Page 4 -The Michigan Daily - Friday, November 16, 1990 Ott 3rdmijun 1ailU EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 420 Maynard Street Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109 NOAH FINKEL Editor in Chief DAVID SCHWARTZ Opinion Editor Unsigned editorials represent a majority of the Daily's Editorial Board. All other cartoons, signed articles, and letters do not necessarily represent the opinion of the Daily. U.S. v. CNN High court should support press over fair trial THE UNITED STATES' CRUSADE TO convict deposed Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega may soon end unsuc- cessfully with the recent decision of a Florida District Court in Miami. Last Friday, Judge William Hoeveler ordered a federal investigation into recorded audio tapes of conversations between Noriega and his aides and de- fense attorney team. Hoeveler also banned the Cable News Network (CNN) from broadcasting the tapes, because he said they threaten Noriega's right to a fair trial with an impartial jury. Noriega has been detained at a prison outside Miami since his capture last December. Like other inmates, he must notify guards if he wants to use the telephone, and all calls are moni- tored. Frank Rubino, Noriega's chief attorney, claims that government offi- cials improperly recorded some of these phone conversations, including a discussion about Noriega's trial strat- egy. Justice Department officials deny any wrongdoing, though government eavesdropping - perhaps not illegal - could jeopardize the case against the former dictator. The fact that the tapes exist, argues Rubino, is a violation of the Sixth Amendment and its implied attor- ney/client privilege. The Sixth Amendment requires that a criminal cannot have a fair trial without an attor- ney, nor can a criminal have fair repre- sentation if someone violates the crimi- nal's privacy with the attorney. Only the criminal can waive this confidence of security. If CNN plays the tapes, they may expose confidential privileges between an attorney and client. "The court may be leaning toward favoring attorney/client privilege, based on Friday's decision," commented Joan Lowenstein, LSA Adjunct Com- munications Lecturer. CNN has not broadcast the conver- sations between Noriega and his legal team, and until the network does, Ru- bino's argument does not apply. Judge Hoeveler must reverse his decision and allow CNN to show the tapes to the public. However, the issue surpasses CNN's right to broadcast a thirty-sec- ond videotape on the 6 p.m. news. The case brings to question the conflict between First Amendment rights to free speech and access to information and Sixth Amendment rights to a fair trial. When the media releases "incriminating" or "convincing" evi- dence, it may affect the opinions of potential jurors. The question, then, is whether or not a criminal can be granted a fair trial if potential jurors na- tionwide have continually heard or seen only one side of the case. History points to the fact that the courts know they can find fair jurors for any trial, regardless of what the media has told them. For this reason, freedom of the press has traditionally been supported over the right to a fair trial. Therefore, the courts have been re- luctant to issue "gag orders" -deci- sions mandating that the press not pub- lish or broadcast something. For ex- ample, the courts ruled that the under- cover tapes used to incriminate Marion Barry were legal, and thus did not issue a "gag order" during the Washington D.C. mayor's trial. According to the courts, Barry's Sixth Amendment rights were still protected. The court decision in the case of the Pentagon Papers in the early 1970's is perhaps CNN's biggest ally. In that case, the court ruled that the defense had not convinced the court that the is- sue was one of national security - the only constitutional justification for prior restraint. Thus, the press had the right to publish the classified informa- tion it had obtained. Certainly Nor- iega's phone calls from prison do not represent a threat to United States' na- tional security. During the Oliver North trial, ABC television aired a report after which they said anyone who had seen the segment would not be able to serve as a juror for the trial. In this case, as in the case of the Pentagon Papers, the courts ruled in favor of the press. In 1976, the Supreme Court ruled that prior restraint - prohibiting the dissemination of information by the press because of perceived dangers - was one of the most serious First Amendment violations. Judge Hoeveler must find a way other than prior re- straint to ensure Noriega a fair trial and impartial jury - banning CNN from airing the tapes is clearly prior restraint. The United States' effort to convict Noriega on federal drug trafficking charges cannot be jeopardized because the government recorded his phone conversations. There is no issue of na- tional security involved. If the government succeeds in en- joining CNN from broadcasting the tapes through prior restraint, a danger- ous precedent will be set - one that breaches the integrity of the First Amendment. Y'~ LANA KA/oWAJ .4_' r 0 /- |, /C -- Ts.- Teach-In will analyze Gulf situation~ By Bert Hornback and Tom Weiskopf "What's a Teach-In?" Twenty-give years ago we were all asking that question. Frithjof Bergmann and a couple of col- leagues had just called a Teach-In for 7 p.m. Friday night. It was March 1965. The Vietnam War was still small, but growing rapidly. And we were all sitting here, doing very little to stop it. That first Teach-In lasted 12 hours. Some 3000 of us went to school from 7 p.m. Friday evening until 7 a.m. Saturday morning, to learn about our war. Our classes that night taught us about the history of Southeast Asia, about its culture, about its colonization by Western nations. They gave us a chance to discuss why we were there, and how we got there, and what we could do to get us out. That first Teach-In served as a catalyst for anti-war activity on campus, and more and more Teach-Ins began to spread the word rapidly all across America. The war in the Persian Gulf hasn't started yet. But our government is ready to start it, eager to get the first shots fired so we can... So we can what? Does anybody know what we expect to accomplish by means of this war? After three months of con- fused talk from a confused administration, does anybody know why 210,000 Ameri- cans - soon to be 400,000 - are in Saudi Arabia? Do we need that many troops to protect Hornback is a Professor of English and Wesskopf is a Professor of Economics. the Saudis from attack? Hardly. We're told we need to be prepared for offensive ac- tion. But why? To protect oil fields by bombing them? To restore to his rightful throne a minor but very rich little despot? To defeat out earlier friend and ally, Sad- dam Hussein? Or do we need to "use force" against Iraq to show the world our strength and re- solve? To prove our president's manhood? It's very confusing. In the midst of all killed. To act to stop this war, however, we need to know as fully as we can what's going on, in Washington and in the Gulf. And that is the purpose of the Teach-In. { The Teach-In will open at 7 p.m. in. Angell Auditoritum B with a major ad- dress by an expert on the Persian Gulf, the Hon. James Akins - long a foreign ser- vice officer in the Middle East, United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia from Do we need that many troops to protect the Saudis from attack? Hardly. We're told we need to be prepared for offensive action. But why? To protect oil fields by bombing them? To restore to his rightful throne a minor but very rich little despot? To defeat out earlier friend and ally, Saddam Hussein? the confusion, most of us can't see the genuine issues for all the false ones. Some of us are reduced to cynicism. That's why a group of faculty have called another Teach-In, for this Sunday evening. It's depressing to realize that we're back where we were 25 years ago. But the world is now a more dangerous place than it has been in many decades; we are on the brink of what could be a most stupid and hideous war. So there's work to do. This time we want to stop the disaster before it happens, before several hundred thousand people - most of them Arabs, most of the rest poor Americans, and a hugely disproportionate number of those Black Americans - get 1973 to 1975, and now an independents foreign policy consultant in Washington. Following Mr. Akins' address twelve different classes will be offered (in hour-, long time slots from 8 p.m. to midnight); on topics ranging from "The History of the Middle East" to "Oil" to "Who Will Fight OUr War." The formats of these classes will vary, but all will encourage. serious, thoughtful discussion. And if we do things right, that discussion will con- tinue long after the Teach-In is over. At midnight we will all reconvene in Auditorium B, to discuss briefly what we, have been learning, and what kinds of things we might do next. Come and join: us, while we still have time to act. ' Flush the Pipes :Beware of'Dog' Should students have a python in the dorm? STICKS AND STONES MAY BREAK your bones, but four-foot pythons will never hurt you. At least that is what the owners of that now-infamous reptile claim as they keep a vigil, waiting for their slithering serpent to return from its week-long adventure through the ventilator system of Couzens Hall. Students at Couzens now find them- selves at the mercy of Dog, the snake. He winds his way through the pipes, watching and waiting for the perfect opportunity to victimize some innocent student. No one knows for sure where he will next emerge, but some students are absolutely panic-stricken. This whole slithery situation brings attention to the debate over which pets should be allowed in the dorms. Dogs, pigs, armadillos, and pythons are completely unacceptable, but fish should be allowed (except barracudas, sharks, and piranhas). In addition, stu- dents should act responsibly, respect their neighbors, and not bring an alliga- tor or a chimpanzee to school with them. Rumors persist to this day that bats, those lovable, winged, Transylvanian bloodsuckers, still loom in the attics of some of the residence halls, waiting for the day when they can make Alfred Hitchcock's prophesy come true and fling themselves down on the diag at noon one day. So what animals, legal or not, can be found within this campus jungle? Can we expect Marlon Perkins to show up one day on the hill with a camera crew, looking for rare species of ro- dents? He might try looking at the next MSA or regents meeting, but as for the residence halls, who knows. Neverthe- less, this saga of Dog, the missing Python at Couzens, forces us to make November "Animal Awareness Month" at the University. For the rest of you at Couzens who are terrified to walk the halls for fear that you could be swallowed whole by the voracious viper, don't blame the owners of the beast. They were just trying to make their room a little more like home. To the Daily: During the past month, I and the 1,100 or so residents have noticed the continuous discoloration of the hot and cold water throughout Markley. I first noticed the wa- ter turning shades of brown and red in the bathroom sinks and subsequently the rust stains on the shower walls and floor. Resi- dents on other hallways have seen the same in the toilets. So far, the actions taken by the resi- dents have been complaints to the front desk, (possibly to environmental services), and several petitions by Markley Council. At one point, it was announced that it was unsafe to use the washing machines. The problem was apparently (visually) fixed by either filters of bleaching the wa- ter, but as of recently the discoloration was back. I have heard rumors that a similar problem arose at Michigan State Univer- sity, and after a complaint by an affected student, the state threatened to shut down the dorm until it was fixed. I drink a lot of water and, last week, bought bottled water for the first time, rather than drink whatever has infested our pipes. (I now have an idea what it must be like, on a lesser scale, for our troops in the Middle East to drink water.) Markley is open all year round, so there never seems to be any good time to shut down the building for necessary annual repairs. I have heard that our building director wishes to close Markley this coming summer, but that will do us little good. I wonder if we can sue the residence hall phone Books." First, our office regretted the necessity of not collecting phonebooks this year as we had done the previous two years. Part of our disappointment in hav- ing to make this decision was the fact that the phonebooks are an excellent "gateway" recyclable. Because they are large, conspicuous, and can lead people to participate in the many other ongoing and expanding recy- cling programs that the University oper- ates, it would certainly be in the interest of the University to expend the relatively high price in collecting and recycling these books. Unfortunately, unlike the last two years when we were able to find a market (albeit scarcely), it wouldn't make any sense to separate telephone books, only to watch them go into a landfill anyway. In addition, assuming that we would have collected roughly 30 tons of phone- books, this would amount to, at most, 3 percent of our overall paper recovery pro- jection of 1100 tons for the 1990 -1991 fiscal year (which we expect to exceed). The decision to collect or not collect phonebooks will continue to take place year-by-year based on the marketability of this product. We are already exploring sev- eral options that might allow us to collect them again next year. There is, however, a step that can be taken now. Our experience over the last two years of collecting phonebooks, has demonstrated convincingly that a signifi- cant percentage of the books collected had never been distributed throughout the buildings. We know this because of the large University has right to deputize its police To the Daily: In recent days, there has been much discussion over what activities and proce. dures the University has the right to su- pervise. The one thing most of the people involved in these arguments forget is that the University is a branch of the State of Michigan. That means that every citizen has the right to elect a regent to (however badly) assure that their tax dollars go where they want them spent. Having students elect the regents would deprive many citizens of their right to influence the disposition' of their tax dollars. It means that the University can have a police force if it wants, because the State of Michigan has the legal authority to cre- ate armed police forces, which are re- stricted by other laws. And it means that, if the public likes, it can create a code to insure that the stu- dents who receive their tax dollars to sub- sidize their education adhere to minimal standards of decency. If you can't accept these facts, then I challenge anyone to find a private school that can deliver the same education at the same price. If you can't -- and I doubt you can - then face up to the debt you owe Michigan's people. Jason Larke -" 0 > , 0. }}i CxF~'Fllw}r?$......F....... . J; Y.J .:.}' t{r..rJJrJ.~y'~~'rlrf. .r r " .