Page 8-Friday, July 13, 1979-The Michigan Daily Sen. Basil Brown admits he's a reformed alcoholic Military adviser denounces SALT LANSING (UPI) - Sen. Basil Brown, the volatile Senate "dean" whose drunk driving escapades became a political legend, quietly told reporters yesterday he is a recovering alcoholic. I feel great," said Brown, who has served in the Senate for 23 years - the longest of any of his colleagues. "I HAVEN'T felt better physically or mentally in years." The Highland Park Democrat, who has undergone extended hospital stays for alcoholism and heart disease, seemed subdued and there was little of the tension which often has marked his dealings with the news media. But he insisted his experiences will not alter his flamboyant style. "I'm the same old Basil Brown," he promised. "It isn't going to make a change in me ... I haven't been born again, even though I may be living for the first time." THE 52-YEAR-OLD Brown suffered a heart attack in May, shortly after the most recent in a series of drunk driving arrests. Brown was treated for heart disease in Lansing and Detroit and then checked into Brighton Hospital for three weeks of alcoholism treatments. He said he is continuing treatment for both and the prognosis is good. The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman came back to work to vote on key bills such as auto insurance reform despite a doctor's advice to stay home until mid-August. BROWN, WHO started drinking at 15, said he tried for 10 years to come to grips on his own with the problem. These efforts included spotty attendan- ce at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and the use of an anti-alcohol drug. "I always thought in my attempt to deny the disease. .. that accepting medical treatment was the thing that separated me from the other guy," he said. Brown called his treatment at Brighton Hospital "an educational ex- perience." "I was amazed at how ignorant I was, how ignorant most of the world is, about this disease," he said. Saying he has not had a drink in "a couple of months," Brown credited the AA program with giving him the strength to fight the habit on a one-day- at-a-time basis. He also thanked his family and friends for standing by him. Despite his dedication to the AA method, Brown said he does not intend to launch any reform campaigns in a legislature where drinking is a common facet of day-to-day business and recreation. WASHINGTON (AP) - The chief military adviser to the U.S. delegation at the SALT negotiations denounced the arms control treaty Thursday as one that "establishes the conditions which threaten our security for years to come." S"This treaty does not meet minimally acceptable standards," Retired Gen. Edward L. Rowny told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. ROWNY SERVED on the SALT delegation for six years as represen- tative of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He retired from the Army when the negotiations ended and joined the ranks of critics urging rejection of the agreement. He testified on the fourth day of hearings on SALT II, a day given over to opponents of the treaty. The retired general said that based on his experience negotiating with the Soviets, he believes a stronger treaty from the U.S. standpoint "was - and' still is - attainable." HE INSISTED that if U.S. negotiators had persisted in their Mar- ch 1977 proposal for sharp reductions in the most powerful missiles on both sides, that the Soviets would have agreed. The proposal submitted by the Carter administration was flatly rejec- ted by the Soviets who refused to con- sider ita basis for further negotiation. Rowny's statement was challenged by Sen. Edmund Muskie (D-Maine), who said, "You are saying that we could have had a better treaty if he had tried harder. . . You are saying it was so evident to you, it should have been evident to other negotiators . . . It ought to be based on something better than a person's gut reaction to per- sonalities." Muskie kept insisting that "I want to blame somebody . .. I want something tangible." But Rowny was unable to cite any evidence other than his ex- perience to support his contention that the Soviets would have accepted tougher U.S. proposals. Rowny served on the SALT delegation for six years as represen- tative of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He retired from the Army when the negotiations ended and joined the ranks of critics urging rejection of the agreement. HE TESTIFIED on the fourth day of hearings on SALT II, a day given over to opponents of the treaty. Meanwhile, the Senate Intelligence Committee -began closed hearings on whether the United States can verify Soviet compliance with the provisions of the treaty. That committee's findings will have a critical role to play in whether the treaty is ratified. Adm. Stansfield Turner, director of the CIA, was the opening witness before the Intelligence Committee. Earlier, Paul Nitze, a former deputy secretary of defense, said the treaty provisions "one-sidedly favor the Soviet Union." Nitze also called the treaty "wholly ambiguous" and said it could be used to prevent the most effec- tive deployment of the U.S. MX missile. NITZE IS an advocate of the so-called MPS basing system for the MX missile. Under MPS, dummy silos would be constructed to prevent the Soviets from knowing the exact location of each of the nation's intercontinental ballistic missiles. President Carter is expected to decide on a missile basing by Aug. 1. When it is deployed in the mid-1980s, the MX will be the largest missile in the U.S. arsenal. MPS is one of the options being considered. Nitze, a slight, gray-haired man who heads the Committee on the Present Danger, told the committee the MPS system is the only basing method that could adequately protect the MX from a Soviet missile attack. And he testified that he is certain the Soviets would ob- ject to MPS as a violation of SALT II. THE DISCUSSION on the MPS oc- curred as several members of the committee pressed Nitze to say whether any of the steps he says are necessary to upgrade U.S. strategic forces would be prohibited by SALT II. The only one he cited was the MPS deployment method. Nitze objected to allowing the Soviet Union to maintain its force of 308 giant SS-18 missiles and to the failure to in- clude the Backfire bomber as a strategic weapon covered by the treaty. "I think it's an outrage," he said. "The strategic balance will move from a position not far from parity to one of Soviet strategic nuclear superiority," Nitze said. When Sen. Jacob Javits, (R-N.Y.), asked Nitze if he were saying the two super powers were about equal now, the witness replied: "I believe we've slip- ped off the edge . . . It is on the wrong side of parity." Martin Scorsese's 1976 TAXI DRIVER Manhattan cabbie goes crazy on the night shift in a corrupt New York that resembles Fellini's Rome. In Robert De Niro's soft-spoken way "you talkin to me?" winner of the 1976 Cannes Film Festival grand prize. Screenplay by Paul Schrader. With HARVEY KEITEL, JODIE FOSTER, CYBILL SHEPARD and PETER BOYLE. In color. Sat: THE GROOVE TUBE Sun: Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS (free) TONIGHT AT OLD ARCH AUD CINEMA GUILD Q30&9:30T i$1.0 Felch Park Entertainment by Orchestra Members " Nothing by William Shakespeare OPENS TONIGHT 8 PM edding aY Wilder Band Fever ness! by Alice by Noel by Eugene Childress Coward O'Neill 1.1 REPERTORY AT POWER CENTER July 13-22 & Aug. 1-5 Pa.e ",'Cnter.Bo xOticepss" 6p.m.a 763.3333.Mi a e. .p79 Tick. toffice: weekdays noon to Sin teMigionague 7640450 -m The Ann Arbor Film Cooperstive Presents at MLB $1.50 Friday, July 13 THE CONQUEROR WORM (Michael Reeves, 1968) 4:40 only-MLB 3 VINCENT PRICE'S best "non hammy" role is in this excellent horror film set in England during butcher Cromwell's era. Price plays a self-styled "witch- hunter" who is paid for torturing confessions out of accused witches before they are executed. Director Reeves was considered the most promising British filmmaker since Carol Reed when he died tragically at age 2$. This is his last and best film. Not for the squeamish. PSYCHO (AlfredtHitchcock, 1960) Ta10:20-MLS3 Often cited as the most frigtening film ever mode, PSYCHO tells of a secretary (JANET LEIGH) who absconds with $40,000 and comes upon a lonely motel near a Gothic house inhabited by a strange young man (ANTHONY PERKINS) and his possessive mother. Need we continue? Will you ever shower again? If you've only seen it on TV, you've never really seen it. Chilling music by Bernard Herrmann: Tomorrow: BLUE COLLAR _ ,.