Indiana Gazette from Indiana, Pennsylvania • Page 2

"JBUre it left to me to bectbe faliettier foe ahoutti government fattlioui Hctuspapera or ttefctspapera foiiltnut a BljouUt not fyeattate a moment to prefer tijc latter." Jefferson The Indiana Gazette Friday, April 14, Page 2 GOP wraps itself in 'Stars Bars' By ROBERT WALTERS Ala. (NEA) For connoisseurs of Southern politics the most telling moment of the only televised debate between the two candidates in a recent special election for a House seat here came during its final minutes. During the time allotted for his closing summary, state Sen. John Rice the Republican contender, reached into an inside jacket pocket, produced a small Confederate flag and waved it in front of the cameras'. There is no more powerful cultural or political symbol in the South than the banner that invokes memories of the Civil War, slavery and racial tension.

The signal it sends to blacks is unmistakable that they are not welcome. A senior aide to the Democratic candidate, Secretary of State Glen Browder, promptly accused Rice of "race-baiting." Indeed, that reaction was shared by some neutral observers in the state's 3rd Congressiona! District in east-central Alabama. Insisting "I'm not a racist," Rice rejected that characterization. But he brandished the Confederate flag while calling for continued display of the banner at the state capitol building a practice blacks charge is racially inspired. Rice lost to Browder by a 2-1 margin in early April, but the nature of the Republican appeal to voters here typifies the party's attempts to build support throughout the South by appealing to voters' worst instincts on the touchy issue of race.

In 1968, Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon fashioned a "Southern strategy" that targeted alienated white Democrats as potential supporters. schools' became a euphemism for white schools and segregated neighborhoods," notes Southern author Jason Berry. In the early 1980s, Republican President Ronald Reagan endorsed special tax treatment for the all-white academies established across the region to circumvent the school desegregation mandated by the Supreme Court. In 1988, Republican presidential nominee George Bush relied heavily upon a television commercial that criticized his opponent's allegedly lenient treatment of a convicted black rapist. Those efforts have been reinforced by GOP appeals to the region's cultural conservatism, such as Rice's attack on the "gay rights, gun control and unilateral disarmament" allegedly endorsed by the Democratic Party.

As a result, political realignment is well underway throughout the South. In recent decades, every state in the region has elected at least one Republican to the Senate, and only Georgia has not had a Republican governor. The Republican National Committee says that in recent years about two dozen state legislators in four states Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee have abandoned the Democratic Party. Rice is one of four members of the Alabama legislature (two senators and two representatives) who switched from Democrat to Republican during the past year. Alabama's 1st and 2nd Congressional Districts, which border the Gulf of Mexico and the Florida Panhandle along the state's southern tier, already- are represented by Republicans and, notes one local political observer, "it's inconceivable that they'll ever again go Democratic." Politicians in both parties believe the 3rd Congressional District is a logical candidate for a similar switch.

Its biggest city, Anniston, has a population of only about 30,000, and most of its 13 counties are rural. (The town square and other exterior locations in the film, "Mississippi Burning," were photographed not in Philadelphia, Miss, but in Lafayette, a small town near the southern end of the district.) Ricei however, was not an especially appealing candidate. His proclivity for emotional outbursts led some of his fellow legislators to nickname him "hand grenade," and voters apparently were uneasy about his self- described "confrontationist" approach. Newspaper Enterprise Assn. New skipper By ART BUCHWALD A federal judge recently ruled that the United States could not keep the America's Cup.

The judge stated that by using a catamaran, the San Diego Yacht Club had raced unfairly against New Zealand, and many world-class American yachtsmen, including myself, went into mourning. It seemed unfair to lose the trophy just because we had discovered a new way to dunk the chaps down under. What to do? An emergency meeting of the Vineyard Haven Yacht Club was called In the past, the VHYC had left it to the New York Yacht Club or the San Diego Yacht Club to do the dirty work but now it looked as if it was time for others to save the day for the United States. Stern proposed, "I think that we should hire the captain of the Exxon oil tanker in Alaska as skipper." Brown seconded his proposal, "I'll drink to that." Clurman rose to object. "How do you know we can get him? He's the hottest sailor on the West Coast." Stern answered, "We will appeal to him on environmental grounds.

We'll tell him that he's not just going out there to win the cup back from the New Zealanders. He's also going to show them what Americans can do with a tall sail and a compass to steer her by. Captain Hazelwood is the only man for the job. Gentlemen, I suggest that we begin our trials." "We can't because we don't have a hull," Guggenheim added. "It doesn't matter," Stern replied, "he'll never know." Van Ripper was not so sure.

"Does the man have a driver's license?" "All sailors have a driver's license. Otherwise they couldn't go to sea," Wallace assured us. I told the group, "My only concern is that he doesn't hit anything." Stern sounded surprised, "How can he hit anything? The channel is 10 miles wide. I'd trust my life to an Exxon skipper on the open sea." "Do we have any other choices?" Styron wanted to know. "No one in the same class," Durr answered.

"He's a household name." "I'll drink to that," Eaton yelled. "How do we get him?" Stern spoke up, "He's hiding out now because everyone is trying to sign him up. I think we have the inside track if we appeal to his patriotism and hatred of the New Zealanders." Guggenheim sounded worried, "I just hope that none of the other yacht clubs gets to him first." Stern continued, "It's essential that we move fast. We have to convince him that our boat is the only to win back the America's Cup. Once he realizes how seaworthy it is, he's bound to sign up." "Wait," I said, "he's only captained oil tankers.

Maybe he won't want to take command of a racing yacht." "There's no difference between an oil tanker and a yacht. They both depend on the wind," Styron explained. Stern was anxious to finish our meeting, "If there are no objections, we agree to hire Captain Hazelwood to skipper the next race, and to bring back the America's Cup to the shores of this great land." "Suppose he says no?" Van Ripper suggested. Stern replied, "Then we'll ask his third mate to take his place." Los Angeles Times Syndicate Navy reluctant to give crash details WASHINGTON Marilyn Ginsberg has been waiting for two years to bury her husband. Thanks to the secrecy of the U.S.

Navy, she may never put to rest the mystery of his death. Capt. Daniel Ginsberg was one of the Navy's esteemed "Top Guns." On May 20,1987, his F-18 jet crashed into the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California on a routine training flight. The Navy claimed it spent 1,388 flight hours searching for the wreckage. Then it gave up.

But Marilyn Ginsberg, the petite widow with two toddlers, wouldn't give up. The more she read of the Navy's search records, the more hollow they sounded and she grew determined to find the plane herself. A year after the accident she did, and it took only seven hours. Using the same information the Navy had, Mrs. Ginsberg had reward posters and maps hung in ranger stations, at trail heads and in sheriffs' offices.

With reluctant help from the military, she initiated a search. On June 18, 1988, after a half-day hike, a search team found the plane east of Yosemite National Park near the Nevada border. Finding the plane so easily raised far more questions than it answered for Mrs. Ginsberg and the family of the dead co-pilot, Lt. Michael Mueller.

Why hadn't the Navy spotted it? Was the Navy hiding something? Why would a pilot, respected for his caution, who had flown the 1986 bombing raid on Libya, crash on a routine flight across California? The Pentagon has locked the records of the crash in a vault for top secret material and will only release a sanitized version of its conclusions. Our associate Jim Lynch pored over documents and interviewed more than a dozen people privy to the crash and the search. We found convincing evidence that the Navy may have known exactly where the plane was, and decided to leave it there. The plane crashed on a ridge behind Green Creek Canyon. The Navy records show that no search aircraft A Navy spokesman told us the official search was thorough and that the wreckage could not be seen from the air.

The Navy should thank Mrs. Ginsberg. Until she found the F-18, it was the only military jet lost inside the United States in the past 10 years. If the Navy found the plane, why was it kept a secret? It may have Washington By JACK ANDERSON DALE VAN ATTA Merry-Go-Round were near the canyon on the day of the crash. Yet a hiker and a forestry worker swear they saw Navy planes fly in and out of the canyon just hours after the crash.

A deputy at a nearby sheriffs department saw a helicopter equipped to pick up wreckage a couple of days after the accident. A hiker reported an "explosion" near the crash site and the last radar reading from the F-18 was less than three miles from the crash site. But the Navy focused its search 30 miles away on Glass Mountain. The Navy stuck to the Glass Mountain theory, even to the point of putting it on Capt. Ginsberg's death certificate.

something to do with chronic mechanical problems in F-18s, including sporadic engine fires. Three more F-18s crashed after Capt. Ginsberg's ill-fated flight. Five months after his death the Navy shelved half of the Pacific Fleet's F- 18s for work on engines with more than 800 hours flying time. One of Capt.

Ginsberg's engines had 1,482 hours, the other 955 hours. Officially, the Navy says an F-18 fire has never killed anyone. A top Navy official, who asked not to be identified, told us Capt. Ginsberg made a dumb mistake and dipped down out of the clouds for better visibility. That explanation bothers another F-18 pilot who had flown with Capt.

Ginsberg for more than 100 hours and called him, "real cautious." The Navy is still identifying remains taken from the rubble. The Ginsbergs and the Muellers hope to have it all sorted out by May 20 so they can bury their men on the second anniversary of the crash. "It bothers me to feel I have been lied to," Mrs. Ginsberg told us. "I want to know why.

I guess I feel it's going to help with the grieving process. Until I have answers I don't know what I'm dealing with." PAN AM DILEMMA The Central Intelligence Agency is conducting a massive investigation into the bombing of Pan Am flight 103, but the closer the CIA gets, the less government officials like what they see. They are uneasy over evidence linking the bombing to Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini and Syria's President Hafez al-Assad. The officials don't know how to retaliate against either without taking the risk of inflaming the Middle East. MINI-EDITORIAL The U.S.

attempt to freeze Manuel Noreiga out of power is a bust. One year ago, American companies in Panama were ordered by President Reagan to withold taxes from Noreiga. The idea was to break the dictator, it hasn't worked and now the companies are whining because they are losing friends in Panama. Noreiga has become a monumental embarrassment to Washington, but this is no time to back off on the economic sanctions. The power of the purse strings is the best leverage the United States has, even if private companies have to suffer a little discomfort.

United Feature Syndicate, Inc. By ROBERT j. WAGMAN Drug scourge has bypassed Chicago CHICAGO (NEA) From the streets of Boston and New York to Miami and Los Angeles, crack is spreading so rapidly with its drug-related murders and other crime that even hardened narcotics agents seemed stunned. The national figures are startling: In New York City, there had never been an arrest for crack, the highly concentrated form of cocaine, before June 1985. In 1988, there were over 20,000.

Washington, D.C., now has the nation's highest, per-capita murder rate 372 in 1988. More than two- thirds were crack-related. Los Angeles' infamous youth gangs responsible for 400 murders last year now have turned into what a recent Drug Enforcement Administration report called "nothing more than heavily armed crack distributorships." It seems that no urban area is immune. Except for Chicago. For reasons that investigators are still trying to piece together, the crack epidemic has almost entirely bypassed the Windy City.

Crack a type of hardened cocaine that is sold in small chips or "rocks" acts quickly on the central nervous system when smoked to induce an intense, short-lived, euphoria. It is also significantly cheaper than powdered cocaine, which explains its popularity among the inner city poor. A large vial enough for about an hour-long high costs about $15 in New York City and as little as $10 in some cities. Crack is even more addictive then powdered cocaine, but it also gives its user a rapidly diminishing high. The longer it is used, the shorter the duration of each high and the more the hardened addict must by.

A significant percentage of the crack trade nationally is today controlled by Los Angeles youth gangs and gangs of murderous Jamaicans called "posses." Two of the largest Los Angeles street gangs the "Crips" and the "Bloods" are major suppliers of crack as far east as Cleveland and have significant operations in Midwestern cities as small as Omaha, Neb. The posses named after the old- time westerns that were a staple of daytime television in Kingston', Jamacia started as marijuana dealers in Miami, switched to the more profitable crack trade, spread up the East Coast and are now well established in the Midwest. Why hasn't crack become a staple on the streets of Chicago? According to drug agents here, it's a good bad news story. Simply put, Chicago already has such a highly organized and entrenched gang system that it has been impossible for the outside gangs who trade in crack to move in. According to Chicago DEA spokesman Franz federal agents have concluded "the existing gangs are doing well enough without crack.

They would have to deal with the posses or the gangs to get it, and 'ton 7 All letters to the editor must be signed and include the writer's full address and telephone number before they will be considered for publication. Letters must be factual and discuss issues and not personalities. They must also be addressed to the editor and not be mass-produced. Two typewritten double-spaced pages is a recommended length. Letters designed to promote political candidates' campaigns will not be accepted.

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This is not something they want." There is a second explanation of- fe.red by law enforcement officials, that, at first glance, seems extraordinary: Crack use is so low, they say, because cocaine use is already so high, so readily available and relatively cheap. The Chicago Police Department reports that mandatory urine tests on all persons arrested for crimes in Chicago last year showed that almost 60 percent tested positive for cocaine use. Among major cities only criminals in New York and Detroit tested higher. In Chicago today one of the most popular drugs among city addicts is a form of very pure powered cocaine that is freebased (smoked), producing an effect similar to that of crack. The drug is about as inexpensive on Chicago's streets as crack would be.

"With such cheap powdered cocaine available, our addicts don't really need crack," a police spokesman said. "I'm not saying that we don't have crack out there," says Commander Richard Risley, head of the Chicago Police narcotics division. "But it hasn't become the problem here that it has in places like New York or Detroit or Washington. And we've also been spared much of the violence that seems to come with the crack trade." The fact that some crack trafficking exists in Chicago was shown last December when federal authorities and local police closed down a fairly large drug operation, arresting more than 30 people on charges of selling both heroin and crack. Another smaller crack ring was broken "I can only say what the situation is Risley.

"I don't know if this is going to last. I expect that there will be an active attempt in the future to bring crack here: Whether it succeeds may depend on the size and effectiveness of our response. I think in some other cities crack was there and established before authorities knew what was happening. That is not going to happen here." Newspaper Enterprise Assn. (Hazetie: Published by THE INDIANA PUBLISHING COMPANY P.O.

Box 10 Indiana, Pa. 15701 Phone 412-465-5555 Eitabliihecf in 1890 1UCY R. DONNELLY JOE DONNELLY Pnsidint MICHAEL J. Stcnttaryrtraaturar Ginfral Manager HASTIE D. KINTER Auiitant Tntaiurar STACIE K.

DONNELLY Aimtant Secretary JOSEPH GEARY AdvJMktg. Director WILLIAM B. HASTINGS Managing Editor FRANKS. HOOD Awociate Editor MEMBER OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Attoclared it entitled exelvtively to the ute or reproduction of all local newi printed in this newipaper ai well ai alt AP newt diipatchei. (USPS 242-CMO).