The Michigan Daily-Saturday, May 30, 1981-Page 7
AIR FORCE EMPLOYEE IN PRE-TRIAL CONFINEMENT
Officer charged with Soviet visit

WASHINGTON (AP)-A U.S. Air Force missile
launch officer has been charged witly "yisiting the
Soviet Embassy in Washington on more than one oc-
casion" without telling his superiors, the Pentagon
said yesterday.
Second Lt. Christopher Cook, 25, of Richmond, Va.,
is "in pre-trial confinement" at McConnell Air For-
ce Base near Wichita, Kan., the Pentagon said.
COOK WAS a missile launch officer for the Titan,
the biggest of the U.S. intercontinental ballistic
missiles. There are 17 such missiles at McConnell,
where officials said Cook had been stationed since
Juneof last year.
Cook, who entered the Air Force in December, 1979,
was charged with "violating Air Force regulations
which require reporting all contacts with represen-
tatives of a communist country," Pentagon sources
said.
The charges involve "visiting the Soviet Embassy
in Washington on more than one occasion without
reporting these contacts" in accordance with an Air
Force regulation, the Pentagon said.

COOK'S CASE has also been referred to the Justice
Department for possible prosecution for other-
alleged offenses, according to the Pentagon.
It was believed to be the first such case of a gover-
nment employee being accused of unauthorized con-
tacts with a representative of a communist country
since former CIA agent David Barnett pleaded guilty
last October to spying for the Soviet Union.
In the last such military case, Lee Eugene Madson,
A Navy security guard, was sentenced to eight years
in prison in October, 1979, after he walked out of the
Pentagon with top-secret documents stuffed in his
trousers. He pleaded guilty to an espionage charge.
MILITARY SOURCES, who asked to remain
anonymous, said the visits by Cook to the Soviet em-
bassy occured during the past year.-
Asked if any information was passed to the
Russians that might damage U.S. security, defense
officials indicated they were not certain but they
stressed that precautionary actions have been taken.
They refused to elaborate.
Pentagon officials said'a check disclosed that no
documents to which Cook had access were missing.

As a launch officer, Cook would know procedures in-
volved in firing the Titan, and he would be
knowledgeable about the Titan system in detail.
HE WOULD NOT, however, have in his possession
the key codes used in firing orders from higher
authority, officials said. Such codes are kept in a
locked box in the launch silo until orders are sent for
by the president, down through the chain of com-
mand. In any event, officials said, the codes are
changed from time.to time.
The Titan is the oldest U.S. intercontinental
ballistic missile, dating to the early 1960s. There are
52 in service at McConnell, Little Rock Air Force
Base, Ark., and at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base
near Tucson, Ariz.
It is also the most powerful ICBM, with a single
warhead rated at a nuclear explosive power
equivalent to nine million tons of TNT.
But the vast bulk of the U.S. land-based ICBM force
is composed of 1,000 Minuteman missiles, more than
half of which have three warheads each with much
less explosive power than the Titan.

Laser to destroy missile in test

WASHINGTON (AP) - Air Force
technicians will try soon, possibly this
weekend, to destroy an air-to-air
missile with a high-intensity beam of
light in a significant test of a future
laser weapon, Pentagon sources said
yesterday.
The killer beam will be aimed from a
modified KC-135 plane, which the Air .
Force calls an Airborne Laser
Laboratory, at a fast missile released
by another aircraft at the Naval
Weapons Center in China Lake, Calif.,
said the sources who declined to be
identified.
WHILE STRESSING the importance
of this test, officials said a practical
laser weapon, which could
revolutionize warfare, is still years
away.
Research looking toward possible

laser weapons has been under way sin-
ce the early 1960s in both the United
States and the Soviet Union.
There have been' previous high-
intensity laser device tests by the Air
Force from ground test beds. In 1973,
the Air Force shot down a winged drone
at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M.
BUT THE UPCOMING test, reflec-
ting advancing development, would be
the first from an air platform and the
first against a very fast air-to-air
missile.
Since light travels at 186,000 miles a
second, a laser beam can strike a target
almost instantaneously without any
necessity to "lead" it, as would be
necessary with a slower-moving
weapon.
Technicians had hoped to conduct the
key airborne test this week, but

Chicago mass transit
system faces collapse

weather conditions have not been just
right for it, officials said.
This points up one of the problems
which some scientists have suggested
would limit the effectiveness of laser
weapons used in the atmosphere. Inten-
se as it is, the beam of light cannot pier-
ce clouds, rain or fog and can be at-
tenuated by such obstructions.
However, this would not be true in
airless space, and that is where many
scientists believe lasers will be enor-
mously important in the future in
destroying enemry intercontinental
ballistic missiles and hostile-satellites.
Dr. J. Richard Airey, a scientist with
the Defense Department's Directed
Energy Office, has said that practical
laser beam weapons could possibly be
feasible in the atmosphere in the latter
half of the 1980s.
Afl
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CHICAGO (AP) - The Chicago
area's largest private bus company
said yesterday it would suspend service
by midnight, and others threatened to
shut down within days, as the penniless
regional mass transit network moved
closer to collapse.
Meanwhile, Mayor Jane Byrne
moved to gain control of Chicago's bus
and subway system and divorce it from
the crumbling metropolitan network,
which carries more than two million
riders daily.
GOV. JAMES Thompson said in
Springfield that ordering a special
legislative session "may be the
cleanest way" to reach an accord on
solving the worsening transit crisis.
The Regional Transportation
Authority on Wednesday ran out of
money to subsidize the Chicago and
suburban bus and rail operators.
Several suburban bus systems shut
down or planned to over the weekend
because of the subsidy cutoff.
Highlighting the gloomy news was
the announcement yesterday that West
Towns Bus Co. of Oak Park, the largest
private bus company in the area, would
suspenaservice indefinitely last nighf.

ARBY SUNDSTROM, West Town's
vice president and general manager,
said the company, which serves 21,000
daily riders in 40 west and northwest
suburbs, could meet only half its
payroll yesterday and had barely
enough fuel to last the day.
West Towns would become the second
suburban bus company to shut down
completely. Bus service in nearby
Joliet ended a week ago; the South
Suburban Safeway Lines Inc. trimmed
service a few days ago. Further, bus
service in Aurora is expected to be ter-
minated today, officials said.
The Chicago & North Western com-
muter service also threatened yester-
day to halt operations following a
possible June 6 shutdown of the
Milwaukee Road line, because the ad-
ded commuter crunch would cause
overcrowding and unsafe conditions,
spokesman James McDonald said.
The North Western serves some
55,000 daily riders from the north, nor-
thwest, and west suburbs, he added.
Chicago Transportation Authority of
ficials have said city services probably
can be continued for another week or
so.

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