Iowa City Press-Citizen from Iowa City, Iowa • Page 13

IOWA CITY PRESS-CITIZEN EDITORIAL PAGE Saturday, April 1,1173 Nixon Domestic Woes Draw Public Attention BlQ Brother Wins By GEORGE SHERMAN ft Kt Big Brother has enough followers in the Iowa House of Representatives to remove a significant safeguard in legislation aimed at protecting the people from abuse of the new crime computer system. The vote was close, 49-46, so it could be reversed whm people and legislators realize wkat has been done in the name of com- batting crime. The measure, rejected Thursday, would have barred storage of unverified intelligence information in police files from which it can be passed along to other agencies by computer transmission or in another way. Such information is raw data, unverified, unevaluated; it need not be connected in any way with any crime; it could be misleading hearsay or totally false. The measure came before the House as it debate on a bill designed to protect the confidentialitv and nrevent abuse of the svstem known as TRACTS.

The House has before it a Senate bill setting restrictions on the type of information that can stored in the system and establishing: penalties for releasing information to unauthorized persons. A variety of changes, all weakening the safeguards of the Senate bill, are pending before the House. Advocated bv Public- Safetv Commissioner Michael Sellers and in the House bv Rep. David M. Stanlev.

Muscatine Republican, the changes proposed would remove other protections of the Senate bill. Under the changes: A committee of non-law enforcement nersons charged with serving as an check on use of the svstem not have access to the information ro'Wted transmitted. It thus would become a nullity. Law enforcement agencies would not be reouirM to not'fv a person that a com- miter rheck was bem? made so that he would be able to resnond to anv information devp'oned. Nor would there be any wflv to check and halt unlawful gathering of information.

The massive amoimts of information that can be stored in such a comnntf rized svstem and the rapiditv with which it can be retrieved make it a powerful tool for aiding 'aw enforcement. Precisely those same attributes, however, demand that stringent safeeruards be provided by law to Prevent abuse, lest it develop into a monster ranable of infringing upon the liboT'ty and privacy of any citizen. Preoccupation with the benefits from indiciors tise of the new svstem must- not blind us to the perils of the possible abuses. Walker The walker of the 1974 political has emerged. He's Al Schock.

a Sioux Falls Republican who'd like to win the South Dakota Senate seat now held by Georefe McGovern. After the electoral success of Lawton Chiles in FloHda in 1970 and Dan Walker in Illinois and Dick Clark in Iowa in 1972, walking loomed as the easy, if blister-ridden, path to political office. Strong legs and several pairs of hiking boots were amonsr the Qualifications prospective candidates could be asked about as 1974 neared. In contrast to earlier walkers, however, Schock, who owns a dairy in Sioux Fallfe, doesn't plan to cover the whole state, at least not on this trip. His plan is to walk from Sioux Falls in the southeastern corner of South Dakota to Leola, his home town and a small community in the northeastern part of the state.

However, since he's going to do this in May, a year and seven months before the November 1974 election, he'll have plenty of time to walk farther in quest of votes. And his early entry stakes his claim on the walking campaign in South Dakota in 1974. In his announcement, Schock, of course, pointed out that many friends had urged him to run for office. He didn't say whether they'd asked him to walk, too. 20 Years Ago April 7, 1953 The City Bakery, 221 East Washington Street, has been purchased from Robert Beyers of Dav- by Barbara's Bake Shoppe, of Dos Moines The charge of name marks the first time in years that Iowa City has not had a "City Bakery." The name was established here in 1890 with 2 bakery operating at 10 South Clinton Street.

The West Liberty School Board has awarded the contract for construction of an agricultural shop building to the Klice Construction Bettendorf. on a bid of $24,775. The senior class of Iowa City High School is rehearsing a three-act play, "Harriet," to be presented April 17. The cast includes Gary Black, John Larew, Bob Shain, Pete Stark, Gordon Cha'k Jim Dana, Gile Sievers, Danise Allen, Martone Lewis, Kay Greene, Sue Kringel, Susan Scott, Janet Saunders, Dick Galen Greene, Allan Dotezal, Bill Kern, Eileen O'Brien, Beverly Gegennelmer, SharonKeUey, Caroline Slagw, Randal Marker, Ron Oathout, BUI Comer, Elinor Huber and Jean Rasper. SAN CLEMENTE, Calif.

President Nixon's passion for foreign affairs seems to be repeatedly frustrated these days by his woes on the domestic front. His first administration a famous for a series of foreign spectaculars stretching Peking to Moscow. Today, the cynical Nixon-watchers are joking that the President must be about ready for a new bout in personal diplomacy overseas, if only to save his second administration from spotlight of home controversy. Whatever he does, wherever he goes, the unhappy headlines on the Watergate bugging case, on inflation, on consumer revolt against meat prices, seem to follow. Even out here, in the crystal sunshine of the Southern California spring, the charges of scandal in far-away Washington overshadowed presidential talks on the new peace in Vietnam.

Take, for instance, the day of Vietnam President Nguyen Van Theiu's ceremonial arrival at the "Casa Pacif- ica'' mansion beside the sea. All was carefully prepared -the military honors, the 21-gun salute, the "beautifully performing U.S. Marine Band brought from Washington. It was a perfect replica of what President Theiu have received on the South Lawn of the White House -had Nixon chosen to give the Saigon leader that i a A i a endorsement in Washington. Nevertheless, the words at the Nixon compound here were gentle and kind.

Both men pledged to cne another determination to persevere in the Vietnam peace both had achieved. But that idyllic morning was to end differently than the presidential press office had anticipated. From out of the distance, like static not to be ignored, came the hard words of Sen. Washington Up Sam Ervin in Washington challenging President Nixon's royal mandate against having White House aides testify before Congress on the Watergate scandal. White House Press Secretary Ronald L.

Ziegler did not take long to react despite the three-hour time lag West and East. The i House entourage was already distressed by Republican Sen. Lowell Weicker's charges on television that day before that key White House aide H. R. Haldeman "probably" a knowledge of political espionage against the Democrats.

The opening felicity of Thieu visit was shoved into the background. When a a group of reporters walked out of the photo session for smiling Thieu and Nixon, Ziegler was ready with an attack on Ervin. Weicker and i investigating committee "irresponsible leaks of i a wave proportions." The blast immediately moved the Watergate affair front and center in headlines that day. It was not that the Thieu-Nixon meeting was any less important, with its talk on vital postwar policy in Indochina. It was 'simply that President Xixcn.

through his spokesman, had shown himself more in volved for the moment in his impasse with the Congress over the sanctity of executive privilege. A few days earlier, Vietnam had taken the backseat to still another raging domestic controversy. The President chose to include his embarrassing about- face toward a ceiling on soaring meat prices in his national television speech March 29 commemorating the final withdrawal of American forces South Vietnam. To many observers, this disagreeable step against inflation seemed to be slipped into the middle of the speech meat was sandwiched between large slices of foreign policy, said one White House wag. The return of the American prisoners of war, the end of U.S.

military involvement in Vietnam, the restatement of the Nixon doctrine of strength in world affairs might be of prime importance abroad. But those few words on beef and other meats seemed of more immediate importance here at home. More detached connoisseurs of government find nothing extra-ordinary in this intrusion of home-grown concerns into presidential diplomacy. Indeed, they say. Nixon has courted i shift of focus by engaging in one controversy after another with Congress since his reelection last November.

But up until now, the President himself has seemed to dwell more on foreign policy. Successes abroad have carefully plotted, with the Chinese, with the Russians, with the Vietnamese. Foreign policy has seemed more manageable in the hands of this President and the professorial Henry Kissinger. It may come- as a shock to Nixon Co. to find themselves unable to continue their em phasis on foreign policy.

that switch could well become the rule, rather than the exception, in the second Nixon administration. Strip Mining Controls Stir Renewed Controversy By RALPH C. DEANS By the time "you finish reading this, another acre of America will have been chewed up by strip miners. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, coal strippers a their way through 4,680 acres a week. That comes to more than 6fiS acres per day or about 27 acres an hour a little less than an acre every The strippers leave a moonscape that is difficult to describe.

It would be a place to stage a film about the end of the world. Strip mining, according to Ken Hechler. who should know, is "a cancer of the earth a pathology deriving from our lust for energy at the cheapest monetary cost regardless of the social cost." Hechler is a Democratic congressman from West Virginia, a state where the economy is based on king coal. i that, Hechbr wants strip mining abolished. Equally significant, the United Mine Workers union has called for a ban unless the disturbed land can he properly restored.

Strip mining is almost as old as the hills it destroys. Coal was picked off Kentucky hill- sides and rafted to cities for luel as early as 1800. By 1825, mule-drawn scrapers were used to rip away the topsoil covering surface coal. In 1877, a Editorial Research Reports steam shovel began to strip near Pittsburg, Kans. And by in05.

an entirely mechanical strip mine was opened in Laurel County. Ky. Today, technology has delivered up machines like the eight-story tall "Gem of Egypt'' an earth mover that eats overburden in swimming-pool sized bites. Tough legislation to control st'ip mining died with the last Congress. Several bills are now pending, ranging from Hechler's outright abolition to administration-backed bill which sets standards of reclamation.

Coal industry spokesmen warn of energy cutbacks if their activities are banned or seriously hampered. The legislative battle in Washington thus pits the energy crisis against the environmental cri- -'K It begs two questions: Does America need such an abundance of cheap energy? Is it will- to rip up the land to get it? reclamation of the torn up land seems one way to have our cake and eat it too. But trying to set stripped land to rights is trickier and Qpstlier than anybody thought. Reclamation work has been successful in Europe but that, according to one authority, is because of "meticulously detailed planning There is no American control comparable to the Euro pean systems." 'I he past record of strip miners is not encouraging. Soil Conservation Service estimated last year that strip mining has disturbed more than 7,800 square miles of land.

And after viewing satellite photographs, one geologist recently a that "90 per cent of the strip- mined land has not been re claimed so far." As with most environmental problems, th2re is plenty of blame to spread around. Consumers demand cheap energy and the coal strippers met that demand. Americans are now beginning to realize that another piece of Appalachia or the western plain was gouged up so that they could snap on kitchen light. Time's up, by the way. There goes another acre.

There's the Little Matter of the U.S. Becoming Dependent On Foreign Oil Supplies By MARQUIS CHILDS WASHINGTON Like a mirage seen in shimmering desert heat is the vast wealth of the oil sheikdoms in the Persian Gulf. When in the next decade the United States must import up to 30 per cent of all the oil we use their take will increase from roughly $10 billion a year to billion or more. That tidy sum will re t' the command of sheiks whoso desert principalities arc sparsely populated and whose peoples make few demands. The leverage in world finance and diplomacy this will give these autocrats is reason for dark foreboding in Western canitals, foremost among them Washington.

Along with the shei'-d-ims there are the leading oil producers sucli as Iran and Saudi bia. making un a tolpl overall of 75 to 90 billions of dollars, yen. sterling and francs by 1980. How will they spend these vast smns? In a spoech in Paris Today -In History By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Toda'- is Saturday. 7, the 97tii day of 197.1 Then- are 268 days left in the year.

Today's highlight in histo'-j: On this date in an audience at the Bell Te'enhone laboratories in New York watched the iirst successful long- i a demonstration of i i image transmitted from Washington was that oi Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. On this date: In 195:5. the Swedish diplomat, Dag Hammarskjold, was elected secretary general of the United Nations. recently Thornton F. Bradshaw, president ot Atlantic Richfield, put this question to a leading British politician.

Bradshaw all he could think of was i hat they would come into the stock market and buy all of General Motors, all of IBM, all of General Electric. After thinking for a moment, his British In end renlied- You let them buy General Motors. You let them buy IBM let them buy Genera! Electric. And then yoii nationalize." This was, of 'oiirse, meant for a laugh. In a serious vein Bradshaw made what for an oil man was an pro- nosal.

He suggested sharply in- cri'aH 5 taxes on cars accord- b''i slower to encourage lar-'e cjri. HP would encourage the ir-r for bui'd-ng ni.Mss in A gasoline surname is just around the corner. It is likely to be acute with the beginning of the tourist season. The motorist scurrying from pump to numn to fill up his tank will be a comrion si! ht. Prices will sharp'v and there nav even be an attempt at rationing.

whi'-h promises to be both too and too little. Short of a direct attack on the great god horsepower one 1 the status symbol of the Cadillac and the Lincoln Continental, the pinch will grow wor-e from veai to year. Far from stimulating production of the motorcar, as was the goal when the excise was removed, the obiec- tive should be iust the opposite. Detroit is saying nroudly that this w-i'l 'ie ni'ltnn-ri- year. City streets are already so clogged that traffic moves slower than a walking pace.

The one-man, one-car commuter is familiar nhenomcnon coming in from suburbs to the center The plain, hard fact is that. for all the chirrupy talk about the boundless resources of oil. gas and shale within the contin- ental United States, nothing can be done to relieve the pinch within domestic confines for at least a decade. Government- controlled priceo for natural gas. the rising cost of exploration, a complex web of circumstances make any qurk change all but impossible.

An illustration of the time lag i 1 discovery the largest in North America in Alaska in 1968. Company geologists first visited the north "slope in 1949. Conservationists blocked construction of the trans-Alaska pipeline in Federal Court. The United States Supreme Court has iust declined to overrule the lower court injunction. This means that on'v Congress can act to decide whether construction of the line on government-owned land can proceed.

This is bound to be a lengthy business as ecologists take up the challenge in Senate a House. Oil from the north slope could at most slich'ly case the shortage ahead. Tint ccnjuring word ecology has helped to snarl the energy tangle. Conservationists fight the construction of refineries "ould despoil the shore line. Drilling for off-shore oil resulting such major snills as that in Santa Barbara brings stout resistance It is all part of a confused and troubled picture, vvhvh may or may not be sorted out by President Nixon's long- i ed energy message.

The recommendations he will have to be approved by Congress. In the current state of hostilities between the two branches of government that could mean further delay. By 1980 the United States trade deficit in energy imports of gas and oil will be over $17 billion a year. That is a daunting addition to the already lopsided traded balance. We would no longer pretend that we can use up 35 per cent of all the oil consumed in the work! without paying what may be a prohibitive price.

Isolation and Watergate -Lack of Nixon Awareness Blamed "We're tpeodina BILLIONS on rftfemt wMfe end REPERTORY THEATER ARE By BRUCE BIOSSAT WASHINGTON There is a plausible theory to explain how President Nixon might not have known about Watergate and related political espionage sabotage even if those 1972 endeavors involved some of his top aides. So far we have only hearsay evidence to suggest that former Atty. Gen. John Mitchell and perhaps White House assistant H. H.

Haldeman might have played "directional" roles in one or more of these enterprises. Proofs are altogether lacking. Yet the evidence is strong that lesser White House and Reflection, Committee aidss were involved, and three already have been convicted of complicity in the Watergate bugging case. This carries with it a presumption of high-aide involvement and raises the big question about the President's own possible knowledge of these matters. If It MTM Ml Mgk attes ucre involved, how could he not know? The answer, and it is rooted in the aforementioned theory, is that Richard Nixon works Capitol Scene in a personal isolation that is so extreme as to be beyonl the understanding of most men including many in the White House itself.

Washington today is sprinkled with a surprising number of Nixon critics who stop short of asserting that he must have known of this unsavory business if key aides gave it guidance. But they do not stress the isolation factor. And those who do think the President hud to know appear to rest their judgment in conventional notions which do not seem to fit him at all. For instance, it is an easy jump for a good many people to assume that if a man is described as a "confidant" of the President, he naturally has at least fairly continuous and icasonably intimate access to him. In the view of one significant private source, this assumption is "entirely wrong." The man adds: "This fellow (Nixon) doesn't talk to anybody that way.

Nobody has that kind or relation- shin with him." Haldeman, in effect guarding the door to the President's office and generally thought to have the chief say as to whom he sees, is perceived as the most logical candidate for "confidant" in the conventional sense. But my source insists that link is frailer than most imagine, that raldemaai enters the Nixon presence only when summoned and is in no way on a "chatty basis" with frm. The same thing, says source, applied to Mitchell when he was attorney general or run- ntafij the re-election committee. Indeed, it is said, Mitchell's asserted difficulties with Haldeman (noted in a prior report) were partly founded on Mitchell's belief that Haldeman was get! ing to see Nixttn regularly and he wasn't. That particular kind of idea, the judgment that since the President does not see many men he must be seeing a great deal of a chosen few, is offered almost as an occupational hazard in the present White House.

Again, from my private source: "AH sorts of animosities and even hatreds get going there because evervbody in those circles believes Nixon must be seeing someone. But the simple fact is that he is not." To politicians and observers accustomed to thinking in ordinary terms, so hieh a degree of personal isolation may not be accepted as believable. I cannot, of course, attest myself to its authenticity. I know only that it was presented me with great force and conviction as the overriding reality in Nixon's White House relationships. If it is true, it could certainly make plausible his lack of awareness of many things, and explain how little even his key aides know of Nixon..