The Michigan Daily Edited and managed by Students at the University of Michigan Thursday July 24, 1975 News Phone: 764-0552 ic an leads the way THE MICHIGAN HOUSE has passed an innovative po- litical reform bill that is one of the most extensive and demanding in the entire nation. The bill, passed 74-29 on Tuesday, sets ceilings on campaign spending, provides for public financing of gub- ernatorial campaigns, requires disclosure of private fi- nances by public officials and their families, and pro- mises a closer, almost itemized regulation of persuasive spending by lobby and pressure groups. The measure is designed to have a number of com- mendable effects in the areas of fair democratic elec- tions and decision-making processes in state government. The limit on campaign spending in elections for gov- ernor, state senator, state representative, Supreme Court justice and state Board of Education member will ideally allow voters a ballot choice based more on endowment with legislative and leadership abilities than with un- limited expense accounts. DISCLOSURE OF THEIR financial holdings and the source of those holdings by State officials will bring personal involvements and potential conflicting interests to the visible surface. Extending that request for finan- cial information to the officials' families further insures revelation of interests that could conceivably affect an official's actions or decisions in office. The tighter regulation of expenditures by lobby and pressure groups is designed to encourage persuasion on the merits of argument and point rather than gratitude and obligation. It is hoped that the bill will have the effects desired by its originators on the election of our state law and policy makers and on the decisions they make in office. The measure provides for a political ethics commission to investigate all sworn complaints of misconduct and unfair practice, and to watchdog the activities of state pressure groups; it is also hoped that this regulatory commission will be effective in enforcing the bill's am- bitious reforms. THE. LIGHTER SIDE Runn ing hard unopposed By DICK WEST WASHINGTON (UPI) - The Federal Election Commission recently invited the public to submit views on various cam- paign regulations it is considering. One of the matters on which it solicited comment concerns proposed spending limits for candidates who are running unopposed. The question the commission was wrestling with was whe- ther candidates who have no primary opposition should be permitted to spend the same amount as those in contested primaries. Since this happens to be an issue I feel strongly about, I have spent a good bit of time collecting my thoughts for pre- sentation to the commission. I am setting them forth here in the hope that if you are likeminded you will let the commission know about it, too. In all fairness, it seems to me, an unopposed candidate shouldn't have any limit on his campaign spending. POLITICIANS have a hard time drumming up support when the race is close. In a contested primary, a candidate's major source of support comes from voters who can't stand the other candidate. Candidates who are forced to run unopposed not only lose that advantage; they acquire at least two big disadvantages. Possibly the main obstacle an unopposed candidate mst overcome is the undecided vote. Public opinion polls invariably show that whenever vot- ers are given no choice there is a substantial increase in the percentage who can't make up their minds. Actually, of course, in an uncontested primary the voters do have a choice of sorts. In effect, they are told that "it's either him or nobody." And that is the point on which many are unable to reach a decision. Thus, for an unopposed candidate the problem is twofold. He must look for support not only among voters who would prefer nobody but among those who aren't sure which they would prefer. New light on the CIA By WILLIAM W. TURNER (First of two parts) On September 20, 1963, a rangy man with a vertical scar on his forehead strode into the State National Bank in El Paso, Texas, and requested $100 in travelers' checks. Before the tel- ler could comply, he whipped out a pistol and fired two shots into the ceiling. Then he waited to be arrested. Police quickly realized that the suspect, Richard Case Nagell, 32, was no ordinary bank rob- ber. Papers he carried showed that he was a decorated hero of the Korean War who had gone on to a career in Army intelli- gence before being discharged with the rank of captain in 1959. Why had he pulled the non- robbery? Last week Dr. Richard H. Popkin, a philosophy professor at Washington University in St. Louis, stepped off a plane in the nation's capital lugging' a briefcase containing documents illuminating the strange case of the man who shot a bank. Also crammed into the briefcase was a thick sheaf of papers relating to a bizarre "Manchurian Can- didate" episode in the Philip- pines in 1967. Both the El Paso and Manila incidents, Popkin said in an in- terview before leaving for Wash- ington, were linked to the Dal- las assassination of JohntF. Ken- nedy on November 22, 1963. They "crack the case wide open," he predicted. The slight, bearded academic- ian was stopping in Washington to present his discoveries to At- tornev General Edward Levi and the Senate Select Commit- tee on Intelligence Activi'ies be- fore going on to a conference of learned philosophers. Popkin is no stranger to the JFK investigation. In 1966 he published "The Second Oswald", which chronicled several in- stances of someone impecsonet- ing the man later accused of slaying the president. At the time the book gained scant at- tention, but recently it was dis- closed that as early as June 3, 1960, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover himself wrote at interde- partmental memorandum citing evidence of an Oswald imposter. The FBI knew Oswald at that time as a defector to Russia, and, some conspiracy theorists believe, as a possible CIA agent. Popkin said he nad been in touch with Richard Nagell now living near San Diego, and had learned about .Nagall's friend- ship with Lee Harvey Oswald. Nagell has fascinated assassina- tion researchers ever since an FBI report filed with the War- ren Commission quoted him as saying he had met with Oswald in Mexico City and Texas. But the former intelligence officer had been inaccessible. He re- mained in prison for the El Paso caper until his conviction was reversed for insufficient evidence in 1967, after which he dropped from sight. Nevertheless, researchers were able to glean some picture of Nagell's significance from his defense pleadings and cryptic letters from prison. In August 1963 Nagell, work- ing as a CIA agent, learned of a domestic plot to assassinate the President, involving Oswald and anti-Castro Cubans. He in- formed his- CIA supericr b u t feared nothing would be done be- cause he lacked details. On Sep- tember 13 he dispatched a let- ter warning J. Edgar Hoover of the plot, but again assumed no action would be taken. As Nagell understood it, Ken- nedy was to be shot in Washing- ton about September 26 (as it turned out, JFK left September 25 for a whirlwind tour of the West). Frantic, Nagell flew to Havana on September 19 to see if Castro aides could shed light on the assassination plot, but the only advice they coild offer was to execute Oswald in the hope that would stop the plats. But Nagell left Cba de siding that he "was an intelligence agent, not a killer." Flying to El Paso via Mexico City, he walked into the bank the next day for "the sole purpose of nav- ing myself arrested and detain- ed by federal auttorities' - apparently fearing that his as- sociation with Oswald would im- plicate himself in the planned assassination. Nagell was in the El Paso jail when Kennedy was shot in Dal- las two months later. He sent an offer to testify before the Warren Commission through "private channels" but received no reply. In his recent discussions with Popkin, Nagell has revealed new details about Oswald. He first met Oswald, he said, in the late 1950s at the U.S. Naval base at Atsugi, Japan, where Oswald was a Marine Corps radar rpec- ialist. They became friends, but didn't encounter one another again until August 1963 w h e n Nagell learned of tie plot against Kennedy. Disputing claims that Oswald had ' ties with the CIA, Nagel believes that Oswald was a dedicated leftist who was duped by anti-Castro exiles involved in the conspir- acy. Posing as Castro G-2 intel- ligence agents, the exiles wheed- led Oswald into becoming a "fall guy" by playing on his Castro sympathies, painting Kennedy as anti-Castro, a n d promising that he would be spirited to Havanne after t h e assassination. Nagell told - Popkin he mset with Oswald in Mexico City and New Orleans, both hotbeds of the anti-Castro movement. "Na- gell claims be has squirreled away a snapshot of hims'tlf with Lee Harvey Oswald taken in Jackson Square in New Orleans in 1963," Popkin asserted. "In the picture are two other men, both anti-Castro Cubans, w h o were pretending to Oswald that they worked for Castro's C-2." If this photograph does exist it would lend credibility to Na- gell's account. And Nagell is willing to surface and tell his story to Congress, Popkin sws, provided protective coditiins are met. (Part Two tomorrow) William Turner is the au- thor of a book on the CIA's secret war against Castro, and a writer for the Pacific News Service. Copyright, -PNS, 1975. ru a .-MWwrl="* ATZCV41PGL .coo woo. i } I d i m"iil"='rrr M1 i .yillgtaAr i ' t' "