4—The Daily Collegian Wednesday, August 13,1980 Defense lawyers admit: Abscam defendants took payoff NEW YORK 1 (AP) Government tapes introduced the names of two congressmen and one senator yesterday at the initial trial growing out of the Abscam scandal. Four defendants are accused of accepting a $50,000 payoff from FBI agents posing as represen tatives of an Arab sheik. One of those named in the tapes was Rep. Michael “Ozzie” Myers, D-Pa., one of the defendants in the Brooklyn federal court trial that opened yesterday. Another was Rep. Raymond Lederer, D-Pa., under indictment in another facet of the Abscam case. The third member of Congress named in the tapes was Sen. Herman Talmadge, D-Ga., who is not among those charged in the Abscam bribery-conspiracy case involving the phony sheik’s efforts to solve a hypothetical immigration problem. Another of the current defendants, Angelo Errichetti, mayor of Camden, N.J., was quoted on the tapes as telling FBI agent Anthony Amoroso, posing as a representative of the phony sheik, that he had suc ceeded in “getting” Myers and was working on "getting” Talmadge and Lederer. When asked what Myers could do for the sHeik, Errichetti was quoted as replying, “He’ll do anything . . . Anything you want.” The Camden mayor also said he was working on “getting” two congressmen from Georgia involved and had succeeded in setting up talks with two Florida congressmen. None of these was named. In a subsequent meeting, Errichetti reported Myers was “all set” and was advised that “on the rest we’ll go one right after another.” In opening statements, defense attorneys told the jury that the defendants Myers; Errichetti; Howard Criden, a Philadelphia attorney; and Louis Johanson, a Philadelphia city councilman, did accept the $50,000 payoff on behalf of the phony sheik, but did nothing criminal in return for the money. “All the defendants did was take the fat Arab’s money,” said Criden’s lawyer, Richard Ben-Veniste. News bi Dogs die, but By The Associated Press A new, highly contagious intestinal disease called parvovirus is killing thousands of dogs across the United States and the only laboratory licensed to produce the needed vaccine has a backlog of orders for five million doses. “It's like when the white- man brought measles to the Indians,” said Dr. Joe Smith, a veterinarian in Little Rock, Ark. “It wiped out whole tribes of Indians.” While federal agencies don’t keep statistics, outbreaks of the disease first discovered following a collie show in Louisville, Ky., in 1978 have been reported in growing numbers from coast to coast this summer. In Arkansas, Smith estimated 1,200 dogs had died in the past two months, though the state health board had only officially counted 240. The disease is primarily spread through the feces or vomit of dogs. Anderson files ' HARRISBURG (AP) - Cam paigners for John Anderson filed petitions with the Department of State yesterday to put the in dependent candidate for president on the ballot in the state. If the petitions are approved, Pennsylvania will become the 35th state in which Anderson has won a ballot position for the November election. Campaign officials said the petitions contained 119,000 signatures of registered state voters, well over the 48,000 required by state law. Following the filing, Jane Fowler, Anderson’s campaign coordinator in the state, said the expected renomination of President Carter by the Democrats “will give us a real boost. “All of the polls show Carter trailing badly. (Sen. Edward) Kennedy’s withdrawal means we’ll get started 72 hours earlier in looking for supporters among the Kennedy people,” she said. Judge stops rape-record ban PITTSBURGH' (AP) State Supreme Court Judge Henry X. O’Brien has refused to issue an across-the-board ban on defense attorneys who seek the records of rape counseling centers. The full court is expected to decide whether to take up the issue later this month or in September. Until then, O’Brien said he will decide on a case-by-case basis whether to delay a trial when defense attorneys seek such information. TMI must furnish HARRISBURG (AP) The operators of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant must provide computer tapes to show whether maintenance was improperly deferred for the plant’s undamaged Unit 1 reactor, a three-member federal panel ruled yesterday. “The hearing board of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is interested in whether work orders went undone to avoid a shutdown (of Unit D,” said Ivan Smith, panel chairman and chief NRC administrative law judge. “That is a serious, serious matter." Smith said he didn’t want raw data dumped on the board and directed the plant operator, Metropolitan Edison Co., to produce the maintenance records in the most concise fashion possible. “They never used their offices. They never did anything on his behalf because they never were sup posed to.” Defense lawyers delivered their opening statements to the jury in a Brooklyn federal courtroom presided over by U.S. District Judge George C. Pratt. Earlier, the prosecution claimed that the $50,000 had been accepted in return for a promise that Myers would introduce a special congressional immigration bill on behalf of the sheik, who actually was an FBI agent. Prosecutor Thomas Puccio, head of the federal Organized Crime Strike Force in Brooklyn, said six audio and four video tapes would be offered in evidence against the quartet of defendants. In his opening turn before the jury, Ben-Veniste said the entire sting operation was contrived by a professional con man named Melvin Weinberg. The government admits that over a three-year period Weinberg received $93,000 as a paid informant. Ben-Veniste gave what he characterized as Wein berg’s eight-step sting operation, beginning with the informant getting the government to drop a three-year prison term against him and then commence paying him $5,000 a month. The second step was “to make the Arab the biggest, fattest cat you ever did see,” Ben-Veniste continued. “They set him up to be a billionaire.” The third step was to tell Criden that the Arab was interested in investing in a casino venture in Atlantic City but that first he needed to meet some people in high places. The job of finding these important people was given to Criden and Errichetti, the defense lawyer added. The fourth step in the sting, Ben-Veniste went on, was for Criden’s law partner, Johanson, to contact Congressman Myers. At that point, Ben-Veniste claimed, Weinberg told the defendants that when they met the Arab’s representatives they should “come on strong, promise vaccine scarce “People can carry the virus home on shoes and clothes, thus exposing their (logs,” said Pierre A. Chaloux, deputy administrator of the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. Dr. William Kay, chief of staff of the Animal Medical Center in Manhattan, said, “We can save 90 percent or more animals if they are brought in right away.” “The disease strikes rapidly and hard,” he said. “It is characterized by loss of appetite, vomiting, severe diarrhea, dehydration and high temperature.” But vaccine for the virus is in critically short supply. Dr. Philip Fox of the Animal Medical Center and others in the field said part of the problem is that only one laboratory has been licensed to produce the vaccine, a “killed virus” similar to feline distemper vaccine. ballot petitions Rep. John B. Anderson Fowler said that beginning Sept. 1, Anderson’s state campaign expects to spend $lO,OOO a week, not including funds spent on television advertising. The 2,000 campaign workers who obtained the 119,000 petition signatures will be the core of the volunteer campaign staff in the state, Fowler said. Defense attorneys say they need to know whether a rape victim gives differing accounts of the assault to police officers and rape counselors. Counselors argue that the interviews should remain confidential. O'Brien, meanwhile, also decided to delay a decision in the case of a 28- year-old Duquesne man charged with raping a West Mifflin woman. The defense attorney had asked for in terview notes taken by the Center for Victims of Violent Crime. information “Get somebody down here from your computer programming,” he told company attorneys. “You know what we want. Tell us how to ask for it.” The board said it wants to know why the leak occurred in the cooling system of Unit 1, why it was not stopped sooner and what steps have been taken to prevent a recurrence. The Unit 1 reactor has been shut down ever since a March ’79 accident crippled its sister reactor, Unit 2, at the central Pennsylvania generating plant. The board also said it wants more details on a June leak that dumped 10,000 gallons of radioactive water onto the floor of the factor's con tainment building. Bolivia may be cocaine haven, officials say WASHINGTON (UPI) Ad ministration officials yesterday said there are established financial links between the new Bolivian military junta and drug traffickers and they fear the nation could become a sanctuary for the cultivation of cocaine. Sen. Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz., asked a Senate foreign relations subcommittee to investigate possible links between the Bolivian military government and the international cocaine traffic. “The cultivation of coca (the plant which is the base of cocaine) is already there, and has been for centuries,” the TAKE A HIKE Nature Walk at Walnut Springs Thursday August 14, 1980 7:00 PM Sponsored by H.O.P.S R-011 for more info, call 863-0588 i jLf The Gattie Cm? mMMTldfil ! @4* Junction of College 4 Garner Sfe. iJflzLtitw ; %\ I** tattk G&rlEa&t off Univemiy Drive- him everything,” realizing, however, that they would never have to produce. “The fifth step was to put them on television,” the lawyer told the jury. “You’re going to see on camera what happened, and it’s going to look terrible. But it’s exactly what Weinberg wanted. ” The defense lawyer said that “because Weinberg can’t resist it, because he’s such a con man, a crook, he hit on these men for kickbacks” the sixth step in the sting. For the seventh step, according to Ben-Veniste, Weinberg got a literary agent and obtained a book contract, then began leaking details of the FBI un dercover probe to the news media. The lawyer claimed that the publicity increased the advance for the book deal and .that Weinberg had assumed that the defendants would plead guilty and that he would not have to testify at a trial. Ben-Veniste said, in telling the jurors that they were the eighth step in the sting scenario, that Weinberg would definitely be called to the witness stand by the defense, if need be. “You’re going to write this last scene,” Ben-Veniste declared. “You will decide if Mr. Weinberg and his Abscam is the good guy or the bad guy.” In opening remarks Plato Cacheris, Myers’ attorney, told the jurors that in order for them to convict the defendants the government must prove more than the mere acceptance of money, that it must prove criminal intent. “Mr. Myers was never influenced and never per formed any acts for these people,” he declared. “He said, ‘I can do this, I can do that,’ never intending to do any of it.” Errichetti’s attorney, Raymond Brown, said “ab solutely nothing was done” on behalf of the so-called Arab. At one point, Brown quoted Weinberg as saying, “Just blow your horn as loud as you can, it’s all bullshit.” officials told United Press International. “We were on the verge of establishing a program of limiting its cultivation, when the military threw the government over.” The officials spoke on the basis of no further identification. They said the military, which had actively cooperated with the wealthy coca growers previously, appears to have received direct financial payments from the narcotics traffickers. “The country will be a sanctuary," the officials said, “wher.e the growers will have a freedom and license to operate." JiMT \l, l" WBS&M U.S. Rep. Michael Myers, D-Pa., leads the way into U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, N.Y., followed by Mayor Angelo Errichetti of Camden, N.J. They are two of four men charged with taking bribes from FBI agents posing as Arab sheiks seeking special favors. According to State Department figures, the total yearly cocaine trade in the United States amounts to $5O billion, with an estimated 10 percent of young people using it. “The military revolution in Bolivia was not ideological,” the administration officials said. “The driving force is self enriched greed. They are venal, and that’s what it comes down to. “It is well established that the military got hundreds of thousand of dollars from the ‘Santa Cruz Mafia’ which controls ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ yL Century Towers J student rentals 9 month leases from $245 per M month, includes all utilities, heat and electric. if- Rental office 710 S. Atherton Street X Open from 10 - 6 daily, closed Sundays. ?T £ 238-5081 J '>r I *i h i the growing and selling of the coca plants.” The officials said that in light of the cooperation between the cocaine traf fickers and the Bolivian government, “It may be that for the first time, the drug trade has purchased itself a govern ment.” DeConcini said news reports since the July 17 coup are virtually "unanimous in characterizing the present regime as little more than an appendage of the criminal organizations which dominate the flourishing international cocaine trade.” i. I & J I? 1 The morning after Delegate Aldolpho Leon, New Nogales, Ariz., dozes during platform committee reports at the Deomocratic National Convention in New York yesterday. 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