The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 13

The Boston Globe Monday, November 19, 1979 13 POLITICAL CIRCUIT By DAVID FARRELL On saving hostages and saving face Former judge By MARY McGRORY WASHINGTON In the deadlock, both prin makes a pi ea cipals, Jimmy Carter and the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, have the backing of their own people. The Ayatollah regularly turns out a mob of 100,000 into the street facing the US embassy to scream "Death to The armed services show up in force, demonstrating that, however differently Iranians may feel about the Ayatollah, they are united in their loathing of the shah. Jimmy Carter, according to an ABC poll, has the approval of 64 percent of his fellow citizens. that Carter cannot meet his ultimate demand, the return of the Shah. Carter is talking about international civility, and dispatching a sick man to his homeland and the mercies of a mob would hardly become the leader of the western world.

Even those Americans who thought it was a poor idea to let him in do not want the shah sent back. The Ayatollah must also realize, in his less-frenzied moments, that he cannot harm the hostages without risking World War III. The militants who scream outside the embassy vow they will accept nothing less than the return of the shah and his wealth. But they are doing Khomeini's will. And he controls the armed forces which could, with the weapons we so lavishly supplied the shah, put down any resistance to a less drastic resolution if Khomeini would accept one.

One small ray of light is cracked at the beginning of the second week of the siege. Iran demanded, without mentioning extradition, a special session of the UN security council to air their rage. This initiative was thwarted by strenuous efforts on the part of Secretary of State Vance. But i at least it hinted that the Ayatollah, demented as he may be, retains some shred of concern for world opinion. It also suggests the possibility that the Iranians might settle for a symbolic trial of the shah at the UN rather than the real thing in Tehran.

A nation with Iran's oil supply can never expect to be made a total pariah, but perhaps in some corner of the Ayatollah's medieval mind lurks the hope-of convincing the world that the revolution he created has not collapsed in madness. He obviously wishes the entire planet to understand why he and his nation went berserk when the shah landed in New York. But somebody in what is barely a government is thinking about a way out. A subsequent announcement from the Ayatollah himself that women and black captives would be released was another small ray. Somebody realized that a wisp of humanity, at least for propaganda purposes, was required.

The most frightening and frustrating aspect is that no one knows the Ayatollah's terms. Carter's dilemma has been compared with President John F. Kennedy's during the Cuban missile crisis. But the cruel difference is that Carter has no one to bargain with. The few cool heads in the so-called government who would like to put an end to the affair do not dare raise their heads too far for fear of being charged with pro-Americanism.

It seems a time for third parties. When governments don't speak to each other, someone unofficial can.help. Khomeini has been careful to say, even in the midst oi his molten-lava eruptions about Carter, that his quarrel is with the US government, "not the nation." Anwar Sadat couldn't bring himself to tell Menachem Begin that he would go to Jerusalem without conditions. But he didn't mind telling Walter Cronkite. Maybe somewhere in Iran, there's an American journalist Khomeini doesn't hate.

The militants found more fuel for their rage in secret embassy documents which the State Department neither acknowledges nor disowns which show that, long before the shah became the "inevitable step" of his admission to the United States was being discussed at the highest levels. In one "secret-sensitive" cable, a State Department official wrote: "Nevertheless, the danger of hostages being taken in Iran will persist." Now it has happened, and nobody knows what to do. Maybe the shah, who has been hailed as a friend by five US presidents who overlooked the fact that he was a war criminal to his own become a friend in need. Maybe he will take off for Mexico, post-haste. The Ayatollah knows that Mexico never plotted his return to his throne.

He knows that we did. The shah's departure might convince him that we're not at it, again. But if Carter is playing his hand to the satis faction of the country, he has no cards. Force is no use. He has decided against using food as a weapon.

Freezing Iranians' assets, rounding up Iranian students, and cutting off our Iranian oil supply has lowered the temperature of Americans who are boiling over fresl humiliation at the hands of the small, intransigent coun try. But it doesn't free the hostages. All he can really do is pray. But if he is stymied, the Ayatollah, who has prophetically declared the onset of "a brief illness," is not in a much better position. In his vengeful heart, the Ayatollah knows Former Superior Court Judge Edward J.

DeSaulnier petition for reinstatement to the Massachusetts Bar will be a landmark case which may establish whether or not an ex-judge, who has been disbarred, must endure a longer waiting period than other ex-attorneys applying for readmission. DeSaulnier, who was stripped" of his judgeship and disbarred nearly eight years ago because of his improper conduct and association with a bail bondsman, goes public this morning with his petition for readmission to the bar. His application will be heard by a three-member panel of the Board of Bar Overseers, the watchdog agency created by the Mass. Supreme Judicial Court five years ago to police the law profession. Three distinguished lawyers John Brooks, former president of the Boston Bar; Stephen Rosenfeld, former chief of Atty.

Gen. Francis X. Bellotti's Government Bureau; and Julia Kaufman, chairman of former Gov. Michael S. Dukakis' Judicial Nominating Committee will hear the case of the 58-year-old jurist, who had a rash of personal problems in the last decade.

They will report to the full board which, in turn, will make its recommendations to a single justice of the Supreme Court. As in the landmark Hiss case decided in 1975, the justice probably will pass the appeal directly to the full bench for consideration. Also expected to pass judgment on DeSaulnier's petition that his readmission would not offend the public interest or detract from the integrity of the bar, is Atty. Robert J. DeGiacomo, counsel to the bar overseers.

It will be one of DeGiacomo's last official acts before he is sworn in as the new magistrate of the US District Court in Boston next month. Since his removal from the bench and bar, DeSaulnier has tumbled all the way down the stairs of life. It was the familiar chain of events which happen all too frequently to individuals carried away with power: excessive drinking, a broken marriage and finally total collapse as an alcoholic. Since bottoming out a few years ago, DeSauliner has had a remarkable turnabout, helping other alcoholics get back on track. He is now deputy director of the Broward (Fla.) County Commission on Alcoholism, Inc.

and is a graduate of Rutgers University School of Alcohol Studies. He lectures on the problem all over Florida. The high court's ultimate verdict will be watched closely by the legal profession because the justices are expected to tie up some of the loose ends left in two decisions on the famous Centracchio case. The court is expected to focus on how long a period it feels a former judge must wait before he may apply for reinstatement to the bar. Under present rules of the Supreme Court, a disbarred lawyer whether or not he happened to be a judge must wait a minimum of 5 years.

In the Centracchio proceedings, the SJC had disbarred Anthony A. Centracchio, a former special justice of the district court, in 1954 for fee splitting with doctors with whom he conspired in his private law practice involving motor vehicle accident litigation. Eight and a half years later the court rejected Centracchio's appeal Being meant to me that itiyilii SfttfW my By DAVID B. WILSON A costly cure for hospitals This department is in receipt of a communication from the White House press office arguing President Carter's position on hospital cost control, an issue presently before the Congress. It's hard to disagree with the President.

Hospital costs once again are rising faster than the general inflation rate. Something must be done about it. Otherwise, Americans will face even less endurable costs for the delivery of health services. The country has to confront the fact that there is an illimitable amount of discomfort in the world and, if relief is to be offered gratis to the discomforted, they are going to take advantage of the offer, no matter how math it costs the tax- family had given up, that I was not worth fighting for. Karen Walton Terror in children's mental ward The following is adapted from written tes for reinstatement on the grounds that "public confidence 1 in the courts would be lessened and general respect for membership in the bar lowered." timony submitted to the State Department of Public Health in connection with its hearing on establishment of a children's psychiatric "Such a decision would not be in the interest of the public welfare but would be a disservice to it.

The main tenance of the integrity of the courts and of the bar com pels one result, that the petition for readmission be denied," the court said. In 1976 the high court approved Centracchio's return to law practice and cleared up one fuzzy aspect of its previous decision on his case by ruling that disbarred judges could eventually be readmitted to practice. "In matter (Alger) Hiss," the SJC said, "the court rejected the view that in some cases a former attorney will never qualify for readmission because of the serious nature of the misconduct which led to his disbarment. The decision concerning readmission must be made on the facts of each case." "Reinstatement (of Centracchio) would no longer diminish public confidence in the courts or respect for the bar. The public interest in the integrity of the bar structive and leads only to increased rage and hopelessness.

The labelling that occurs as part of the "work-up" has a life-long impact on self-esteem. The labels, become part of the children, though they may never hear them, and the daily interactions on the ward reinforce the children's sense that they are sick, rejected failures. I was hospitalized as an adolescent because I was very depressed. I was terrified from the first moment I entered the hospital and it was considered to be a "caring" place. Being hospitalized meant to me quite clearly that my family had given up, that I was not worth fighting for, and I was convinced that I was being put away forever.

After I had been there a week, I was so turned around by the environment, so petrified, so preoccupied by learning how to survive that I withdrew completely and was diagnosed as schizophrenic. After that diagnosis was made, I was given 50 insulin and electric shock treatments. I can only say that for 50 days I was completely terrified for my life and never dared to say a word. During this time, after only a month in the hospital, I became very sophisticated at behaving in self-destructive ways. I learned a lot from watching other children who had been there longer than who had learned from those before them.

And so it went in a downhill spiral of self-destruction. But that was the behavior that led to attention, to contact, and any attention, no matter how negative, felt better than none at all. That, of course, included the shock treatments. I took pleasure in those horribly terrifying experiences because that was all there was. And from that I learned to want the drugs, to want to be locked up, to expect assault.

Watching other children being held down and medicated with all the violence in such situations was a terrifying experience. I felt a need to rescue them and at the same time a need to hide or be good so that the same would not happen to me. I remember trying to behave in ways I thought would be approved of by the staff, but when it was clear that that behavior would bring no response, I would feel desperate and angry and the cycle would repeat itself. I would be drugged and locked in my room. Playing their game led only to my own further destruction.

It was a constantly losing fight for the survival of my soul. And it was clearly easier for the staff to put me to sleep than to listen and hold and comfort and support. I still believe that had anyone taken the trouble to listen and comfort almost anywhere along the way, my downhill trip could have been turned around. Finally, the label placed on me is something I shall always carry even though I no longer believe that I ever was, or am, schizophrenic. Childhood is a time of forming and growing.

What other people say about you matters, and there is nothing positive that can come from such labeling. Children have hearts and minds and feelings like all of us, but they are even more sensitive to those around them whether they talk or not and no matter how they behave. They need support, not isolation. They are always reaching out for support, whether they appear to be or not. If they are withdrawn.it may be because they have been hurt and they no longer dare to reach out; if they are angry, there may well be a good cause.

Putting children in an institution, no matter how "caring," is making a choice for them that can lead only to their increased rage, depression, isolation and feeling of worthlessness. I am very lucky to have survived. Most of my friends were not so lucky. I have now come to a place in my life where I can see clearly and I must speak out against the abuses and deplorable conditions that took the life of my friend Susan and caused most of the others I knew to be permanently and irretrievably scarred. and in the administration of justice requires that there be a higher standard for reinstatement where disbar unit at the VMass Medical Center in Worcester.

The author is the mother of four and lives in Newton. This testimony is dedicated to the memory of Susan Kelly who, had she been treated differently, would be alive today. She died at the age of 17 from the misuse of insulin shock therapy in the bed next to me. We were being given insulin together; she died and I lived, and she is with me in spirit as I write this. We who have been lucky enough to survive our experiences in institutions feel a great need to fight to prevent similar hurt to others, hurt that could have been prevented had adults been willing to make other choices for us, to take other risks, to find alternatives to the isolating, devastating experience of being locked up.

I spent three years of my adolescent life in four different mental institutions. I am here to represent the voices of children who were locked up with me who did not get out, because they died, because their souls were suffocated and they have remained in institutions ever since, or simply because there was never an adult who would help them out. There are four points which I especially want to make clear: Simply being hospitalized has a devastating effect on a child. The question of whether a ward is locked or unlocked is virtually irrelevant for children. If they are in a space they cannot leave, then it feels locked.

In fact, there is something very dishonest about an institution's taking pride in unlocked wards when we all know where the power lies: It never lies with the patients. The behavior a child learns in order to survive, even in the most "caring" settings, is de ment was prompted by misconduct while a judge. However, the fact is not sufficient to prevent his reinstate ment after the passage of many years." The long period Centracchio had to wait caused much criticism in bar circles that the high court was too severe. Some attorneys now are anticipating that the court in the current DeSaulnier proceedings will set a new minimum waiting period (perhaps as high as 10 years) for disbarred judges. Elapsed time is not on DeSaulnier's side.

But his to tal rehabilitation and the strong support the former Marine combat pilot is expected to receive from judges, lawyers and civic leaders may be enough to convince the sensitive justices of the Supreme Judicial Court that he has suffered enough and rehabilitated himself to the But there is a paragraph in the release which dramatically illustrates the government's capacity to abuse human liberty in defiance of the long-disused reserved rights and powers amendments IX and of the Constitution. The White House, arguing for public regulation of hospitals, observes that 55 percent of all hospital revenues come from governmental sources. If the people of the United States are getting up the money to run the hospitals, the people have a right to see that it is spent in their interest, right? The problem is that nobody knows quite what "the people" is. Mostly, "the people" seems to mean the government. If "the people" is some jet commuter in a plastic shirt with a wife and kids in Silver Spring, and some highly parochial notions about how medical care ought to be delivered, then democracy is arriving in a peculiarly unattractive disguise.

Nevertheless, if public revenues, "tax dollars," as the editorialists like to call them, are to be the main support of a service like hospital care, then the taxpayers need to be protected from the natural tendency of all enterprises, public and private, to be exploited by the people involved in them. If "the government" is paying, everybody is paying, which is the same thing as nobody paying. All of the parties directly involved in hospital care transactions that is, insurance companies, suppliers of drugs and equipment, hospital employees, doctors, lenders, vendors of technical and professional services, consultants and even patients can be seen to possess a competitive interest in maximizing the expenditures of the system in each individual case. There is really no great mystery about this. It is safer and smarter to order another test, another X-ray, another day's stay in the hospital.

It is particularly safer and smarter when the physician and the institution are subject to malpractice litigation. And it often is a means of optimizing employment of capital. Empty beds and unused machines cost money. So it is really necessary for the government to get into the management of the hospital care enterprise in a major way if it is to provide the wherewithal to keep the institutions in business. Meantime, for-profit hospitals deliver decent care cheaper.

Colleges and universities, Jimmy Carter's peanut business, Chrysler Corp. and even The Press are subject to the same principle. Once the government camel gets its nose into the tent, the inhabitants have to learn to live with a notoriously' un-fastidious beast. If you don't believe this, ask Derek Bok. Never mind the peanut business.

Why ought the taxpayers to buy Chrysler when they are unwilling to buy the cars it makes? Far better to let it become an increasingly attractive acquisition for Volkswagen. And if The Press decides it must depend upon legislative enactments for its protections instead of its own integrity, then let it be remembered that what the Legislature grants the Legislature can revoke. But, no. The government is going to "save" Chrysler. And the colleges and universities and the peanut business and, would you believe, the hospitals from themselves.

If you believe that you believe, well, Jimmy Carter. David B. Wilson is a Globe columnist. point where his restoration to law practice would not in any way detract from the public confidence in the bar and the courts. David Farrell is a Globe political columnist.

Those maddening roads make drivers see red By IAN MENZIES receive all CTPS reports. It will from now on. It's important that it should. A great many 3Aers use the MDC's Quincy Shore Drive, which the report points out will become even more clogged than now if proposed strip development continues. The MDC and DPW must unify highway planning.

Incidentally CTPS, the DPW and the MDC all know that the lights on 3A as well as Quincy Shore Drive are screwed up they'll go red with nothing coming, not even an old lady with a seeing-eye dog but the agencies won't react unless bugged by legislators and the public (for MDC call 727-5494; of some 14 miles, there are an unbelievable 58 traffic lights; bunched together they come at you every 900 feet, too much even for Marvin Hagler. This 57-mile lunatic loop, which runs from the Neponset RiveF bridge to Route 3 in Plymouth, is truly a suicidal monument to a long-dead profession that of highway engineer. (MIT please note). But surprise of surprises, it seems that the commonwealth may possibly have discovered the same thing, after all these years. The state's Central Transportation Planning Staff (CTPS), an arm of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) forgive all the initials has just completed a study called, "Route 3A, Corridor Traffic Safety Analysis." It's a good study because it says all the things we've been saying.

For instance, an introduction describes 3A between the Boston-Quincy line and Hingham as "characterized by relatively high volumes of average daily traffic, 20,000 to 35,000 vehicles, a relatively high number of traffic control signals and intensely developed zones of commercial, industrial and residential land use." DPW 727-7925). More specifically on traffic signals it speaks of "no less than 35 signalized intersections on a ten-mile section between Boston and Hingham." It also states that the average speed of a.m. rush hour traffic through Weymouth is only 18 m.p.h., barring accidents, whacky lights or a raised Fore River bridge, and is even slower at night. Even at non-rush hours the average speed through Weymouth is listed at only 24 m.p.h., although the roadway is posted for 30 to 35. On accidents.

"Sections of Route 3A in Quincy, Weymouth, Hingham and Duxbury all have accident rates above the statewide average for an urban two-lane arterial. Between 1973 and 1976 there were 19 fatals between Boston and Duxbury." The report describes the section between Hingham and Neponset "as an extremely hazardous roadway for motorists, bicyclists and pedestrians alike." It identified "40 high hazard areas" and made corrective recommendations. Sounds fine, but by itself means little. CTPS reports are simply forwarded to the Department of Public Works, which decides what, if any action, to take. We did discover, however, that the MDC doesn't All this isn't just a 3A phenomenon.

Things are Every so often reference has been made in this space to a narrow pathway, originally used by the Pilgrims, which leads in circuitous fashion and with massive impediments from Plymouth to Boston. It is known as Route 3A. We have pointed out that this sadistic circumbendibus was designed by Democrats to harass Republicans who at one time called the South Shore home. We also revealed, at considerable personal risk, that for years Route 3A was secretly used by the Army as a stress test, incrementally mis-engineered to discover at what point frustrated drivers would self-destruct. (Incidentally, the Army obtained excellent data which have been fed into its truck-driving course at Fort Dix, graduates of which can now outchick-en Italian dragsters on the Amalfi Drive).

No highway has more lights totally out of synchronization than Route 3A. It is known to local commuters as "the red light district." Between the Hingham police station and downtown Boston by non-expressway roads, a distance just as bad on Routes 9, 2, 1, 28 and others. What has been missed is that Greater Boston, compared with other cities, has relatively few real freeways. Nothing wrong with that except as substitute we've turned interior streets into free ways with disastrous results. Improved public mass transit is the first answer but it's also urgent that Greater Boston's 3As be re- engineered for the safety of both driver and pedes trian.

Ian Menzies is a Globe columnist..