The Record from Hackensack, New Jersey • 29

1 Bergen County, New Jersey THE RECORD, WEDNESDAY, MAY 24, 1972 A 29 By James J. Kilpatrick Judges' severity might curb criminal reliance on handguns 'Friends of the FBI' A high-sounding cause, a Niagara of dollars i "i licensing and record-keeping; and they flatly prohibit the sale of handguns to persons under 21. Yet thousands of young hoodlums manage to acquire concealable weapons anyhow, and the ugly wave of crime rolls on. What to do about it? It is easier to suggest what ought not to be done. We are hearing once again the fatuous, demand for outright confiscation; the idea is that a 30-day period would be provided in which every person would have to surrender his firearms to his local police.

There he would receive a receipt, and subsequently he would receive, compensation. The idea is absurd. It would leave criminals armed and their victims defenseless. The car analogy is false Neither is there merit in the idea of licensing and registration. Here the argument goes that men do not object to licensing of their automobiles.

If a car-can be effectively registered, why. not a gun? One answer is that automobiles, by their very, nature, can be publicly observed; an automobile licensing law presents no problems of effective enforcement. But this is not true of firearms. For every law-abiding citizen who registered his weapons, and paid the heavy license fees proposed, a hundred criminals would simply ignore the law. One measure does make sense.

Last Wednesday, less than 48 hours after the Wallace shooting, a Senate subcommittee approved Sen. Birch Bayh's bill to ban the so-called Saturday night specials. These are small, snub-nosed handguns, useless to the sportsman. If a law could be drafted that defined such weapons precisely, the law should be passed. Over a period of years, it might help.

But my own thought is that Congress can' do less than judges can. If our courts would crack down hard on gun-toting criminals, hitting them with tough additional sentences for the use of a firearm, the word would get around. Four years ago the assassination of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy led directly to congressional approval of sweeping gun controls. History repeats. This summer, in the wake of the attempted assassination of Gov.

George C. Wallace, Congress will try once more to draft an effective law: It won't be easy. In this highly charged field, where emotions have a way of outrunning reason, it is far easier to define the problem than to find a workable solution. That same year saw art -estimated 350,000 robberies. Nearly two thirds of.

them were armed robberies. Between 1961 and 1970, more than 600 law enforcement officers were slain; 466 of them died of handgun wounds. The figures give no account of the hundreds of tragic accidents that occur when children discover loaded weapons around the home. No accurate tabulation is kept of persons wounded by firearms in cases of aggravated assault, but at least 80,000 such assaults occurred in 1970. The gun problem in our country is grave, and it is getting worse.

Some ideas are absurd That is one point to keep in mind in contemplating new laws. There is little to indicate that the two acts approved in 1968 have done much to curb criminal violence. The first of them, embodied in Title IV of the Omnibus Crime Control Act, prohibited the interstate shipment of pistols and to individuals, prohibited the sale of such 'weapons to convicted felons and fugitives, and banned over-the-counter sales of handguns to nonresidents of a dealer's state. The law also required that detailed records be kept on shipments and purchases; it was this provision that enabled the FBI instantly to track down the weapon used against Gov. Wallace.

In October of 1968 Congress extended generally the same provisions to commerce in rifles and shotguns. Together, the two federal laws provide a tight system of dealer By Jack Anderson The Bremers are overlooked, but Groucho's on the list which would involve all three of us for some time now. I think 'Friends of the FBI' is it and a natural" According to the memo, Edwards proposed that his firm, Lee Edwards and Associates, would be paid $750 monthly for receiving and receipting the contributions, and $6,000 in fees for publicity work and for writing and editing the study. Gorman was to receive $1,500 a month during the direct-mail campaign, plus a rental commission for use of his lists of persons who were likely to contribute to this kind of cause. THE PROJECT now had all the ingredients for success, said Edwards, except for a name sponsor whose appeal would spur contributions to Friends of the FBI.

On May Edwards found his sponsor cn a Warner Brothers movie lot at Burbank, Calif. By recalling that they had worked together for one day during the Goldwater campaign, Edwards was able to get an appointment with Efrem Zimbalist who stars as Inspector Erskine on the television series, "The FBI." Zimbalist agreed to help the project by serving as honorary chairman. He also agreed to sign a fund-raising letter, says Edwards, and gave him two specimens of his signature for use in the fund-raising letter. In early June, Friends of the FBI was launched by Gorman with an avalanche of fund solicitations that went throughout the country on-stationery with the heading "Efrem Zimbalist Hollywood, Calif." Zimbalist asked "Dear Concerned Americans" to counter vicious attacks against Hoover and the FBI by signing a declaration of support and contributing money for a study report "to counter the powerfully backed campaign with an objective, scholarly study. Your gift of $100, $50, $25, $10, or whatever you can possibly afford is tax deductible, so I ask you to please be generous." He signed the letter, "Yours for the preservation of law and order in America." The money rolled in with each sackful of mail delivered to Suite 800, 919 18th N.W., Washington, D.C., which turned out to be what Kutner later called a mail drop that is, a secretarial service that accepts mail and then turns it over to its owner.

The effort was so successful that Edwards moved quickly to add luster to the cause. He wrote Zimbalist on June 26 asking him to sign another letter which would carry out "our next step to put together a topflight national board of sponsors." Adding another request, Edwards wrote: "There are a number of people in Hollywood whom we want very much to bring on board, particularly James Stewart and Jack Webb. Would it be possible for you to contact them personally Zimbalist turned down the request and, in a telephone call to Edwards, expressed concern that critics had begun to question whether Friends of the FBI legally qualified as a tax-exempt organization. i As criticism mounted in the following months, Zimbalist grew increasingly worried and then angry. Edwards sought to reassure him with a July 26 letter in which he said: "I took the precaution, to inform a good friend, Deputy Attorney-General Richard Kleindienst, about Friends of the FBI." Edwards enclosed a July 12 "Dear Dick" letter to Kleindienst which he described as the memorandum he had promised Kleindienst regarding the project.

After explaining the origins and purposes of the project, Edwards ended his letter, "I would like to know someone here in Washington on whom I could call if the need and occasion arises." Zimbalist, however, was not mollified. He turned the issue over to his Hollywood lawyers, who in an Aug. 9, 1971, telegram to Gorman, Edwards, and Kutner accused them of fraud and misrepresentation and improper management, and directed them to stop using Zimbalist's name in connection with the project. ALTHOUGH FRIENDS of the FBI drew enor- mous support in its mail solicitation, it also attracted critics who initiated government investigations of its operation. Attorney Kutner was sharply questioned by several liberal members of his board of directors.

Sen. George McGovern asked IRS to investigate whether Kutner's commission was making proper use of its tax-exempt status in sponsoring ByNickKotz The Washington Post WASHINGTON At a leisurely breakfast meeting in the Statler Hilton Hotel last year, three men agreed to a partnership that one later described as having produced a Niagara of dollars. They named their venture "Friends of the Their plan was to solicit the public by direct mail advertising for funds that would be used to support and study the FBI. A year has'now passed since that breakfast, and it has been a stormy one for Friends of the FBI. One partner has withdrawn, accusing the other two of improperly enriching themselves from the project.

A Hollywood television star claims he was "used" by the partners. The Internal Revenue Service and the Postal Department are conducting investigations, questioning possible violation of tax and postal laws. 'And Friends of the FBI, now reorganized, is preparing its study and an educational conference to be presented in Washington late this month. Viewed from its inception, the development of Friends of the FBI illustrates how many public" campaigns are initiated today with the skilled use of highly selective mailing lists, computerized letters, and nationally known personalities who agree to become sponsors. Many of the campaigns are conducted with the highest idealism.

Their causes range across the political spectrum from far Left to far Right. But the many causes have two important characteristics in common: the public seldom knows (1) who is really running the campaign and (2) how the funds are spent. Such is the case with Friends of the FBI. Of $380,000 collected in the first four months of the campaign, at least $256,000 has been paid out in fees and expenses to the partners and their yers. About $80,000 has been paid to other organizations to study -the FBI.

There has been no public accounting to the contributors. THE STORY begins with the breakfast meeting last year. Lee Edwards, 36, a public relations man who specializes in conservative causes, says he thought up the idea. The first partner he recruited was Patrick J. Gorman, a professional fund-raiser who operates as Patrick J.

Gorman Consultants, a Washington, D.C., firm. The third man at the breakfast table was Luis Kutner, a Chicago lawyer who has built an. international reputation with 40 years' work trying to free political prisoners around the world. Edwards and Gorman had worked together before on similar campaigns. Their association extended back to raising funds in 1963 for Sen.

Barry Goldwater's early presidential bid. Using' fund-raising lists compiled over the years, Gorman and Edwards later collaborated on a variety of conservative-oriented projects such as "The Committee of One Million to Keep Communist China Out of the U.N.," "Americans for Agnew," "Save Our Symbol," and others. But Kutner was a new associate. Edwards said he approached Kutner because he wanted political balance, and Kutner was a liberal Democrat. Kutner also was useful because a commission he runs already possessed an IRS tax ex-i emption that would be used in the project.

The men agreed that Gorman would run the direct-mail solicitation of funds and would put in the seed money to send out the initial mailings. Edwards would handle public relations and administration. Kutner would provide the services of his Commission for International Due Process of Law, which would sponsor the project under its tax-exempt auspices and would conduct the. proposed study of the FBI. The men agreed such a project would serve a worthwhile purpose, namely to counteract a liberally oriented FBI Study Commission centered at Princeton University and a spate of criticism of the FBI and its chief, the late J.

Edgar Hoover. They cited verbal attacks by House Majority Leader Hale Boggs, and an article in Life magazine which featured Hoover on the cover dressed in emperor's clothes. Later that same April day, in a memorandum to Gorman and Kutner, Edwards summarized the plans and concluded: "As you know, I have been trying to come up with a solid project Efrem Zimbalist Jr. In at first, then wrathfully out the FBI project. This status is given to organizations that meet requirements for education, religious, or charitable purposes.

The IRS began an investigation which is still continuing, and warned the public in July and again in August that contributions to the FBI project were not necessarily tax exempt. J. Edgar Hoover wrote inquirers emphatically that the FBI was not connected with the project As the IRS, FBI, and Postal Service began questioning Kutner, the three partners began quarreling over operation of their project, which had grown by leaps and bounds before they had ever agreed on a contract. By July 9, Gorman was proposing a new contract in which his monthly fee would be almost triple bis original $750 monthly suggestion. On July 16, Gorman asked $3,000 monthly as a fee, starting in the fourth month.

And Kutner began writing Edwards and Gorman that they were endangering his organization's tax-exempt status by failure to keep proper records and to account for income and expenses. Kutner protested that Gorman had submitted charges for use of his mailing lists that could be looked upon "as dealing with oneself and an unconscionable dilution of contributors' funds." The three partners and their lawyers finally reached a settlement agreement, determining what each would be paid out of the first four months' receipts of $380,000. Gorman was paid $138,000, which included $50,000 for use of his mailing lists, $10,000 in fees, and whatever he might have made in markups on preparation of advertising material. Edwards received $7,500 in fees. HE PROJECT is still very much in business.

When Kutner refused to sign their checks and challenged their procedures, Edwards and Gorman created a new entity. "Friends of the FBI, Inc." As president at a $1,000 monthly salary, Edwards installed J. A. "Jay" Parker, 36, one of the few blacks who has been active as a leader in Young Americans for Freedom and other conservative causes. The group also now lists a national advisory board of academics, of whom Parker said: "The real role is the weight of their endorsement.

They are busy men." Edwards says' the Friends of the FBI will soon inform its estimated 50,000 contributors how much money was raised and how it was spent. As of now, the incomplete record indicates that about $400,000 has been raised. Of this amount, Kutner and his commission got $47,000, Edwards got $27,500 in fees for his public relations firm, Gorman got $155,000 including $77,500 in fees and commissions, plus unknown amounts he charged for later mailings. Lawyers for the squabbling partners were paid about $20,000. When Americans for Effective Law Enforcement completes the study, "Friends" President Parker says his group will publish it as "Our FBI: The True Story." I never tell the truth.

I lie about everything I do or say about men, women, or any other sex." Assistant U.S. Attorney Elgin Edward turned thumbs down on prosecution, but Groucho was assigned file number CO 2 39700 09205 and programmed into the Secret Service computer. He is now officially recognized as a threat to the President of the United States. Tony Randall also wound up in the data bank because he made statements the Secret Service didn't like. A memo dated March 25, 1968, explains that the Philadelphia field office "had received a telephone call from Congressman James Byrne, concerning Tony Randall." "Congressman Byrne stated that Randall has opened an office in Philadelphia on March 21, 1968, for Sen.

McCarthy. In Randall's remarks to newspapermen on March 21, 1968, he called the President (Lyndon Johnson) the 'murderous- bastard in the White House' and stated that 'the SOB lied to Byrne wanted to know whether Randall's derogatory language violated the law. A sub- sequent memo notes, "Congressman Byrne was advised that there did not appear to be a federal violation involved." Nevertheless, actor Tony Randall, file number C02 39700 00174, is still carried in the Secret Service's computerized file as a potential assassin. free lubrication and a free oil change, (Retail Value on any Chevrolet car or truck. We assure you that we shall use only the highest quality lubricants and oil when we perform these services and we further assure you that no attempt will be made to sell you anything else.

We'll appreciate the chance to meet and serve you. We do ask that you present this ad when you come in. THANK YOV. WASHINGTON The Secret Service, apparently, has been protecting presidential aspirants from the wrong people. A fanatic with a handgun had no trouble infiltrating within a few feet of George Wallace at a political rally.

But such unlikely assassins as comedians Groucho Marx and Tony Randall would have come under Secret Service scrutiny. The Alabama Governor was gunned down, and Arthur Herman Bremer, a smoking pistol in his hand, was wrestled to the 'ground. He is being held on $200,000 bond. Yet Bremer's name appears nowhere in the Secret Service's computerized file of 180,000 suspicious individuals. Those who wind up in the file aren't likely to shoot off anything more lethal than their mouths.

Most came to the Secret Service's attention because of some intemperate remark. Many are prominent in politics, the arts, or the entertainment world. The presidential contenders don't have to worry about being shot by the likes of Groucho Marx or Tony Randall. But the Secret Service took their intemperate cracks seriously and considered bringing action against them. The incorrigible Groucho was quoted by a West Coast underground newspaper as saying, "The only hope this country has is Nixon's assassination." Groucho immediately disowned the statement.

"I deny everything," he said, "because Because we believe that SERVICE SELLS SHEA-VROLETS any other car for that matter. Shea Chevrolet, Hacken-sack, for most of the past two years, has been enlarging and modernizing their Parts and Service Departments. Shea Chevrolet, Hacken-sack, now has the most modern and complete Chevrolet Service Facilities in this area. To induce you to visit our improved facilities Shea Chevrolet offers you a An Irishman prays that his dream come true 6 Voice of the People o5 Why are Army personnel still being sent to Vietnam? True, he is pulling troops out, but troops are still being sent there. My husband left for Vietnam March 7.

One hears news of the withdrawals but never of the troops dispatched to Vietnam. Don't they consider the men's marital status and the number of their dependents? I find it hard to understand why at this stage of the game in our position in Vietnam they would send men who are parents. (Mrs.) SUSAN E. MAZZARISI 258 Franklin Ave. Editor, The Record: Like Martin Luther King Jr.

I had a dream. I was on board an ocean liner taking me back to the land of my birth. Back to an Ireland that was free from Cork to Donegal Back to where again I could hear the song of the lark, instead of the. bomb and the bullet. Back to where the salutation of the day was "Good morning, God bless you" instead of "Halt, hands up!" Back where I could hear again the light lilting laughter of the lads and their colleens as they met at the crossroads, and danced and sang to the jigs and reels played by Uncle Mike on his violin.

Back to where the Tri-Colour waved proudly over a 32-county republic where peace and tranquillity reigned supreme and Ireland was' at last a nation once again. I went up on deck as dawn was breaking, and just then the hills of Kerry appeared on the horizon. I stood in awe at the beauty and majesty of the scene appearing before me and from the bottom of my teart I cried out: "Oh her, but after he is finished, is he willing to bear the burden and cost and rearing of the child? If he is married, perhaps. But even then there may be reluctance. If the couple is unmarried, the man is generally unwilling.

Who then is to bear the brunt of responsibility? The woman, of course. So, should she not bear the brunt of decision as to whether the child within her is to survive? Of course the child should live. We do not view life as to be doomed. But life already born or dead has to be further pursued by the living. They alone have the responsibilities for life on Earth.

Whether we like it or not, decisions are up to individuals, and what is good for one is not good for all More and more aspects of life are placed upon an individual basis. Because there are so many people in the world, we must base our decisions upon the opinions of majority. LUCRETIA S. WILSON 32 Benton Road Paramus, May 8, 1372. chain-operated or not, plus any supermarket open on this important and solemn holiday.

I think it is time that big business stop thinking about the almighty dollar and remember that were it not fori the lives 'given by the men and women we should remember on Memorial Day the storeowners would not be in business. M. GUTWERK 75 Luke Ave. Bergenfield, May 1, 1972. Personal question Editor, The Record: I realize President Nixon is doing an excellent job with his Vietnamizatibn Plan, but one question concerns me deeply.

sure 'tis grand you look with all the pent-up love of my heart, I bid you the top of the mornin'!" I pray to God my dream may soon come true. PATRICK J. McARDLE 358 Griggs Ave. Teaneck, May 13, 1972. Boycott for honor Editor, The Record: I read an article in your business section April 28, stating that the shopping centers, namely the large department stores, will be open Memorial Day.

As a veteran I find this revolting and a slap in the face to all who have given their lives in wars our nation has fought I urge your readers to boycott any of those stores," The decision's hers Editor, The Record: Re the subject of abortion the many pros and cons boggle the mind. Regardless of what one believes the woman is involved more in this situation than is the man. She alone bears the responsibility. A man fertilizes SHEA CHEVROLET HACKENSACK 111 River 489-3400 1.