" El Lobo said he and some friends founded the Honduran death squad in 1979 with 85 members. "Now we have 400," he boasted, "and we've successfully infiltrated the leftists with our own spies in the university and labor unions. "We've eliminated 16 people so far. They were either labor unionists or university professors all confirmed Marxists." El Lobo explained how his death squad operates.

"First we investigate and follow a suspect who' has come to our attention," he said. "Then, if we decide the case merits further action, we either kidnap the victim or leave him an anonymous warning." The usual warning, he said, is a scrap of paper with the message: "Men don't fight with flowers, they fight with bullets." "If the suspect heeds our warning, and we confirm his rehabilitation, we leave him alone," said El Lobo. "If he doesn't, we machine gun him." He did not explain how they can be sure the victim simply failed to understand the cryptic warning. One victim apparently never had a chance to mend his ways. A peasant cooperative leader, staying at the same small hotel in Tegucigalpa as my associate, disappeared the day after he arrived.

Police found his body crammed into the trunk of his car, his head riddled with bullets. The official explanation of the crime was "robbery." EI Lobo said his group gets "unofficial help" from the Honduran military, whose head, Gen. Gustavo Alvarez, is the de facto ruler of the country. Alvarez dismisses even the best-documented reports of leftists' disappearances as "subversive propaganda." But in 1982, Leonidas Torres Arias, former Honduran military intelligence chief, defected and publicly implicated Alvarez in death squad activity. Torres Arias is now in hiding in the Washington, D.C., area.

He is afraid to speak out, for fear he will be deported to Honduras and certain death. WATCH ON FOOTBALL: So much loose cash is wagered on football that someone is bound to try to fix an occasional game. The FBI, therefore keeps a watchful eye on the sport. The FBI tends to become suspicious of football officials who regularly make crucial, game-breaking calls that turn out to be wrong on the television replays. But it is almost impossible to prove that a bad call was intentional.

The FBI's suspicions have never progressed beyond the investigative stage. The most active investigation, as I reported in an earlier column, was conducted during the National Football League's 1979 season. The probe finally floundered for lack of evidence. Underworld sources say that some games were fixed, all right, but the FBI didn't find a bit of proof. The National Football League also has an outstanding record for guarding against the fix.

Still, the story won't go away. My sources say that a game can be fixed. The news that Charles Z. Wick, the director of the United States Information Agency, was taping the telephone conversations of everyone from United States senators (Mark Hatfield) to movie stars (Kirk Douglas) to his most intimate friends (Walter Annenberg), without their knowledge, has left everyone in Washington with an uncomfortable feeling. It's all right to read another person's mail (we do it all the time), but it is still considered bad manners to turn on a Dictaphone when your phone rings.

After Watergate it's also considered very, very dumb. "What the hell got into Wick?" I asked one of my pals at the USIA. "He caught the Potomac Tape Bug," the friend explained. "I've seen it happen time and time again. A guy comes to Washington to do a job, and slowly paranoia sets in.

He's afraid something he says on the phone may be misinterpreted, so he decides to tape the conversations so Snow job by E. D. Cory ST. GEORGE I flew into Salt Lake City at 2 a.m, on Eastern's Redeye Special from' Atlanta. After three weeks in the airport parking lot, my truck looked like a rectangular snowman.

I scraped the snow from the top, hood, and windshield, but I left a good foot, with drifts to 18 inches in the bed. Better traction, I thought. I still had to use four wheel drive to get out of the parking lot. The temperature was below freezing and the sky obscured on the trip home to St. George.

My cargo stayed intact. The mountains between Beaver and Cedar City had received a scant snow cover compared to the powdering everything north had taken. Pine Valley Mountain looked like May. I started to drive to Brian-head to offer them my load. But as I drove down the St.

George with the temperature approaching 55 degrees, my cargo became the object of great attention. I Hard work Editor, Spectrum: During the past few months a healthy and hopefully constructive examination of our educational system has been unfolding. Charges and counter-charges have been made, some responsible, some irresponsible. I should like to address only one of the statements, which has beem repeated many times, and which in a way demeans the character and quality of those working our school system. The statement I refer to is: "The really competent, the cream of the crop, are leaving Utah, to go where the salaries are better." I take issue- with the generalization.

I say: "The cream of the crop have stayed, have chosen our state, our communities, our children and have loved them more than the almighty dollar." Now it is time for us to carefully examine the salary structure and as best we can to reciprocate, to show our appreciation for the loyalty and dedication of our teachers and administrators. I am sure that as parents and grandparents we have sometimes been guilty of using the schools as a "whipping boy" placing the blame for our children's shortcomings upon them instead of our own shoulders. 1 Soviet protest would be unwise. The Afghans are free to protest the invasion of any country except their own, provided, however, that they must never protest any action by the Soviet Union. Such are the blessings of freedom under the rule of the Red Army.

These blessings are likely to continue in Kabul for the indefinite future. Only one capital city occupied by the glorious Soviet liberators during and after World War II has ever escaped from occupation. That was Vienna in 1955, and little did the Viennese know how lucky they were on that day a generation ago when they waved goodbye to the Red Army. The scene may never be repeated. York hospital, three days after he had been found ill and almost penniless in a hotel room.

In 1868, the U.S. Senate refused to accept President Andrew Johnson's ouster of War Secretary Edwin Stanton and acting secretary Ulysses Grant resigned. In 1941, Irish novelist James Joyce died at the age of 58. In 1972, New York state ruled that a woman may become a professional baseball umpire. A thought for the day: Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman said, "War is at best Its glory is moonshine." A striking bit of news on Christmas Day was the report from Kabul Radio that more than 100,000 students and workers marched in the Afghanistan capital that day to protest the United States-led invasion of Grenada on Oct.

25. There was no mention of the fact that the U.S. troops have already been withdrawn from the island. Nor was there any mention of the fact that four years have elapsed since the Red Army invaded Afghanistan. That seems odd.

You may say that the human rights activists who marched did not feel the need to protest any violation closer to nome than the Caribbean. But it is more likely that they were persuaded by the presence of Russian troops on the streets of Kabul that any anti- By United Press International Today is Friday, January 13th, the 13th day of 1984 with 353 to follow. The moon is moving toward its full phase. The morning stars are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. There is no evening star.

Those born on this date are under the sign of Capricorn. They include Horatio Alger, author of "Rags-To-Riches" stories, in 1834, actor Robert Stack in 1919, and actress Gwen Ver-don in 1925. On this date in history: In 1864, composer Stephen Foster died in a New sun world They even made a bicycle jump out of what snow they didn't throw at everyone and each other. As they were about to leave, I saw that one of them had a The Daily Spectrum pouch on his bicycle. I hated to see them leave, so I walked out and asked them if they had an extra copy.

"I just barely have enough to finish my route," he said very businesslike, having just been reminded that people were waiting for their evening paper while he was enjoying himself. The other one added, "You can I thought he meant that I could join them in the snow fun. I was anxious to get my boots. Then he continued, would have your own copy every night." "You mean you want me to subscribe to the paper?" I asked as I slipped my houseshoes back on. "Yes." "OK, start me on Sunday," I said.

"I'll pay by the month, the column inch, or in snow." I have taken the liberty of ordering the printing of bumper stickers that say "Impeach Scott Matheson." I will be happy to furnish one to anyone, free of charge. Phillip L. Foremaster St. George Stagger lunch Editor, Spectrum: People who live in St. George and the surrounding area, who own and operate a motor vehicle, in most cases hold down a job to pay for that vehicle.

Working a full-time job hardly provides adequate time for a citizen to take care of personal business. In fact, most citizens would probably agree that their lunch hour is the only opportunity during a work-week to do such. Recently, while conducting business at the St. George Hall of Justice, I found myself a victim of the "Out-To-Lunch" syndrome. When everyone leaves the office at 12 noon it is rather difficult to pay a traffic fine or other such business.

A suggestion if I may: To benefit everyone who operates a motor vehicle, works, or is a student, a staggered lunch hour for the Hall of Justice employees seems much more I efficient than the current system. I'm surprised someone didn't speak up sooner. Scott Millet St. George in summer parked in front of my house and my neighbor greeted me with, "What's this, snow and tell?" I couldn't park in the garage for fear of flooding, so I took my shovel and emptied the load of snow into the irrigation gutter. I thought about the people in Minnesota who have to shovel snow every day in the winter.

A lady and her two small children walked past. The kids looked at my snow like it was fake Christmas decoration. Then one of them reached down and touched it. His mother probably had to spend the rest of the day explaining to him what snow is and where it really comes from. Some other kids made snowballs, ate snow, threw snowballs and ate some more snow.

Remember what the cross-country skiers say don't eat yellow snow. Just after dark two boys on bicycles screeched to a stop by my snowbank. They were just at the devilment age I was when I zinged snowballs at cars, dogs and frightened pedestrians. They had a blast as I watched them from my window. If we expect our readers to be better readers, better spellers, better scientists, better mathamaticians, we have got to have the courage to turn off the television and put the children to work.

The school I attended as a young man was a modest, plain building but it had great marble pillars. Their names were Ellis Biggs, Miss Anderson, Miss Kartchner, Albert Huber, Harvey L. Taylor, Joe Reed, Holland Melvin, etc. They were my teachers. How much is a good teacher or leader worth? You cannot pay them enough, but you can try! Tell the teachers, "Work the heck out of my children and I'll sustain you in it.

Hard work is the price of excellence. Richard T. Harris Parowan Impeach stickers Editor, Spectrum: Governor Matheson's speech on television on January 9, 1984 calling for the largest tax increase in Utah history is profoundly disturbing. It is beyond me how any governor can call for an increase of the magnitude of the Governor's in view of the recession we are struggling to come out of and the fact that the federal government is also making noise about increasing taxes. One can only assume that the Statehouse has lost its senses.

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