THE WORD FROM WASHINGTON
Stein, Jeff
THE WORD FROM WASHINGTON Jeff Stein TWO WOMEN On the day before the Senate confirmed the appointment of Sandra Day O'Connor to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, I went down to...
...One idea was to count catsup and pickle relish as vegetables...
...Most people think just a man should be in the job...
...November Briefing On Company Business...
...No names of the lawmakers were available...
...Chinagate A New York grand jury has quietly begun to hear testimony on illegal operations by Taiwan to acquire sensitive U.S...
...Intelligence sources were thus disturbed to learn that Weisenburger now works for SCI, a company whose primary income derives from highly classified Government contracts...
...A telephone call to SCI confirmed Weisen-burger's employment, but he was out of town and unavailable for comment...
...I asked her if she had thought about Sandra Day O'Connor's nomination to the Supreme Court...
...That helped, but Roberts had already won a Federally supported scholarship...
...THE WORD FROM WASHINGTON Jeff Stein TWO WOMEN On the day before the Senate confirmed the appointment of Sandra Day O'Connor to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, I went down to courtside to meet with twenty-three-year-old Cheryl Roberts, a dynamic young black woman from a small town in West Virginia...
...A spokesperson for Webster pooh-poohed the rumor, however...
...spokesman for the Shah of Iran...
...Edwin Meese III is supposed to replace him...
...Earlier, former aide to Barry Goldwater and GOP National Chairman Dean Burch represented Bolivia...
...There are places where you can do better—the Navy admirals' mess at the Pentagon , for example...
...That's where the all-white school was...
...Take, for example, the employes' cafeteria in the Department of Agriculture...
...I immediately rejected the daily special, Swiss steak, as too close to my high school experience, but the price was right: $2.58...
...I chose a half pint of milk for thirty-six cents (the USDA plans call for a cutback to six ounces in the schools), over a bottle of Perrier water, the price of which I didn't notice...
...An unusual $7 million deposit in a Cayman Islands bank from South America, however, prompted an investigation that eventually led Interpol to the door of President Baby Doc Duvalier...
...But when they finally did find work, there just wasn't enough money or room for all six kids...
...She didn't know there was any other kind, though it was ten years after the Supreme Court had decided that segregated schools were unconstitutional...
...Somehow, I found Roberts's life more interesting than that of the first woman to be named to the Supreme Court...
...We chose to sample the USDA's fare after recent reports that the Reagan Administration had planned a 30 per cent cutback in the Federal school lunch program...
...There were a few teachers, black and white, who gave her important counseling—important because her parents had left her to grow up with friends in West Virginia while they tried to find work in Washington...
...A year after the 1954 decision in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, the Court said schools should be desegregated in "all deliberate speed...
...Another Job for Mr...
...I hope so...
...that way, french fries smeared with catsup could be called "two vegetables...
...She applied and was accepted...
...Hoping to brush up on its image, though, the generals have hired Robert Ar-mao to represent them...
...I didn't even know there was a school there...
...It was almost enough to spoil one's appetite...
...Judiciary Committee Chairman Strom Thurmond, who led a "states' rights" walkout of the 1948 Democratic Convention, liked that...
...This is what I call the "keep-your-fingers-crossed" school of American politics...
...And I think people learned to deal with me beyond being a woman and black...
...You know," she added, "I didn't really think about it...
...Integration was a great thing," she said, "because I learned to deal with personalities and not just color...
...At the top of the docket awaiting her is Watt v. Energy Action Educational Foundation, which raises the question of whether the Secretary of Energy can sell the coastlines of the United States to the oil companies...
...Because of its deep involvement in the international drug trade, it's the only Latin American dictatorship that remains a pariah in Ronald Reagan's Washington...
...I had to show my press credentials to get into the USDA cafeteria...
...Cheryl Roberts had never heard about it...
...That would shake up the monotony, wouldn't it...
...When Senators asked, during her confirmation hearings, about discrimination Judge O'Connor had suffered as a woman in her legal career, she indicated that the worst thing that had ever happened to her was being turned down for a job at several corporate law firms after her graduation from Stanford...
...It turned out Haiti was secretly reselling the oil to South Africa, according to an investigation by the Mexican paper Uno Mas Uno...
...At first, it reminded me of my suburban high school...
...Armao was formerly U.S...
...For those who can enjoy such perks, it's a real bargain...
...Many of the people who live here pay the same prices and have the same complaints...
...This time, Webster is said to have been offered an opening on the World Court...
...At Jefferson High School, her social studies teacher took her aside and told her about a summer job with the Federal Youth Conservation Corps, where she worked on weed eradication by planting bushels of common vetch...
...In the center of town, the whites lived...
...It was one of several boosts she got from the Government in her journey from Martinsburg to Washington, D.C...
...She was all smiles...
...She will be in charge of scouting and recruitment...
...In her office, a poster of television's "White Shadow" was tacked to the wall over her desk...
...There was desperation in the air to get a woman—any woman—on the court...
...military equipment...
...So— cottage cheese and catsup came out as the equivalent of meat and potatoes...
...But frankly, I think the kids deserve a break today...
...When she was asked about busing to achieve racial desegregation, O'Connor squirmed and recalled long bus rides to and from school in Arizona...
...Because Weisenburger could hardly work at SCI without CIA acquiescence, the astonished investigators say...
...In 1964, Cheryl Roberts was attending an all-black elementary school in rural West Virginia...
...Finally, the Government gave her a job...
...On September 9, she was appointed assistant coach of the men's basketball team at the University of the District of Columbia...
...She got her first break from the Government—and from women who marched and demonstrated and picketed so that the Government would give women a break...
...She was dressed in work clothes: blue slacks and a yellow T-shirt...
...If a man had been appointed, I probably wouldn't have paid attention to it...
...Cocaine Blues Poor Bolivia...
...In college, an adviser told her about another Government program: The Department of Housing and Urban Development offered work-study internships in recreational planning six hours away in Charleston...
...Perhaps Justice O'Connor will reflect, in her commodious chambers at the Supreme Court, on how she got there in the first place...
...During the confirmation hearings, abortion rights activists button-holed committee liberals and pleaded that they steer away from the issue...
...I kept thinking of Judge O'Connor's tactical retreats under the bright lights of the Senate hearing room...
...She was talking about her own new job as the first woman ever named to a coaching position in an NCAA varsity men's basketball program...
...Cheryl Roberts did not have Sandra Day O'Connor on her mind...
...From the Deli section, I considered the Stuffed Avocado with Chicken Salad, $2.25, and the roast beef sub, $1.50...
...That's the irony: While the Administration has abandoned its catsup-is-vegetable, peanuts-are-meat approach, it is still cutting the school-lunch budget, so that kids all over the country will pay more or eat less...
...She graduated from Shepherd College with a B.S...
...Meese, meanwhile, is getting ready to push the White House's next big program: a ballyhooed campaign against crime in the streets...
...I wouldn't have wanted to be black," Cheryl Roberts said in quiet appreciation, "if I hadn't been able to have some of the opportunities I've had...
...Snake Oil Mexico decided not long ago to help out Haiti by sending it oil at cut-rate prices...
...When she read in a newspaper that the assistant basketball coach at the University of the District of Columbia was moving to Georgetown University as an aide to another black coach, John Thompson, she applied for his job and got it...
...Critical to the operations, say the sources, was the assistance of friendly members of Congress who introduced "private bills" to grant specific export licenses...
...If you can sneak in there, you can find a Lucullan feast at modest price: Broiled filet of sole goes for $4.05...
...That's where the blacks lived," she said...
...But she didn't have the manners to stand up and say, "Thank you...
...But in some Government office buildings, the best eating in town can be had at much lower cost than in the most modest of city restaurants...
...HIGH ON THE HOG People who come to Washington are always complaining about the high price of eating...
...According to knowledgeable Federal sources, Taiwanese agents set up phony American companies to buy the parts separately and export them...
...I thought it was great a woman got it...
...There was the west side of town, and there was the east side of town...
...he smiled like a turtle on a summer rock...
...Yeah, I did," she smiled...
...But at the USDA cafeteria, I finally settled on Chicken Salad on Croissant (which included a small salad), for $1.05, and a generous side of cottage cheese, for thirty-three cents...
...According to published reports, Weisenburger led Scientific Communications, Inc., of Dallas, Texas, to believe he was conducting CIA business when he bought the equipment for Wilson and Terpil (who resold it to Qaddafi at a 1,000 per cent mark-up...
...But when you plant them in the ground, they blossom and look nice...
...That included two vegetables, soup, and apple pie...
...Nearby, I was tempted by a yogurt sundae with topping, seventy-five cents...
...In April 1977, CIA Director Stansfield Turner fired William Weisenburger, an electronics specialist, and forever stripped him of a security clearance for helping former CIA agents Edwin Wilson and Frank Terpil acquire explosive devices for Libya's MuammarQaddafi...
...But then she was transferred to an all-white school...
...And when it came time to vote on her confirmation, Thurmond cheerfully joined a unanimous Senate...
...The woman serving them up agreed the price was right...
...When Wisconsin Democrat Les Aspin recently discovered the Navy had so many stewards hovering around to serve admirals that the real cost of the fish was $31.00 (picked up by the taxpayers, of course), he awarded the senior sailors a "Brass Bicuspid" medal...
...You can imagine what a field day the Democrats would have with that sort of Government "economy...
...Another poster, near the counter serving the Scarsdale Diet, announced a "Namesake Recipe Contest" for the "Lean Lunch Bunch...
...Another spate of rumors is swirling around FBI headquarters regarding the possible replacement of Director William Webster...
...his employment there suggests the Wilson and Terpil dealings with Qaddafi had high-level approval, no matter what Admiral Turner did...
...Among the colorful posters on the walls was one that cheerily announced, "If It's Date Bread, It Must Be Thursday...
...Under the force of court-ordered desegregation, Roberts went to the formerly all-white school and excelled...
...Like the cafeteria in every Government agency—from the CIA to the Supreme Court—it offers good, cheap food in surroundings that are quite pleasant...
...As I walked around the food service carousels, I saw no need for discounts...
...She paused and smiled again and added, "Now a black President—that's what we really need...
...Meese, according to the recollection of a close friend, angled for the job shortly after the election, and it remains his passion...
...And that's what stuck in my mind as we talked...
...Another idea was to shift soybean curd, cottage cheese, peanuts, nuts, and seeds to the meat column...
...in 1980 and snagged her first full-time job with a veterans' hospital in Martinsburg...
...Prizes included a year's discount on cafeteria meals...
...But at Agriculture, high officials were furious: They had been doing their best for the Reagan budget cuts, only to have the rug pulled out from under them...
...Heavy thinkers at the top of the Government had come up with creative ways to accomplish this...
...The Reagan White House could imagine, too, and hastily canceled the new, improved school lunch formula...
...They look ugly, like they're dead, when you plant them," she remembered...
...Newly redecorated, it was about the size of a football field, with skylights and a jungle of potted trees and plants...
...No less an authority than Budget Director David Stockman called it "bureaucratic bungling" and hinted that the Department of Agriculture had acted without proper White House clearance...
...She said she would have a hard time paying the higher lunch prices for her two kids in District of Columbia schools...
...None of them gave Sandra Day O'Connor a job when she needed one...
...Cheryl stayed in Martinsburg...
...They're not alone...
...Listening to her story, I thought it must have been like being transferred to Mars...
...Along the way, she was named one of the Outstanding Young Women of America...
...she didn't like them...
...I didn't know where they went to school...
...Without desegregation orders, there would have been a life of riding in the back of the bus...
...The total: $2.04...
...I like it," she said with infectious enthusiasm, "because it shows what a woman can do...
Vol. 45 • November 1981 • No. 11
