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Livingston controls speaker race
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“The truth is, the vote is in. Bob Livingston is going
to be our next speaker, and I'm withdrawing my
name for that reason.”
Christopher Cox
House representative, California
WASHINGTON (AP) - Rep. Bob
Livingston, a pragmatic conservative from
Louisiana, took command of die race to suc
ceed House Speaker Newt Gingrich on
Monday as his only rival dropped out and die
second-ranking Republican leads* paid a cour
- tesy call.
“The truth is, the vote is in. Bob Livingston
is going to he our next speaker and I’m with
drawing my name for that reason,” said Rep.
Christopher Cox of California, who was a for
mal candidate fra less than 72 hours.
Majority Leads* Dick Armey of Texas left
die Capitol to visit Livingston in his office in a
congressional building across the street, said
his spokeswoman Michele Davis. “He went
over there to congratulate him,” she said.
Armey, too, has enough votes to ward off
challenges, Davis said Even so, Rep. Jennifer
Dunn ofWashington announced a bid to topple
Armey, joining Rep. Steve Largent of
Oklahoma in that race. “I am asking you to sup
port me as a member who will serve as a fresh
face for the party,” Dunn said in an e-mail sent
to GOP lawmakers.
Gingrich returned to the Capitol for the f rst
time since Republicans lost seats in last week’s
midterm elections, an event that led to his stun
ning decision Friday to step down as speaker.
The Georgian did not speak to reporters as he
arrived. A handwritten sign was posted at the
entrance to die suite where he presided over the
Republican Revolution die past four years:
“Office closed to tours.”
Inside the Capitol, Gingrich was a lame
duck, his power ebbing as Republicans jock
eyed for position in die Congress that convenes
in January.
Influence was flowing to Livingston, 55,
who chairs the Appropriations Committee and
was elected last Tuesday to his 11th hill term.
Cox announced his decision on ABCfe “Good
Morning America,” then wrote a letter to fellow
Republican lawmakers, saying Livingston
“deserves our unanimous support as he takes
on this daunting challenge.”
The maneuvering continued in the House
while in the Senate, any threat of a challenge to
Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., disap
peared during the day. Sen. Don Nickles of
Oklahoma, the GOP whip, was sending a letter
to colleagues saying he will seek a second term
as second-in-command.
Livingston, as a veteran of the House
Appropriations Committee, has spent a career
making deals with lawmakers of both parties to
build support for legislation. While solidly con
servative-he is firmly opposedto abortion, for
example - he bristled at several points over the
past few years when other conservatives want
ed to use the spending bills that came out of his
committee to carry controversial amendments
dealing With social issues.
Normally genial - on one recent day he lin
gered to explain details of a diet that has
enabled him to shed several pounds -
Livingston also has occasional outbursts of
temper. Past targets of his anger say it passes
quickly.
Hoover’s remarks on JFK case released
■ The FBI director condemned
_ some agents’ missteps in
keeping an eye on Oswald.
WASHINGTON (AP) - After President
Kennedy’s assassination, an angry J. Edgar
Hoover scribbled stinging remarks in the mar
gins of an FBI memo detailing how agents had
failed - sometimes for “asinine” reasons,
Hoover wrote - to keep a close eye on Lee
Harvey Oswald in die months before the 1963
shooting.
The FBI memo was among more than
400,000 Kennedy-related documents released
Monday at die National Archives.
It has long been known that the FBI mis
handled its pre-assassination investigation of
Oswald, who had been watched by agents
since 1959 when he defected to the former
Soviet Union. But archivists say this is die first
time they’ve seen the Dec. 10,1963, memo
containing Hoover’s curt, handwritten remarks
aoout how the bureau bungled the case.
The 11-page memo to Clyde Tolson, the
No. 2 official at the FBI, was written by James
Gale, who conducted an internal probe that
revealed “a number of investigative and report
ing delinquencies in the handling of the
Oswald case.”
The memo argues that based on Oswald’s
defection and other details known to FBI
agents, Oswald should have been placed on the
FBI’s Security Index, a list of people consid
ered threats to public officials or national secu
rity
The list is available to thC'Secret Service,
which uses the information in its efforts to pro
tect the president. FBI field personnel told
Gale they did not think Oswald met the criteria
for being on the list
If Oswald had been on the list, law enforce
ment officials may have been more aggressive
in checking his status before Kennedy traveled
to Dallas.
“Certainly no one in full possession of all
his faculties can claim Oswald didn’t fell with
in this criteria,” Hoover wrote at die bottom of
die memo.
John Newman, a University of Maryland
professor and former intelligence officer who
has written a bookon Oswald, said Hoover was
angry because FBI agents in Washington,
Dallas, New Orleans and New York all had
been following Oswald^ movements yet woe
“flat on thek feet” in the weeks before the
assassination.
“Hoover is saying in earthy terms the obvi
ous: How could they have been so incompe
tent?” Newman said. “Hoover’s written
remarks make clear die level of incompetence
and embarrassment of the bureau^ handling of
Lee Harvey Oswald,”
Gale’s memo cites several FBI missteps in
Dallas.
FBI Agent James Hosty,who was assigned
to Oswald in Dallas, said the bureau wanted to
interview Oswald’s wife, Marina, but didn’t do
it in March 1963 because Oswald had been
“drinking to excess ancf (had) beat up (his)
wife on several occasions.”
Hosty said die Dallas bureau opted for a
“60-day cooling-off period.”
This is “certainly an asinine excuse,”
Hoover wrote.
After the cooling-off period, the FBI
couldn’t find Oswald or his wife. The pair sur
faced a few months later in New Orleans.
In mid-December 1963, Hoover quietly
censured and placed on probation more than a
dozen agents, including Hosty, for shortcom
ings in handling the Oswald case, (hi his book
on Hoover, author Curt Gentry wrote that in
obtaining his personnel file years later, “Hosty
discovered thm his answers to Inspector Galefe
questions had been falsified.”)
Gale also suggested die bureau change die
criteria for placing an individual on the
Security Index “rather than take the position
that all of these (FBI) employees were mistak
en in their judgment”
Hoover disagreed again, writing: “They
were worse than mistaken.”
(^Dcm^^velniqtimetoi^uildweapcHis
WASHINGTON (AP) - Iraq could rebuild its chemical
and biological arsenals if international arms inspections
ceased, the CIA said Monday as foe Clinton administration
prepared options on the latest standoff.
Iraq has “the capability to quickly resurrect weapons of
mass destruction production absent U.N. sanctions,” the CIA
reported to lawmakers.
Ten days ago, Saddam Hussein declared a halt to coop
eration with the U.N. Special Commission that searches for
chemical and biological weapons. President Clinton’s
national security team has developed options for him that
include air strikes.
At the State Department, spokesman James Rubin
sought to dispel suggestions that the United States was alone
in its effort to isolate and punish Iraq for noncompliance with
international arms inspectors.
“The blame of the whole world is resting clearly and
squarely on the doorstepoflraq and the shoulders of Saddam
Hussein,” Rubin said. “Wfe don’t feel lonely.”
It appeared that only Britain was ready to join the United
States in a threat of force against Iraq. British Defense
Secretary George Robertsonwarned during avisitto Kuwait
on Monday that the international community Is patience was
“draining away.”
Adams asks Blair to continue pressure
LONDON ( AP) - Sinn Fein party leader Gerry Adams
implored British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Monday to
break the impasse in Northern Ireland peacemaking by
putting pressure on the Narthb Protestant leaders.
Protestant leader David Trimble is refusing to form a
new administration for Northern Ireland that includes
Adams’ Irish Republican Army-allied party unless the IRA
starts disarming
April’s historic accord - supported by both Trimble’s
’ Ulster Unionist Party and Sim I&i- envisioned forming a
new coalition government by last month and securing IRA
disarmament by mid-2000.
TrimWe insists the IRA needs to show its July 1997 truce
is sincere by starting to disarm, or Sinn Fein won’t be eligi
ble to help govern the divided province. |
But Adams asserted that Aprils accord doesn’t require
the IRA to disarm, and that the truce should be sufFdent
“proof of tee goodwill of tee IRA"
Blair made no comment after the meeting.
Britons: Queen should remain on timme
LONDON (AP) - Most Britons do not think Queen
Elizabeth II should abdicate the throne to allow ha- oldest ,
son, Prince Charles, to become king, according totrpoll
released Monday.
A poll commissioned for tee Daily Mail tabloid and a ]
British television station found teat 67 percent believe tee
queen should remain the monarch for the rest of her life, the
paper said
The prince, who celebrates his 50th birthday on
Saturday, recently has been at tee center of some controver- !
sy. A television documentary that aired Sunday quoted an
uimamed “senior royal aide’’as claiming that Prince Charles
would be “privately delighted” if his mother; 72, abdicated |
The prince issued a strong denial on Friday, following
publicity about tee London Weekend Television program.
The producers have said they stand by their report
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German Jews remember Kristallnacht
BERLIN (AP) - With a “march of
silence,” Germany's Jewish community
marked the 60th anniversary Monday of
Kristallnacht - die “Night of Broken
Glass” - when Nazi storm troopers
burned and ransacked Jewish business
es and temples.
Germany’s Jewish community,
which numbered 530,000 before the
Nazis took power, now stands at around
70,000 and is growing.
Neo-Nazi incidents are on the rise,
and Jewish leaders are more determined
than ever that the Holocaust not be for
gotten-fighting what they see as atrend
toward emphasizing Germany’s future
at the expense of remembering its past
Politicians, including Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder, religious leaders
and members of the Jewish community
gathered for anniversary speeches in a
cavernous, mosaic-covered Berlin syn
» agogue where windows were shattered
during the Kristallnacht violence that
' ■» ' f . M-; '
presaged die Holocaust
They discussed how to remember
die past while moving Germany into the
21st century and its seat of government
back to Berlin. Underscoring all the
speeches was die theme that Gomans
still struggle for the right way to pre
serve the honors of the Holocaust as a
lesson for future generations.
. Ignatz Bubis, the leader of
Germany’s Jews, lambasted what he
calls an “intellectual nationalism” rep
resented in comments by a prize-win
ning German author who says repeated
media references to Nazi atrocities are
designed to perpetuate German guilt
The Kristallnacht anniversary has
particular significance this year; which
saw the election of politicians too young
to have memories ofWorld War IL
The generational change, coupled
with the move to Berlin and foe new gov
ernment’s emphasis on a forward-look
ing Germany, has sparked concern that
there is a desire to return to a “normal”
Germany unburdened by foe Holocaust
‘Tor me, normality isjfcp be a Jew
and to be able to live in Germany again,”
Bubis said. “‘Normality’ cannot mean
that we supplant memory and live with
a new anti-Semitism and new racism.”
Berlin^ Jewish community held its
first “march of silence” Monday in
remembrance of Kristallnacht Some v
2,000 to 3,000 people formed a sea of
umbrellas on a dark, drizzly afternoon.
A march also was held in Duesseldorf,
along with ceremonies in Buchenwald,
Frankfort, Hamburg and Munich.
They marked the “Night of Broken
Glass,” when Nazis rounded up Jews j
and burned and broke windows in syna
gogues and Jewish businesses.
When the rampage ended Nov. 10,
more than 1,300 synagogues were
destroyed and more than 30,000 Jews
had been sent to concentration camps.
Several hundred people died.
