The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 127

LOS ANGELES TIMES SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1995 A3 econd Front Page THE NATION PETER H. KING ON CALIFORNIA Legwork, Luck Led to N.Y. Bombing Suspect A Farmer Tells His Story Manhunt: A mysterious informer's tip capped an intense search for alleged mastermind of trade center blast. DELREY alifornia farmers don't receive much minutes, they had bundled him out of the small, musty room and through Su-Casa's white marble entrance. "It was like a hurricane, a big panic," recalled Pakistani businessman Khaled Sheikh, a lodger at the guest house.

"He was shouting: 'Why are you taking me? I am innocent! Show me papers if you are going to arrest me! Who are "No one listened to him. They took him without his shoes. His eyes were blindfolded. His head was covered. His arms and legs were tied." Within 36 hours, the young man who goes by the name of Ramzi Ahmed Yousef as well as assorted other aliases was locked up in New York's Metropolitan Correction Center to face charges of masterminding the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in Manhattan.

One of the most intensive manhunts ever conducted by the United States was over. In the end, it was not only the legwork of allied intelligence services that led to the apprehension of the most sought-after foreign terrorist ever held in the United States, a man who managed to evade a worldwide dragnet for almost two years. According to detailed U.S. and Asian accounts of events leading up to Yousef capture, it also involved a fair amount of luck. The net was finally closed by a walk-in informant.

The tipster is believed to be Istiaque Parker, a movie-loving South African Muslim who lived across the street from Su-Casa. Parker reportedly was sighted there with Yousef and also at the U.S. Please tee MANHUNT, A18 II' good press anymore. There are many By ROBIN WRIGHT and JOHN-THOR DAHLBURG TIMES STAFF WRITERS WASHINGTON Shortly after 10 a.m. Tuesday.

Pakistani and American agents burst into Room 16 of Islamabad's Su-Casa guest house, a whitewashed residential' structure with stately Greek pillars and a balcony. Stretched out on a bed was a man in his late 20s, a fugitive renowned for his cockiness and cunning but clearly startled by the agents' arrival. Within THE WORLD if reasons, but I suspect public relations started to sour for farmers about a generation ago, when they took to calling themselves "growers." Farmers were Old McDonald, cornballs in overalls, Midwestern antiques. Ah, but growers. Growers were a new, improved breed, distinctly Californian.

Growers were modern CEOs, engaged in "agribusiness." Growers didn't farm; they managed crop units, mastered nature, kept a hard eye on the bottom line. That there was little room for romance in thie hard-hearted self-image was not lost on the public. Californians whose association with farms began and ended at the supermarket dairy case which is to say, by far, most Californians lost sympathy for the rural set. It was one thing to pray for rain to help Farmer John. It was quite another thing to pay for federal water to lubricate Corporate Agriculture.

On issue after issue farm labor, pesticides, crop subsidies, ground water contamination agriculturists found themselves cast as scoundrels. They became whiny, defensive and, finally, sullen. They sulk. They plaster bumpers and cotton trailers cotton trailers! with defiant slogans: "No Farms, No Food." They wonder why no one loves them anymore. Well, now for some good news.

There is a man who lives with his young family on a farm here, in the lush eastern flank of the San Joaquin Valley. His name is David Mas Masumoto. He is a grower no farmer of peaches and grapes. He also is a writer, a wonderful writer. And he has written a book: "Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm." (Harper San Francisco.

It might stand as a last word on what's good about farming. 3 Mexican Vote to Test Ruling PartyReforms Politics: Elections put Zedillo in a lose-lose situation. A loss could be the beginning of the end forthePRI. 4 1 1 ft JUL. 4 1 I If i i w.

llHlini.i liflllwSsisiS 'I LSI ummr m. "1 n.J'A By MARK FINEMAN TIMES STAFF WRITER GUADALAJARA, Mexico-As aN closing campaign act for elections today that will test Mexico's President Ernesto Zedillo and his ruling party as never before, Eugenio Ruiz Orozco's final rally in the capital of the state of Jalisco had it all. In the state where mariachi music Was born, the would-be ruling-party governor had hired the nation's top two bands. A modern fleet of buses packed Guadalajara's Plaza Juarez with thousands of rural peasants. Trucks brought banners, chairs and a sound system to cover an acre.

There were free lunches and free Cokes; free T-shirts, free baseball caps, free flags and free buttons-all bearing Ruiz Orozco's name. A hot-air balloon towered overhead. A helicopter circled. Local television and radio trucks set up ground stations, and a 50-foot stage backdrop promised, "To-Please tee VOTE, AS i imm Associated Press As elections neared in Jalisco, an army patrol in Chiapas state reinforced President Ernesto Zedillo's anti-rebel stand. CALIFORNIA Ostensibly, Masumoto writes of a struggle to market his Sun Crest peaches.

This once popular variety has been supplanted in supermarkets by newer creations peaches with fiery red skins and long shelf lives, but also less flavor. While this agrarian drama is intriguing, the soul of Masumoto's effort resides in his subtitle. "Epitaph" is a composite diary of one year on a common farm and far more charming, exciting, even, than I just made it sound. Masumoto uses his farm as Thoreau did his Walden pond. He records the pain of dragging away dead trees his father planted, searches the farm junkyard for rusted family history, observes uneasily the failed lottery tickets of farm workers that litter his orchard, describes the Zen of pruning: "Trees don't let you forget your mistakes, especially pruning." Some examples: On a rainstorm that swamped a raisin crop: "As the final clouds of this front move out, I talk to nature.

I hope for strong winds and warm sunshine. The wind blows and I ask it to blow some more. I ask the sun to shine brighter. I feel much better, remembering that in myth and legend humans often talk to nature. We lack modern myths in farming, trapped instead with a reliance on science to explain everything.

I ask the clouds if they'd help by staying away for a while. They will try but can't promise anything." On manure piles: "A common practice was to buy manure in the good years in order to build up the soil. I could identify which neighbor had a good year by the direction of the wind and the smell of profits being returned to the earth." On farm dust: "All good farmers become connoisseurs of dirt and dust. dust is a fine powder. The soil is a sandy loam that would be a chef's delight.

Add water to the earth and create a rich roux, thick but pliable. Stir and the air will be filled with a rich aroma of turned earth. I lick my lips often when working in my dust." Simpson Panelists Give Jury Watchers Few Clues broke down in tears during dramatic testimony. No visible reaction. They looked on as images of terrible carnage flashed on the screen above them.

No visible reaction. Trying to divine what's behind such outward unresponsiveness has become something of an obsession for reporters covering the trial. But unless the collective courtroom personality of the panel changes substantially in the coming weeks, the world will have to look elsewhere for human score cards. The Simpson jurors, whose names are being kept secret, have given up next to nothing about what they might think of the testimony and other evidence as it unfolds before them. A television station reported last week that some of the women jurors averted their eyes when pictures from the murder scene were shown on a giant monitor above their heads.

In reality, they were looking dispassionately at the pictures on a television monitor placed out of sight, near the floor of the jury box. There are exceptions. One juror almost imperceptibly rolled his eyes and another soundlessly chuckled when a witness seemed to suggest that a black man should not have been oil a sidewalk in Brentwood after dark. And the group broke into laughter when Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito asked during questioning of a witness with a hearing aid if he could have such a device to tune out the proceedings.

But such outbursts are the exception, not the rule. And the enigmatic behavior of the jurors has fueled even greater scrutiny. They are watched and com- Please see JURORS, A30 Courts: Nearly expressionless, their enigmatic behavior has prompted even greater scrutiny from media and public. By ANDREA FORD TIMES STAFF WRITER LOS ANGELES You might do well to stay out of a poker game with jurors in the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

This panel has made an art of keeping a straight face. They had front-row seats when O.J. Simpson rolled up his pant leg and bared his knee. No visible reaction. They watched as Nicole Brown Simpson's sister Foreign Student Aid Saves Local Colleges Education: Institutions are recruiting abroad because tuition is higher and fees go directly into their general funds instead of being redistributed by the state.

Official Draws Fire for Her Gun Remark Weapons: Fellow council members say Webb's admission to illegally packing a pistol sends the wrong message: that Simi Valley is a town of gunslingers. TV Interview Shows Guests scheduled for today's television interview shows: SUNDAY JOURNAL C-SPAN, 6 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. (VCR Plus No. 339524) Journalists Michael G.Gartner and Gary Barrett MEET THE PRESS NBC, 7 a.m., Channel 4 (VCR Plus No.

668 12) Former Vice President Dan Quayle and White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta THIS WEEK WITH DAVID BRINKLEY ABC, 9:30 a.m., Channel 7 (VCR Plus No. 102831) Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala and Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) LATE EDITION CNN, 2 p.m. (VCR Plus No.

153706) Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) FACE THE NATION CBS, 12:35 a.m. Monday, Channel 2 (VCR Plus No. 6738394) Sens. Richard G.

Lugar Dan Coats (R-Ind.) and Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) It is interesting what's not found in this farmer's almanac. No politics. No dollar figures. No kaffeeklatsch whining about the guv-mint.

And no presumptions of mastery: "Farmers fool themselves when they talk about taking land from the wild. Some believe they can outwit nature. the end, though, nature has a way of keeping us in our proper place, a thunderstorm on our table grapes, or a heat wave that burns peaches, or showers falling on unprotected grapes trying to dry into raisins. "We are humbled." As for the story line the plight of Sun Crest peaches Masumoto's ending will herein be protected. What can be said is what the farmer himself told me, standing amid his trees, fingering tiny green buds about to explode into pink blossoms: "If the ending is ambivalent, it's because farming is ambivalent There is no ending on a farm.

There is always the next season." Incidentally, like his peaches, Masumoto's book won't reach stores until June. Publishers, too, must attend to seasons. By SCOTT HADLY SPECIAL TO THE TIMES Simi Valley Councilwoman Sandi Webb's admission last week that she illegally carries a pistol when she leaves the safety of her home city for Los Angeles, and will continue to do so, has drawn disbelief from fellow council members and law enforcement officials. Webb maintained on two Los Angeles talk radio programs that she has a God-given right to protect herself. That drew quick complaints from Simi Valley officials.

"I don't thinh we want to send the message out that we're a town of gunslingers," said Councilman Paul Miller, the city's former chief of police. "We all have to abide by the law, and I think it's unwise for an elected official to publicly state that they break the law." Please see GUN, A33 By DIANE SEO TIMES STAFF WRITER i i In an effort to raise additional money for their cash-strapped campuses, many California community colleges are recruiting foreign students, who provide added revenues because they pay higher fees. To compete for these students, some schools ate spending thousands of dollars on overseas recruiting trips, advertisements and college brochures. Despite the hefty cost, school officials believe their attempts to lure more foreign students is well worth the investment While California residents pay $13 per unit at the state's 106 community colleges, international students are charged $124 per unit, which can add up to $3,600 a year for a normal class load, college officials say. And the system's trustees voted last month to raise the tuition for foreign students to $137 per unit beginning this summer.

Please see RECRUIT, A34.