S r ening the ax for AMON& By GORDON ATCHESON was called to testify before the WASHINGTON - Until the af- Senate Watergate committee. ternoon of July 16, 1973, he was During his testimony that af- just another faceless federal ternoon, Alexander Butterfield Bureaucrat. dropped a nuclear bombshell on Before going to the Federal Richard Nixon's imperiled fort- Aviation Administration that ress with the announcement that March, he was a White House he president had tape recorded aide, an innnocuous middle-level his Oval Office conversations. paper pusher. In any event, he Those tapes and the bitter The Michigan Daily Edited and managed by Students at the University of Michigan Wednesday, July 23, 1975 News Phone: 764-0552 Wheeler ig nores puic MAYOR AL WHEELER'S display of back-room, power politics at Monday night's Council meeting did little to enhance either his political integrity or his stead with city voters. By trying to railroad a resolution through Council that would establish door-to-door voter registra- tion procedures citywide, Wheeler showed his contempt or ignorance of the citizens' mandate of last .April which shot down a door-to-door charter amendment during the city elections. The Daily believes such a procedure, if handled equitably, would do much to ensure that a maximum number of Ann Arbor residents would have a say in the city's affairs and who should conduct them. Yet we do not feel the procedure justifies the mayor's betrayal of the trust placed in him by the city electorate. MAYOR WHEELER MADE no effort to set up a public forum before introducing the resolution;a hearing was scheduled only after his tactic ran into heavy flak from Council itself. If Thursday night's move is any indication of Wheeler's attitude toward those who put him in office, it might be a good idea to keep a close eye on the mayor, lest he make a practice of letting his own whims take precedence over the wishes of local residents. legal battle to get them,'finish- ed Nixon off or at least forced pis resignation and probably would have landed him in t h e Alink had not Gerald F o r d interceded. After making his startling re- velation, Butterfield drifted back into the bureaucracy and was not prominently involved n any subsequent Watergatery. But suddenly, last week, he was back in the headlines when the rumors began to fly that he had been working for the Cen- tral Intelligence Agency during his years in the White House. THE SENATE committee in- vestigating the CIA has come- up with no evidence indicating that Butterfield was a CIA agent, according to a statement released last week by panel chairman Senator Frank Church. There has been very little - if any - fact to support the al- legation, and Butterfield has vig- orously denied it, saying that the charge has severely dam- aged his reputation. Butterfield left the govern- ment in January and went into private business, but according to a close FAA asociate, he "was driven out." And the same people who pressured him at the FAA are the ones pushing this story about him being a CIA operative, his former co-worker claimed over dinner. "The rumors about the CIA and Butterfield cametfrom Nix- on people who want to see But- terfield ruined," he. said. "They think Nixon might still be in office, if nobody found out about Letters: Lo To The Daily: I THOUGHT that you might be interested in a memo I wrote to some people within the Uni- versity of Michigan. It speaks to the needs of many people in our community, and a problem Butterfield the tapes, and Butterfield spill- ed the beans." THE MAN'S opinions w e r e just that - opinions. He offer- ed no hard evidence to support his theory abot' the "hatchet job" being done on Butterfield. Still, he positively said t h at Butterfield was never an em- ployee of the CIA or any other covert outfit, "No, I'm absolutely sure he didn't work for them," he de- clared. "Alex's problem that he was too honest . .. he could only tell the truth and when he says he's not a CIA agent, I believe him." Of course, this guy didn't know for sure. And what better person to have inside the White House than Butterfield, who had access to the Oval Office 'apes. Thus he could monitor the pre- sident's most important meet- ings and telephone calls. While the thought that the CIA might indeed have its claws in such high places as the Execu- tive Mansion is disturbing, the alternate theory - that ardent Nixon backers are smearing Butterfield - is equally discon- certing. IF THAT is the case, and ft seems plausible, one wonders where THEY will draw the line - simple whispering campaigns or maybe far worse. Who is on their list? Wood- ward and Bernstein, Leon saw- orski, and Elliot Richardsan. And who, in fact, are "they?" Reportedly, Jeb Stuart Ma- gruder, after pleading that he would never do bad things like dirty tricks again, began gather- ing defamatory information about people who had helped cause Nixon's downfall. Those allegations were never substantiated, either. It just may be that everyone is a bit paranoid after all the dirty laundry - Nixon's, the FBI's, and the CIA's - that has been washed in public lately. But considering what did go on secretly, it's not hard to "a- agine that Alexander Butterfield is being slandered as revenge for what he said on that after- noon three years ago. Gordon Atcheson is co- editor-in-chief of the Daily, working in Washington as a summer intern with, Knight Newspapers. W on the job ladder '1-4Er CO',e.%-uP (COwntINuE) that seems to be growing rather than diminishing - discrimina- tion in employment: I was just reading the article in the Michigan Daily on 'U liit for Failing onhAffirmative Ac- lion." It hit home wilth me. I am a secretary in the Uni- versity and have seen discrim- ination, sometimes ever so sub- tIe, as when my professors have assigned routine work to female part-time students employees and thought-provoking work to male part-time student employ- ees. I have been involved in the hiring of a research assistant and an assistant professor. Little effort. was made to search out qualified women or minorities. The lists of qualified women are available for use, but they cost money; maybe the Affirmative Action Office should pay those fees. No women applied for our assistant professor job. Snce we made a half-hearted effort to check women's clearinghouses for qualified women existedI for the job. We will soon be hi-cog a man. I BELIEVE that the women are there but have not been found. They were probably fun- neled into research associate or' other job ladders instead of onto the professorial job ladder. I believe that there are many qualified women right within the University job family w- are completely overlooked when a better job opening comes up. The University Affirmatine Ac- tion Office needs to become in- volved in gathering information on women and minorities and their backgrounds and interests, and then making the information available to professors and oth- ers so that these people can be upwardly mobile. It is obvious to me that this must be done by one unit within the University, so that seople can go to one well advertised, well organized location to find women and minorities who might be able to fill a parti- cular job. I have been a secretary within the University for a few years and will be leaving soon. I went to college so that I could be something other than a sezrc- tary. I want a job that offers me challenge, a chance to feel proud, and a chance to earn a good salary. I never thought that after college I would be working for 12 months and earning $7,- 848.00, and feeling little prid2 is myself. I FEEL that the Unive -sit, has taken more from me than it has given me ,in return. I know that many others feel the same way. Many of us are in- terested in getting better jos, but have not been creative in our approach to job-hunting We easily fall into the University clerical, or other low-level lad- der, and then are dissatisfied and do not know how to gat out. People 'applying for clerical and perhaps other low-level jobs need to be given job counsel- ing and a survey of ther real interests before they are given a typing test or an inte.view. There is no good reas-tn for keeping qualified, bright or mo- tivated people from upward mobility in the job families. -Name withheld by request July 18 Portugal To The Daily: IT IS RATHER odd to have everything protested about 0n campus except the fall of social democracy in Portugal. -Inez Pi1k July 20 1~