Tallahassee Democrat from Tallahassee, Florida • Page 2

Tallahassee Democrat Wednesday, December S3rf 9933 A TOD United Airlines board of directors to vote on employee buyout. Till RSD II: Golden Globe nominations in Beverly Hills. RID II: Pope John Paul II to say Christmas Mass. Nation WEATHER THE FINDERS bRIEFS 1 Coferap charge aimed at cult with local ties i if 7 IrV 77 i ALAN MARLERThe Associated Press after an unexpected snowfall. Many people in the central Appalachians and Dakotas also were trying to get around in the aftermath of snow storms.

Harold Eller of Morganton, N.C., uses a broom to clean some of the more than seven-plus inches of snow from his car during the first day of winter on Tuesday On the first day, winter shows itself: 'There's people in the ditch all over' There was no chance to do some last-minute Christmas shopping for many caught in storms. By Roger Petterson THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Snow piled up nearly 2 feet deep Tuesday in the central Appalachians, stalling travelers in the Smoky Mountains on the first day of winter. Near-blizzard conditions forced motorists off roads in the Dakotas. "It's nasty," said Margie Pos-sen, manager of a restaurant along U.S. Highway 83 in Washburn, N.D., north of Bismarck.

"There's people in the ditch all over." WEATHER Yep, it really was a cold autumn The government is confirming the observation of folks who found themselves grabbing an extra sweater while raking leaves: It.was an arctic autumn across America. Nationally, the period from September through November was the third coldest autumn in records going back to 1895, reports the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. The country had an average temperature of 52.2 degrees Fahrenheit for the three-month period. Only 1976, at 51.3 degrees, and 1896, at 51.9, were colder, according to federal HEALTH Caffeine is risky for pregnant women Women who consume as little as half a cup of coffee a day during pregnancy may increase their risk of miscarriage, says a new study that adds to a wealth of conflicting data about caffeine. Since 1980, the Food and Drug Administration has recommended that pregnant women cut down on caffeine, the study's authors said.

That recommendation was based on animal studies, but most doctors probably advise their patients along those lines, said the authors, led by Dr. Claire Infante-Ri-vard of McGill University in Montreal. THE HOMELESS Almost half are families with kids Families with children now account for about 43 percent of the homeless, up from about 33 percent in previous years, the U.S. Conference of Mayors said Tuesday in a survey that challenges some of the stereotypes of urban poverty. "We you talk about home-lessness, people seem to think about the man that's-sleeping on the park bench or the lady walking down the street with bags," said St.

Louis Mayor Freeman Bosley co-chairman of the group's Task Force on Hunger and Homelessness. "But it's families, it's women and children that are gradually beginning to feel these problems." GOVERNMENT Budget deficit rises over last year Increased spending on federal retirement and medical benefits helped boost the budget deficit in the first two months of the new fiscal year by 2.8 percent over last year, the government said Tuesday. The deficit in November totaled $38.4 billion, up 17.3 percent from a year ago. The combined shortfall for November and October, the first month of fiscal 1994, totaled $83.8 billion, up from $81.5 billion a year earlier. And chances are the red ink will continue to accumulate more rapidly than a year earlier because the government is resuming its savings and loan cleanup program after a stall of more than year and a half.

FBI agent suspended for TV comments James Fox, the FBI veteran who heads the bureau's New York office, was suspended by Director Louis Freeh for commenting about the World Trade Center bombing in a television interview while the trial is going on, the bureau said Tuesday. "Director Freeh made the decision to place Assistant Director Fox on administrative leave with pay until his retirement in January," FBI spokesman John Collingwood said. "He did so after carefully reviewing inappropriate public comments Fox made about pending prosecution," he said. Democrat news services Tuo of the Finders' cult members were arrested in Tallahassee in 1987, but chiid-abuse charges were dismissed. Now, someone says it was a CIA coverup.

By Jan Pudlow and Gregory Spears DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITERS When first heard from, the Finders were a mysterious cult loosely accused of everything from devil worship to selling children into slavery. But after police agencies in three jurisdictions finished sifting through the evidence in February 1987, the two male members of the Finders arrested in Tallahassee's Myers Park in the company of six disheveled children were freed from jail. Case dismissed. The child-abuse charges didn't stick. Get ready for Finders II: The CIA Conspiracy.

Nearly seven years after the first media firestorm, another improbable accusation has been leveled against the communal group now numbering about two dozen members that makes its home in a brick duplex in Washington. Those 1987 child-abuse charges lodged against the two men weren't dismissed for a lack of evidence, goes the latest refrain from a conspiracy buff. It was a coverup. According to Skip Clements, a 42-year-old private citizen from Stuart who said he has researched the Finders for more than a year, U.S. Customs Service investigators in Washington were called off the investigation at the behest of the CIA.

"The investigation was impeded," Clements claimed. "A senior official at Customs said it (the Finders) was a CIA operation." A CIA spokesman labeled the charge preposterous. "This story is a non-story," said agency spokesman Dave Christian on Tuesday. "I think of it as a nothing-burger. No links.

No ties." Tallahassee woman says charges are baseless One of the former Finders, Paula Arico, lives in Tallahassee with her two children who were the focus of a child-abuse investigation. The media had displayed her children's faces nationwide, along with the story that the Finders were a satanic cult and maybe were part of a child-pornography ring. When told of a Justice Department investigation into a CIA link, Arico said, "I think it's totally ridiculous. If there was a CIA link, it's not anything that anybody knows about If anybody was a CIA link, they fooled us. "We were just a bunch of semi-naive Utopians trying to better our selves and our children's Arico said.

But Clements' accusations which he has shared with members of the media, police and politicians have turned the heads of at least two members of Congress, whose staffers freely confess they haven't got a clue as to whether the charges are true. "It might be right, it might be wrong," said Curt Hollmann, a legislative assistant to Rep. Tom Lewis, R-North Palm Beach. "That doesn't make the greatest story, but that's the way it is now." Lewis wants Clements' accusa tion investigated, Hollmann said, Under mounting pressure to find out the truth, the Justice Depart ment is conducting an investigation to find out if the Finders were a CIA front, according to published re ports. Justice Department spokesman Carl Stern didn't return phone calls for this story.

But Clements said he's been interviewed by an FBI agent and has shared with him documents that he says were sent to him anonymously after he began asking questions about an unrelated sex-abuse case involving students at a Stuart elementary school. One 1987 document Clements provided to the Democrat says that the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department refused to allow a Customs Service agent to review White House wants fewer road signs on information highway Hunt Now a sergeant with the Tallahassee police, he arrested two cult followers in 1987 at Myers Park. evidence seized with a search warrant at a Finders address. According to the report signed by Customs Special Agent Ramon J. Martinez, a confidential, unnamed informant within the D.C.

police de partment told him "the investigation into the FINDERS has become an internal CIA matter. No further information will be available. No fur ther action will be taken." The Customs Service had no comment on Martinez's report. But CIA spokesman Christian said it's most likely the result of a misunderstanding by a Washington police detective. The detective learned, Christian said, that a member of the Finders was employed as a part-time ac countant at a computer-training school called Future Enterprises Inc Some CIA employees received com puter training at the company, Christian said.

Somehow, the investigating de tective came to the incorrect conclu sion that the computer company was a CIA front owned by the Finders, Christian said. Joseph Marinich, executive vice president of Future Enterprises, said Tuesday: "We have no connection never had any connection with the CIA other than someone coming for a class." When a reporter visited the com pany's offices in a downtown Wash ington office building, he saw sever al classrooms equipped with personal computers, printers and overhead projectors. Marinich said students learn how to use common programs for personal computers. TPD officer still hoping for answers FBI agents have also interviewed Tallahassee Police Department Sgt. Scott Hunt, Hunt said this week.

Hunt was the department spokes man who told reporters the Finders were a satanic cult suspected of sexual child abuse. Hunt said he based his allegations which made front-page national news on information given to him by Washington police. One minute, the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington was assisting in the child abuse investigation, Hunt said. The next minute, Hunt said, he was mysteriously frozen out by Washington police. "I have never witnessed a situation in which one law-enforcement agency has cut the legs out from another," Hunt said in a recent interview.

"I can only speculate. But it is my belief that someone above the D.C. police shut down the investigation." Hunt said he and retiring Chief Mel Tucker have been invited by U.S. Rep. Charlie Rose, and Lewis, to testify in Washington.

No dates for hearings have yet been set What shut down the original investigation was the lack of a factual basis to the allegations, according to a Washington Post ombudsman who wrote a column highly critical of his newspaper's handling of the original Finders story. "The story started coming apart; Satan simply wasn't cooperating. He disappeared in a puff of smoke, replaced by a psychiatrist who could find no evidence of child abuse," Joseph Laitin, the Post ombudsman, wrote in a February 1987 column. "When the satanic dust settled, all the Florida police had on the two men they'd arrested were six children who appeared to be unkempt hungry and bug-bitten, a condition the Tallahassee gendarmes had apparently never before encountered," Laitin wrote. "They were shocked beyond belief, and thus began the 1987 Salem witch hunt, aided and abetted by newspapers and TV." Heavy rain slowed the morning commute in parts of the Northeast.

At least three traffic deaths were blamed on the snow. A small plane crashed in poor weather and one person was reported killed. Twenty inches of snow fell atop eastern Tennessee's Mount Le-Conte, highest peak in the Smoky Mountains, the National Park Service said. U.S. 441 through the Smokies between Gatlinburg, and Cherokee, N.C., was closed during the morning.

Up to 16 inches of snow fell in the mountains of western North Carolina, closing schools, contributing to hundreds of traffic accidents and knocking out power to thousands of customers. Hundreds were stranded for TELECOMMUNICATIONS Vice President Gore outlines the from manufacturing, long distance and information services because they were monopolies. But communications opportunities are changing with cable-TV companies planning to offer local phone service, phone companies' development of video services and wireless voice and data transmitting devices coming on the market. Congress is working on legislation that would achieve the White House's basic goals. John Dingell, and Jack Brooks, D-Texas, are sponsoring legislation that would phase out limits on the activities of the Bell operating companies.

Rep. Edward Markey, and Rep. Jack Fields, R-Texas, sponsor a bill to repeal the restrictions that prevent telephone companies from offering cable TV service in their phone service areas. fi i lit It ill nil -at itit iiln -m uirni hours during the night as Interstate 40 in western North Carolina was blocked by jackknifed tractor-trailer rigs and other wrecks. 1-26 also was blocked for a time.

John and Hazizah Muth of Honolulu were among the travelers snowbound along 1-40. They spent the night at Glenwood Baptist Church in Old Fort, one of five shelters opened in McDowell County. More than 200 people used the shelters. Snow also fell at higher elevations in the Northeast, with more than 10 inches possible in the Green Mountains of Vermont, the National Weather Service said. Rain fell elsewhere in the Northeast, slowing morning commuters.

SCOTT APPLEWHITEThe Associated Press administration's policy Tuesday. Lobbying interests outside Congress were generally supportive of Gore's remarks and the legislation before Congress. "There are some things in the Dingell and Brooks bill we think need fixing," said Tom Norris, vice president of government affairs. He said, for example, the measure allows the Bell companies into long distance service before adequate competition is created in the local exchange. "We're glad the administration says it is committed to an affordable and open information highway," said Jeffrey Chester, of the Center for Media Education, a public interest group that lobbies telecommunications issues.

"We are worried the administration has not provided any specifics. When they say they want to be flexible it may be a giant loophole." Vice President Al Gore calls for relaxing restrictions on telecommunication firms to assure public access. By Diane Duston THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON Government restrictions should be eased on telecommunications firms to allow more competition and greater public access to information and technology, Vice President Al Gore said Tuesday. Industry is moving quickly to market new technology such as interactive television, telephones with pictures and home-computer access to huge databases. "We want to manage that transition," Gore told the National Press Club.

Gore said the White House wants to encourage private investment, promote and protect competition, ensure everyone access to the network, avoid a society of information "haves" and "have nots," and create flexibility. Gore said the White House would send a legislative package to Congress soon. He will give details Jan. 11 in a Los Angeles speech to the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He said the White House supports removal of judicial and legislative restrictions on all types of telecommunications companies, including cable, telephone, utilities, television and satellite.

Among such restrictions is the court agreement that broke up American Telephone and Telegraph. It created a separate long-distance company that competes with other companies and seven regional phone companies for local phone service. Originally, the regional companies were prohibited.