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The Des Moines Register from Des Moines, Iowa • Page 1

Location:
Des Moines, Iowa
Issue Date:
Page:
1
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

Gclllcmcn fed H12 heel Women in charge A Iowa Farm Business 4 Can Arledge take ABC to top of news heap? rvSI -a special if Iowa TV Hens tad Family SECTION A CpyrHM ItU, Un MMnn Rwtltar nd TMbun Campwiy WiH IM-W $1.00 single copy from dealer or vendor THE NEWSPAPER IOWA DEPENDS UPONO Des Moines, IowaD September 4, 1983 by motor route; by carrier this is what it feels like to die in an airplane crasM By RANDY EVANS RMlslvr Staff Writer It had been a routine day, not one that had provided the makings for memories. Gerald Preator was headed home from a business trip to the West Coast, settled comfortably into his seat on a United Airlines jetliner. The Des Moines man had just finished dinner when the pilot announced over the intercom that the plane was beginning its descent to the Denver, airport. It would be, Jerry Preator found out moments later, the ride of his life. And almost his last.

For reasons that have stumped investigators, the new Boeing 767 jetliner lost power in both of its engines, timed three full minutes that my second hand went completely around. And I thought, "My God! This thing is really falling through the air, and we are really going down!" If I hadn't seen as much as I did from watching my watch and seeing the flight attendants' faces so, closely maybe I wouldn't have thought I was as close to death. But I knew the desperation on their faces and the desperation in watching the second hand go around and around. I think I saw in their faces that there was no hope, PREATOR Please turn to Page 6A sending the craft dropping helplessly for more than a mile over the Rocky Mountains. I fly a lot, and Tm very familiar with the feelings of an aircraft.

All of a sudden, the plane just rocked around, and we were really being bounced around. About five seconds later, we started down. I wasn't aware that the engines were off at that time. I just knew that we were descending at a faster rate of speed than Tve descended in an aircraft before. A flight attendant came up and stopped probably four feet from me in the aisle.

I could read her facial expressions, which really said more than her words. And the words scared me. They were the four worst words you could hear in an airplane: "Assume the crash position!" I looked up and thought, "That's impossible. That's just for people who are going to die or if it's a movie." The guy next to me apparently was a little hard of hearing, and he said, "What did you say?" She looked at him very sternly and said, "Please assume the crash position!" And she took off down the aisle. All of a sudden, just thousarids of things cross your mind, like "This can't happen to me." We all leaned forward, and as I did, I saw my watch.

We had fallen probably 20 seconds or so, and I ii i liar (oiiiiiii Iowans find little good to say about unions; leaders not surprised U.S. will pay $1.6 billion to lova farms PIK drives assistance to record high; Iowa No. 1 U.S. won't obstruct arms talks Contradictory views disclosed in poll By DAVID ELBERT Resistor Stall Wrttar CA0VrttjM Dm MstaM Rwltltf And Tribunv Cothmmv As Iowans gaze upon the specter of organized labor this Labor Day weekend, they see: a. A greedy, lazy dupe.

b. A middle-aged, blue-collar man, who may sometimes feel like a pawn. c. A frustrated young person of low or middle income, working in a white- or blue-collar job. These are the ghosts of Iowa labor unions past, present and future.

At 'least, they are the images that Retaliation eyed for shooting down airliner IOWA P0LCZ3 1 Lack of education, press are blamed ByRICKJOST Miter Staff Wrtttr Wait a minute. How come labor unions wind up getting blamed by Iowans for just about everything but the summer drought? The answer, said Iowa labor leaders at a Des Moines Register forum last week, is simple: Unions get a bum rap. They said unions are misunderstood because of bad press, lack of labor education in schools, some deep-rooted hatred for unions, Iowans' personal experiences and failure of organized labor to get its message across. But they also said they really were not surprised by the unfavorable results in an Iowa Poll on organized labor, particularly in light of what they say is an "anti-labor" climate in the Reagan administration and in the business community. "I'd like to have it better, but the fact of the matter is, I didn't come here thinking we'd rate up there with the churches or anything," said Chuck Gilford, president of the Iowa United Auto Workers' Community Action Program.

Gif ford and the other panelists said they were encouraged by several poll results the fact that nearly three of 10 adult Iowans said they would join a union if they had a chance, for example. "You know," said Gifford, "if I was a candidate running for office and jumped out of the box and found out that I had 28-30 percent support, I'd want to know where it's at and go build on it." But Iowans also said that labor unions in this state have too much power, that they are controlled by out-of-state interests and that they hurt the state's economy, productivity and product quality. The labor leaders disagreed, of course, and said the negative attitude FORUM From The Register's Wire Services WASHINGTON, D.C. President Reagan, nearing a decision on American sanctions, said Saturday the Soviet Union must account for "the murder of innocent civilians" aboard Korean Air Lines flight 007. Nonetheless, he said the "inexcusable act of brutality" would not interfere with arms reduction talks with Moscow.

"It is up to all of us, leaders and citizens of the world, to deal with the Soviets in a calm, controlled, but absolutely firm manner," the president said. Reagan met Saturday for a second day with his top security advisers and considered a list of retaliatory options. White House spokesman Larry By DON MUHM Rtoisttr Finn Editor CHICAGO, ILL. More federal farm program dollars will pour into Iowa this year than ever in history, with Iowans pocketing something like 1.6 billion in all, which is far more than farmers in any other state. Iowa's share of government grain to be paid in this year's payment-in-kind (PIK) program alone will have a value of about $1.3 billion when this corn is turned over to farm program participants next month.

Iowa farmers are scheduled to receive 378 million bushels from the PIK program 110 million bushels more than Illinois, the next highest state. The $1.3 billion value is based on late August corn prices, which are up sharply from last winter and spring when grain farmers agreed to accept a combination of cash and grain for idling chunks of cropland. In short, Iowans now stand to receive more than a fifth 22.5 percent of all the government corn destined to be turned over to grain farmers next month. Iowa farmers normally raise about a fifth of the corn grown in America. In Mills County, for example, the 832 farmers enrolled in this year's farm program will receive corn and grain sorghum worth $9.3 million, an average of about $11,200 per farm, according to government projections.

Some 111,500 Iowa farmers signed up for the 1983 program and now are in line to receive 378 million bushels of corn on top of other payments made earlier. Here are the top 10 states and the estimated value of government corn each will receive: Iowa $1.3 billion; Illinois $903 million; Nebraska $630 million; Minnesota $567 million; Indiana $523 million; Ohio $309 million; Wisconsin $295 PIK Please turn to Page 10 A congeal from the data of the latest Iowa Poll on organized labor in this state. The poll shows Iowans' attitudes toward labor and business are more polarized than they were when first surveyed 36 years ago, that if labor has a hope it is with the youth of today, and that Iowans' opinions on the gamut of labor issues are confusing, if not downright contradictory. For example, on most questions, most Iowans have little good to say about unions unions are too powerful, harmful and controlled by outside influences, they say. But the same folks split nearly evenly when asked if public employees should be given the right to strike; 46 percent say yes, 48 percent say no and 6 percent are uncertain.

That may be a contradiction, or it may be Iowans demonstrating their sense of fair play if unions in the private sector can strike, why not in the public sector? On only one question do a majority of Iowa's union and non-union citizenry agree. It is who controls Iowa's unions 51 percent of the IOWA POLL 'Change the rules? Why, that's Hoover's FBI spied on Iowan Wallace Please turn to Page 6A Please turn to Page 4A Year of agony for Gosches, lone witness not get back to Wallace. I told him I would have this done immediately." The extent of the surveillance, revealed in FBI documents, has surprised at least one historian. "This is tremendously exciting material," said Richard Kirkendall, the Henry A. Wallace scholar at Iowa State University in Ames.

"I'm especially surprised that the Truman people saw Wallace as such a threat and saw it necessary to use these WALLACE Piease turn to Page 7 A said the president "will probably announce some decisions" after meeting today with top congressional leaders. A senior U.S. official said the U.S. response would probably focus on measures to restrict Soviet air traffic. Another senior official said that no "economic sanctions," such as canceling the recently concluded five-year agreement to sell grain to the Soviets, are being considered.

In other developments concerning the shooting down of the airliner last week with 269 people aboard: The Soviet ambassador to Japan reported that debris from an aircraft had been found in waters where the KAL airliner was reported shot down, the Japanese Foreign Ministry said Saturday. The South Korean government dismissed the assertion by the Soviet Union that the airliner was engaged in a spying mission for the United States, calling it a "flagrant lie." Secretary of State George Shultz will not cancel his meeting this week with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. A senior State Department official, who insisted on anonymity, told reporters that although the meeting in Madrid was scheduled before the attack, it was decided to go ahead and spell out directly to Gromyko the "feeling of revulsion" Washington has over the incident and to press Moscow to "come clean with the facts." Intelligence analysts studying in- PLANE Please turn to Page 3A By SHERRY RICCHIARDI tftvffttw Staff Wrttar Over the past year, Noreen and John Gosch have dealt with everything from a Bulgarian psychic to crank callers who scream, "Your son is dead" into the telephone. Their relentless search has involved grisly, heartbreak By FRANK SANTIAGO Rt9lstar Staff Writar John Rossi still replays the tape recorded in his mind that morning a year ago. But the pictures yield few answers.

He got dressed, went to the quiet street corner to pick up bundles of newspapers for his kids to deliver and saw a 1 ByTOMKNUDSON Rcgfttar Stiff Wrtttr CwvrWM, inj, On Mtfntt RttftMr and Trlbunt Ctmpany Iowa's Henry A. Wallace was the target of extensive FBI surveillance while he was vice president under Franklin Roosevelt and secretary of commerce under Harry Truman, and while he was running for president in 1948. Among other things, the FBI opened Wallace's mail, placed wiretaps on his supporters' telephones and used informants and agents across three continents to trail Wallace in search of "possible Communist or pro-Soviet ties." FBI records show what historians have long suspected: that former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover disliked the liberal Wallace and was quick to investigate him. In one handwritten note in 1950, Hoover referred to Wallace as "old bubble head." In a later note he exhorted his agents to step up the Wallace surveillance: "Keep after this.

We must nail it down." The Truman White House, the State Department and the attorney general's office were involved in the surveillance. During Wallace's 1948 presidential bid on the Progressive Party ticket, then-U. S. Attorney General Tom Clark ordered a secret FBI probe of Wallace and his alleged ties to Russia. Wrote Hoover: (Clark thought we could check this possibility through our informants, but that we should be most discreet as this inquiry should ing tasks that, at times, leave them desperate and nearly broken.

"Last November, we had to look at pictures of mutilated, dismembered children to see if we recognized any part of our son. It was ugly I came close to fainting," said Noreen Gosch, who has begun to show the wear of a year of suffering. One year ago Monday, 12-year-old Johnny Gosch vanished without a trace when he went out to deliver newspapers in a quiet West Des Moines neighborhood. Since then, the Gosches have conducted an extraordinary public campaign to find their son. They have excoriated law enforcement authorities for not trying larder to find Johnny, they have hired private investigators to check dozens of 1 St i man sitting in a blue car talking to Johnny Gosch.

As he stuffed the bundles under his arm Sunday, Sept. 5, 1982, Rossi thought something was strange. He glanced at the car's license plate. He didn't know until later that Labor Day weekend that he was one of the last persons known to have seen the Gosch youngster. Moments later, at the West Des Moines street corner, the 12-year-old boy rolled his wagon loaded with the Des Moines Sunday Register newspapers up the street and vanished.

So began what has become a baffling, frustrating hunt that has led investigators to almost every corner of the nation and has left the name "Gosch" on the lips of hundreds who have taken up the SEARCH fc 1 ft 'f if INSIDE THE REGISTER Book Rfwtwi 4C Brk)9 2H Cluufkd 9F, 1G Country living 2F Inveitor's Memo 4F John Karris 6H Ann Undert 2E Markets 6F Movies 4H Nation 4A Obituaries 73 Larry Stone 100 Stamps 2H Weather 2B Weddings 4E World 2A FAMILY Johnny Gosch Missing for one year, Henry A. Wallace He altxajs suspected it Please turn to Page 7 A Please turn to Page 7 A.

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Pages Available:
3,433,144
Years Available:
1871-2024