The Indianapolis Star from Indianapolis, Indiana • Page 13

THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR WEDNESDAY, JUNE 30,1982 PAGE 14- William Safiro The Indianapolis Star Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty II Corinthians 3.17 At lunch the day before a resignation After nearly a year under Haig's tutelage at state. Clark, the new national security adviser, is still intellectually incapable of conducting a searching on the record interview with any reporter. Haig did not mount a defense of his teaching skill; it seems that most of the heavy political advisers and over the strong protest of the secretary of state was "the greatest foreign policy mistake of this administration He thought it made a mock ery of subsequent economic pressures such as the recent resistance to the Siberian pipeline. EUGENE C. PULLIAM 1889 1975 Publisher 1944 1975 EUGENE S.

PULLIAM. Publisher "Let the people know the facts and the country will be saved. "Abraham Lincoln 'History will show that I was the hardliner in this Alexander Haig recently. Vice President Bush and Defense Secretary Weinberger were in the Saudi capital for the funeral of King Khaled: in addition, Clark had been seeing the Saudi ambassador in the White House. (That suspicion checks out: I know that Clark has been saying from deep background ambush that the coverage of the friendly Reagan Begin departure statement was misleading, and would be "straightened out in the news Moreover, the first June 6 response from Washington with the President and Haig in Versailles was to approve mis takenly United Nations Resolution 509.

or dering Israel and not the Syrians or the PLO out of Lebanon. Haig stopped short of naming names, but the man who fell into that trap was crisis manager Bush. ON THE OFF-CHANCE that he might be leaving soon though the irony of his departure as a steadfast Mideast hawk escaped me I allowed as how the word was around the White House that the 1984 Republican nomination might be up for grabs. The reaction, from a man uniquely sensitive to the danger of ebbing presiden tial power, was a curious mixture of agitation and loyalty: "I told him time after time, said Haig. stiff fingered hand slicing the Foggy torn air.

"that he has to stop telling Jhpse guys around him that he's not going, 19 run again." Tim sric Washington Last week I called Alex ander Haig. told him he seemed to be on the ropes, and suggested we finally have our one-on one talk; he invited me to lunch in the secretary eighth floor dining room Thursday "Let me know the moment the President calls." he told the waiter. I thought that was one-upmanship, unaware that only two hours before, the secretary of state had told President Reagan that he could not continue in office if George Bush. James Baker and William Clark were going to undermine his efforts to disarm the Palestine Liberation Organization in Beirut. My old Nixon administration colleague hinted that he might not be long in his job.

When I told him that his slightest whisper of resignation would be snapped up. he shrugged that off by recalling how Henry Kissinger resigned 30 times. Evidently Mr Reagan had not yet reacted to his ultima turn; in view of the intervening event, and on the assumption that Haig kept his lunch date with a purpose in mind, I will amend the articles of attribution to report on that last lunch a day before his final resigna tion TO A CHARGE that he had been too moderate toward the Russians after Poland, he responded vigorously: "History will show that I was the hardliner in this administration." The secretary said that Mr Reagan's decision last year to lift the grain embargo at the behest of his leaking from state ceased when Clark went over to the White House. Most of our discussion centered on the problem of "mixed signals" from the ad ministration to the Arab world about the war in Lebanon. Haig's own signal, and that of the President, was clear: In order to save West Beirut and to end the bloodshed, the PLO must be pressured to lay down its arms or to get out, paving the way for withdrawal of all hostile forces from Leba non.

HOWEVER, a contrary signal was be ing sent: that the U.S. had extracted a pledge from Israel not to attack the PLO in Beirut. If this were publicly emphasized the PLO would have an incentive to fight on. causing many more casualties now and delaying the peacemaking. Who was sending the contrary signal? Haig, absolving Philip Habib.

would not say, but noted he had not been in Riyadh If Haig was such a hardliner, why did he give de facto recognition to Cuba by meeting with the Cuban vice president in Mexico City last November? Response: Haig's meeting was at the direct order of the President, who had been troubled by reports from his political aides of crime in Florida by Castro's human exports; it was a good thing that this initiative was handled by tough minded mer 'amiliar with Castro duplicity. WHAT ABOUT our relations with China wasn't the State Department's position considerably softer than the view from the White House, which insisted on some arms sales to Taiwan? He called my attention to a recent statement by Richard Nixon, a recognized China expert, who said the future security of Taiwan depends primarily on the ties between the United States and China. I accused him of being a poor peda Flora Lewis FOUND AN AWFUL LOT OF SM0KW5UT NO FIR Back in the saddle 0 Assume Nothing Indiana Attorney General Linley E. Pearson believes the Supreme Court dealt a low blow to homeowners and to states rights when it ruled Monday that federally-chartered savings and loan institutions may enforce due on sale clauses in mortgages. We agree.

The clause requires homeowners to pay off the balance of a mortgage when they sell, thereby denying new buyers the right to assume an old. low-cost loan. Practical ramifications of the ruling are clear Prospective home buyers lose a powerful inducement to invest and sellers lose perhaps the only trump card they hold in a tight real estate market. Many Indiana homeowners will be affected. The majority of savings and loan institutions in Indiana are federally chartered 89 as compared with 48 with state charters.

"Without assumable mortgages, the housing market is limited in sales ability and those who would like to move to where jobs are will have a tougher time doing that," Pearson added. Due on sale clauses date back to the late 1960s when lenders began trying to protect themselves irorr oao credL hsks Later, banks and began to use the clause to hike interest rates on assumed loans In 1978 a California court ruled the clauses were illegal restraints on borrowers. Other courts held conflicting opinions. Meanwhile, states were reacting to consumer pressure in the matter. Economics aside, Pearson blasted the ruling as "an assault on states rights" because it rescinds laws in about 18 states which prohibit enforcement of due on sale clauses.

The Supreme Court opinion came in a case challenging regulations of the Federal Home Loan Sank Board affirming the authority of to include such clauses and enforce them. The board has declared its regulations preempt state law. By supporting the board, the court jeopardizes all state contract laws and portends more and more national control. Pearson fears. That is why Indiana joined 21 other states in filing friend of the court briefs, even though no specific Indiana legislation was at stake.

I Again a federal regulatory agency, with no authority from Congress, has successfully used its Clout to run roughshod over local and state law, hamstring state officials and deprive individuals of the right to freely buy and sell property. Nobody thought reining in federal agencies w'as going to be easy, but the Supreme Court spotlights not only the difficulty involved but the rights and powers at stake. Sen. Jake Garn (R-Utah), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, has introduced a bill ihat would strike down state laws prohibiting banks from calling in loans under due on sale clauses; but he is said to be considering adjusting Che bill to include buyer safeguards. Whether they agree or disagree with the Garn proposal, at least voters and their representatives will have the opportunity to make their opinions heard.

As it now stands home buyers and sellers can assume nothing regarding their mortgage rights, individuals and states are at the mercy of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and the court's interpretation of the "board's authority. And that's a far cry from the principles of the New Federalism outlined by the administration. 'I Field Newspaper Syndicate Paris Barely back in the saddle after castle-hopping through Europe, President Reagan has revived frictions with allies that his trip was so carefully planned to ease. Secretary of State Alexander Haig's resignation, after several other upsetting decisions, led a French TV commentator to wonder if relations with the Reagan admin istration aren't even bumpier than the uneasy four years with President Carter. With hindsight, officials now see the recent resignation of State Department economics expert Robert Hormats as a first signal that right-wingers were getting feisty again.

Many Europeans are even angrier now because they feel they were misled during the long ascent to recent summits and by the sweeping assurances Mr. Reagan gave during his visit. Apparent United States support for Israel's wanton use of force in Lebanon has puzzled and disturbed the allies. But the key issue is new U.S. sanctions to block the gas pipeline deal with the Soviets.

Washing ton seems to underestimate the implications. BEYOND PRACTICAL interests, it has become a symbol of far broader questions about East West relations and American foreign policy. Last week, the United States an nounced it was extending its embargo on American equipment to include foreign companies with U.S. licenses. To enforce this legally questionable move.

Undersecretary of Commerce Lionel M. Olmer said a list of foreign companies selling oil and gas equipment to the Soviets was being studied to "look at the range of dependencies they have on the U.S. for other things." COVER soe ft. Victor Riesel Political art of the impossible bership and bankrupt fleets. Some of the big ones are closing their docks and shutting garage doors.

There's a bitter internal feud. Powerful forces are challenging Williams' supporters in the various "conferences" (districts). As general president, he can't afford to have his internal allies beaten by those inside who say he and his subalterns are working 'Harmless' Drinking William Clark The license deals often involve reeipro cal arrangements. The threat was to cut off trade that has nothing to do with the East bloc if the firms involved refuse "to obey the embargo. It all adds up.

in European eyes, to a Washington order to make economic war on the Soviet Union or risk economic war with the U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER Wil liam Clark's winning argument in the fight with Haig was that the U.S. must have a tough policy toward the Soviets, and if the allies don't shape up, too bad for them. That's a strange follow up to Mr. Reagan's rousing speeches about undying support for the alliance and America's will for peace.

Underlying the U.S. approach is a belief, apparently dominant again at the White House, that Soviet policy can be changed by squeezing its already bloodless economy. The basic objection to the pipeline' has little to due with the potpourri of arguments Washington has made. The U.Si said the gas deal would make Europe too dependent on Soviet energy supplies? But now Washington looks for "dependencies" on U.S. products as political leverage against allies.

Then it said Western credit sales endangered the banking system with bad debts and subsidized the Russians. But the Soviet Union is the one East bloc country that has remained credit worthy, and East-West trade is dropping anyway. It isn't exports but imports Washington is really trying to block. At the end of the decade gas sales would earn some $10 billion a year in hard currency for Moscow, minus debt repayment and servicing. Russia could then shop more widely in the West to make up for its own poor production.

In his recent strategy speech, -Clark we "must force our principal adversary, the Soviet Union, to bear the brunt-of its economic shortcomings." Washington appears to be preparing a trade hedge, if the arms race actually is curtailed, to keep up the economic pressure on Moscow. Expanding trade during a decade of detente didn't make the Russians behave in Afghanistan or Poland, or slow their arms buildup. So, the reasoning reverse direction. If the south wind didn't strip the bear's hide, the north wind will. But the evidence is that it doesn't make much difference.

Because the Soviet Union is not a free country, outside developments that make things easier or harder for its people don't provoke internal pressures change the government. Someday, after the Brezhnev generation of stagnation, there will be another push for reform, but the West can scarcely affect when and how it will come. A tough stance that can't deliver isn't a tough policy. It looks reckless and renews doubts about U.S. overall intentions, especially when it comes alongside defense planning that envisages "protracted nuclear war" Meanwhile, it does affect West Europeans acutely worried about recession.

German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt stressed that the first "strategic interest" of the West is to restore its own economic health. The presidential traveler is home from his whirlwind tour. The smiling snapshots faded fast and the souvenirs seem forgotten. George Shultz, Haig's successor, is known and respected in Europe, but he comes when allied relations are heading for another rough ride. Y.

Tlmt Ntn Sarvlc open door policy and warmly telling them never to hesitate to come on over when they wish. THEY ARE BACKING Richards. There certainly is a feud inside the Republican Party. Richards is convinced his strategy and constant conferences with the 18 person labor advisory council will cut into the workers' vote and neutralize the AFL-CIO's Committee on Political Education (COPE) machine drive in 100,000 precincts. So he's defying DeVos and the conservative opposition.

On the same day the party's financial chairman assailed Republican collaboration with the chiefs of the six unions and heads of many regional labor organizations, Richards appointed to the RNC's Executive Committee a national AFL-CIO Executive Council member, Capt. John J. O'Donnell, president of the militant Air Line Pilots Association. O'Donnell is also a national AFL-CIO vice president and thus is part of big labor's high command. O'Donnell will be "a labor representa live" in the GOP's high command and will sit with.

DeVos, the national party's money-raiser. THERE ARE OTHER collisions be tween the conservatives and the moderates in that Republican hierarchy. For some weeks, the White House has been seeking a replacement for Labor Secretary Ray Donovan, now being scorched by accusations of links with organized crime. Donovan, a feisty fighter with a bomb bunker mentality when it comes to being bombarded by political opponents, won't continue to embarrass the President. He will go.

Few realize the significance of the Labor Department in this nation's economic infrastructure. It has the power of economic life and death over many businesses. Richards and his moderate allies inside the White House have been leaking names of prospective Donovan successors. These moderates want a new labor secretary who will move closer to labor, bringing them into tripartite (government, unions and industry) committees in the steel and auto industries, and woo the vote by helping the unions. The conservatives say the time has come for organized labor all along the line to make concessions on 40 years of escalating gains.

The conservatives insist there's more out there than COPE's vote. So watch this one. Fitld Nwpapr Syndicate Washington Politics is the science of keeping strange bedfellows happy or the art of the impossible, President Reagan's tacticians have discovered. The ingenious effort to roll out a smoothly-operative Republican national labor advisory council has been monkey-wrenched by angered conservatives who want the new council to go across the street. Most outspoken is the Republican Party's national finance chairman, Richard DeVos, who wants nothing to do with unions and has told them so.

In Dallas recently, he told party leaders as they were announcing the city as the GOP's next national nominating convention site, that "This recession has been a beneficial thing and a cleansing thing for this society." DeVos thrust even deeper. He charged that unions are a "negative wind." And he added, in front of the media, that "80 percent of the American people don't belong to labor unions. We ought to represent the working people and not the labor unions. If they want to be represented by somebody else, good for them." DeVOS DECLARED that the recession wasn't an ill wind because the drooping economy had forced labor to sit with management and agree to wage and fringe concessions. To top it he concluded by telling newspeople that "The recession is a cleansing tonic." Shortly, proving that the solvent Postal Service really pulsates these days, an indignant letter swiftly arrived on the White House desk of Ed Rollins, Mr.

Reagan's political adviser. It came from Roy Williams, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters And Williams isn't even a member of the GOP's Republican National Committee's labor council. He was urged by RNC Chairman Richard Richards to join but Williams explained he goes on trial next September on charges of conspiracy to bribe Nevada's Sen. Howard Cannon to vote against trucking deregulation. Williams promised he'd join later The Brotherhood was the only giant union to endorse candidate Reagan in 1980.

It poured out money, manpower, vehicles and organizational talent. Deregulation has shunted the freight hauling industry into rutted chaos. IN EFFECT, Williams' letter asked what's happening and who stands for what. The Teamsters have problems these days heavy joblessness, declining mem Anyone who has paid close attention to the Ijves of friends with severe drinking problems has a mental score card showing that alcoholics who decide a drink now and then won't hurt are headed for real trouble. The score card lists wet brain cases and funerals.

The real alcoholic cannot risk "social drinking" without risking hisher life. Yet "authorities" are guilty of spreading the myth that heshe ct)n have "a few drinks now and then" without ajiy harm. I Ten years ago 20 men were singled out at California's Patton State Hospital as alcoholics who supposedly had been retrained as "social drinkers." This first "scientific" study on the question led to others, including one by the Rand allegedly "proving" the same thing. Now University of California and Veterans A'dministration researchers at San Diego and Los Angeles who followed up on the Patton project have found that 19 of the men "trained to drink moderately" are and always have been souses and the 20th was mistakenly diagnosed as alcoholic. I Of the original 20, four are dead of alcohol-related causes.

One committed suicide and one was found floating face down in a lake. Both had b'tood-alcohol levels triple the measure of legal drunkenness. Eight kept drinking in spite of alcohol-caused troubles including job loss, marital breakup, arrest apd serious illness. Six, after numerous scrapes gnd hospitalizations, gave up attempts at controlled drinking and, with help from Alcoholics Anonymous, became abstainers. One, who about a year after discharge from tlje Patton project was certified "gravely disabled" by drinking, is missing.

I Maybe some people unfamiliar with careers in alcoholism think that more research is needed before definite conclusions can be drawn. Others may find instruction but no comfort in the score of the new study: out of 19 (one having been misdiagnosed) four dead, eight wounded, six dry, one missing. Richard Richards is working to gain labor votes for the GOP. with a political party which hasn't reregu-lated and undone the harm of the laws pushed by Jimmy Carter and Sen. Edward Kennedy.

Williams will be in office in 1984. If he believes his Brotherhood's demands haven't been -espected. the Teamsters could defect and sit out the presidential election in unbenign neglect. Most of the RNC's labor advisory council's six major union presidents are ignoring the conservative attacks on the GOP's efforts to "open lines of communications with organized labor," as RNC chairman Richards puts it. These six union presidents have received letters from the White House welcoming them, confirming the.