The Pensacola News from Pensacola, Florida • 6

GTfiecPeiisacola News Clifford W. Barnhart, Pul.liht J. Earle Bowden, Eiliior Paul Jasper, Editorial Pap- Kdimr 6A Thursday, January 17, 1980 An Ounce of Prevention' Genghis Khan II the power to compel school systems to comply with fire regulations, and that office is rather far removed from the local level. It does little good for school officials to find potential fire hazards if there is no realistic way of seeing to it that school officials correct them. Thus the concept of legislation proposed by State Sen.

Tom Tobiassen to make the State Fire Marshal or local certified fire officials responsible for inspection of public schools is a sound one. Most importantly, it would give the State Fire Marshal the power to order corrective action or closing of a school if deficiencies are not corrected within a reasonable amount of time. The final draft of the legislation has not been completed, but Tobiassen is correct in asserting there must be some way of ensuring that violations are corrected in a reasonable period. The old adage, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" applies not only in medicine but in fire safety as well. LEGISLATION to keep fire safety matters in the public schools of Florida from being neglected should be adopted in the April session of the Legislature.

As it now stands, school system employees have the authority to inspect public-schools for fire hazards, but school officials have almost complete discretion in deciding which fire hazards they will correct. In an investigation launched by The Pensacola News last fall, fire officials unearthed scores of fire safety violations in six randomly-selected public schools in Escambia County. Those findings were subsequently bolstered when an inspector with the state fire marshal's office found 221 violations in the 24 county schools located inside Pensacola's city limits. Most of those violations, according to Inspector Dewey Yates, had been found by school personnel, but the deficiencies were never corrected. Therein lies the problem.

Only the state Commissioner of Education has Mugging a Personal Crime Shah Still Rules Empire panion had said not one word. The two of them ran off, loping more than running, across a playground and up an embankment. I ran back to the Star, crying "Police!" at the top of my lungs. Funny thing. I was able to call my secretary and to tell her calmly to get at the business of reporting the stolen credit cards and driver's license.

Then shock set in. Shock, humiliation, shame, rage, tears, aching legs, tightness in the chest, slurred speech. I could not get my breath. It is an awful thing, a terrifying thing, to be dominated, to be helpless, to know stark, sobbing fear. A police officer tried to reassure me.

I had done exactly the right thing, he said, in not He wished all robbery victims showed the same good sense. I am 59 years I am in my 40th year as a newspaperman. We newsmen are supposed to have exceptional powers of observation. I could not tell the police whether the two men had mustaches; I could not describe the pants they were wearing. I never saw their faces clearly.

I am a fair judge of time. My guess is that the incident didn't consume 30 seconds. Twenty-four hours later, as I write, I am still shaky. I fantasize: I had hidden a pistol on the floor of the car, and instead of supinely handing over my billfold I had made a lightning grab for my gun, shot the two punks in their bellies, and laughed as they fell to the pavement. And so on.

The Truth is, I was scared out of my wits. I see by the FBI Crime Reports that in 1978, a robbery occurred every 76 seconds 417,000 such crimes in all. I was lucky. The off-duty police officer, mugged earlier that day, was killed. WASHINGTON There were two of them.

They were both black, and they were both about 18 or 19. One of them was wearing a loose shirt or jacket with large gray and white checks. Subject One was a little shorter and heftier, I think, than Subject Two. And that is all on earth I could tell the police about being mugged and robbed. I am minded to write about the experience, mainly to write it out of my system but also to pass along some advice from the cops and the record, for whatever it may be worth, what it feels like to be the victim of a crime against the person.

As muggings go, my little mugging was not much. Unlike a dear friend in Richmond, who two years ago was beaten to a bloody pulp, I was not hurt. Unlike an off-duty police officer in Washington that same day, I was not shot at. In terms of stolen property the loss was trivial. Mine was a routine instance of what the police call "Robbery, fear." But it was not routine to me.

On this particular Friday morning, I parked my car on Virginia Avenue a block away from the Washington Star. The street runs under an elevated freeway at this point. It is always shadowy there. The sun never penetrates. I finished my work at the Star and exactly at noon I left the building and walked through a fine drizzle toward my car.

The street was empty. I unlocked the door on the driver's side, tossed a briefcase onto the passenger seat, got behind the wheel, and started to close the door. There was a large body blocking it in an open position. This was Subject one. "The money," he said.

It was as if WASHINGTON The deposed shah of Iran still rules a far-flung, multibillion-dollar financial empire from his exile on Contadora island off the coast of Panama. He is in constant communication with his trusted minions around the world, who still address him slavishly by his imperial honorifics. The Panamanian authorities have upgraded the island's telephone system to accommodate him. The prime minister of his shadowy empire is Ardeshir Zahedi, who used to be the shah's swinging ambassador in Washington. His written reports to the shah, as always, begin with the salutation: "I kiss your feet thousands and thousands of times and beg you to allow me to report to His Imperial Majesty the following." Zahedi is now as secretive and elusive as he used to be ostentatious.

He lives near the shah's secret bank ac-. counts in Switzerland, slips frequently into the United States and pays court to the shah at his hideaway. It has been little more than a year since Zahedi was the darling of the society writers who chronicle the pouts, whims and bons mots of the social moths fluttering around the flame of power in Washington. He was always dapper, always charming, always able to put together the tame puns and bland epigrams that pass as wit at Washington parties. But behind the tinkling glasses, sparkling wines and sophisticated chatter, he led a secret, more sordid life.

He cleaned out his files before he photograph, taken in his bachelor quarters, of a strikingly beautiful, raven-haired woman lounging on rugs and pillows. She is dressed in red pants, red scarf and a white blouse open down to there. If the names should ever be revealed of the men who have been entertained by Zahedi's call girls, sources say, it would be a major Washington sex scandal. My staff located some of the women hired by Zahedi, but they refused to identify their playmates. Apparently, Zahedi also passed out greenbacks as if they were calling cards.

Embassy records show that he drew huge sums in cash. The largest single check made out to cash was for a staggering $500,000. He lavished money on luxuries. He paid $456,000, for example, for two custom-built Mercedes Benz automobiles, both armored and equipped with James Bond-type protective devices. He also used cash, according to witnesses, to pay off pro-shah demonstrators.

Embassy attaches carried the money in briefcases and handed it out to Iranian nationals. The witnesses also report that Zahedi would write out large checks for cash before receiving visits from certain U.S. officials and members of Congress. The cash presumably was delivered to the visitors, but there were never any witnesses to the actual transactions. Both witnesses and records attest, however, that he distributed expensive gifts to thousands of prominent Americans.

The gifts ranged from $700 tins of Iran's finest caviar to dazzling jewelry and Persian rugs worth up to $20,000. There were 4,000 names on his gift list. But this will be the subject of another column. PRESIDENT Carter is politically vulnerable in the West, and Sen. Ted Kennedy must change his image as an anti-growth conservationlist if he is to make any gains on Carter in the Rocky Mountain and sagebrush territories.

That's the advice political advisers close to western states' governors have given Kennedy. Even Carter's recent upsurge in the polls has still left most western political kingmakers unenthusiastic about his re-election. Angry farmers and developers haven't forgotten Carter's infamous "hit list" of water projects to be eliminated by Congress, despite Interior retary Cecil Andrus' partially successful efforts to soothe ruffled feathers. Smith Column Censored i i he were answering a question. "Your money, man." His right hand in his pocket, holding a short, solid object.

It may have ben a pistol. I thought it was a pistol, which is what he meant me to think. He jabbed me on the arm. He might have been talking to an exceptionally stupid child. Separating each word with rising urgency: "Give me the money! Give me the money." "Take it easy," I mumbled.

I reached into my breast pocket, took out my billfold, and pulled out three or four $10 bills. He snatched them from my hand. The whole thing," he said. Now he was speaking faster. "Gimmee the thing." He grabbed the billfold.

He noticed a watch on my left wrist. "The watch! Take it off!" He jabbed again with his concealed right hand. I remember pleading with him. "It's a cheap watch," I said. "Wait a minute." He was shouting at me now, the tension climbing in his voice.

I have limited use of my right hand; a chronic dermatitis causes my finger tips to split open, and I often have to wear a cotton glove. Clumsily, I tried to unfasten the strap on the watch. It wouldn't give. "My God," I thought to myself, "he's going to kill me for a $20 Timex watch." At last the strap came free. He seized the watch and spun around.

So far as I can recall, his com fcfU Mary a i McGrory cance of everything. I would not presume to speak for Red Smith, but I think there's a fair chance he thinks the Ivory Tower chaps are name-dropping, tea-drinking, tennis-playing dilettantes who rarely come in contact with the real world and wouldn't know news if they fell over it. And since when has agreement with the editorial policies of a newspaper been the standard for being printed? It is not so on The Washington Star, I am happy to say. If it were, some of us would be looking for work. The Times' own most recent editorial utterance suggested U.S.

participation on condition of a pledge for "reform" of the games. What is envisaged by the boycott is something more ambitious the reform of Soviet manners, a sharp blow on the side of Ivan's thick head to convey to him that a tank is not a calling card. I happen to agree wholly with Red Smith that the United States should take the lead in saying we won't play. I didn't need Afghanistan. I was saying that we ought to tell them to go ahead without us when Shcharansky and Glnzberg were sentenced.

I haven't begun to get over what they did to Hungary and Czechoslovakia. A Russian dissident, Edward Kuznetsov, told me he wanted the games in Moscow in the hope that some athletes might claim their medals in the names of dissidents. But after hearing the pompous statements the small society LSI Jack Anderson surrendered the Iranian embassy to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's loyalists. But in his haste, Zahedi left behind clues to the double life he had led. This cryptic note, for example, was found among his abandoned belongings: "4 girls wk.

$1500." Witnesses explain that Zahedi did a big business with some of Washington's classiest prostitutes. He held orgies in the embassy's Persian Room an intimate but lavish room, with a high octagonal dome of mosaic mirrors, a fresco of lovers set among tiles and silk Persian rugs assessed at about $50,000 apiece. He invited prominent guests into this richly draped and cushioned love nest to watch belly dancers, smoke opium and sample the favors of his high-priced call girls. Zahedi assigned two men to procure the women who were offered to guests he wanted to influence, sources say. For Washington muckamucks who preferred out-of-town philandering, he reserved a suite at New York City's fashionable Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, the sources claim.

Among his personal effects was a Art Buchwald No matter what you think of him personally, I believe it's unfair to make Fidel Castro run against John Paul II in the best-dressed statesman category. There may be a few South American generals in full uniform who could make it a constest Ferdinand Marcos is no slouch when it comes to dressing up for formal occasions, and the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia can get it all together when they have to. But except for Queen Elizabeth II, when she's opening Parliament, John Paul is in a elass by himself. The foundation tried to get off the hook when it announced the Pope as winner by saying it took "special note of the fact that the Pope added a light touch of fashion when he donned a sWa JL AJ of the Olympic bureaucracy about the threatened boycott, I cannot share his fantasies. People who fatuously insist that "sports is above politics" would surely warn their athletes against any kind of protest.

Offhand, I cant think of anyone who is better qualified to say what I think he said than Red Smith. Who loves sports more? Or people? He knows all about young athletes who, fired by dreams of glory, have trained for four years. He knows about coaches who make champions out of farm boys. He would take those things into account. But he may have noticed that farmers, who also put in long hours, are being asked to give up something in order to make an important point.

Let us put aside the merits. Let us pass over the freedom of the press and First Amendment considerations. Let us even turn away from the sad spectacle of editors who were willing to face jail to bring their readers the Pentagon Papers suddenly choking over a legitimate expression of opinion by their best writer. What it comes down to is that The New York Times has no right to deprive its readers of anything Red Smith has to say. Here is how his column in last day's Times began: "Eddie Gottlieb was a wonderful little guy about the size and shape of a half-keg of beer." Who was Eddie Gottlieb? I have no idea.

But if Red Smith sees fit to write about him, I want to read about him. You don't have to like sports to like Red Smith. You only have to like the English language. I know the Times is a stickler for usage. But maybe just this one time, they might loosen up.

How about printing a headline like "We Wuz Wrong" over the Red Smith column they shouldn't have killed. vm.z& WHAT COST Pope Heads Fashion List WASHINGTON Of course, I have no idea and neither do you what New York Times sports colum- nist Red Smith wrote in favor of an Olympics boycott. The New York Times killed the column. None of us knows why, either. Smith, who in 35 years never had it happen to him before, said, "It's a little difficult to figure out." As usual, he is right.

Statements from Times editors compound the mystery. Sports Editor Le Anne Schreiber apparently thought that Smith had gone too far when he said that "sentiment would grow" for a boycott as the Soviets continued their "bloody work" in Afghanistan. Is Schreiber against the spread of such sentiment, or did she find Smith's description of the invasion excessive? In the slain column, Smith made reference to the grisly preparations the Soviet hosts were making against the world's arrival. This information was gleaned from The Washington Post. The mighty New York Times, which does not like to take anyone else's word for anything, attempted to verify the sweeps of "undesirables," through its own correspondent, who averred that they were only "rumors." Arthur Gelb, a deputy managing editor, lamely tried to justify the censorship on the grounds that the column, being the second on the subject by Red Smith, "sounded like a crusade." Oh, come on.

Isn't that what columnists are for? Columnists, or so everyone but the Times hierarchy thinks, are supposed to burn, nag and rage. Wasn't H.L Mencken, another Olympic class newspaper writer, known as the "Disturber of the Peace?" And if crusading is a no-no, how come the Times prints William Safire, who writes many columns designed to redeem the name of his onetime employer, a man by the name of Richard M. Nixon? Smith, we hear, took a swipe at editorial writers of his lofty paper. He noted that they probably weren't around when the free world went to the Olympics in 1936 and gave Hitler a chance to flaunt his loathsome "master race" theories. In many newspaper offices, editorial writers are considered fair game.

A natural, wholesome hostility exists. Editorial writers think that the likes of Red Smith, who does his own reporting, are shallow, sweaty fellows who race around missing the signifl- Mexican hat during his trip to Mexico last year." With all due respect to the Pontiff, even Henry Kissinger looks good when he's wearing a Mexican hat. The judges also said that John Paul II wears his robes far better than most recent Pontiffs have. I don't believe this. Every Pope I've known looked great when he put on his vestments, because when it comes to papal attire, clothes make the man man doesn't make the clothes.

Why am I getting so excited over this? The reason is quite simple. I've always dreamed of making the best-dressed list of statesmen, ever since I bought my first J.C. Penney's polyester suit. This year I thought I'd be up against Giscard d'Estaing, Helmut Schmidt, Kurt Waldheim, Andrei Gromyko, Anwar Sadat and Zbigniew Brzezinskl. I was sure I was a contender.

If I had known that Pope John Paul II was in the race, I would most cer- tainly have asked the foundation to take my name off the ballot. It's like asking Princess Margaret to compete against Cher. WASHINGTON My gripe today is with the Fashion Foundation of America, which has just voted Pope John Paul II the "Best Dressed Statesman of 1979." I want to make it perfectly clear that I am a big admirer of Pope John Paul II and believe he should receive any honor bestowed on him. But when it comes to clothes, I don't think he should be allowed to com- pete with people like President Tito, Jimmy Carter, Deng Xiaoping, Marga- ret Thatcher or the Ayatollah Kho- meini. It just isn't fair to the other states-.

men of the world to go up against His Holiness when it comes to clothing. All John Paul's raiments are made by hand. I have it on the highest au- thority that be spends more money on one cape than Menachem Begin spends on his entire wardrobe. The cost of the Pope's slippers could shoe Madame Gandhi for the rest of her life. When It comes to headgear, there "tent a statesman in the world who can hold a candle to one of the Pope's skullcaps..