Star Tribune from Minneapolis, Minnesota • Page 11

Star TribuneTuesdayDecember 271988 Commentary Federal officials deserve pay hike By Robert H. Bork U.S vs. North is more than politics Associated Press Wilma Mankiller: demonstrating that grass-roots leadership can be successful among poor Indians. Cherokees' first woman chief shows award-class leadership documents." According to the indictment, there was also deception of the CIA and the Defense Department well before the inquiry began. The indictment states, for example: "In early 1986, the defendants Oliver L.

North and Richard V. Secord agreed to retain for the Enterprise a substantial part of the $10 million (Iranian) payment for the first shipment of TOW missiles by having the defendant Secord transmit to the United States through the CIA substantially less than was paid for those missiles on behalf of the Iranians." When all was said and done, North's "Enterprise" skimmed off $6 million of the $10 million that Iran paid for the missiles. The Boland amendment makes only a cameo appearance in the extensive indictment in one paragraph of one of the 23 counts. The paragraph charges a conspiracy to conduct a "secret war" in a way "calculated to defeat legal restrictions governing the conduct of military and covert action activities and congressional control of appropriations, and to conceal these activities from legitimate congressional oversight." Here and only here does it matter whether North diverted money to the contras. And nowhere has Walsh or the grand jury even remotely suggested that mere "policy disagreements" with Congress are criminal.

The heart of the prosecution's case in United States vs. North is this: Weapons and other properties belonging to the United States, and paid for by its taxpayers, were sold to foreigners, and much of the proceeds were fraudulently, deceitfully and secretly set aside in private bank accounts, rather than being given to the government. Since the beginning of the republic, federal criminal law has prohibited government officials from secretly directing government funds to themselves or to enterprises of their choosing. Such statutes protect both against private corruption and against perversion of a fundamental principle set out in Article I of the Constitution: "No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law." The Iran-contra affair undoubtedly raises important issues of foreign policy. But the prosecution itself is focused principally on alleged acts that are and always have been criminal.

And unless the Iran-contra committee and the grand jury have gotten the elementary facts of the case wrong, these charges are going to be tough to beat. She also has dealt with the problems of illiteracy where more than 50 percent of the population does not graduate from high school and where many have less than an eighth-grade education. This contributes to high unemployment and leads to other social disasters involving medical and welfare burdens. There have been reports of some early disappointment with the election of Mankiller. This came from older Indians, especially men; however, it appears most of those opinions have changed.

One reason is that their new chief has done something seldom, if ever, done by other Cherokee chiefs she has gone into the individual communities to empower and inspire local leadership. is difficult to describe the quiet power and determination evident as Wilma Mankiller accepted the John Gardner award in Houston. She told of some of the adversities her people had suffered; some in the audience were moved to tears. Yet she strikes a positive note when she says, "I know for a fact that poor people have' a great capacity for leadership and that the best chance for change in the poor communities is from within the communities themselves." Wilma Mankiller stands as a model for women and minorities all across the country. Paraphrasing words from the song that has become the theme for New York City, "If she can make it there, others can make it anywhere." Ross Swimmer is a prominent Republican banker and lawyer.

When he ran for the chiefs position in 1983, he asked Mankiller, -a liberal Democrat, to run on the ticket with him and they were elected. Swimmer concentrated on economic development and Mankiller on social development. She had established her reputation by working on various community projects and by founding the tribe's community development department. Her philosophy has been to foster "all sorts of little organizations rather than having one huge governmental agency." Perhaps her greatest feat has been a model self-help program for rural Cherokees, enabling a community in Bell, to build its own 26-mile water line. Bell has fewer than 400 residents, many of whom were without indoor plumbing when the project was proposed.

Achieving the necessary teamwork between tribal headquarters and the. local citizens was no easy task. Mankiller describes the community leadership as ranging from "very reluctant to very cynical" at first. But with the people of Bell doing the work and the tribe providing funds, materials and organizing assistance, positive results were produced: the water line, 50 new or refurbished homes, a fire department and most important of all a new community spirit. And the Bell community development plan has spread to several other tribal communities.

Mankiller has demonstrated her executive abilities in presiding over Cherokee Nation Industries, a trib-ally owned multienterprise corporation that has evolved from sales of $1.9 million to estimated sales of $20 million, earning a projected profit of $2.5 million. ByOttoSilha A national award that didn't get the attention it deserved was announced a few weeks ago in Houston at the annual assembly of the Independent Sector, a Washington-based umbrella group for U.S. nonprofit agencies. The award was the John W. Gardner Leadership Award, named for the former secretary of heath, education and welfare, former head of Common Cause and founder of the Independent Sector.

The recipient was Wilma Mankiller, the first female principal chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. She assumed her position in an historic tribal election in 1987. In a relatively short time, Chief Mankiller has utilized her skills as an organizer and leader to accomplish significant improvements against all the odds in one of the most difficult areas of the national economy rural community development. But of even greater significance has been her ability to demonstrate that grass-roots leadership can be successful among poverty-stricken Indians. Mankiller's name comes from an 18th-century Cherokee warrior.

She grew up one of 1 1 children in a poor family in rural Oklahoma. The opportunity of a lifetime arose when her predecessor as chief, Ross Swimmer, was called to Washington to head the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1985. She took over until the 1987 tribal election made her the principal chief. The unusual position of first woman chief of the more than 91,000 Cherokees is all the more amazing in light of the history of tribal leader selection. Until 1971, the leaders were appointed by the federal government, a process that elevated only wealthy, prominent members to the top.

Washington The tidal wave of venom that threat-, ens to sweep away the proposal to raise the salaries of federal officials is flabbergasting. Who would have thought that so many Americans who love incumbent congressmen so dearly as to award them something resembling life tenure simultaneously hate them so much that they would require them, along with federal executives and judges, to serve at inadequate and steadily decreasing real compensation? Yet people are responding to the populists of the left and right who have exploded with fury at the Quadrennial Commission's proposal. That reaction is shortsighted and self-defeating. If you don't like our present federal officials, you are going to loath the ones that will be produced by salary levels that are continually eroded by inflation over the next 10 or 15 years. We have made the same kind of mistake before.

Many people once answered "yes" to the question, "Would you rather pay less than the market price for natural gas?" That affirmative answer brought a drastic shortage of natural gas. Today, many people may be ready to answer "yes" to the question, "Would you rather pay less than the market price for qualified representatives and judges even if doing so creates a shortage of competent officials?" Ralph Nader, whose demagogic skills easily outrun his respect for the laws of economics, was among those who advocated a below-market price for natural gas. Now Nader is mounting a campaign to ensure that the real wages of government officials are not restored but will continue to be eaten away by inflation. Political parties are having trouble recruiting good candidates for Congress and part of the reason most certainly is pay. While salaries in the past 20 years have fallen 30 or 40 percent behind inflation, the price of housing in and around Washington has skyrocketed far past the rate of inflation.

This is also true in many major metropolitan areas. The result is increasing difficulty in recruiting and retaining qualified federal judges. Many excellent lawyers simply will not consider the federal bench as a career and many excellent judges are thinking seriously of giving up that career. There is, for some unfathomable reason, a feeling that judges and elected or appointed officials should earn little more than the average American. Nader sounds this theme.

But our society is built on the income differentials necessary to attract talent where it is wanted. Certainly, much of the compensation for government service is psychic. But even with the recommended pay raise, most congressmen and judges will have living standards well below those they would enjoy in other occupations, and psychic income does not buy a house in Washington or send the children to college. One of my clerks, after an additional year as a Supreme Court clerk, joined a New York law firm with a bonus that put her first year compensation well ahead of mine as a Court of Appeals judge: District court judges and congressmen now make $89,500 a year. When law professors make much more, when youngsters two, three or four years out of law school make more, who will want a career on the federal bench? Who will seek a career in Congress? The answers are obvious: the independently wealthy, the financially unsuccessful, those who intend to stay only for a few years in order to dress up their resumes or, perhaps the most disturbing thought of all, those who crave power.

There is no respectable reason to oppose spending the small amounts it would take to compensate our officials adequately. This is especially true when the proposal would ban the "honorariums" that raise serious ethical questions for congressmen. At a $135,000 salary in Washington, New York, Chicago or Los Angeles, no judge or legislator is about to become a maharaja. We already have indexed retirement benefits, tax rates and much else to the rate of inflation. It makes no sense to object to similar treatment for federal salaries.

President Reagan is expected to approve the increase. And, if Congress does not allow this raise to go into effect, it will not be easier next time. Sooner or later Congress must summon the courage to make public service a reasonably attractive calling. Robert H. Bork is a scholar in legal studies at the American Enterprise Institute and a former judge of the U.S.

Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. By Walter Dellinger Durham, N.C. "It's time to recognize that the case against Ollie North and others in the Iran-contra affair has been political from the start," says the Wall Street Journal. Conservative columnists such as George Will, Patrick Buchanan, Robert Novak and James J. Kil-patrick agree.

They seem to think that North's trial represents "the criminalization of a policy dispute" between Congress and the president. A careful reading of the indictment leaves one amazed that so many people could get the story so wrong. United States vs. North is an embezzlement case. The grand jury, acting on evidence assembled by Lawrence Walsh, a distinguished Republican attorney and former president of the American Bar Association, alleges that North violated eight separate criminal statutes.

Central among them is Section 641 of the U.S. criminal code, which makes it a felony punishable by 10 years' imprisonment for any person knowingly and willfully to "embez-. zle, steal, or convert to his use or the use of another" any money belonging to the United States. The money in question is surely the greatest amount ever alleged to have been embezzled from the United States in a single criminal conspiracy. The prosecutor charges that over $30 million was obtained from the sale of arms to Iran, and that less than half of that found its way into the U.S.

Treasury. Most of the $30 million went into secret Swiss bank accounts controlled by North and co-defendant Richard Secord. As far as the indictment's embezzlement count is concerned, it doesn't matter whether the money went from there to the contras, or to Secord and Albert Hakim, or for that matter to the United Way or Mother Teresa. Since the money did not belong to the defendants, they were not free to use it for anything other than the authorized Iranian arms sale. So questions about the diversion of funds to the contras, and about whether North, Secord and others personally profited from the arms sale are irrelevant to the central charges against the defendants.

That is not to say that questions of personal corruption won't come up at the trial. One count charges that Secord and Hakim set up a secret Swiss account of $200,000 intended to encourage North to stay on the National Security Council staff so that Hakim and Secord "would continue to receive opportunities for substantial revenues and profits The grand jury also has charged North with making "false, fraudulent and fictitious" statements to the U.S. attorney general in the course of an official inquiry, and with "concealing, removing, mutilating, obliterating, falsifying and destroying official Christmas By Andrew Borkowski The Englishman next to us has obviously been to Poland before. You can tell by the extraordinary bulk of his cabin luggage. The bags contain a melange of citrus fruits, women's hosiery, French wine and toilet paper topped, rather fancifully, by a pineapple.

The contents bespeak a visitor who knows what the country's most sought-after commodities are likely to be. "Is this your first Christmas in On this trip, a year ago, I answer in the affirmative, prompting a smile of paternal forbearance. "Try not to be too sad," he advised. Going to Poland is probably the saf-' est way to get an idea of what life is like during wartime. The army no longer patrols the streets and demonstrations are rare, but day-to-day living conditions remind you that Poland is a country where the war never really ended.

"Nie ma!" These words become indelibly stamped into consciousness. We hear them as the negative reply to requests for everything from Klee- nex to as many as three-quarters of the items on the average restaurant menu. Poland's world-famous shortages become aggravated at Christmas by a wave of panic purchasing in anticipation of government price in- creases. No one knows what's going to go up or by how much. the land of eternal shortages Otto Silha, former publisher of the Minneapolis Star and Tribune, chairs the Innovative City Project, formed to stimulate and assist significant urban improvements in the United States.

our assailants were not from the village. "No one in Bialy Dunajec even owns a tie," we are told. They were probably "hooligani," one of the street gangs that regularly come up from Silesia to test their mettle against the Goralskis so celebrated for their brawling propensities. There are no broken bones among us, no cuts or bruises, but the anger at having been humiliated while hopelessly outnumbered sticks with me for the rest of the trip. It's as if the chain of frustration that circumscribes Polish life has opened to include me in its links.

My inclusion is mercifully temporary. A few days later we are at Warsaw's Okecie Airport, saying goodbye to the friend and guide who has tirelessly bucked lineups, bureaucrats and hoodlums on our behalf over the past two weeks. It's not easy. "Look," he jokes over the barrier at passport control, "you are already abroad." The duty-free shelves in the departures hall teem with coveted Western goods. In the restaurant, I'm distracted from bacon and eggs by a rapping noise above me.

It's our guide, peering in through a skylight on the terminal's observation deck, his face pressed to the glass like a beggar barred from our feast. The sight of his silhouette against the gray Polish dawn is one I'll remember for a long, long time. Andrew Borkowski, a Canadian writer who lives in Europe, visited Polish relatives during Christmas 1987, He wrote this article for the Los Angeles Times. Walter Dellinger, a professor of law at Duke University, is a 1988-89 fellow at the National Humanities Center. This article first appeared in the New Republic.

in Poland, The Poles are as eager to explain their hardships as they are to show off the monuments and artifacts of their heroic past. In Wroclaw, a tour of churches and museums is interrupted for a visit to a former prison building, its cells now being used as apartments. Families can wait up to five years for housing. Singles and childless couples can wait longer. "There are two types of architecture in Wroclaw," a guide said, "baroque and barrack." The Poles keep their sense of humor intact with an arsenal of wry witticisms.

Favorite targets include the Soviets, the national airline and the absurdities of the system in general: "At first, in Poland, there was socialism. Then came communism. Next will be cannibalism." One of the saddest aspects of the post-Solidarity era is that when the going gets tough, it's every comrade for himself. Jostling and queue-jumping have become basic survival skills in the scramble to secure life's essentials. At railway stations, holiday crowds jump platforms in front of incoming trains in the competition for seats.

Among shop clerks, lavatory attendants, waiters and most other public functionaries, civility is rare and cordiality extinct. Aboard the train from Wroclaw to Krakow, a conductor ejects a young mother from a carriage after she has the effrontery to request a place in the compartment he has reserved entirely to nimseu. There is little hope for change; lack of prospects is the main reason one in rooms for New Year's. As we drive past the police station, our taxi driver chuckles and says "You won't be seeing much of them tonight When the parties start up in this town, the police just lock their doors." The Goralski, or mountaineers, are Poland's most distinctive ethnic subgroup a sharp-featured people who speak their own dialect and are known for their whooping, ax-swinging style of song and dance. At the local church, we hear a sampling of Goralski carol singing.

Traditional Polish hymns are rendered in an incantational style that carries an Oriental quality with droning, extemporized harmonies. The priest's hour-long sermon is less mystical an impassioned lecture to male parishioners on the evils of drink. Three million Poles are said to be drunk at any given moment of the day. The problem is by no means specific to the mountaineers, but its impact on their rowdy character has been particularly devastating. By 9 p.m., the parties are in full swing and energy charges the moonlit streets.

Eerie whoops rise from dark pine groves and echo off the mountainsides. As we cross the village, we're confronted by a group of ypung toughs in black jackets, white shirts and narrow black ties. I am knocked to the ground, then kicked and punched several times. Our guide tries to intervene and is dragged off into a neighboring field for the full treatment. The next day, locals assure us that four young Poles say they want to emigrate.

Our guide says he's not prepared to leave just yet but if he did, it would be because of the environment. The Poles believe that their country is now the most polluted in Europe. A train ride through Silesia, the industrial heartland, suggests they may be right Workers are lured to Silesia by high wages, only to find themselves entombed in an environment where acid rains and fogs eat through women's stockings and infect children with chronic lung disorders. Acid fallout is also speeding the degeneration of the buildings and monuments of Krakow, the ancient capital. "Yes, you must see Krakow," relatives say, "before it dissolves." Krakow is one of the great walled cities of Europe.

The cozy underground bistros, colorful buildings and a majestic central market square almost carry a visitor back to a more cheerful time. High above the square, atop the vertiginous tower of St. Mary's Church, a bugler makes his hourly rounds, playing a slow mournful an at each lookout point Down below are the less heroic calls of the black marketeers, nondescript men in nylon coats who circle furtively among tourists muttering as if in prayer. "Change money? Change money? Dollary? Marky? Poundy?" The way to escape is to make for the mountains. We head for Bialy Duna-jec, a small "Goralski" village in the Tatras, where friends have rented.