Sulphur Springs News-Telegram (Sulphur Springs, Tex.), Vol. 103, No. 67, Ed. 1 Friday, March 20, 1981 Page: 2 of 26
This newspaper is part of the collection entitled: Hopkins County Area Newspapers and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the Hopkins County Genealogical Society.
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2—THE NEWS-TELEGRAM, Sulphur Springs, Texas, Friday, March 20,1981.
£I ■.
forum
Jack Anderson
l
In our opinion
^ , ' 'Si;*
% news report:
«*.
measles stamp out seen,
F\.
'*■ The eradication of measles from the
American scene is a projection that
inay be accomplished by an October
1982 goal. This is a parcel of good news
fa a nation where unhappy news often
dominates the daily reports.
, 'Americans launched a program in
1978 which, in effect, was an all-our
war on measles. The campaign was
progressed far enough that it appears
? that success will be reported before the
>1982 goal.
During the first nine weeks of 1981,
there were 409 cases of measles
reported in the United States. This
Compares to 1,461 during the same
period a year ago. It also compares to
Legislative district needs
about 10,000 citizens
: The Tenth District of the House of
Reprsentatives, which includes Hunt,
Hopkins and Rains counties, is going to
.fall short by almost 10 percent of the
ideal numbers of people needed.
A recent preliminary census report
adopted by the House Regions,
Compacts, and District Committee,
which will be responsible for State
House and Congressional redistricting,
shows that District 10’s population has
increased by 17.8 percent. The
population count for the tri-county
area has climbed to 85,288, but that is
9.6 percent, or 9,568 less people than
the ideal number if all districts are to
be equally populated. The ideal district
will contain 94,856.
It is unlikely that districts can be
drawn that will not deviate from the
ideal number. However, the
lawmakers must attempt to come up
with districts as near the ideal as
possible.
If District 10 retains its basic
identity, the lawmakers will have to
reach out and annex almost 10,000
people from some other adjacent
county. It will not be an easy thing to
extract these people from another
whole or part of a county and combine
them with the current district, but that
is one of the problems facing the
legislators.
Ideally, the additional people added
to flex out the district will have similar
interests as the current residents.
7t ■ ■1 v- *
■tfsifa'V ■> fy-,-
if
The Almanac
i By The Associated Press
' Today is Friday, March 20,
r the 79th day of 1981. There are
f 286 days left in the year.
,? Today’s highlight in history:"
■ On March 20, 1942, General
i Douglas MacArthur made his
' famous pledge: "I shall
? return.” He had fled from the
| Philippines to Australia as the
v islands were invaded by Japan.
| On this date:
v In 1602, the Dutch East India
f Company was formed.
| In 1941, Yugoslavia agreed to
peace terms with Germany in
World War II.
In 1956, France recognized
the independence of Tunisia,
with Bourguiba as its first
president.
In 1972,19 mountain climbers
on Japan’s Mount Fuji were
killed in an avalanche.
Ten years ago: James
Chichester-Clark resigned as
Prime Minister of Northern
Ireland.
Five years ago: Patricia
Hearst was convicted of armed
robbery for her part in a bank
holdup.
One year ago: President Tito
clung to life in a Yugoslav
hospital, several weeks after
arrangements had been made
for*his funeral.
Today’s birthdays: Actor
Michael Redgrave is 73 years
old, as is retired broadcast
executive Frank Stanton.
Thought For Today: The
most manifest sign of wisdom is
continued cheerfulness —
Montaigne, French essayist.
Could canceled NBC program
have averted Jonestown tragedy?
8,967 cases during a corresponding
time period in 1970.
Public health officials have been
vaccinating everyone who has come in
contact with a measles victim. The
widespread frontal assault on measles
is reducing the disease and the health
officials are confident that the end of
the war, so to speak, is near.
There have been many great ac-
complishments in the fight against
diseases over the years. Polio was one
of the first major crippling diseases to
be conquered.
Now, with the near eradication of
measles, it is hoped that success comes
with other diseases that have plagued
citizens since the beginning of time.
By JACK ANDERSON
WASHINGTON - There is
a startling untold story
behind the grotesque
murder-suicide ritual that
resulted in the deaths of 911
men, women and children at
Jonestown, Guyana, in
November 1978. It raises the
agonizing possibility that the
tragedy could have been
prevented.
The story goes back to the
summer of 1978, when NBC
News aired a segment on a
violence-prone cult called
Synanon. Apparently
pleased with that program,
the NBC brass approved a
hard-hitting series about
brainwashing in religious
cults. The first segment
would be about the Peoples
Temple in Jonestown, head-
ed by a power-drunk preach-
er, the Rev ."Jim Jones.
In the meantime, howev-
er, hundreds of threats from
members of Synanon began
to pour into NBC offices.
Network president Fred
Silverman and RCA board
chairman Arthur Griffiths
personally received many
vicious letters from Synanon
supporters.
“We are going to teach
you a lesson you will never
forget," said one. Another
warned: “Your actions place
you in legal and physical
peril.”
NBC turned the threaten-
ing letters over to the FBI.
They were released under
the Freedom of Information
Act to Paul Morantz, a law-
yer who had helped NBC on
its cult series. Two of the
letters to Silverman were
signed bv individuals who
were later arrested for
planting a rattlesnake in
Morantz' mailbox.
In October, according to
my sources, the brainwash-
ing project was on “the back
burner.” On Nov. 13 - five
days before the Jonestown
tragedy - NBC issued a
press release stating that a
show about cults was being
"temporarily halted" for
valid journalistic reasons.
The press release continued:
“NBC News has not been
pressured by anyone to drop
the work on this story.1’ .
.V In January 1979 -- a
month and a half after the
Jonestown catastrophe -
NBC News president Lester
Crystal wrote in Variety
that the planned series on
brainwashing by religious
cults had never led to
"threats or risks to our staff
people.” There were, he
wrote, "never any threats
made."
The fact that a segment
on the Peoples Temple, in
particular, had been pre-
pared and canceled was nev-
er disclosed. Nor did the net-
work reveal - then or later -
- that it had been inundated
with threats from Synanon
members and supporters.
Patricia Lynch, the
The Majority's masses
LYNCHBURG, Va. - These were the little people, I suppose
you could say - blue-collar workers, small businessmen,
housewives wno are happy being housewives, young parents,
people who put the milk bottle on the table at home (only now
It’s the carton).
■» But when you get nearly 12,000 of these little people troop-
ing to church on a Sunday morning - 12,000 people who think
alike — suddenly they are not little people anymore. You had
better pay attention to them.
These were “Falwell’s Followers” who filled Thomas Road
Baptist Church here, where Rev. Jerry Falwell is pastor, for
three Sunday morning services - at 8,9:15 and 11.
There were 4,000 here for the early service, 4,000 for the
second service and about 8,500 for the nationally televised
service ("The Old Time Gospel Hour”) at 11. I attended all
three.
I liked these people. I would like them for neighbors. They
SMUTS AND SINNERS
George Plagenz
looked like the kind of people who would bring over a lima
bean and ham casserole if they found out your wife was sick.
But something Falwell said in his sermon at 11 made me
nervous about these people.
“We have decided,” he said, "that we have an obligation to
£ be our brother’s keeper.”
■ Falwell, the founder of Moral Majority, may be right that
those who would like to see an improvement In the moral tone
of society today are a majority (one hopes so, anyway).
But to have someone else decide what is best for you -
unless it is someone whose ideas you respect - can be unset-
tling. And this is what worries many of us in the Moral Majori-
ty about the Moral Majority,
Yet nothing gives vitality to a. worship service more than a
preacher and a congregation who know where they are going
and what they are going to do.
The minister and parishioners at Thomas Road Baptist
i
Church are not wine-and-cheese intellectuals sitting around
discussing an idea. They are “shock troops of the Lord” gird-
ing for battle.
If this can be frightening, it also makes for a lively hour of
worship.
Falwell set a mood of excitement right at the start by tell-
ing the people he was going to talk later about Playboy maga-
zine and the article in it about him.
“We’ve got the other side shook up,” Falwell told his people.
The service had only just begun but Falwell already had the
---egation charged up. They sensed tti......
big, something on the march. H
of purpose which few ministers
their congregations.
But you get religion at this service too — simple, down-
home religion. There is none of the theatricality of Rex
Humbard’s Cathedral of Tomorrow in Akron, Ohio. There are
no portable stages which move back and forth electronically,
no slick production numbers, no floodlights.
The atmosphere is low-key with touches of humor.
Falwell told us he had missed the church’s donkey basket-
ball game Saturday night because he was “nursing a bug,” not
because he was afraid of riding a donkey.
He said he had been riding Jackassess “all my life — liber-
als, humanists, pornographers.”
The long TV “commercial” for the local building fund at
Liberty Baptist College (which the church operates), bordered
on the crass, I thought. People were asked (and asked) to send
contributions to build a prayer chapel on campus.
When you make a pledge, a memorial bricx in the name of
some loved one you designate will be put in place in the chapel
as it goes up. You yourself get an “identical brick” to keep for
your very own.
I had always thought every brick in the world was identical
to every other. But don’t laugh. Falwell raises (56 million a
year with these TV pitches.
In his 30-minute sermon, Falwell said Jesus wants us to be
not only “the light of the world” but “salt of the earth.”
If you put salt on a sore, it causes pain and burning. It stings
the eyes. “We must be salt too,” said Falwell.
Then, to illustrate, he lit into Playboy and rubbed salt into
this “sore” on the face of America. ’1 don’t know of any Chris-
tian who reads this magazine,” he said.
It was not hard to believe that this was true of the 13,000
Christians at Thomas Road Baptist Church on this Sunday
ynorning. *
(NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE ASSN )
Emmy award-winning pro-
ducer of the Synanon story
and the brainwashing series,
said she learned about the
letters only last spring. The
cancellation of the
brainwashing series "came
as a surprise" to her, she
said. "All I was told is what
I read in the November
press release."
My associate Indy
Badhwar has learned that
NBC had about 30 hours of
interviews with former
members of the Peoples
Temple, giving shocking
details of the violence and
tyranny at Jonestown - and
warning of possible tragedy.
Gordon Lindsay, a Cali-
fornia journalist who was a
consultant on NBC’s investi-
gation, said: “We had the
whole story on the temple.
There was no aspect of that
tragedy that was not known
to NBC News by October."
He added that a senior State
Department official admit-
ted that State was aware of
"the weapons, tortures and
beatings at Jonestown."
Lindsay, whQ. began investi-
gating Jonestown in early
1978, said: “Everything I
learned then came true in
November."
Another source inter-
viewed by NBC was Steve
Katsaris, whose daughter
Maria was once Jones' mis-
tress and died in the mass
poisoning at Jonestown. Kat-
saris had visited Guyana in
1977 and learned about the
torture going on. and about
Jones' practice of demand-
ing signed, undated suicide
notes from his followers.
"We fed all these details
to the State Department.
Katsaris said. He also gave
it to NBC in several conver-
sations in 1978. Katsaris
said he hoped that a televi-
sion expose of Jonestown
would create such a furor
that the State Department
would be forced to intervene
and avert a catastrophe.
Another NBC news
source, author Jim Siegel-
man. echoed this feeling: ,
"Had it aired before the
Guyana tragedy, national
interest would have been
stepped up and Congress
would have been forced to
investigate."
But the show was not
aired. And instead of a full-
scale congressional investi-
gation, one lone congress-
man, Leo Ryan, pursued the
scandal on his own.
Whether the tragedy at
Jonestown would in fact
have been prevented if NBC
had exposed the Peoples
Temple is, of course, impos-
sible to say. It is a tragic iro-
ny that among those who
were killed with Rep. Ryan
in Guyana was Don Harris, a
reporter for NBC news.
Footnote: A spokesman
for NBC News said the
brainwashing story was not
a series but only a segment.
Fitting the "diverse" story
into one segment, he said.
•would be a complicated
task" so network officials
"decided on a finer focus.
The focus was on Jonestown
and we were still investigat-
ing the story. That is why
our newsman Don Harris
went on the trip to Guyana
with Rep. Leo Ryan ... It is
absurd to say that we killed
the story." The spokesman
added: "When Crystal said
there had been no 'threats,'
he meant there had been no
legal threats."
SWABBIE HIGH: The
Navy has a bigger problem
with drug and alcohol abuse
than the Army and the Air
Force do - more than 25.000
cases of such "behavioral
problems" each year. A dep-
uty chief of naval opera-
tions. Lando Zech. suggested
a reason in recent Senate
testimony: The Navy's rec-
reation program gets only
half the funds appropriated
for it. the admiral said.
Copyright, 1981,
l nited Feature Syndicate, Inc
ETTA*®1!#1 WORTH STAR-TElEGRA^
HULMF
N.E'ft
AfAii-.
1 “I tied a yellow ribbon ’round the old mail box in anticipation of my income tax
rebate coming back.”
Henry K. matches lore
in diplomacy, economics
By LOUIS RUKEYSER
NEW YORK - penry
Kissinger told me —
misleadingly — that he knew
nothing about economics. But
the former Secretary of State
was troubled, nonetheless.
“During World War II, the
German tanks were clearly
superior to our American
tanks,” he said as we chatted
the other evening, “but none of
my fellow soldiers would admit
this. The general attitude was,
‘If better tanks could be built,
we Americans would build
them.’”
What, Kissinger wondered,
had happened to that confident
American attitude? What had
happened to our pride in U.S.
workmanship? Why had
standards slipped so un-
mistakably that the Japanese —
once known for shoddy
imitations — were now widely
acknowledged, by Americans
themselves, to produce better
products ranging from cars to
television sets?
The point at issue was the
Reagan administration’s for-
thcoming decision on demands
for protection against Japanese
auto imports. It’s one of those
fascinating economic situations
where most of the noise, and
most of the political pressure, is
generated by a narrow sector
whose interests may by no
Berry's World
■
li
O'MbyNtA.M <
"This caller is concerned about your becoming
tense about El Salvador and from drinking cof-
fee — I think It's Robert Young."
means be identical with those of
the country at large.
(Protectionism might benefit
U.S. auto companies and
workers, but it would surely
damage a variety of less
organized groups — including
consumers, who would have to
buy and probably pay more for
products that otherwise
couldn’t compete in the U.S.
market, and companies and
workers in U.S. export in-
dustries, who would find that
foreigners now had fewer
dollars with which to buy their
wares.)
Now, Henry Kissinger is no
ideological free-trader. Indeed,
trade to him would appear to be
one more weapon in the
diplomatic arsenal. He would
like to be able to license ex-
ports, for example, as a means
of rewarding friends and
punishing enemies — and in an
effort to assure better behavior
from (say) the Soviet Union.
Moreover, he is not averse to
the protectionist case on autos
— for a highly interesting
reason. Without some sort of
new restrictions on Japanese
producers, he fears, Ford is in
danger of following Chrysler
down the road to corporate
oblivion (a development he told
me we “can’t” let occur).
Significantly, like so many
other independent observers of
that extended trauma, he seems
already to have written off
Chrysler’s survival chances.
On the broad strategic
question of whether the U.S.
should intervene in-
ternationally on behalf of
beleaguered Detroit, then,
Kissinger would appear to be
firmly in toe camp of those
anxious to do so (such as
Transportation Secretary Drew
Lewis), as opposed to those who
believe that such new
restrictions would run counter
to the Reagan desire to bolster
trade and curb inflatin' such
as most of the admt' .lion’s
economic policy'.,.•• ors).
Tactically, Kissinger
«
suspects that the ultimate
outcome may be neither higher
tariffs nor formal quotas, but
negotiations aimed at fuj-ther
“voluntary” limitations'^ the
Japanese auto producers.
Having considerable ex-
perience himself with
negotiations on a similar
subject (textiles), the veteran
diplomat worries that the
Japanese might stretch out
such negotiations for years —
thus largely vitiating their
purpose.
More significantly, there
appears to be a second
Kissinger at work. Behind the
elder statesman coolly
assessing the pros and the cons
of one more foreign-policy
expedition is the German-bom
American sergeant who
couldn’t get over his buddies’
(somewhat excessive) pride in
American workmanship.
For Kissinger clearly
realized that not the most gifted
negotiator in the world can
permanently save the U.S. auto
(or textile, or steel) industry. At
best, he can buy a little time
while the industry moves
strenuously to solve its own
problems on both the
management and labor sides.
Government can help by
dismantling the worst of its
regulations, by reducing in-
flation and by encouraging
private investment, but it
cannot save Detroit (or
anybody else) by erecting a
self-righteous wall around
America.
The cure cannot come from
diplomacy, however skillful
and this is what has Kissinger
ultimately concerned. He
wonders whether we will, as a
nation, rediscover the spirit
that so impressed a young
immigrant GI. And in posing
that profound question, he
shows that he knows more
about economics than he is
willing to admit.
Copyright, 1W1
McNaught Syndicate, Inc.
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Keys, Clarke. Sulphur Springs News-Telegram (Sulphur Springs, Tex.), Vol. 103, No. 67, Ed. 1 Friday, March 20, 1981, newspaper, March 20, 1981; Sulphur Springs, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth823768/m1/2/?q=%22%22~1: accessed July 11, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Hopkins County Genealogical Society.