home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- GRAPEVINE, Page 19
-
-
- By JOHN GREENWALD
-
- Home at Last
-
- It is the biggest breakthrough in resolving the fate of
- America's 2,266 Vietnam War POW/MIAs since 1973. The U.S. has
- acquired 4,500 black-and-white photos of dead Americans taken
- by Vietnamese combat photographers during the war. While some
- 80% of the grisly photos are duplicate shots of the same
- individuals, the material has already helped determine what
- happened to several soldiers who were listed as missing. Armed
- with the photos, special presidential envoy GENERAL JOHN VESSEY
- flew to Hanoi last week to try to persuade the Vietnamese to
- open up the rest of a cache of photos, dog tags and other items
- that could help identify missing Americans.
-
- Stop Me If You've Heard This One
-
- Flexing his rhetorical muscles before the
- Vice-Presidential debate, DAN QUAYLE explained what he called
- the essence of the Republican campaign. "If you give a person
- a fish," he said, "they'll fish for a day. But if you train a
- person to fish, they'll fish for a lifetime." Besides misquoting
- the proverb (it's ". . . feed him for a day" and ". . . feed him
- for a lifetime"), Quayle was stealing a page from an unlikely
- book: Democrat Michael Dukakis recited the lines often during
- his 1988 campaign. Not to worry. The saying has been a favorite
- with orators since the ancient Chinese.
-
- Cashing In
-
- Republican Party Chairman Rich Bond loves to fly, and it
- shows. Bond was the only member of the G.O.P. high command to
- ride first class on the 8:15 a.m. TWA flight from St. Louis to
- Washington after the first presidential debate. Seems he took
- a lot of heat for it from the bigwigs back in coach class,
- including White House chief of staff James Baker, presidential
- pollster and official campaign chairman Robert Teeter and Budget
- Director Dick Darman. "I've visited 35 states since February,"
- Bond says, "and I've accumulated several hundred thousand
- frequent-flyer miles, which we're using to upgrade me at no
- expense to the party or the campaign."
-
- Hell No, We Won't Go
-
- Bush administration experts fear that a wider war could
- erupt at any time in the former Yugoslavia. But COLIN POWELL,
- Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has forbidden his
- generals to prepare any U.S. contingency plans. Without the
- plans, he figures, there can be no U.S. involvement in the war.
-
- One from the Heart
-
- Attorneys who contend that Democratic patriarch CLARK
- CLIFFORD, 85, is too ill to stand trial for his alleged role in
- the B.C.C.I. scandal could well be right. When Clifford sought
- heart surgery at the Washington Hospital Center in July, doctors
- quietly determined that his heart was too weak to withstand an
- operation. "He has practically no heart muscle left," says a
- medical source. Clifford was later hospitalized briefly for
- internal bleeding. His lawyers now plan to ask a New York judge
- to dismiss the charges against him on the ground that the rigors
- of a trial could cause a fatal heart attack.
-
- CAMPAIGN QUIZ
-
- Q
-
- Two weeks before the election, President Bush trails Bill
- Clinton by about 15 percentage points. In which postwar races
- did polls show these results two weeks before the vote?
-
- A: Democratic incumbent 45%
- Republican challenger 42%
-
- B: Republican incumbent 44%
- Democratic challenger 49%
-
- C: Democratic incumbent 45%
- Republican challenger 50%
-
- D: Democratic 51%
- Republican 45%
-
-
- A
-
- A: Carter-Reagan, 1980
-
- B: Ford-Carter, 1976
-
- C: Truman-Dewey, 1948
-
- D: Kennedy-Nixon, 1960
-
-