home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- <text id=89TT2173>
- <title>
- Aug. 21, 1989: Grapevine
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- Aug. 21, 1989 How Bush Decides
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- NATION, Page 26
- Grapevine
- </hdr><body>
- <p> FOREIGN FIREPOWER. News photos of George Bush meeting with
- Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia in Washington last week included
- a surprising detail: one of the prince's bodyguards was openly
- packing a pistol in a hip holster. Many Americans might assume
- that the Secret Service maintains a monopoly on firepower, but
- the U.S. has reciprocal arrangements with other protection
- services. The deal: foreign bodyguards carry guns when their VIP
- visits the U.S., and American agents do so when the President
- goes abroad. More worrisome to the service are the hundreds of
- armed local policemen near the President when he makes speeches
- at home. They might begin shooting in the event of a
- disturbance, posing more danger than an assassin would.
- </p>
- <p> IN A STATE AT STATE. In a rare rebuff, Secretary of State
- James Baker refused to take along Alexander Vershbow, the State
- Department's top Soviet specialist, when he met recently with
- Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze. Career Foreign
- Service officers complain that Baker has cut them off,
- preferring to confer with a few longtime assistants. The only
- way the State Department knows what Baker is up to, says a
- senior officer, "is by reading his testimony on the Hill or
- seeing what he's putting out for press guidance."
- </p>
- <p> THE BLUE PAGES. The June 29 issue of the Congressional
- Record could be rated X, thanks to remarks inserted by
- California Congressman William Dannemeyer. In a piece titled
- "What Homosexuals Do," the conservative Republican cites sexual
- practices -- including some involving vegetables and light bulbs
- -- that he maintains are commonplace among gays. Dannemeyer's
- unorthodox entry prompted Indiana Democrat Andrew Jacobs to ask
- the House ethics committee to clarify standards for placing
- "unspoken, not to say unspeakable, remarks in the Congressional
- Record."
- </p>
- <p> THE OTHER BERLIN BLOCKADE. More than 40 years after the
- Berlin airlift, West Germany is trying to break another
- blockade: an Allied monopoly over East-West air traffic. The
- U.S., Britain and France allow only their airlines to fly the
- lucrative air corridor from the Federal Republic into Berlin.
- The Allies also control the entire border zone, in effect
- barring direct traffic between major cities of the two Germanys.
- Bonn is skirting the Allied monopoly, if not breaking it:
- Lufthansa will fly from Frankfurt in West Germany to Leipzig in
- the East by detouring through Czechoslovakia.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-