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- NATION, Page 35Grapevine
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- DOUBLE DIPPING. Former U.S. Army Sergeant Clyde Lee Conrad,
- charged last August with spying for the Warsaw Pact, had a
- second sponsor: the CIA. After Conrad was approached by East
- bloc recruiters, he offered his services to the agency and
- collected $150,000 in payments. The CIA had hoped to use him as
- a double agent but finally decided it was throwing good money
- after a bad spy.
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- GUN-SHY. George Bush's new crime-busting program, which was
- to be unveiled Monday, borrows heavily from a confidential memo
- that Bush solicited from the conservative Heritage Foundation.
- A major recommendation is "to retain the support of your
- gun-owning constituency," whose activists the President angered
- by banning imported semiautomatic rifles. To "reorient the
- argument away from . . . gun control," as the memo advises, Bush
- planned to propose $2 billion for more federal agents,
- prosecutors and prison cells, as well as tougher laws against
- gun-toting criminals.
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- PAPER CHASE. It's early, but Texas universities are already
- scrambling for the privilege of housing the Bush legacy. Rice
- is fielding the President's former oil partner and now Pennzoil
- chief Hugh Liedtke to exert influence. At the University of
- Houston, Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay is leading the charge. At
- Texas A&M, oilman Michel Halbouty is the designated persuader.
- So far, Yale University, Bush's alma mater, has expressed only
- mild interest in his papers.
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- SHE'S A TEETOT-ALER. Annoyed by Alaska politicians' attacks
- on the oil industry after Exxon's disastrous spill, the head of
- a company making a tidy profit in the cleanup took a potshot at
- the state legislature. Said President Pete Leathard of VECO
- Inc.: "Twenty-five years ago Alaska suffered an act of God, the
- Good Friday earthquake. We didn't waste time seeking to punish
- the cause of that disaster." Retorted state senate president Tim
- Kelly: "As far as I know, God wasn't drunk when the earthquake
- hit."
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