Ptage2-Suriday, Mdrch 25, 1979-The MichiganDaily'
The Michigan Daily-Sunday, M
R AMRLINGS/keith riehburg
TELEVI SION/julie rovner
PBS: Playingnetwork ga
IT WAS LIKE a case of deja vu.
I had seen it before on television,
back when I was too young to realize
the significance: The students on one
side, with their signs and placards,
chanting for the U.S. to come home
from foreign soil; on the other side, the
helmeted police, all in riot gear and
looking even more menacing in their
uniformity. There was the scuffle, billy
clubs flying, students lying on
pavement, whisked away in the backs
of police cars.
That was ten years ago. The cause
then was a war in a tiny country in
Southeast Asia-a war that split this
country into two warring factions,
brought down a president, and laid the
foundation for our present foreign
policies of retrenchment. And it started
on college campuses, just like' here,
with scenes just like this.
The issue this time is more com-
plex-the University investments in
certain companies, which in turn do
business that help support the minority
regime in South Africa.. The crowds are
also smaller now, though not
necessarily less vocal. The success of
causes is measured not in numbers but
in intensity.
At one point the crowd begins singing
"We shall overcome," -immediately
conjuring up images of Selma, Mem-
phis, and Resurrection City. I have of-
ten heard older students of the sixties
lament the "good old days" of sit-ins
and boycotts, and I have often longed
for just a glimpse into the times I came
too late to see.
Someone in the crowd has passed out
lyrics to the folk songs of protest. "All
We Are Saying Is Give Divestment A
Chance," and "Which Side Are You
On." Someone asks if anybody in the
audience is carrying a guitar. Shades of
Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.
I cannot sing along with the rest-my
journalistic objectivity precludes ac-
tive participation. But I can observe,
with awe and envy, this one brief glim-
pse into the sixties. I remain neutral,
calling on all my will power to refrain
from shouting out with the crowd, for a
cause in which I really believe.
One enters to inform the protesters of
their legal rights. They will probably be
ordered to vacate the premises. The
police will move in. The protesters will
try to sit on their hands-passive
disobedience. The police will probably
remove them by force.
Shades of Chicago, 1968.
The hours pass. The tension mounts.
The rumors begin: The police are
mobilizing outside the building for a
major assault. someone talked to
someone who talked to someone who
saw the police carrying in cannisters of
tear gas. sSomeone else saw an
automatic rifle.
Shades of Kent State.
At last the police enter, armed not
with tear gas or automatic rifles, but
with a court injunction. The officer.
reads the court order to the crowd, and
has trouble pronouncing some of the
words-"apart-te-heid.' His business is
law enforcement, not public speaking.
He read, the court order in a monotone,
oblivious to the snickers and hisses
around him. It's just like in the movies.
HE COURT has decided that the
protesters can stay-but business
as usual will proceed behind closed
doors. Public Not Invited. Press Only.
The waiting game is over. Victory?.
Or defeat?
The protesters debate among them-
selves. Shall the protest continue?
Should they all go home? What was won
here today and what, if anything, was
lost?
The leader speaks up-he keeps a
clear head in the confusion. "Brothers
and Sisters, what is this defeatist at-
titude?" he asks. "This is not a defeat!
This is a victory!" The protest. has kept
the administration from carrying on
with business as usual. That, he tells
them, is the victory.
I feel both the excitement of the
moment, and the frustration of the anti-
climax. It was all done too soon for one
who had missed the turbulent 1960s. I
had waited all this time for the confron-
tation that never was. But at the same
time,-it was the most excitement I had
seen through in an otherwise uneventful
college life. I came in a time when
everyone was telling me that student
unrest is dead. If the protest here was
any indication, then someone forggt to
tell the students.
They file out of the building and wind
down from the day of unrest with an ad
lib march across campus. Their num-
bers seem to grow as they march and
chant in unison. "one, Two, Three,
Four! Kick Apartheid Out The Door!"
"One, Two, Three, Foyr! We Don't
Want Your Dirty War!."
Shades of deja vu.
They file through the Literary
College building, to the surprise of star-
tled secretaries and cashiers counting
the University's intake from another
day of operation. There is a distinct
look of amusement on some of their
faces, as if they are saying, "Oh, look at
See RAM BLINGS, Page 8
THERE'S BEEN a lot of talk
recently about the prospects for
so-called "quality programming."
Even Freddie Silverman, mentor of
such notably far-reaching shows as
Laverne and Shirley and The Love
Boat, has joined the commercial net-
work bandwagon to push for shows that
don't insult a viewer's intelligence.
Only now, there seems to be a new
factor with which to contend: While the
debates go on behind the closes doors of
CBS, NBC, and ABC, the folks over at
PBS, erstwhile champions of shows
that wouldn't last a half hour - on a
major network, are spending their time
figuring out how to be more like the
networks from which PSA was sup-
posed to differ.
As the tube's best alternative to Star-
sky and Hutch or Three's Company,
PBS has long been known for its forays
into, new types of programming. Of
course, most of the highlights on the.
PSB/schedule--Master Piece Theatre,
say, or Monty Python's Flying Cir-
cus-are imported from Britain. But as
the nation's PBS stations are becoming
more settled, they .are putting in-
creasing time and money into
domestically-produced programming.
Julie Rovner is a Daily managing
editor.
Much of these shows fit the
stereotype mold df highbrow elitist ap-
peal. This is not entirely unreasonable.
Highbrow elitists should have
something to watch, too. Besides, they
give much of the money that helps keep
PBS going. But if PBS prides itself on
being alternative television, then living
up to that label means taking chances
with innovative ideas. Is PBS really
taking that angle seriously? What hap-
pens when a different sort of show
doesn't garner wide appeal, even
though it gets rave reviews? In essence,
PBS is faced with the same nagging
question the commercial networks:
which is more important, quality or
ratings?
A good case in point is the untimely
death of New York's WNET's We In-
terrupt This Week, one of,the first en-
tirely PBS-produced comedy shows.
Describing WITW to someone. who
hasn't seen it is a tall order, as is trying
to explain why the show didn't catch on
outside a cult following that developed
on the east coast. At its simplest, itis a
quiz show, with two teams answering
current events questions from the
previous week. At the end of the show,
the team with the most points is
designated the winner..
Complicatingwthings is the fact that
points are awarded not only for
producing the right answer, but, as an-,
nouncer and guiding light Ned Sherrin
glibly pronounces at the beginning of
every show, "for lying in a creative or
inventive manner." All points going to
each team are awarded by Sherrin, who
assures 'the audience that all of his
decisions will be "capricious, ar-
bitrary, and final."
T HE TEAMS are comprised mostly
media heavies, and very few
people who would be recognized on the
street by the average person. This is
perhaps another reason why tke show
wasn't successful. The home team con-
sisted of Richard Reeves of Esquire
magazine, Washington socialite and
sometime author Barbara Howar, and
National Lampoon's Jeff Greenfield,
who was the team's best point man.
Members of the visiting team included
everyone from screenwriter Peter
Stone to NBC anchorperson Jessica
Savitch.1
Most of the questions were hopelessly
obscure, dealing with some of the
week's most determinedly incon-
sequential events (e.g., the name of a
man who was in some kind of legal
trouble because he refused to tear down
his outhouse). Panelists admitted that
the only useful preparation for the show
was to read the week's Washington
Posts and New York Times' from cover
to cover.
4,
sunddY magazine
i1ICiiESTdE! PUZZLE
A. Pioneer English canal-
builder(1716.1772) 195
B. Resembling on automaton
5
C. Possible site, near LakeRudolph in
Ethiopia. for the down of man -
(2 words) 4
D. Danish physicist (1885-1952)
credited with synthesizing
quantum and atomic theory (Fl-am)4
(Fullname) -0
E. Thin and brittle bread made from _
the cereal avena sativo 16
F. Eng. naturalist (1823-1913) who
independent of Darwin, proposed
theory of evolution by
natural selection 122
G. German physicist (1887-1961)
who developed the fundamental -
equation of quantum theory 14
H. Brit. moth. and physicist for whom
the absolute scale of -
temperature is named 80
1. Inspire or possess with a _
foolish possion 8
J. Wizard of Menlo Park (1847-1931) --
(Full name) 1
K. German physicist (1901 1977)
best known for his
Uncertainty Principle 2
99 108 150 178 185 45 59
i164 139 173 26 13 62 77 91 101
189 138 17 28 37 58 63 129
89 120 162 54 60 152 167 174
i56 97 147 182 165 186
i
L.Austrian physicist (1838-1916)-who
gave his name to the ratio of
the speed of a body to the
speed of sound in the surroundir
atmosphere (Full name)
M. Ancient Roman conduit
for flowing water
N. Athenian philosopher (470-399
B.C.) famous for his "method"
0. Founder of modern astronomy
(1473-1543)
P. Turn inside out or cause to
protrude by eversion
Q. Untrue; without basis in
tact (3 words)
R. Discuss; deal with:"handle
S. Gorge in Tonzania where Leakey
made his discoveries
T. Printer (14601527) famous
for his editions of the
classics
U. Russian chemist (1834-1907)
who created the
periodic table
V.Diplom tsyc official ervirng an
embassy in a technical
capacity
W. Formerly known as the Germon
Ocean (2 words)
.g -
3 88 125 49 102 191 146 70 157
10 43 53 75 86 135 104 181
22 177 47 114 161 169 190 76
9 111 98 21 31 69 79 38 55 180
6 29 51 90 103 133 158 166 179
46 134 23 67 123 128 110 142 187 197
7 144 8 93 136
39 106 33 96 159 66 115
141 19 163 95 116 121 81 131 188
112 30 82 12 42 57 64 71 112
25 126 137 32 50 148 160
BY
S TEPHEN J.
POZSGAI
Copyright 1977
INSTRUCTIONS
Guess the words defined at the
left and write them in over
their numbered dashes. Then,
transfer each letter to the cor-
responding numbered square
in the grid above. The letters
printed in the upper-right-hand
corners of theasquares indi-
cate from what clue-word a
particular square's letter
comes from. The grid, when
filled in, should read as a
quotation from a published
work. The darkened squares
are the spaces between words.
Some words may carry over
to the next line. Meanwhile,
the first letter of each guessed
word at the left, reading down,
forms an acrostic, giving the
author's name ang the title of
the work from which the quote
is extracted. As words and
phrases begin to form in* the -
grid, you can work back and
forth from clues to grid until
the puzzle is complete.
Answer to the previous puzzle
Confronted with the liv-
ing substance of farming-
the complex/y even mys-
teriously interrelated lives
on which it depends, from
the microorganisms in the
soil to the human consum-
ers-the agriculture special-
ist can think only of turn-
ing it into a machine.
(Wendell) Berry
(The) Unsettling of
America
foiai
(Continued from Page 3)
delays of six to eight months on some of
his forty requests for files from Detroit
and Washington D.C. FBI offices.
Agency officials attribute the delays
to the strain of processing the tens of
thousands of file requests that have
poured in since FOIA's passage in 1966.
That torrent increased when amen-
dments tightening up loopholes in the
law were passed in 1974 and 1976. The
FBI, which was exempt from file
requests until the 1974 amendment was
passed, received 36,000 FOIA the
state's Privacy Act requests for infor-
mation in the last two years, according
to Special Agent Eric Williams. CIA
Deputy Chief of Information and
Privace Staff Charles Savige said that
agency received more than 4000
requests last year.
Soon after the amendments passed a
nation-wide network concerned with in-
telligence abuses and what could be
done about them began to form. Groups
like FOIA Inc., the Center for National
Security Studies in Washington D.C.,
Ralph Nader's FOIA Clearinghouse,
and the campaign for Political Rights
(formerly the Campaign to Stop Gover-
nment Spying) added to intelligence
agency woes by studying and inter-
preting files-and by encouraging
people to ask for files of their own.
To some, the delays are minor an-
noyances that must be endured in order
to receive valuable information. Dave
White, news director of Detroit radio
station WJR, received 1330 pages of
FBI documents relating to the 1967 riots
in Detroit in August 1978-seven mon-
ths after his station had filed its
request. But White- was philosophical
about the time lag.
"Well, I feel it's a long time, but bet-
ter late than never," he said. "I don't
think you can expect, in an organization
of the size and scope of the Bureau, or
any other federal agency, to go in there
and have them just snatch out all of
their files and dump them on your desk.
They're going to fly-speck your request.
They're always going to look at things
that they think don't pertain directly to
what you asked for," added White.
"And that's something we're going to
have to live with." -
But Bellant doesn't buy huge
backlogs as a reason for long delays.
Bellant, as well as Steffens and Berlet,
explained that the FBI and other in-
telligence agencies were avoiding
prompt processing by refusing to hire
enough personnel to handle the enor-
mous number of requests.
Diane Sinclair, who helped John
Marks research his. book on CIA attem-
pts at mind control, The Search for the
Manchurian Candidate, feels the CIA
may have purposefully delayed
releasing information in order to keep it
out of Mark's book.
They knew we were working on a
book deadline, and I guess the idea was
if they could stall us long enough then
we wouldn't have that material to put in
our book, which, in fact, we didn't," she
said.
BI AND CIA officials attribute
the processing backlog to other
causes. Savige, who said the CIA
had the equivalent of more than 116 full-
time staff members processing
requests last year, said delays were
caused by the agency's decentralized
filing system. Savige explained the CIA
has 23 different departmentalized in-
dexes instead of one centralized file so
that "only those with a real need to
know" have access to information.
Because these filing systems have to be
searched each time a request is
processed, Savige said, responses can
take quite a while.
Ultimately, however, the patient and
persistent petitioner can wait out agen-
cy delay tactics. More distressing are
massive editing of documents and the
refusal to release large amounts of in-
formation that is often encountered.
Recipients of FOIA material say it is
not inknown to find documents that
have been entirely obliterated except
for the name of the individual who has
made the request. Names of persons
who work for the intelligence agency
are always censored for privacy
reasons. And opponents of the editing
procedure claim other information is
sometimes arbitrarily left out.
Occasionally, information an in-
telligence group hoped to keep secret
will slip out. Detroit attorney Neal Bush
explained that in small political groups
infiltrated by the FBI, it is often
possible to determine from the infor-
mation made public which member of
the group is the informant. According
to Berlet, one intelligence group used a
magic marker that could be seen
through when held up to a light. But af-
ter a short while, he said, that mistake
was remedied.
Observers become almost uniformly
more emotional when they describe in-
telligence agency justifications for
holding back information. The FOIA
and its amendments list nine narrowly
drawn exemptions under which an in-
telligence group can refuse to turn over
information. The exemptions range
from national security to trade secrets
to "geological and geophysical infor-
mation and data," but the national
security rationale is the most widely
used.
Many people who follow FOIA feel
the exemptions are abused by in-
telligence agencies. Berlet, who said
the 55,000 pagaes of COINTELLPRO
documents released by the FBI were
probably "less than half" the infor-
See FOIA, Page 8._um.,'
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35 27 '78 87 107 170 183 151 155 193
140 196 119 20 156
85 153 36 72 44 105 130 145
24 68 176 84 109,118 184 149 171 7C 92
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