For the Record

With 28 states already in favor, National Taxpayers Union is predicting that drive for a balanced-budget amendment will reach the necessary number (34) by June. . . . Move over George Meany. Business wants a turn. White House attacks on “excessive” 1978 profits have prompted business to strike back. “You have 9.5 per cent after-taxes profit and 8.2 per cent inflation— that doesn’t sound like inordinate profits to me,” said Forrest Shumway of Signal Companies. “If business was as deceptive in its advertising as politicians are on the issue of corporate profits, the government would probably throw us businessmen in jail,” said J. W. Dowdle, treasurer of R. J. Reynolds. . . . Chamber of Commerce President Richard Lesher pointed out that from the fourth quarter of 1977 to the fourth quarter of 1978 the “increase in workers’ wages was three times greater than the increase in profits, and the increase in federal taxes was eight times greater.” . . . Business Week went after Alfred Kahn, Administration’s inflation czar, who termed the profits a “catastrophe.” The magazine said the U.S. “desperately needs its chief inflation fighter to learn to keep his mouth shut and take a refresher course in economics.”

If SALT II treaty were voted on right now, it would be crushed in the Senate. Most optimistic count has forty senators approving pact, ten short of simple majority, 27 short of two-thirds needed for ratification. Administration claims of public support for SALT have been called into question by poll commissioned by Committee on the Present Danger, which found only 21 per cent of Americans supporting SALT II treaty. Crucial man in the debate over treaty will be hawkish Senator Sam Nunn, a Georgia Democrat highly respected on both sides of aisle. Wall Street Journal quotes a White House official as saying: “I can envision winning SALT without Jackson and possibly even without Baker. But without Nunn we’re dead.” . . . How bad are things at CIA? Senator Daniel Moynihan, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, recently said there are “few functions left in the CIA—most of them, I think—that couldn’t be performed by the Library of Congress.” Morale wasn’t helped when agency received a request for data, under the Freedom of Information Act, from Polish embassy. . . . Moroccan leftists have stepped up their campaign to expel Shah of Iran. Switzerland, Spain, France, Britain, and Italy have informed Shah they can’t accept responsibility for his security. Only Egypt .and U.S. have extended welcome mat, but he is unlikely to come to U.S. for two reasons: 1) his advisors have warned that his security, in light of FBI breakdown, can’t be protected; and 2) the U.S. role in pressuring him to go into exile. . . . USSR is spurning U.S. warnings to stay out of Afghanistan fighting. Four days after U.S. delivered warning, Soviet pilots began flying troops to remote rebel strongholds. . . . An historic first: the Soviet Academy of Sciences has refused, by a vote of 212 to 137, to admit a member of the Communist Party Central Committee, Sergei P. Trapezhnikov, chairman of the Science Commission of Supreme Soviet. Academy of Sciences pre-dates the Soviet regime and is the only Soviet institution that allows a secret ballot. It is also the only Soviet institution to which dissident Andrei Sakharov belongs. . . . With many Chinese troops moved to the Vietnamese border, many Chinese have taken the opportunity to flee the country. So far this year 56,000 have crossed the border, legally or illegally, into Hong Kong. The figure is already more than double the number for the whole of last year.

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With 28 states already in favor, National Taxpayers Union is predicting that drive for a balanced-budget amendment will reach the necessary number (34) by June. . . . Move over George Meany. Business wants a turn. White House attacks on “excessive” 1978 profits have prompted business to strike back. “You have 9.5 per cent after-taxes profit and 8.2 per cent inflation— that doesn’t sound like inordinate profits to me,” said Forrest Shumway of Signal Companies. “If business was as deceptive in its advertising as politicians are on the issue of corporate profits, the government would probably throw us businessmen in jail,” said J. W. Dowdle, treasurer of R. J. Reynolds. . . . Chamber of Commerce President Richard Lesher pointed out that from the fourth quarter of 1977 to the fourth quarter of 1978 the “increase in workers’ wages was three times greater than the increase in profits, and the increase in federal taxes was eight times greater.” . . . Business Week went after Alfred Kahn, Administration’s inflation czar, who termed the profits a “catastrophe.” The magazine said the U.S. “desperately needs its chief inflation fighter to learn to keep his mouth shut and take a refresher course in economics.”

If SALT II treaty were voted on right now, it would be crushed in the Senate. Most optimistic count has forty senators approving pact, ten short of simple majority, 27 short of two-thirds needed for ratification. Administration claims of public support for SALT have been called into question by poll commissioned by Committee on the Present Danger, which found only 21 per cent of Americans supporting SALT II treaty. Crucial man in the debate over treaty will be hawkish Senator Sam Nunn, a Georgia Democrat highly respected on both sides of aisle. Wall Street Journal quotes a White House official as saying: “I can envision winning SALT without Jackson and possibly even without Baker. But without Nunn we’re dead.” . . . How bad are things at CIA? Senator Daniel Moynihan, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, recently said there are “few functions left in the CIA—most of them, I think—that couldn’t be performed by the Library of Congress.” Morale wasn’t helped when agency received a request for data, under the Freedom of Information Act, from Polish embassy. . . . Moroccan leftists have stepped up their campaign to expel Shah of Iran. Switzerland, Spain, France, Britain, and Italy have informed Shah they can’t accept responsibility for his security. Only Egypt .and U.S. have extended welcome mat, but he is unlikely to come to U.S. for two reasons: 1) his advisors have warned that his security, in light of FBI breakdown, can’t be protected; and 2) the U.S. role in pressuring him to go into exile. . . . USSR is spurning U.S. warnings to stay out of Afghanistan fighting. Four days after U.S. delivered warning, Soviet pilots began flying troops to remote rebel strongholds. . . . An historic first: the Soviet Academy of Sciences has refused, by a vote of 212 to 137, to admit a member of the Communist Party Central Committee, Sergei P. Trapezhnikov, chairman of the Science Commission of Supreme Soviet. Academy of Sciences pre-dates the Soviet regime and is the only Soviet institution that allows a secret ballot. It is also the only Soviet institution to which dissident Andrei Sakharov belongs. . . . With many Chinese troops moved to the Vietnamese border, many Chinese have taken the opportunity to flee the country. So far this year 56,000 have crossed the border, legally or illegally, into Hong Kong. The figure is already more than double the number for the whole of last year.