The Index-Journal from Greenwood, South Carolina • Page 1

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132 GREENWOOD, S.C, MONDAY AFTERNOON, JULY 9, 1979 18 Pages 2 Sections 20 SALT II is fair, Vance tells Senate the pact the world would be less stable, the risk of nuclear war would be greater and arms costs would skyrocket by billions of dollars. "We should build on the progress we have made," Vance said. "The alternative is to return to an unrestrained arms competition with the suspicions and fears of an earlier time but with the ever-more-devastating arms of today and tomorrow." "It clearly limits the Soviet threat with which we will have to contend, while not substantially constraining what we would otherwise plan to develop and deploy," Brown said. He called the treaty "a clear and WASHINGTON (AP) Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance testified today that the SALT II treaty is fair, balanced and verifiable and told the Senate it cannot now expect to wrest a better bargain from the Soviet Union.

Vance and Defense Secretary Harold Brown opened the Carter administration's defense of the embattled treaty before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee amid suggestions from the Senate's majority leader that some "clarifications" might be acceptable to Moscow. "We cannot expect to shift the bargain more in our favor now through a process of amendment and reservation," Vance said. "Even if it were possible to reopen the negotiations, certainly they would be reopened to both sides," he said. "This could lead to the reopening of points that now are resolved in a manner favorable to our interests." Vance and Brown said the treaty will slow the arms race while permitting the United States to modernize its arsenal by including such weapons as the new MX missile. Making the arguments they hope will win the 67 votes needed for ratification, the two Cabinet officers said that without Stiff p.

kr Claafetu MtMa; Officials gather for Skylab watch Collison kills one driver, Clarence Hackett of 213 McKellar Drive, was headed east on S.C. 246. Witnesses said Sprouse apparently failed to yield right of way, according to Deputy Coroner AA.A. Mills. He said no charges have been made, and an inquest is pending further investigation.

Joseph Samuel Sprouse, 65, of Route 1, Waterloo was killed, apparently instantly, when the car he was driving struck a Satterfield Construction Co. asphalt truck about a.m. today, according to local authorities. Sprouse, the only occupant of the station wagon, was traveling south on Secondary 39 (Old Laurens Highway). The truck bipartisan groups conference that has darkened the White House offices of Carter's key aides as they confer with the president in the Maryland woods.

Talks Sunday afternoon with a group that included representatives of environmental interests, the oil industry and academia dealt with world energy supplies and prices, strategies for reducing oil imports, and the management of the short-term energy problems, Powell reported. Among those at that session were Energy Secretary James Schlesinger; domestic affairs adviser Stuart Eizenstat governors Jay-- Rockefeller -of West Carter, WASHINGTON (AP) President Carter is moving from a broad-brush review of the domestic problems that have dogged his administration to a close-up look at the nation's energy pinch and an economy seemingly sliding into recession. Congressmen from both parties were flying today to Camp David for another of the secretive meetings reminiscent of the isolation that surrounded last year's Mideast summit on the Maryland moun-taintop. As the president entered his seventh day of seclusion, press secretary Jody Powell said Carter's discussions with a wide range of Americans from members of his Cabinet to governors, university presidents and top labor leaders had been "free-wheeling, remarkably candid and very productive." Powell said the senators and representatives meeting with Carter today were assembled by the congressional leadership. Other sessions were likely to continue, Powell said, through Wednesday with prominent political leaders, energy ex Economists foresee toward curtailing the numbers and types of weapons that each country can add to its nuclear arsenal.

"My judgment is that this treaty will make the people of the United States more secure militarily than we would be without it," he said. Vance said SALT II will force the Soviet Union to dismantle some 230 of its strategic missiles and bombers, and be assailed critics who question the usefulness of this achievement on grounds some of the weapons are "old." "Undoubtedly some of the older systems will be discarded, but with nuclear weapons 'old' should never be mistaken for he said. Atlantic Ocean. But the midpoint has jumped around each day. On Saturday, it was 4:30 p.m.

Wednesday. Most of the station will bum up from atmospheric friction, but NASA estimates about 500 pieces weighing between 1 pound and 2Vfc tons will reach the Earth, scattering along a corridor. Officials insist the odds of anyone being hit are slim. NORAD has been making daily predictions on the fall. Starting Tuesday, it will update them every few hours, and these and the course of Skylab will be marked on large charts lining the walls of the situation room.

The final prediction will come about two hours before the expected fall. But that will be only 20 percent accurate on where the pieces may land. It will alert people in a strip about 12,000 miles long and 100 miles wide that pieces may strike there. In the situation room are seats for representatives of NASA, the departments of State, Justice and Defense, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Preparedness Agency. The Pentagon will have five medical and engineering teams on alert around the world to provide assistance requested by other countries.

The State Department through its embassies will alert any nations that might be in the path of Skylab debris. Covered bridge burns BY ANGELENE WILLARD Staff Writer McCORMICK At one time in South Carolina's history, 400 covered wooden bridges spanned its streams. Today there are only two left, and one of those is in "pretty bad shape," according to a local historian. The 87-year-old Long Cane Creek Bridge, the most popular tourist attraction in McCormick County, collapsed in flames early Sunday morning. Arson is suspected, McCormick County Sheriff J.P.

"Press" Gable said. "We've probably got a couple of suspects," Gable said this morning. "We're going to talk to some people and see what they know about it. This has got the whole county upset." A couple driving past the bridge shortly after midnight Saturday discovered it in flames and immediately contacted Troy Volunteer Fire Department. But when firemen arrived about 12:20 a.m.

Sunday, there was nothing they could do but watch; the 168-foot-long structure was already collapsing, according to B.F. "Bobby'-' Edmonds, local historical society president who helped get the bridge on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977. -Firemen did, however, keep flames from spreading to the adjacent steel bridge, which took the wooden bridge's traffic in 1964. The steel bridge's wooden pilings would have been in greater danger if it had not been raining. Edmonds said.

Edmonds, who visited the ruins Sunday along with "scores" of McCormick County residents, said. "The public is appalled. It was a beautiful old structure." While be was there Sunday afternoon, some disappointed tourists from Minnesota got out of their car and said they'd driven 100 miles out of their way to see the bridge. (See Bridge, page 2) valuable, though limited, step" Saudis to send more oil to U.S. WASHINGTON (AP) The Skylab death watch began in earnest today as the huge station neared the end of its long space journey and headed for a flaming plunge back to Earth, probably on Wednesday.

Representatives of several federal agencies gathered in a situation room here to keep track of Skylab's final hours and to take emergency action in case pieces of the laboratory cause death, injury or damage. The situation center is in a windowless room on the sixth floor of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's headquarters. Down the hall, NASA has set up a newsroom so the media can alert the world when Skylab comes tumbling in. The North American Air Defense Command, which is tracking the 77.5-ton station, predicted Sunday the spacecraft will fall out of orbit in a 30-hour period between 7:28 p.m. EDT Tuesday and 1:28 a.m.

Thursday. The midpoint is 10:28 a.m. Wednesday. If re-entry occurred then, most of Skylab probably would fall in the tax cut Any serious congressional debate, staff members of the House and Senate tax-writing committees said, probably won't occur until late this year or very early in 1980. Jit r.

smoldering all that's left of Long Cane Creek Bridge to be the cause of the fire that destroyed morning. The inset is a recent photo of .1 confer Virginia, Hugh Gallen of New Hampshire and Robert Graham of Florida: and two university presidents, Jerry Weisner of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and John Sawhill of New York University. Until 12:30 a.m. Sunday, and then again over breakfast. Carter conferred with another diversegroup that included the Rev.

Jesse Jackson; Clark Clifford, an adviser to seven presidents, and Lane Kirkland, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO. Following his meeting, Schlesinger said it would probably take Carter several weeks to put together the energy speech he-canceled last week. years as is now the case; equipment and machinery during five years, instead of 10 years; and the first $100,000 of annual investments in certain business vehicles during three years. Ruins still stone pilings and fin are in McCormick County. Arson i believed the 87-year-old structure early Sunday the bridge.

perts and others. A tentative schedule for Tuesday was being set up, with people from outside government being invited to discuss the economy, Powell said, adding that meetings were also planned with "a group of people whose interest is in religion and ethics." Meanwhile, Carter was to be given a series of options to end long gasoline lines, promote fuel conservation and cut reliance on imported oil. Those options, the work ot an interagency task force, are intended to serve as a basis for far-reaching presidential decisions. Powell and other participants in the meetings have been extremely cautious about revealing any details of the discussions. Carter flew to Camp David on Tuesday.

Without any advance public signals, he decided Wednesday to cancel a major speech on energy planned for the next day. On Thursday he began consulting with senior advisers and, by Friday, the talks had blossomed into a domestic summit The New York Times in a survey of the oil shortage Sunday said the United States this year needs to import 8.6 million barrels a day of crude oil and refined products to meet demand, but total oil imports have averaged less than 8.2 million barrels a day. His name not mud family says LA PLATA, Md. (AP) For 40 years. Dr.

Samuel A. Mudd's descendants have fought to clear their grandfather of the deed that inspired the saying "his name is mud" setting the broken leg of assassin John WUkes Booth. The family's appeal is now before President Carter at least the third president to consider Mudd's case in more than a century. And this month, restoration work is beginning at the home of the Confederate sympathizer who got a life sentence for aiding Booth after he shot and killed President Abraham Lincoln. The house, near Byrantown, is be- ing preserved as an historic landmark.

It was there, about 30 miles from Washington, that Mudd repaired the actor's leg broken when Booth leaped from the balcony of the Ford Theater, Where Lincoln was mortally wounded. "Suppose he wouldn't have set Booth's leg. What would history have said about him then?" said Louise Mudd Arehart, a 62-year-old granddaughter. "He took a Hippocratic oath of service to humanity." WASHINGTON (AP) While President Carter remains cool to a tax cut, many leading economists say its enactment by next spring is almost certain if recessionary trends continue. Tax specialists in Congress also say a cut is becoming more likely, but momentum for such action is not expected until late this year or early in 1980, when the current economic slowdown is better understood and work on key legislation, such as the tax on oil company profits from the decontrol of domestic oil prices, is completed.

The Carter administration isn't convinced a recession is underway, despite evidence suggesting a decline in economic growth during the second quarter. A tax cut, presidential aides say, could intensify inflation and sabotage efforts to balance the budget. "It would be a mistake for the administration and Congress to begin preparing a tax cut if we are going to have any hope of convincing the public we're serious about beating inflation," said Lyle Gramley, a member of the president's Council of Economic Advisers. "We can't push the tax button at the first indication of a recession," be cautioned. Walter Heller, council chairman during John F.

Kennedy's presidency, and Alan Greenspan, chairman in the Nixon administration, are among those economists who disagree with Gramley. "1 feel a modest cut, 25 billion, or 1 percent of the gross national product, would make quite a difference in terms of the depth and duration of a recession," Heller said. "It would be a good tonic for the economy." Heller, in a telephone interview last week, rejected the claim that a tax reduction would fuel inflation. "If you're in a soft, soft economy there're enough unused resources so that a tax cut will improve productivity and investment," which would work against price increases. Greenspan envisions a tax cut by March that will aid business by cutting the corporate tax rate 1 percent and accelerating depreciation allowances.

He supports legislation proposed by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, led by Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, D-Texas, the chairman of the Joint Economic Commit- -tee. Bentsen said he foresees about a $20 billion tax reduction. Such a cut would allow businesses to depreciate nonresidential structures in 10 years, instead of being spread over 20 NICOSIA, Cyprus AP) Saudi Arabia has increased its production of crude oil a million barrels a day more than double the shortage in U.S. imports for the three summer months, the Middle East Economic Survey reported today.

could not be learned immediately how much of the increase would go to the United States, but the authoritative oil journal said it will be marketed through Exxon, Texaco, Socal and Mobil, the four American oil companies that are participants with the Saudi government in the Arabian-American Oil Co. Nor was it known how soon the increase might mean more gasoline at American pumps. But it eould ease the threat of a shortage in heating fuel next winter. Saudi state radio announced a week ago that production was being increased temporarily because the government needed extra money for its (142-billion development program. But the announcement did not say how large the increase would be or how long it would last.

Saudi Arabia increased its production a million barrels a day, to 9.5 million, for the first three months of the year to ease shortage caused by the Iranian revolution that overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. After Iranian production resumed at a reduced level, the Saudi government cut production back to 8.5 million barrels a day for the past three months although officials said the output was somewhat higher. The Middle East Economic Survey said It learned reliably that an increase of a million barrels a day took effect on July 1 "and would continue through September. It Said production for the fourth quarter is undecided, but sources reported "the situation will be reviewed in the light of market and price conditions when the time comes." Teen-age twins Miss Gharleston crowned Miss S.C. Knight survives third Pan Am row spel sing go; page 6 page 3 9.