Page 6- The Behrend College Beacon - Thursday, September 17, 1998
For Latino fans,
Sosa puts the
`Home'
By Ken Ellingwood
Los Angeles Times
SAN DIEGO - From a press
box perch at Qualcomm Stadium,
Tijuana sportswriter Rafael
Gonzalez Martinez pondered the
continuing twists in Sammy Sosa's
remarkable duel with Mark
McGwire for the single season
home run record.
Despite McGwire's 63rd home
run on Inesday, which put him on
top once again, Gonzalez knows
how his countrymen south of the
border want the tale of these duel
ing "jonroneros" to turn out.
"Mexico hopes Sosa does it be
cause he's Latino," said Gonzalez,
who covers sports for the respected
weekly newspaper Zeta. "He re
flects well on Latin people."
Though a world away from
Sosa's homeland in the Dominican
Republic, the border with Mexico
is proving an auspicious place for
the Chicago Cubs slugger to turn
up this week during one of the final
legs of the frenzied race. Interest in
Sosa is cresting among California
Latinos and in sports-crazy
Tijuana, where Sosa T-shirts are
showing up and many are trumpet
ing their heartfelt pride in a fellow
Records show CIA funded
Program, Dalai Lama in '6os
By Jim Mann
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON - For much of
the 19605, the CIA provided the Ti
betan exile movement with $1.7 mil
lion a year for operations against
China, including an annual subsidy
of $lBO,OOO for the Dalai Lama, ac
cording to newly released U.S. intel
ligence documents.
The money for the Tibetans and
the Dalai Lama was part of the ClA's
worldwide effort during the early
years of the Cold War to undermine
Communist governments, particu
larly in the Soviet Union and China.
In fact, the U.S. government commit
tee that approved the Tibetan opera
tions also authorized the disastrous
Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.
The documents, published last
month by the State Department, il
lustrate the historical background of
the situation in Tibet today, in which
China continues to accuse the Dalai
Lama of being an agent of foreign
forces seeking to separate Tibet from
China.
The ClA's program encom
passed support of Tibetan guerrillas
in Nepal, a covert military training
site in Colorado, "Tibet Houses" es
tablished to promote Tibetan causes
in New York and Geneva, education
for Tibetan operatives at Cornell
University and supplies for recon
naissance teams.
"The purpose of the program ...
is to keep the political concept of an
autonomous Tibet alive within Tibet
and among foreign nations, princi
pally India, and to build a capability
for resistance against possible politi
cal developments inside Communist
China," explains one memo written
by top U.S. intelligence officials.
The declassified historical docu
ments provide the first inside details
of the ClA's decade-long covert pro
gram to support the Tibetan indepen
dence movement. At the time of the
intelligence operation, the CIA was
seeking to weaken Mao Tse-tung's
hold over China. And the Tibetan ex
iles were looking for help to keep
their movement alive after the Dalai
Lama and his supporters fled Tibet
following an unsuccessful 1959 re
volt against Chinese rule.
Tibetan exiles and the Dalai
Lama have acknowledged for many
years that they once received support
from U.S. intelligence. But until now,
Washington refused to release any
information about the ClA's Tibetan
in home run
Latino who has carried himself
with grace and good humor under
hiteuse daily pressure.
"Everybody wants Sammy,
Sammy, Sammy," said Paulo
Aguirre Cortes, who hosts a sports
talk show on a Tijuana radio sta
tion.
Of course, nearly everyone at
this week's Cubs-San Diego Padres
series is hoping to catch a glimpse
of history in the making. (Sosa
struck out four times Monday, a
day after tying Southern Califor
nia-bred McQwire at 62 home runs.
After McGwire hit No. 63 Tuesday,
Sosa again went hcimer-less.)
No other U.S. big-league
ballpark sits closer to Latin
America than the Padres' home
field, and few offer a better vantage
for watching how a mere home run
race can serve as a prism for cul
ture and nationalism - not to men
tion the universal glee in seeing
records smashed and smashed
At jammed news conferences
as the four-game series opened here
this week, nearly half the questions
were delivered to Sosa in his native
Spanish- an unusual number and a
sign of how Sosamania has taken
hold.
operations
The U.S. intelligence support for
the Tibetans ended in the early 1970 s
after the Nixon administration's dip
lomatic opening to China, according
to the Dalai Lama's writings, former
CIA officials and independent schol
The purpose of the program ... is to keep the political
concept of an autonomous Tibet alive within Tibet
and among foreign nations, principally, India, and to
build a capability for resistance against possible
political developments inside Communist China
The Dalai Lama wrote in his au
tobiography that the cutoff in the
1970 s showed that the assistance
from the Americans "had been a re
flection of their anti-Communist
policies rather than genuine support
for the restoration of Tibetan inde
pendence."
The newly published tiles show
that the collaboration between U.S.
intelligence and the Tibetans was less
than ideal. "The Tibetans by nature
did not appear to be congenitally in
clined toward conspiratorial profi
ciency," a top CIA official says rue
fully in one memo.
The budget figures for the ClA's
Tibetan program are contained in a
memo dated Jan. 9, 1964. It was evi
dently written to help justify contin
ued funding for the clandestine in
telligence operation .
"Support of 2,100 Tibetan guer
rillas based in Nepal: $500,000," the
document says. "Subsidy to the Dalai
Lama: $180,000." After listing sev
eral other costs, it concludes: "Total:
$1,735,000." The files show that this
budget request was approved soon
afterward.
A later document indicates that
these annual expenses continued at
the same level for four more years,
until 1968. At that point, the CIA
scrubbed its training programs for
Tibetans inside the United States and
cut the budget for the entire program
to just below $1.2 million a year.
In his 1990 autobiography,
"Freedom in Exile," the Dalai Lama
explained that his two brothers made
contact with the CIA during a trip to
India in 1956. The CIA agreed to
help, "not because they cared about
Tibetan independence, but as part of
their worldwide efforts to destabilize
World and Nation
3 more
to quit;
By Rita Ciotti
Newsday
Three dozen newspapers had al
ready called for President Clinton's
resignation but Monday, one of the
largest, USA Today, and two other
influential voices, the Philadelphia
Inquirer and the Atlanta Journal-Con
stitution, raised the volume by add
ing their names to the list.
"Bill Clinton should resign
now," said an editorial in USA To
day, which has a national circulation
of 2.1 million.
In contrast, in an editorial head
lined: "City to Bubba: Hang in there,"
the New York Daily News told
Clinton to "finish the job you were
hired for. - The Miami Herald
condemmed Independent Counsel
Kenneth Starr. "This was and is a
political lynching," said the paper.
But are such editorials just add
ing to the noise about a story the pub
lic is telling pollsters it wants to go
away? Or are they a warning of rip
tides for the White House?
"After a weekend like this people
are looking for all sorts of barometers
to what people are thinking. There is
some distrust of polls, so institutional
opinions like that of newpapers tend
to gather weight over time," said Joe
Stroud, who was editorial page edi-
all Communist governments," the
Dalai Lama wrote.
"Naturally, my brothers judged
it wise to keep this information from
me. They knew what my reaction
would have been."
The Dalai Lama also wrote re-
US intelligence memo
gretfully in his book that the CIA had
trained and equipped Tibetan guer
rillas who conducted raids into Tibet
from a base camp in Nepal.
The effect of these operations
"only resulted in more suffering for
the people of Tibet. Worse, these ac
tivities gave the Chinese government
the opportunity to blame the efforts
of those seeking to regain Tibetan in
dependence on the activities of for
eign powers _ whereas, of course, it
was an entirely Tibetan initiative."
Lodi Gyari, the Dalai Lama's
personal representative in Washing
ton, said last week that he had no
knowledge of the ClA's $lBO,OOO-a
-year subsidy or how the money was
spent.
"I have no clue whatsoever,"
Gyari said. Speaking more generally
of the ClA's past support for the Ti
betans, Gyari acknowledged: "It is an
open secret. We do not deny it."
The CIA has long resisted efforts
to disclose information about its Ti-
betan operations.
Warren W. Smith Jr., author of a
recent book on the history of Tibet,
said he believes that the newly pub
lished documents are the first to de
scribe the ClA's Tibetan operations.
Until now, information about the
CIA plans has come from "(Tibetan)
exiles and a few old CIA agents,"
Smith said. "None of the agents in
volved would know detailed infor
mation about things like the budget."
The documents provide no de
tails about the $lBO,OOO-a-year sub
sidy to the Dalai Lama. But they sug
gest that the money was used to pay
for the staff and other costs of sup
porting his activities on behalf of the
Tibetan people.
The same 1964 memo speaks of
"continuing the support subsidy to
newspapers call for Clinton
others defer decision
tor of the Detroit Free Press for 25 The growing number of editori
years. "It does tend to snowball. In als about what consequences Clinton
some ways these controversies take should face will likely prompt even
on a life of their own." more editorial boards to take a stand.
There is some distrust of polls, so institutional opin
ions like that of newspapers tend to gather weight
over time
Among the papers favoring res
ignation are the New York Post, Den
ver Post, Des Moines (Iowa) Regis
ter, Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel and the
Seattle Times.
"If I were in the White House I
would be concerned that some news
papers have called for resignation or
impeachment," said Creed Black of
Miami, a journalist who in his 40-year
career was the editorial page editor of
the Philadelphia Inquirer, president of
the American Society of Newspaper
Editors and the head of publisher and
editorial writing associations.
Black said the editorials at this
stage aren't really reflecting public
opinion but helping to form it. "The
newspapers are leading and inform
ing and molding public opinion right
now," he said.
Tibetan
the Dalai Lama's entourage at
Dharamsala," the city in northern In
dia that has served as the Dalai
Lama's headquarters and the seat of
the Tibetan government-in-exile.
A brief internal history of the
ClA's Tibet operations shows that the
Eisenhower administration first for
mally approved covert support to the
Tibetan resistance in September
1958, at a time when the Tibetans
were conducting guerrilla raids
against Chinese army units.
The U.S. intelligence operations
were overseen in Washington by the
executive branch's top-secret "303
Committee." On May 20, 1959, only
a few weeks after the unsuccessful
Tibetan revolt, the 303 Committee
approved the first covert support spe
cifically for the Dalai Lama, who had
just arrived in India. These covert
CIA programs were re-approved sev
eral times during the 19605.
In 1964, the CIA decided that
one of the main problems facing the
Tibetans was "a lack of trained of
ficers equipped with linguistic and
administrative abilities."
The files show that the Tibetans
were keeping close track of U.S.
policy toward China. In fact, they
sometimes had a better sense of what
Washington was about to do about
China than did the rest of the world.
On Dec. 6, 1968, a month after
Richard Nixon was elected president
but before he took office, the Dalai
Lama's brother told a senior State
Department official that the Tibetan
exiles were afraid "of an accommo
dation the United States might make
with the Chinese Communists."
Undersecretary of State Eugene
V. Rostow told him not to worry.
Rostow said that "we (the United
States) would not make any accom
modation with the Chinese Commu
nists at the expense of Tibet."
Over the next four years, the
Nixon administration carried out its
opening to China, and the ClA's Ti
betan operations were shut down.
The U.S. government now pro
vides some financial support for Ti
betans, but openly and through other
channels.
In recent years, Congress has
approved about $2 million annually
in funding for Tibetan exiles in In
dia. Congress has also urged the ad
ministration to spend another $2 mil
lion for democracy activities among
the Tibetans.
Joe Stroud, former editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press
"We have some voices for resign
ing immediately, some for letting the
impeachment process play out and
there are others who think that Ken
Starr and the independent counsel law
are the problems," said Mike Zuzel,
an editorial writer at The Columbian
in Vancouver, Wash., describing the
debate at his paper over what stand to
take.
While almost any sampling of
editorial opinion will show severe dis
approval for Clinton's behavior, most
are saying it is just too soon to take a
Study finds 'Gulf War
Syndrome' symptoms in
soldiers who weren't there
By David Brown
The Washington Post
The physical complaints known
as "Gulf War syndrome" are not only
common among Gulf War veterans,
they're also frequently reported by
soldiers who never went to Iraq, Ku
wait or Saudi Arabia, according to
new research.
The fatigue, moodiness, memory
problems and musculoskeletal pain
many Gulf War veterans complain of
are not likely to be explained by toxic
exposures, exotic infections or other
"risk factors" peculiar to the war, a
team of epidemiologists report in
Tuesday's Journal of the American
Medical Association.
Epidemiologists from the federal
Centers for Disease Control and Pre
vention (CDC) in Atlanta surveyed
four Air Force units in 1995 and found
that 45 percent of Gulf War veterans
had chronic physical complaints.
However, about 15 percent of soldiers
who had never been deployed to the
Gulf had the same problems, the re
searchers found.
Further, people reporting illness
showed nothing unusual on physical
examination or laboratory testing, and
the Gulf War veterans among them
had nothing notable in common, such
as military occupation, exposure to
combat, or the place where they had
spent most of their tours.
Altogether, the study "suggests
that the multisymptom illness we ob
served ... is not unique to (Gulf War)
service," the authors of the study
wrote.
Soon after the end of the Gulf
War in 1991, numerous soldiers - pri
marily in reserve and National Guard
units - reported they were suffering
from an illness characterized by tired
ness, difficulty concentrating, muscle
and joint pain, and, less commonly,
diarrhea, skin rashes and breathing
problems. Some believed they had
transmitted the problems to family
members.
The number of people with such
complaints is unknown, although in
recent years about 100,000 people
(out of 697,000 deployed to the Gulf)
have signed up for medical exams
offered by the federal government.
Several large-scale epidemiological
studies are underway to determine the
exact prevalence and severity of
chronic illness in Gulf War veterans.
In the new study, the CDC re
searchers defined the "chronic multi
system illness" as the presence, for
at least six months, of at least one
symptom from at least two of the fol
lowing categories: fatigue; mood and
cognition problems; and muscle or
joint pains. Mood and cognition prob
lems included feelings of depression,
difficulties concentrating or finding
words, and insomnia.
The researchers surveyed mem
bers of four units: two Air National
Guard detachments in Pennsylvania
position on what the consequences
should be for the president. "You are
not just talking about Bill Clinton
here. You are talking about the insti
tution of the presidency," said
Margaretta Downey, editorial page
editor of the Poughkeepsie (N.Y.)
Journal. "It is not something you re
spond to with a gut reaction." How
ever, she added, the fast-moving
events are being monitored closely.
"That doesn't mean that next week we
won't make a decision," she said.
Tuesday's edition of the Long
Island, N.Y., newspaper Newsday
warns in its editorial against hasty
calls to judgment. "We're not pre
pared to agree that the president
should remain in office come hell or
high water," the editorial says. "But
we think those who have called for
his immediate resignation are trying
to avoid one of the people's funda
mental responsibilities in this demo
cratic society ... Demanding his res
ignation, at least at this stage, is ask
ing him to take all of us off the hook,
not to mention a queasy Congress."
(including one that was among the
first units in the nation to report an
outbreak of Gulf War syndrome), and
two units in Florida, one reserve and
one active-duty. In all, about 1,200
Gulf War veterans, and about 2,600
servicemen who had never gone to the
Gulf, were queried.
Forty-five percent of Gulf War
veterans fit the case definition for the
illness, with 39 percent having mild
or moderate cases, and 6 percent se
vere ones. In the non-deployed group,
15 percent had complaints fitting the
definition, but only 1 percent were
severe
The researchers also examined
158 members of the original Pennsyl
vania unit that had reported illness
soon after the end of the war. Even
though nearly two-thirds were ill, the
exams were most notable for the gen
eral paucity of abnormal findings, the
researchers write. The scientists also
tested the soldiers' blood and body
fluids for about 30 different patho
genic microbes, as well as for evi
dence of exposure to anthrax and
botulinum toxin vaccines that some
Gulf War soldiers received. A few
people tested positive, but they were
as likely to be in the healthy as the
unhealthy group.
"It is clear that the distribution
of cases among (Gulf War) veterans
and non-deployed personnel in this
study cannot easily be explained by
risk factors unique to Southwest
Asia," the researchers concluded.
What could explain the unusual
distribution of the chronic illness?
"Stress comes to mind as some
thing that could plausibly have had
more of an effect on people who went
to the Gulf than people who did not,
but which could be present in both
groups," said Keiji Fukuda, a CDC
physician and epidemiologist who led
the study. "That's an easy example."
He added, however, that the
study did not finger psychological
stress as the cause of the symptoms
(as some other scientific experts
have). Although the researchers found
no higher prevalence of pre-deploy
ment medical problems in the ill vet
erans than the well ones, Fukuda said
there may be other variables research
ers should consider.
Some observers think that Gulf
War syndrome represents the usual
health problems in the population that
have been magnified by widespread
attention to a "mystery" illness. There
is indirect evidence for this theory in
the study. Of the more than 3,700 sol
diers surveyed, 99 percent reported at
least one symptom as a "current health
problem," suggesting that symptoms
in general are very prevalent. Of the
four units sampled, symptoms were
most prevalent in the original Penn
sylvania Air National Guard unit,
which has been the object of much
media attention and several scientific
studies in recent years.