Clarion-Ledger from Jackson, Mississippi • Page 13

Me- Metro STATE-REGION BRIEFS WRITE ACTION DEATHS January 6, 1983 THURSDAY State Horn Island tests weren't nuclear, corps says By STEVE RILEY The Corps' explanation doesn't satisfy as he found no mention of Horn Island in his research. Jones, however, said more information on the project probably is still housed at the U.S. Department of Archives and History. Martin Gordon, the Corps historian who researched Cameron's request said military "old-timers" were surprised to hear the Horn Island experiments mentioned in connection with the Manhattan Project 'We discovered that it was a biological warfare testing station," Gordon said. Cameron found mention of the Manhattan Project while doing research for a trial involving the National Park Service's acquisition of Horn Island for the Gulf Islands National Seashore.

He said he found two references that showed Horn Island was part of the Manhattan project. "We ran up on a couple of wildlife refuge reports," Cameron said. "We were concerned. We felt we had to check it out" The botulism toxin is "one of the most potent poisons around," said Dr. William Riecken, epidemiologist for the state Board of Health.

Riecken said the experiments might have caused a health hazard at the time "if they had dumped them out on the ground," but that time and temperature would have eroded any danger. The tests on Horn Island most of which is owned by the federal government began in 1943, having stemmed from an overcrowded test site at Camp Detrick, Md. The Mississippi site, which was closely guarded by the U.S. Coast Guard, included an eight-mile railroad, two incinerators, several buildings and a large canal leading from the north shore to a lake. Dr.

Vincent Jones, an Army historian who recently completed a history of the military's participation in the Manhattan Project said Wednesday from his Washington office that CUrioa-Ledfer Gll Coast Bncai PASCAGOULA The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says the Army confiscated Horn Island during World War II to use it for biological warfare experiments, not nuclear testa as state officials had feared. Information furnished to the state doesn't specify the nature of the experiments, but Mississippi nuclear waste specialists believe the Army was trying to isolate a powerful botulism toxin. Ron Forsythe, a nuclear waste specialist with the state Department of Energy and Transportation, said Wednesday that the toxin could have been slipped into the enemy's food and water. "They were looking for a lethal weapon," said Forsythe, who added that the experiments also included work on an antidote.

"This is some heavy stuff we're talking about" sistant state attorney general Mack Cameron, who says he will continue to press the federal government for more information. "I don't think it goes far enough," Cameron said of the evidence produced by the Corps. "What we got was a history paper on the Chemical Warfare Service that somebody wrote after the war. We need the actual documents (about the project) themselves." Cameron, during routine research, recently uncovered evidence that the island located 10 miles off the coast of Pascagoula was part of the government's Manhattan Project, which produced the world's first atomic weapons. Fearing a health hazard from nuclear waste, he requested information from the Pentagon.

"I'm sure the corps is telling us what they know," said Cameron, "but I'm not sure they've got the classified documents." Winter outlines priorities before Legislature today By FRED ANKLAM Jr. Clarion-Ledger Staff Writer Gov. William Winter will outline his legislative priorities, including utility reforms already being addressed by legislative subcommittees, in a speech to a joint session of the Legislature this afternoon. A House Public Utilities subcommittee will hear testimony this morning from state Public Service Commission officials, following recommendations Wednesday that the "philosophy and organizational structure" of the commission be changed through legislation to achieve better control over utility rate increases. Reform of the state's public utility laws is one of the key goals expected to be announced by Winter in his 1:30 p.m.

address. Other topics he will raise include meeting the state's need for additional prison housing, toughening drunken driving laws, improving the state's transportation and health care sys tems, and strengthening the state's fiscal management aides said. A Winter aide told the House subcommittee Wednesday that eliminating provisions by which utilities can charge increased rates under bond while waiting for commission rulings will not solve the problems of high utility rates. Under state law, a utility can place increased rates into effect after posting a cash bee uovernor, page zts AP Claiborne schools may be accredited GOT YOU SURROUNDED A wall of sandbags barely protects this house near Hollandale as flood waters remain high. Preliminary reports indicate that winter floods in Mississippi have caused about $30 million in damage.

From Staff and Wire Reports Body of Belzoni man found near Carrollton CARROLLTON The body of a Belzoni man who had been missing since Dec. 20 has been found 7 miles south of here off Mississippi 17, the state Highway Patrol said Wednesday. Ernest Ray Brasier, 26, apparently had been shot in the back with a high-powered rifle, the patrol said. His body was found Tuesday about 4 p.m. by a deer hunter and removed to University Hospital in Jackson for autopsy.

A positive identification had not been made, the patrol said, but the man resembled Brasier and wore a belt with Brasier's name on it Walter Tucker, chief of investigations for the patrol, said a high-powered rifle was found not far from the body, and the Mississippi Crime Lab was testing to see if might be the murder weapon. Tucker said he did not know if any spent shells had been found in the area. Tucker said investigators were not certain the rifle belonged to Brasier, though a similar weapon and a shotgun were reported missing from Brasier's abandoned pickup truck. The shotgun has not been found. The truck was found in Yazoo County, three days after Brasier disappeared.

Brasier was last seen when he left to go hunting with a man the patrol believes was an escapee from Rankin County Jail, John W. Miller. Tucker would only say police want to question Miller about Brasier's death, but warrants have been issued for Miller for escaping from Rankin County Jail Nov. 16 and for alleged embezzlement on Dec. 18 from a Greenville truck stop where he worked briefly.

Miller had served only four days of a grand larceny sentence before he esaped from jail. Edd Jussely, a patrol spokesman, said Miller arrived in Belzoni shortly before Brasier disappeared, and rented a room. The two men left in Brasier's pickup, supposedly heading for a deer camp near Lexington, but neither made it Miller was seen back in Belzoni Dec. 21, Jussely said. Possible bomb found at firm LEXINGTON A grocery sack containing a possible bomb was discovered by workers at a mobile home manufacturing facility today and later disarmed by officers without incident Authorities were unsure whether the device, which included copper wiring, two bottles filled with a liquid, a timing device and a rubber baloon, would explode.

"I don't think it amounts to much, but anything that even looks like a bomb scares me," said Eddie Upshaw, general manager of Fleetwood Mobile Homes. "I told the employees to go outside and take an extended break while officers examined the thing." Police Chief James Stevens of nearby Greenwood, experienced in dealing with explosive devices, was called in to examine the device and disarmed it The bag and its contents were sent to the state crime lab in Jackson for examination. "We're convinced it was some type of a bomb," a spokesman for the Holmes County Sheriff's Department said. "We hope the crime lab will be able to tell us what we've got." Upshaw said a worker discovered the bag inside one of the mobile homes being built at the plant and notified officials. He said the bag was then carried out to the plant parking lot and authorities were called in.

He said there was no note in the sack and the company had received no threats. The plant is located east of Lexington on Mississippi 12. Upshaw said he did not plan to increase security at the plant and said he was not convinced the device was real EMJC fire caused by heater A fire at a historic dormitory on the East Mississippi Junior College campus in Scooba Monday was caused by a faulty heating and cooling unit school officials said Wednesday. Larry Salter, dean of student affairs, said an investigator from the state fire marshal's office concluded that the blaze that destroyed the 53-year-old Gilbert Hall was caused by a heating and cooling unit in the window of a dormitory room. Salter said investigator Dwight Savell determined that the unit caught fire and the blaze spread to curtains and then consumed the women's dorm, the oldest structure on campus.

"We were almost certain that's where the fire had to start," he said. He said all rooms in Gilbert Hall were equipped with the heating-cooling systems and said there were no other appliances in the dorm room, occupied by one of about a dozen students on campus at the time. Salter also said an emergency meeting of the college Board of Trustees was scheduled for Monday to discuss ways to secure an estimated $3 million to build a new dorm. "We hope to begin construction very soon," he said. Meanwhile, women students returning to school will be housed in other dorms, and he said one building has been set aside for women's housing to minimize the need for tripling students in rooms designed for two occupants.

"It'll be a little inconvenient, but nothing major," Salter said. "Things look a whole lot brighter today than they did yesterday. Feds to probe 3rd rock radio fire By VIRGI STEWART Clarion-Ledger Staff Writer The Claiborne County School Board and its school superintendent will have to sign an agreement ending their political bickering before the county's school system will regain its accreditation, the state Commission on Accreditation decided Wednesday. Superintendent of Education Joseph Travillion said he would not sign the agreement because he wanted the commission to monitor board actions several months before reinstating accreditation. However, all five board members said they would sign the agreement today at a special meeting so ac creditation could be restored immediately.

By ROBERT OURUAN Clarion-Ledger Sufi Writer Federal agents were asked by the state fire marshal's office Wednesday to help investigate a fire that destroyed a Jackson area radio station Tuesday, the third such radio station fire in less than nine months. Agents with the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms divison of the VS. Treasury Department began investigating a blaze that destroyed a transmitting station used by "The Rock of Jackson," radio station WQMV-FM, based in Vicksburg. A spokesman for the division said federal investigations into fires deal with possible violations of federal explosives statutes, but said no link had been established "at this time" with an earlier fire in Madison County at a station attempting to break into the Jackson FM rock market. The blaze happened less than nine hours after a new 100,000 watt transmitter began operation at the station's Edwards transmitting base, station officials said.

WQMV, known as Q-99, operated at frequency 98.7. General Manager Kirk Sherwood said he hoped to be back on the air within seven to 10 days after a temporary building and a new transmitter are erected at the Edwards site. Sherwood said he hoped for an exhaustive investigation into the blaze, and said the possibility of sabotage had been discussed by station officiate. "There's certainly a tremendous amount of speculation throughout the whole broadcast community, like, 'Gee, that's certainly a he said. "But you can't really speculate any further than that It could have been just a fire it could have been a coincidence.

"But why didn't it (the transmitting station) shut down at some point and the fire go out? See Feds, page 8B Ralph Brewer said if Travillion doesn't sign the agreement to-' day, the commission which voted 9-5 in favor of the unique accreditation decision will give him "unlimited" time to re-consider. If Travillion says he will never sign it the commission must find another solution to the problem and possibly continue the See Claiborne, page SB So you'll know who you're dealing with Raad Cawthon never returned. However, I did go through Mobile about 17 years ago to take a quick look at the Cawthon Hotel just before they torn it down. The Cawthon was a great old downtown hotel which had degenerated over the years into something of a fleabag. I remember there were stained glass windows in the lobby with what I took for the Cawthon family seal worked into the glass.

"Are we related to the people who owned that hotel?" I asked my mother after viewing the crumbling splendor. "If we are it's so far back you'd need a microscope to find it" she said. Another dream blown to snuff. I think of myself as having grown up in Birmingham. But I was back there last Thanksgiving and hardly recognized it Maybe it was because you could see more than a block in any direction.

While I lived in Birmingham it was referred to as "The Pittsburgh of the South." Soot would pile up on your shoulders like black dandruff if you walked more than half a block. White shirts became polka-dotted. The city flag was grey specks on a field of dismal. I went to grammar school in Birmingham at Barrett Elementary. Barrett is an inner city school I went there long enough ago that that was considered an advantage.

Barrett a three-story, red-brick building, still gives the impression of being a moldy, high-rise dungeon. The dominant theme in my elementary education was fear. Mrs. Murray, my science teacher for two years at Barrett, was a former WAC sergeant who called ca dance as we marched to lunch. She frightened me so badly the first year I was there all I can remember is thinking, "If she catches me chewing gum in class, she'll probably set me on fire." All the swallowed gum was surgically removed when I was 24.

A lot of my Barrett classmates were punks. That term had nothing to do with music, unless you think threats and the sound of people's skulls bouncing off concrete floors is musical. In the sixth grade I had contemporaries who rode motorcycles to school. One of them, Donnie by name, had an after-school job changing tires. These scholars had taken such a liking to the sixth and some of the previous grades that they had decided to repeat them two or three times: Barrett's mixture of people made for some strange social distinctions.

While I was worrying about mastering long division, my classmate Gene Thrasher was concerned his insurance rates were going up because of repeated speeding tickets. During those years I spoke only when spoken to. I left Birmingham and moved to Georgia as a freAman in high school. My relatives acted as if I were moving to the moon. I felt I had moved into a state of grace.

Anyway, that's where the "bio information" about me going to The University of Georgia comes in. I did go there. I did major in journalism. I did graduate. In that case it's probably better to let the facts speak for themselves.

Take the diploma, kid. Could be your last chance. Any success after college was done with mirrors. It's a short, but pithy autobiography. At least now I won't appear to you as just another know-it-all columnist Instead, I'll appear as a real, live, warmblooded, human know-it-all columnist I want you to know who you're dealing with.

If you read the paper very often, you saw this picture of me on the front page last Sunday with what we in the business call "bio information" about yours truly. The picture was up along with Bill Minor's and warned you that he and I have started a couple of columns. Mr. Minor, being the dean of Mississippi journalism, is an old hand at this. But for me the whole thing is kind of embarrassing.

I come from an old Southern family that still holds that you only get your picture in the paper if you get charged with something serious like shooting a neighbor's chicken. "I warned Hiram 'bout lettin' that raggedy rooster run loose," you might read in the caption of a smiling picture of one of my great-uncles in the Paradise Valley Herald. On top of my unease at seeing my face in the paper, I'm also not so sure you get very much of a feel for who you are reading by that smidgen of a biography. It tells you a little about me but, like everything else, facts sometimes obscure the truth. Take for example the line which read, he has written for newspapers across the South in the past nine years." On the surface there is nothing incorrect about that But it leaves more questions than it answers.

Why did I have to keep crossing the South? Why couldn't I hold down a job for more than six months? Was I so brilliant other papers kept bidding for my services? Do I drink? In nine years I've worked for seven different papers in six different geographic locations. Included in that are stints on some journalistic giants such as The Onlooker, a twice weekly paper in Foley, and a brief foray into the dark environs of The Birmingham i- News in Alabama. I also worked in Florida and Georgia. Why did I move so much. Well.

One of my former bosses said, "Raad, you've got talent but you're unstable." I took that as a compliment Isn't being unstable a prerequsite in the newspaper business? A Birmingham newspaper publisher once said he never knew a newspaperman worth his salt who you could get to work more than three days a week. During the brief period I was on each job I've managed to cover everything from sports to murders to a guy who tried to earthworms to Escambia County, Fla. The guy was from Arizona and said the worms would take the place of a proposed sewage treatment plant Some people call all the moving and covering different beats "paying your dues." Others call it a short course in obtaining a divorce. Another line about me in last Sunday's paper read: "He's a native of Selma, Ala. I was born there.

But I have never before heard myself referred to as a "native" of Selma. I got out of town at age three months and I v-.