The Tampa Times from Tampa, Florida • 10

Nick Thimmesch EDITORIALS THE TAMPA TIMES, THURSDAY, JUNE 27, 1974, PAGE 10A Colson's 'truth' can damage White House Spinnaker Cove plan questionable not demonstrated the need for 1 WASHINGTON Charles W. Colson prepares for prison, but he's going to be a hot figure in this town because he's vowed to tell the truth. And the truth will touch President Nixon, Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and some others. Many cynics are stupid not to realize that Colson is for real.

He got the stiffest sentence of anyone as yet convicted on Watergate, pleading guilty to "corruptly endeavor" to obstruct justice by defaming Daniel Ells-berg. Colson's purpose in pleading guilty to this charge is ironical because he insists that his own public image and credibility were severely damaged by newspaper and broadcast reports based on leaked and unsubstantiated information. David Shapiro, Colson's attorney, charged the Senate Watergate committee, the Central Intelligence Agency and other public officials with defaming Colson. It is a crime for a public official' to defame a person under indictment, and Colson admits he tried to do that to Ellsberg. In one instance, he gave information about Leonard Boudin, Ellsberg's lawyer, to Jerry Ter Horst, Washington bureau chief for the Detroit News, indicating that Boudin was a leftist with a history of defending subversives and Communists.

But Colson's information never got into the Detroit News. Indeed, the Copley Press News Service had already printed a "similar story based on leaks from the FBI. Colson also'admits that he tried to use his White House position to COUNTY COMMISSIONER Betty Castor has wisely recommended that public hearing be held before the proposed high-density Spinnaker Cove development construction begins. There 'is some indication that current plans do not conform to a photograph of a scale model of the project submitted earlier. Commissioner Castor contends that the entire character of the project has been changed.

Developers intend to construct townhouses and cluster homes totalling 524 units. In addition, they envision two high rise condominiums with a total of 420 units. This represents 10.2 units per acre and 'nearly 1,900 parking spaces, Commissioner Castor noted with the additional observation that never before has a project of such magnitude been permitted. The County Commission yesterday agreed to review its legal position in this matter. But, on its face, Spinnaker Cove is the type housing project we must avoid.

IT WOULD be located on extremely low land, flooded by yesterday's rains. A major hurricane would prove even more threatening. Better controls are needed to prevent projects such as this from reaching the construction stage without adeqUate review. Commissioner Castor said that the developers wanted site plans approved in 1966 to remain in effect although they had been changed because they feared the consequences of public hearings. Construction activity came to the attention of the commissioner when nearby Bay Crest residents noted filling activity which may be illegal and inquired about it.

If this week's heavy rains have- more careful management of waterfront development, then we will be laying the groundwork for disaster. Our existing drainage systems are incapable of keeping streets open. Too many years of drought have erased lessons learned from past experience. Yesterday, police reported numerous major arterial routes closed by flooding. In St.

Petersburg, nearly three-quarters of that city's streets were under water. Water came into some houses in the Shore Acres section. YET THE lure of being close to the water is very strong and developers are capitalizing on it. The very location of the Spinnaker Cove project should have sent red lights flashing initially. Putting thai many people into that limited amount of space raises serious questions regarding water and sewer facilities.

It also suggests that an already difficult traffic situation would be. further complicated. But most frightening is the amount of housing constructed in low coastal areas on flood plains which are extremely vulnerable to water damage. The fact that we have not experienced a major storm since 1960 doesn't mean we are completely immune from hurricanes. And when one does arrive the damage will challenge the imagination.

Unless high rise structures are erected on pilings, their foundations could be undermined by storm tides and the buildings collapsed. It might be helpful for planners and public officials to look at pictures of previous hurricane damage to Waterfront structures. Careless handling of construction applications could cost many lives. persuade Reps. F.

Edward Hebert (D-La.) and Richard H. Ichord chairman of the House Armed Services and Internal Security Committees respectively, to conduct an investigation of Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. It must be pointed out that President Nixon, Kissinger, Gen. Alexander Haig and John Ehrlich-man-were hardly fans of Ellsberg during the difficult weeks of the Pentagon Papers' release. Poisoning the reputations of people under indictment or suspicion is old stuff in Washington.

It predates the Joe McCarthy era and lives with us daily in the leaks from congressional committees on President Nixon, Kissinger and others involved in the Watergate to work to stop this practice of even by pleading guilty to it himself. In his statement to the court last week, Colson said he "pled to this charge because I believe that anyone who attempts to interfere with an individual's right to a fair trial must accept the consequences Try as I have, I cannot fully explain to myself how I could have strayed as I did from what I knew to be right." If Colson is going to lay it out that way, President Nixon, Kissinger, Haig and others have good reason to be fearful, because Colson knows all about "plumbers" end other White House activities. The FBI, under J. Edgar Hoover, was a wellspring of such poison, as every good civil libertarian knows. The Justice Department of Robert F.

Kennedy wasn't saintly on this score, either, particularly when it came to Jimmy Hoffa and the' International Brotherhood of Teamsters. But those were pre-Watergate days, and after Kennedy angrily' protested any implication he had done wrong the matter died. Thus government officials, because of the enormous information at their disposal, really know how to hurt a man, or woman, and have done so in the past. Now that Colson has come to Christ, he says he is determined Vic Gold John Foster Dulles finally gets the last laugh Sudan act cowardly WASHINGTON Somewhere beyond the Great Brink, John Foster Dulles must be enjoying a last laugh at his detractors. "I had that Middle East situation pegged right all along," he's telling Metternich, Talleyrand, anyone who'll listen.

"Now, if that damn fool Kissinger doesn't move in with those nuclear reactor giveaways and ruin everything The result of Dulles's "simplistic" cold war approach to diplomacy would be that the Russians, rather than the United States, would be. given the magnificent opportunity of investing treasure and technical expertise to develop lip their bags and shipping out, to toe replaced by Russian experts? To be sure, Fve operated ail 1 these years under the illusion that the communists were shrewder bargainers than we've been in such matters. But now even they've absorbed a painful, expensive lesson about the efficacy of a foreign policy based on buying friends around the world. Oh, they can be bought, of course. We can buy them, and the Russians can.

But the problem is whether the purchase price is a nuclear reactor, a multi-million-dollar presidential helicopter, or a dam that they won't stay bought. Two decades of financial and-technical investment poured into the sand! Not to mention all that military equipment supplied back in the not-too-distant days when those same Cairo mobs, now cheering Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger were screaming imprecations at the American imperialists. Well, now, let's just ask ourselves, considering the inverse geo-political logic that seems to apply to that part of the world: Could it be that if John Foster Dulles had indeed committed the U.S. to financing the Aswan Dam the scene now might feature Brezhnev and Sadat drinking toasts? With our American technicians, ho longer needed, packing the Aswan. And America, they said, would be left out in the cold.

But here it is, June 1974, and who do you suppose is receiving that thundering ovation motorcad-ing down the main boulevards of Cairo? Leonid Brezhnev and the Soviet Foreign Minister? No, it's the President of the United States and his secretary of state. And the Russians? After twenty, years of diplomatic, economic and military investment, they've had to pick up their expertise and go home. But that dam they built on the Aswan, it stays. Consider, if 'you will, what the conversations must be -like these days when the commissars take up the subject of Middle East policy in the Soviet foreign office. In justifying its action, Sudan cited Israeli raids on refugee camps in Lebanon and an Israeli raid into Beirut where three Palestinian leaders were killed.

Obviously, the United States does not control Israeli policy and what Israel does cannot justify attacks on U.S. officials in states such as Sudan. Perhaps Sudanese President Jaffar el-Nimeri found it politically expedient" to commute the sentences of the convicted killers and release them to the Palestinian Liberation Organization. It is even possible that some of the more militant Arab states brought pressure upon him to do so. Still, his action cannot be condoned by the United States.

Nor can we continue normal relations with a country in which our representatives are open targets for IT. WAS imperative, that the United States express its indignation over Sudan's release of eight Palestinian guerrillas convicted of murdering three Western diplomats a year ago. This was done through the recall of the U.S. ambassador to Sudan which was announced Tuesday. The terrorists murdered U.S.

Ambassador Cleo A. Noel and his. deputy, G. Curtis Moore. They also killed Belgium charge d'affairs Guy Eid.

The United States has administered a small aid program in Sudan, including $11 million in loans for agricultural development and a $2.5 million loan for the purchase of wheat. The manner in which the terrorists were tried, convicted and then released should provide cause for the State Department to review its economic commitment to Sudan. the small society by Brickman Art Buchwaid HMA- 1 Dinner in Paris MW eW? 27 Co a strike threat WNMnfUA t(r Syndicate, tot. Voice of the People Debt is destroying us THERE WAS ominous news from Tampa Electric Co. yesterday.

The public utility company is stockpiling coal in anticipation of a coal mine strike that is "almost a certain possibility" this fall. Many of us in the Tampa area had been rather smug about TECO's heavy orientation toward coal as the source of our electricity. Granted, there is a problem with air pollution from the coal-fired generating plants but it seemed almost a minor problem when compared with the difficulties confronting neighboring public utility "companies that depend almost exclusively on oil-fired plants During the petroleum embargo resulting from the Middle Eastern war other electric companies were scrambling frantically for supplies to keep in operation. Although Tampa Electric was not totally exempt from the oil shortage problems, the company's heavy dependence on coal permitted customers in the Tampa area to feel rather secure. Also, the TECO service area has largely escaped the almost unbelievable increase in electric rates that has hit the customers of neighboring utility companies.

However, with the impending coal strike, we must hope TECO is able to stockpile sufficient fuel to get through until the flow of coal can be resumed. Tampa will have a big stake in the coal field labor negotiations. TAMPA I hold no brief for King Richard the Crafty nor for Baron Von Kissinger, yet I feel that Corn Pone Sam's clowns and Saint Peter's sanctimonious buffoons have done incalculable harm to America by their antics, and have Congress, if truly dedicated to the welfare of our country, would drastically reduce federal spending, stop all foreign aid, and bring home our overseas military forces. This would largely check inflation, help reduce our dangerous national debt which is well on the way to destroying us. CARTER WELDEN CLARKE "No, monsieur, that is the carte pour dinner." My wife, who always gets nervous when she sees melon selling for over 15 dollars a portion, whispered to me, "Let's get out of here.

"Don't be silly. We don't get to Paris very often. Let's enjoy.it. I studied the menu carefully. "Now we have our We can have, the white asparagus or send Joel to college in the fall." The waiter handed me the wine card.

"There's a very nice Ppuilly. Fuisse," I said. "Can we afford my wife asked. "We can if we sell the car when we get back home." "I need a car," she protested. "All right," I said.

"We'll order an inexpensive Sancerre, and can-eel the orthodondist's work on Connie's teeth." My wife was becoming agitated. "If it's costing this much for dinner, how are we going to pay our hotel bill?" "Will you stop worrying? What do yfiu think the World Bank is for?" PARIS The, last time I was in Paris, six years ago, I wrote a column title "Paris on $500 a The thrust of the piece was that it was still possible to get by in the French capital on $500 if you passed up lunch. My French friends, as well as Americans living in France, thought the article was very funny. But they aren't laughing any more. When it comes to inflation, the United States is "Mary Poppins" and France is "J)eep But, if you don't worry about prices, you can still have a marvelous time in Paris.

What you have to do is forget everything and just decide to live for the moment. I did this the first night I arrived in town. My wife and I went to a small bistro that boasted two stars in the Guide Michelin. When the waiter gave us the menu, I thought he made a mistake. "I beg your pardan, monsieur," I said.

"But I believe you have made an error. You gave me the Bank of France's financial report for the month of May." Tke Timet weleemes vlws frtm lis Mitt. Letters sktsld be kept as sksrt Hsslhle til slgsed l(k' kttk Ike writer's mime aad address. Names win ke withheld rtitst. Address all letters Vtlee si Ike Peepte.

Tkc Tampa Times, Tampa. Fltrlda. ht tmpit tines Thanks for Jan TAMPA How refreshing to read your article on Girl Scouts. I pray for more Mary Poppins like' Jan Piatt helping young people towards more happiness and health. Thank you, Jan-Piatt, and thank you, Sam' Stickney.

Let's elect her to Tampa City Council. Robert L. Hudson. Executive Editor J. Stewart Bryan, Executive Vice President hastened the day when we will have our Napoleon or Trotsky.

When you watch these self seeking, bumbling, unstatesmanlike kooks you can appreciate why the Congress is held in such utter Sam Stickney Editorial Page Editor 77. Doyle Uarvill, Managing Editor Richard F. Pittman, General Manager.