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OPINION
Page 4
Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan
Vol. XCVI, No. 34 420 Maynard ST,
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board
Tuesday, October 22, 1985
The Michigan Daily
'Intelligence is' only the start*
Prize tainted
THE DECISION to give the 1985
T Nobel Peace Prize to the In-
ternational Physicians for the
Prevention of Nuclear War is
positive only in its intent. While the
ideal of preventing nuclear war is
one deserving of recognition, the
organization chosen should uphold
more of the values with which the
award has come to be identified.
Among those values is a strong
respect for human rights. This was
teaffirmed in last year's selection
of Bishop Tutu. The IPPNW, an
organization of Physicians from
both the East and West, is notable
for its lack of respect for human
rights.
Prof. Marat Vartanyan of the In-
9titute of Psychiatry and a leading
member of the group has been a
proponent of putting dissidents in
mental hospitals, a practice which
lead to the expulsion of the Soviet
delegation from a recent world
psychiatry conference.
The American branch of the
group has been equally callous in
its attitude toward those members
of the Soviet peace community who
work outside the government. Co-
President Dr. Bernard Lown of
Harvard has repeatedly failed to
acknowledge the attempts of
relatives of jailed Soviet dissident
Andrei Sakharov to meet with him.
At a group conference in Helsinki
both Lown and Co-President
Yevgeny Chazov of the Soviet
Union categorically refused to
meet with Sakharov's step-
children.
The award could be justified only
if these groups were particularly
successful in bringing the dangers
of nuclear war before all the people
of the world, and they have clearly
failed to do so. Although a group of
Soviet members did publish the
medical effects of nuclear war,
their work was distributed almost
entirely in the west, giving no im-
petus to development of a stronger
peace movement in the Soviet
Union.
Another hindrance is the fact
that the Soviet physicians tend to
hold high government positions.
Chazov, for example, was Brez-
nev's personal physician and has
never endorsed a peace plan which
hasn't first been proposed by the
Kremlin.
By contrast, there are groups in
the Soviet Union, attempting to
maintain contact with American
peace groups, which maintain
their independence from gover-
nment dogma. The leader of the
Moscow Group to Establish Trust
between the U.S. and USSR was
recently sentenced to a three year
prison sentence in part for
possessing information on the
American peace movement. Mem-
bers of this group, as well as more
famous dissidents such as
Sakharov have repeatedly been
jailed or put into mental hospitals
for demonstrating against the ar-
ms race.
In the past the Nobel committee
has honored those who stand for
both peace and social justice. Even
if this meant that they stood in op-
position to their governments. The
IPPNW, unfortunately, is no such
noble organization.
By David Buchen
and Mark Weinstein
One year ago, protests against the Central
Intelligence Agency here at the University of
Michigan helped to spark nationwide campus
protests against CIA recruitment. In April,
nearly 500 people were arrested at the
University of Colorado for protesting the CIA.
On campuses everywhere, the CIA has been
met with active resistance to their attempts
at recruitment.
This Tuesday and Wednesday the CIA is
returning to Ann Arbor to recruit. And again
they will be met by large crowds demanding
that they leave.
Why does the CIA get such treatment from
people all across the nation? Aren't they just
an intelligence gathering agency for the
government? What is wrong with that you
might ask?
The CIA is the government department in
charge of not only "intelligence gathering"
but also more importantly overthrowing
governments they don't like, assassinating
people they consider a "threat" to our
security, training the secret police of fascist
countries to protect "democracy," influen-
cing the elections of foreign countries,
producing misinformation to manipulate
public opinion in the U.S., keeping track of
U.S. citizens opposed to government policies,
and who knows what else.
Everything that we know of the CIA's ac-
tivities is vehemently denied by the gover-
nment. The operations of the agency are kept
secret from the U.S. public. What we know of
the CIA is only the tip of an iceberg.
The action of the CIA most prominent right
now is the training, funding, and directing of
the Somocista contra forces fighting to over-
throw the government of Nicaragua.Ac-
cording to Edgar Chamorro, a former contra
leader, the contras "have been subject to
manipulation by the Central Intelligence
Agency, which has reduced it to a front
organization."-
The CIA has trained the contras to be a
highly effective terrorist force. The contras
based in Honduras and Costa Rica make
regular runs into Nicaragua with the help of
U.S. air support to destroy farm cooperatives,
health care clinics, schools. Over 7,000 people
have been killed by the Contras.
Stansfield Turner, former director of the
CIA, has said that "The people they're sup-
porting down there are committing murders
and terrorism and so on. The CIA is suppor-
ting terrorism in Nicaragua. The contras are
Buchen is an AnnLArbor resident.
Weinstein is a junior in LSA.
doing things that I'm ashamed of hearing that
the United States is doing."
In 1984, the CIA mined the harbors of
Nicaragua. This action was in direct conflict
with international laws. Edgar Chamorro
recalls, "After the CIA mined Nicaragua's
harbors, I was awakened at my "safe house"
in Tegucigalpa, Honduras at 2 a.m. by an
anxious CIA agent. He handed me a press
release written in perfect Spanish by CIA of-
ficials.... Of course we had no role in mining
the harbors."
The mining of the harbors, the murder of
health care workers, the rape and murder of
wedding parties, the constant threats of in-
vasion have all been justified by the claim
that the U.S. is trying to stop arms shipments
from Nicaragua to El Salvador. These two
countries have no common border and the
bay that separates them is filled with U.S.
warships.
David MacMichael, a former CIA analyst
who had access to all reports from the region
in the time that these arms shipments sup-
posedly occurred, recently testified to the
World Court that these allegations were com-
plete fabrications.
Why then is the United States so involved in
the contra war? Stansfield Turner says,
"There's no doubt about it in anybody's mind.
All along, there's only been one objective --
to overthrow the government of Nicaragua."
Overthrowing the democratically elected gover-
nments may seem like a strange thing for an
"intelligence gathering" agency to be doing,
but unfortunately the CIA has much practice
in ousting democratic governments in favor.
of military dictatorships.
In 1954, the CIA brought about the over-
throw of the government of Guatemala. A
man named Arbenz had justbeen elected and
he was "left-leaning." After he nationalized
some land claimed by U.S. corporations, the
CIA and the corporations worked together
and brought about his overthrow. There have
not been democratic elections since that time.
In 1972, the CIA led the coup which ousted!
Chilean president Salvador Allende. General
Pinochet who took over the government still
reigns today.
Of course the Bay of Pigs fiasco was a poor
attempt by the CIA to overthrow Castro in
Cuba. And in Iran, the Shah was put in power
by the CIA in 1953.
The CIA also uses more subltle ways of af-
fecting foreign affairs. In El Salvador, Jose
Napolean Duarte received hundreds of
thousands of dollars in campaign con-
tributions from the CIA. The CIA also subver-
ts foreign labor unions, student groups, and
political parties.
Of course as an "intelligence gathering"
agency, the CIA has the obligation to share
that information with our "friends." The CIA
trained the South African secret police force,
BOSS. In El Salvador and Guatemala, the
CIA trained the right wing death squads
which have killed thousands and "disap-
peared" 38,000 people in Guatemala alone.
The CIA also has trained the secret police of
South Korea, Taiwan, Chile, and other coun-
tries such as the Phillipines.
During the Vietnam war, the CIA carried
out the Phoenix program. The Phoenix
program would identify key anti-government
dissidents and then have them assassinated.
This program alone brought about thousands
of deaths. The CIA was also in Vietnam long
before most of our troops were there. They
were there as "advisorsi"
According to Ralph McGehee, a CIA agent
for 25 years, "The Agency forged documents,
planted evidence of weapons shipments, and
doctored documents to justify military inter-
vention." Sound like Nicaragua?
Here in the United States, the CIA has
illegally kept track of U.S. anti-government
activists. Ralph McGehee says that the CIA's
domestic programs often violated "U.S. law
and the agency's own charter. The Agency
also infiltrated labor, student, youth and
religious groups: It had thousands of college
professors and administrators working for it
on hundreds of campuses.''
One example of the CIA gathering in-
telligence was in one program they subjected
U.S. citizens to mind altering drugs without
their knowledge. According to the Church
Commission, a mid-70s Senate committee in-
vestigating CIA abuses, the CIA opened over
28 million pieces of mail between 1953 and
1973. The CIA also has trained police forces
across the United States in special tactics.0
When the CIA comes to campus on October
22 and 23, people should realize that it is not
an "intelligence gathering" agency coming to
recruit librarians and analysts.
The CIA is the largest, best funded, best
equipped, and most violent terrorist
organization in the world. A terrorist
organization which overthrows
democraticly elected governments and then
claims innocence in the U.S.. media. A
terrorist organization which teaches torture
techniques to the secret police of fascistO
regimes to protect "democracy." A terrorist
organization which funds the murder, torture,
and rape of people in Nicaragua. A terrorist
organization which keeps files on you and me.
These are the practices that the CIA is
ultimately recruiting employees for here at
the University.
Chassy
TI[ DOMINI1O
TII EORLY
Health care bias
D EATH, SUPPOSEDLY, is
color blind, yet a recent
government report indicates that
American Blacks and Hispanics
have a higher premature death
rate than White Americans.
The report, issued by Secretary
of Health and Human Services
Margaret Heckler, focused on the
disparity in effective health care
between the groups, and deter-
mined that minority groups had
"not benefited fully or equitably"
from the "fruits" of the advances
made in medical research in the
last several decades.
The series of statistics indicates
a disturbingly higher incidence of
preventable deaths, particularly
for minorities in the Black
American population. In all, the
study estimated that if the
premature death rates for Blacks
and other minority groups were the
same as those for whites, 60,000
deaths would be prevented each
year.
In response to the problem, the
report recommends that current
government programs such as
Medicaid alter their focus to offer
more prenatal care and self-help
programs. It does not advocate the
creation of any new programs, nor
call for increased funding to
existing programs.
As serious a problem as the
report documents, however,
will not fade away as a result of
self-help practices. It will take in-
creased education programs and
increased availability of simple
medical examinations to alleviate
the problem; and those programs
will obviously take more money.
The fact that the health
discrepancies take place along
racial lines is particularly distur-
bing because it demostrates latent
constraints on minorities. Even as
legal discrimination has vanished,
effective discrimination, resulting
additionally in lower average
salaries and less education, per-
sists.
In order to attend to the problem
the report exposes and to respond
to residual racial barriers, the
government is going to have to pay
the problem more heed than it
seems inclined to.
LT
-1 ~
Vr
LET TERS
0
0
MSA should not advocate disruption
To the Daily:
Learning comes not only from
classroom lectures and tex-
tbooks, but from the exchanges of
varying opinions and ideas. A
university environment
facilitates such educational
processes by bringing together
individuals to share their dif-
fering perspectives.
Certainly it is ironic that a
Republican Vice-President and
former Director of the Central In-
telligence Agency spoke at a
repugnant. Vice-President Bush
nonetheless has the right to speak
publically, not only as Vice-
President, but as a U.S. citizen.
The right to protest is an
inherent right of every
American, Doubtless, anti-Ad-
ministration demonstrations will
be staged regardless of MSA's
position.
If MSA is going to advocate
protest, it should specifically
urge constructive protest over of-
BLOOM COUNTY
fensive disruptions. Simply put,
MSA's energies should be spent
proclaiming what we are for,
rather than decrying what we are
against.
There are many pressing
issues confronting the Assembly
such as the nonacademic code of
conduct, campus security,
minority recruitment and reten-
tion, and financial aid. While it is
important to consider national
and international issues as they
concern students, it is important
that we not lose sight of campus
issues or overlook the celebration
of the Peace Corps 25th anniver-
sary.
-Stephen M. Heyman
October 2
Heyman is an MSA represen-
tative from LSA.
We encourage our readers to use this
space t' discuss and respond to issues of
teir rnornW IA/hnthor thn 'o tnnirc
by Berke Breathed
ser
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ro
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