Iowa City Press-Citizen from Iowa City, Iowa • Page 26

IOWA CITY PRESS-CITIZEN EDITORIAL PAGE Friday, April 27, 1973 Law Mocked They made a mockery of the Iowa Open Meetings Law in Clinton recently. The people of Iowa lost as a result. It happened this way Last January, the mayor and the city council of Clinton met in a secret session to decide how to spend the city's revenue' sharing funds from the federal govern- i ment. Since this was an apparent violation of the law requiring open meetings, they were charged by the county attorney. A few days before the scheduled dates of their trials, however, the city attorney wrote to the county attorney, saying in effect the council wouldn't do it again.

And upon recommendation of the county attorney, the charges in Clinton Municipal I Court were dismissed. This has prompted the Clinton Herald to suggest that anyone accused of a crime in that county in the uture apologize and promise not to do it again. And it notes that if the system works the way it did with the city officials the person accused will go free. But the Clinton newspaper also asks some questions "Are we to assume that the city fathers knew nothing about the law when they held a closed session without advance notice which led to the filing of the complaint?" and "Are we to assume that, not having even received a slap on the wrist, they will desist from secret meetings in the future?" The whole point of the open meetings law is to make information about public business readily available to the public and to provide a means of forcing any reluctant public officials to do so. or face the consequences.

A failure to enforce this law. as a failure to enforce any law. invites a repitition of the offense, not only in Clinton but elsewhere in the state. It becomes even more of an invitation when the people involved are those whoso task it is to enforce the law. A Pond at Altoona? For anyone who's ever spent any time at Okoboji in the last 70 years, the Queen was as much a part of the scene as Gull Point or thr bridges over the channel between the two lakets.

But, it appears, no longei the Queen is going the way of the old Inn. Originally a steamer, built in the 1880s. the Queen once was one of a fleet of boats which took visitors to cottages and hotels around the lake from the railroad station at Arnolds Park. For the last 40 years or more, she has been an excursion boat, making regular circuits of West Okoboji. It's been a part of a vacation there as much as swimming or the amusement park.

That's over now. it seems. A Des Moines area recreational park developer has purchased the Queen and plans to install it in a 10-acre pond near Altoona. However, a group of Iowa Great Lakes residents now are trying to buy it back. We hope they are successful.

The Queen in a pond at an Altoona amusement park would strike as false a note as London Bridge does at Lake Havasu City. Ariz. The boat belongs at Okoboji. Twenty Years Ago Today April 27. 1953 E.

L. Henderson of Brooklyn, Iowa, has purchased the publication, "The Johnson County Farmer." from Irvin F. Duddleson of Oxford. Duddleson is moving to Idaho Falls. Idaho, where he will be associated with another agricultural publication.

"The Eastern Idaho Farmer." Mrs. Fred M. (Dorothy Ashby) Pownall. Press- Citizen society editor, received three first place awards at the meeting of Iowa Press Women. held recently in Ames.

Contest divisions in which her entries topped all others were: feature story in daily, women's department in daily, and poetry in magazine. She also placed second in "interviews." C. H. Snook is honored by fellow employes and friends at a party celebrating his 35th anniversary with the Northwestern Bell elephone Co. Dr.

Allen N. Lang, veterinarian, has closed his office at 305 Kirkwood Avenue for the duration of an active tour of duty with the army veterinary corps. Timely Quotes We can't incriminate overweight because there are lots of overweight people with normal circulation. There is no evidence that exercise extends life, although the individual may feel better if he exercises. -Dr.

Cwday. former presUnt Amer i (CM College CardMcgy. something seems to be working back from the demand side. Consumer resistance may be having ctafnuM Prwkteff Cm- A4vfMTR. nwat I 7 -Nixon White House Haunted -Why Watergate? The Great Mystery Remains HALTER R.

MEARS AP Political Writer WASHINGTON (AP) When tfie web of involvement in the Watergate affair finally is untangled, a question will remain to haunt the Nixon White Why did they do it? Why, while President Nixon's re-election prospects soared and his early Democratic rivals foundered, did men in his campaign organization deem it necessary to try wiretapping? And why the earlier attempts at spying and apparent political sabotage against Democratic candidates who seemed to need no assistance in bungling their campaigns? For all the investigations into who acted and who knew of Republican political spying in 1972. there may never be a clear answer as to motive. "What really hurts in matters of this sort is not the fact that they occur, because over- xealous people in campaigns do things that are wrong." Nixon said last Aug. 29. "What really hurts is if you try to cover it up." That is burling now as Watergate accusers point to men high in the White House, white Nixon's spokesmen deny the President had any knowledge of what was going on.

There has been a claim that political surveillance originally was ordered because of a risk of demonstrations against Republican campaigners. But that could hardly be a motive for the wiretapping-burglary at Democratic headquarters last June 17, or for the abortive attempt to bug the campaign offices of Sen. George McGovern three weeks earlier. It seems more likely that Watergate happened because the Committee tor the Re-election of the President was unleashed to do what its title said, with more money to spend than any candidate could really need. Jeb Stuart Magruder, who actually ran that committee in its early days, before John N.

Mitchell resigned as attorney general for his stint as chairman, has testified that the organization spent some $48 million on the campaign. It had $4 million left over after Nixon's landslide re-election. So there was plenty of money to pay substantial sums to a college student recruited to infiltrate the campaigns of McGovern and Sen. Edmund S. Muskie, and to finance alleged sabotage efforts.

And there are charges now that the same treasury financed efforts to buy the silence of the seven men convicted in the Watergate raid. Republicans now say that the Watergate Proves Nixon Not a Political Master BKUIE B10SSAT WASHINGTON One of the great myths about President Xixon which complicates understanding of the Watergate affair is the deepest notion that he is a political master with his hand on every lever. This naturally conjures up the image of a man poring over every crucial detail of his campaigns, conversant with the full story, making all the key decisions. ft simply isn't true today, and very likely it never was. But the President himself has had much to do with fostering the legend.

For years had a habit of regaling newsmen with talk of "political timing" and other strategic elements, always in a sort of "instructional" vein which suggested the great teacher relishing his subject I had one such talk with him in 1959, when he spoke with what sounded like sage detachment about the political prob- Capitol Scene lems facing him in his 1960 White House bid. Many reporters have had these experiences again and again, and often have rushed to offer them in print as proof of the President's mastery. Well, whatever may a been the case in I960, it is a fact that by 1968 and this is attested to by men who know well what was going on in politics Nixon was not the political commander with great detail at his fingertips. In late March of 1968. I had a "hancp to put a few key po- Today in History-- HI TIIK ASSOCIATED PRESS Today is Friday.

April 27, the 117th day of 197.1. There are 248 days left in the year. Today's highlight in history: On this date in 1941, Athens fell to German invader? after ISO days of heroic Greek resistance in World War II On this date In 1521. the Portugese navigator. Ferdinand Magellan, was killed by natiu'S in the Philippines In 1822.

the 18th American president. Ulysses S. Grant, was born in Point Pleasant. Ohio In 1906. the United States steel Corp.

broke ground along Lake Michigan for construction a new city Gary. Ind. In 194), in World I I American and Soviet troops met at the Elbe River, cutting Germany in two. In 1960, Syngman Rhee resigned as president of South Korea. In 1971, South Korea's President Chung Hee Park won a third term in a national election.

Ten years ago: Special U.S. envoy W. Averell Harriman was in Moscow to seek Soviet aid in keeping peace in Laos, where pro-Communist forces were on an offensive. Five yean ago: Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first man to fly in space, was killed in the crash of a training plane. One year ago: The U.S.

Apollo 16 spacecraft and its three astronauts landed in the Pacific after a Journey to the moon. litical (juestions to him privately. He did not know the answers, though they were fairly fundamental to his then advancing prospects for the nomination. He had to summon a veteran aide to supply ine with the information. That experience, I am told.

could have been repeated endlessly. Nixon indeed wanted to be kept abreast of the general picture and where he stood in it. but he was not following the details of delegate-rustling in March or any other month. He knew little if anything about what was being done to build his strength, block by block, out in the hard-scrabble political arena. When he won the election that November, he had an immediate in-house political problem.

He wanted a new national party- chairman to replace the then incumbent Ray Bliss, i whom he had had differences dating back to But he let the matter slide until it became a dismal mess. Months later the change, to Rogers Morton, now secretary of Interior, was accomplished but only after some pain and folly which the President could easily have avoided. It was a story of his sheer neglect and indifference to the question. He was preoccupied building his image as President. Filling that role has dominated his thinking all the way.

It has helped to nurture his natural preference for isolation, thoroughly exhibited in 1973 and much reinforced since. None of this means that he did not at some point in the 1072 campaign planning, say something which got the whole operation going. Or that reports arc incorreil which now state he was informed months ago that top aides were involved. It simply means it iv quite wrong to see him as a man who, politically, is in the thick of things, isn't. Nixon campaign operation functioned with ample latitude to plot and do what was done, and without the knowledge of the President.

"You need only know the players involved," said Sen. Robert J. Dole of KansaVthe former Republican chairman, who never cared much for the CRP operators anyhow. What the Nixon campaign committee seems to have had was a budget and a license for political overkill, both of which it used. By the time the Watergate raid occurred, McGovern, the Democratic candidate Nixon men were said to have feared least among the opposition prospects, was clearly on his way to nomination.

The campaign for Muskie, who once as towering front-runner had led Nixon in 1971 public-opinion polls, had collapsed. Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey was still trying, but with scant hope of nomination. There was no evidence any covert CRP operation had significantly affected that Democratic situation.

On June 16, the day before the Watergate burglary, George Gallup's pollsters began three days of soundings which found that Nixon had a 60-per-cent-approval rating as president. That polling also discovered that in a two-man race. Nixon led McGovern 53 per cent to 37 per cent. Ultimately, Nixon won with 61 per cent of the vote to McGovern's 38 per cent. So the President was in firm command of the presidential campaign, if not his own staff and organization.

There is another irony in the fact that the Watergate crew had bugged a Democratic headquarters that actually had little to do with what was happening in the presidential campaign. It was managing the debt, scheduling the convention, and dealing with party leaders who had lost their clout to the McGovern newcomers. McGovern hammered the Watergate issue throughout his campaign--but a month before the election, a Gallup Poll reported that 80 per cent of ttose interviewed did not consider the wiretapping case a strong reason to vote for the Democratic nominee. The White House was denying all charges, standing on a Nixon statement that no one in the administration was involved. That statement has now been overtaken by events, and pronounced inoperative.

And the latest Gallup Poll indicates that 41 per cent of the American people believe Nixon knew in advance of the Watergate bugging. New Arms Control Chief Dims Prospects of Limits By ORR KELLY A I Fred Charles Ikle, the Rand Corporation political scientist chosen by President Nixon as the new head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, has attracted considerable attention ith an article on nuclear deterrence in the January issue of Foreign Affairs. The timing of the article is reminiscent of the piece by Henry Kissinger in which he proposed a strategy for ending involvement in Vietnam. Written in late 1968. it appeared MI January 1969, just as Kissinger was moving into White House as a key advisor to the new President.

But Ikle's article, "Can Nuclear Deterrence Last Out the Century?" is far less satisfying intellectually than Kissinger's. best, it is simplistic. worst, it displays a disturbing sense ot confusion about American nuclear strategy. Again and again, Ikle (pronounced Ee-clay) returns to a basic misapprehension of 1 li strategy that has evolved to control our nuclear arsenal -what he refers to as "the dogma that 'retaliation' must be swift, inflicted in an all out strike." In repeating this "dogma." he conveniently ignores major thrust of American strategic weapons development -the continuing effort to make our nuclear arsenal reliable and Mimvable and the more recent fort to make it flexible. Billions of dollars hine been spent to make sure that the weapons could survive any kind of attaoK and that they would be capable Dl response, even after a long period of time.

The major weakness of newest American strategic force the Polaris Poseidon fleet is that it might not be immediately responsive be cause of communications pro- blems. But successive administrations have been willing to invest in this system because it is survivable. Ikle also conveniently overlooks most of the lengthy de- Washington Close Up bate over the Sentinel a Safeguard ballistic missile defense systems a debate in which the major concern was not the speed with which the Minuteman missiles could respond, but the number of them that would survive a surprise attack, And. while Ikle talks of -institutional pressures among the military that will keep driving" toward a launch-on-warning pol- i-'V, the major argument of the Force in support of manned bomber is precisely the opposite a the bomber not be irrevocably com n.itted in "order" to survive. Ikle's own view of how nuclear forces should be designed and deployed is as confused as his description of the forces now in being.

First, he would cast out "the dogma that to deter nuclear attack, the threatened response must be the mass killing of people." Instead, he would i weapons "smart" bombs and missiles "that could enable both sides to the killing of millions yet to inflict assured destruction on mili- a industrial and transportation assets, the sinews and muscles of the regime initiating war matter how accurately each side can aim its own weapons." he adds, "we want to make it physically impossible for most of the strategic arms to be destroyed by sudden attack." In other words, "smart" nuclear weapons would be designed to knock out an aggressor's conventional military force while leaving his strategic nuclear force intact. But Ikle also proposes that the nuclear forces be incapable of instant launch. "Arms buried thousands of feet underground come to mind, with provision for reaching the surface and their targets -weeks or months after attack," he says. One can just imagine a nuclear "mole" burrowing its way up into the daylight, brushing the mud from its sensors and discovering that the conventional forces it was designed to destroy were already comfortably ensconced in the capital of the fatherland. The best that can be said for this strategy is that, if it were followed carefully by all the nuclear powers, it would be a form of nuclear disarmament.

All the weapons would be buried far underground, where they would be almost irrelevant in any confrontation between foes on the sur- lace and burying them would provide jobs for thousands in a kind of global WPA. Ikle himself tops off this silly proposal by admitting its basic weakness. "The risk of the destruction of cities would still loom in the background," he says. Of course it would. And there we are.

right back at space one. The budget of the ACDA is being cut from a request of $10 million to $6.7 million, its staff is being reduced and it has been removed from a central role in the strategic arms talks with the Soviet Union. Those changes, taken together with Ikle's confused view of nuclear deterrence, do not make the future of the ACDA look bright. Scots Approach Oil Boom With Concern for Future By YORICK BLUMEN'FELD Second of Tun LONDON Although North Sea oil promises to make Scotland prosperous, the Scots do not want their country turned into the "Texas of Europe." John Kerr, Scottish correspondent for The Guardian, surveyed the construction of oil-handling facilities around Aberdeen and the Shetland Islands and bemoaned "the sorry saga of opportunism catching com muni ties unawares." Oil could create 100.000 jobs in Scotland within a decade, the Economist of London predicts. This employment a 7 a would be a godsend in an area of chronic joblessness.

Even" now, 5.000 Scots work in oil-related occupations. The demands of the oil boom already are threatening most of the limited areas of 1 ground and many of the more attractive enclosed waters on the northeast coast of Scotland. It would bo the most ironic of all the Highland and Island tragedies," one Scot told "a Nowsweek correspondent, "if the wealth of the oil fields could succeed where the relative poverty of (Scotland's) resources have failed in the eradication of a unique ecology and way of life." The Inhabitant's of one fishing Drambuie, met in March 24 to discuss a proposed facility where oil-drilling platforms would be built. The National Trust for Scotland, a conservation group, contends that such Editorial Research Reports installations would "affect Regenerations the social structure, ecology and amenity of locations" along the Scottish coastline. Inhabitants of the Shetland Islands fear that (he oil boom may endanger their peaceful way of life, based on fishing and crofting (tenant a i "Shetlanders are gentle, kindly folk who will cooperate with anyone, but the one thing they will not stand for is any interference with their land," says the Rev.

Clement Robb, chairman of the Shetland Conservative Association. The Shetland (ounty Council, which has the responsibility for promoting the welfare of these remote and sparsely populated islands, wants to concentrate oil-industry development in two areas. This would save the Shet- lands from despoliation by scattered industrial development, the council feels. On the other hand, industrial enclaves might entail compulsory porchaae of farmland, which thr fiercely In dependent islanders would surely resist. "Scottish control of Scottish oil" was the campaign slogan of the Scottish National Party in a by-election at Dundee East last March.

That rallying cry underscores the fact that discovery of oil in Scottish offshore waters has given a shot in the arm to local separatist movements. Even before the first barrel of oil has been brought ashore, many Scots are clamoring for a greater share of the financial benefits. With oil profits estimated at by 1980, an independent Scotland might well be able to go it alone. The Scots have grudgingly accepted union with England and Wales because of the massive economic subsidies provided by the government at Westminster. But the Scots are not the only ones who covet a share of the oil revenue.

The Labor Party stated last February that it intends to nationalize the oil fields if it should win tlte next general election. In addition, the European Economic Community may want to stake a claim to part of the oil at some future date. So it is safe to say that the Arabs from Aberdeen" will find plenty of competition if they press their demands for a portion of the North horde of blaeV gold. IN EV SPA PERI IEWSPAPERI.