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HOME / The Week/the Spin : The week's big news, and how's it's being spun.

By William Saletan|Posted Saturday, Nov. 23, 1996, at 3:30 AM ET

The United States vetoed the re-election of United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, ostensibly on the grounds that his administration is bloated and unresponsive. The veto pitted America against the rest of the world. Delegates from other nations said the United States had no right to oust Boutros-Ghali without first paying $1.5 billion in delinquent dues. American officials, conversely, said Congress wouldn't pay the dues until Boutros-Ghali was gone. Commentators suggested that President Clinton was once again deserting a burdensome associate (Boutros-Ghali) in order to appease Republicans and protect his popularity. Boutros-Ghali refused to go quietly, posing as the defender of the Third World against the American "Goliath." The betting line was that Boutros-Ghali would eventually lose, and was only making things unpleasant by fighting it out. (posted 11/22)

The Democratic National Committee announced that it had cut its ties to controversial fund-raiser John Huang. The DNC dumped Huang along with 50 other employees, insisting that this was a normal post-election "downsizing," and that Huang's release had nothing to do with the illegal contributions he had raised. Meanwhile, the DNC continued to acknowledge and refund legally questionable contributions, raising the total figure above $1 million. President Clinton urged the press not to rush to judgment, citing the exoneration of one-time Olympic Park bombing suspect Richard Jewell. But even liberal commentators gave up on Clinton's credibility, after the New York Times reported that he had defied White House lawyers' advice to come clean before the election about his meetings with an Indonesian businessman. The New York Times called for an independent counsel. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen said the Jewell comparison was unfair, since "Jewell told the truth." Clinton did get one break: The Los Angeles Times reported that Republican Chairman Haley Barbour had raised money for his party in Tokyo and Hong Kong last year, contrary to his recent denials. (posted 11/22)

CIA officer Harold James Nicholson was arrested and charged with spying for Russia. He allegedly sold the identities and profiles of new agents for $120,000. Though the highest-ranking CIA official ever accused of espionage, Nicholson appears to have done less damage than Aldrich Ames. The CIA and FBI touted this arrest as proof that they had fixed the bureaucratic bungling that had allowed Ames to go undetected for six years. But editorialists said Nicholson had made the investigators' job comically easy (he even climbed into a car with diplomatic plates registered to the Russian Embassy) and, even so, hadn't been caught and busted soon enough. Commentators also debated whether the mole's exposure proved Russia was still a duplicitous enemy. The New York Times offered moral indignation; the Washington Post offered cynical nonchalance. (posted 11/22)

Texaco's PR troubles eased, while its legal peril deepened. The company settled a racial-discrimination lawsuit for $176 million, including a raise for every black employee. Reportedly the biggest payment made in such a case, it is hardly a nick in Texaco's annual revenue of more than $30 billion. Black commentators (e.g., DeWayne Wickham of USA Today) praised Texaco's chairman for acting quickly, called the boycott of independent Texaco gas stations misguided, and argued that the crusade against corporate racism should move on to more egregious culprits, such as Avis and Circuit City. Meanwhile, though, the FBI filed charges against former Texaco executive Richard Lundwall, in what many saw as a maneuver to pressure him for new leads in the evidence-destruction criminal case against Texaco. One juicy discovery: Lundwall apparently released the tapes of the now-infamous "jelly bean" meeting to punish Texaco for downsizing him. (posted 11/22)

Former State Department official Alger Hiss died. Hiss, accused of spying for the Soviet Union in the 1930s, was convicted in 1950 of lying to a grand jury about his activities. The Hiss case was regarded as the trial of the century--at least, until O.J. Simpson came along. Hiss spent the remainder of his life protesting his innocence, despite evidence generally regarded as damning. In marking Hiss' death, the New York Times called the case a "riddle" subject to "dueling interpretations," with observers disputing whether Hiss "was guilty, innocent or something in between." Conservatives denounced all this fudging and waxed nostalgic for the Cold War. "The insufferable agnosticism expressed in many obituaries concerning his guilt," wrote George Will, "is proof of the continuing queasiness of 'anti-anti-communist' thinkers confronting the facts of communism and its servants."(posted 11/22)

The federal government decided to allow car owners to disconnect their air bags, which, according to government estimates, are killing one child per month and are on track to kill one child per week as more and more cars feature them. (The deaths are generally caused by the child's impact against the bag, or against the seat on the rebound.) The decision was viewed as a vindication of automakers, who warned of such injuries many years ago; the Wall Street Journal touted the "humbling retreat" of former air-bag evangelist Joan Claybrook. Auto-safety advocates and editorialists insisted that air bags save many more people than they kill, and worried that the backlash will go too far. Everyone agreed that the solution is technology: Automakers favor slower-inflating air bags, while consumer advocates want new gizmos to detect the size of each passenger and adjust the inflation speed accordingly. (posted 11/22)

Baseball outfielder Albert Belle signed a five-year contract with the Chicago White Sox for $55 million--more than the White Sox's entire payroll for last year. The deal surpassed baseball's previous record salary by 30 percent and infuriated other owners, who claim that salaries must be controlled because nearly every team is losing money. Baseball executives denounced White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf as a hypocrite for "busting the market" after he had quashed a new baseball labor agreement in the name of fiscal restraint. Reinsdorf pleaded that if he hadn't busted the market, some other owner would have. Commentators worried once again that sports salaries are out of control, and that small-market teams won't be able to compete for top talent. Belle is widely detested for bad behavior, including corking his bat, deliberately hitting a fan with a baseball, and purportedly trying to run down Halloween vandals with his car. "Belle's reward for being the biggest jerk in the game is the biggest contract in the game," complained a Chicago Tribune columnist. (posted 11/22)

Pope John Paul II met with Cuban President Fidel Castro in Rome, and agreed to visit Cuba in 1997. The papal meeting was Castro's first; the trip to Cuba would be the pope's first. Political analysts said Castro was trying to borrow the pope's moral prestige in order to thwart America's efforts to isolate Cuba. The catch is that the pope is an outspoken foe of communism, and he insists on moving and speaking freely in any country he visits. So Castro has to gamble that the pope won't stir up enough Catholic or democratic fervor to topple him, as happened in Poland in 1979. (posted 11/22)

Hundreds of thousands of Rwandan refugees returned home from camps in Zaire. The exodus was triggered by a Zairian rebel attack that expelled guerrillas who had held the refugees captive in the camps. The United States and other nations had planned to send an international force to the region to free the refugees. Now that the refugees have escaped, Rwanda says the mission is unnecessary. But the mission apparently will proceed anyway, with its focus shifting to half-a-million refugees who remain elsewhere in eastern Zaire. Early reaction to the exodus was buoyant; many analysts inferred that the crisis was resolving itself. But by Monday, reporters were sobering up as returning refugees found their homes confiscated, food and work scarce, and their guerrilla tormentors sneaking back into Rwanda in their midst. "Arriving Rwandan Refugees Find Home Is Not So Sweet," conceded the New York Times. (posted 11-18)

Miscellany: Rep. Bob Dornan was finally declared the loser in his re-election bid. Dornan protested that noncitizens had illegally elected his Hispanic opponent. An unmanned Russian Mars probe aborted its flight and crashed to earth, devastating the Russian space program. A worldwide study ranked American students slightly below average in math and slightly above average in science. A National Academy of Sciences panel reported that America leads the developed world in the prevalence of sexually transmitted disease. Warren Buffett secured a $590 million premium for insuring California against $1.5 billion in earthquake damage for the next four years. Odds against having to pay out on the claim were estimated at 20-1. San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown apologized for calling 49ers quarterback Elvis Grbac "an embarrassment to humankind" after the team's loss to Dallas; Grbac's son had been operated on for a spinal deformity before the game. Bob Dole appeared in a print ad for Air France, under the headline, "Not doing anything?"(posted 11/22)

Straws in the wind: Chile struck a free-trade deal with Canada, leading the way to incorporating South America in NAFTA. Facing litigation from a rejected white high-school student, Boston scrapped a preference program for minorities; analysts saw it as accelerating the national retreat from racial preferences. The University of Minnesota gave in to its faculty, and abandoned its trailblazing effort to reduce job guarantees for tenured professors. A House report says cash welfare benefits have lost half their real value since 1970. Outrage over skinflint health care, especially for women, shifted from drive-through deliveries to drive-through mastectomies; HMO officials tried to deter new regulations by volunteering to cover a one-night hospital stay for breast-removal patients. USA Today reported that businesswomen are increasingly seeking prenuptial agreements to shield their money. The Washington Post reported that the hot new academic field is men's studies. Publishers are crediting Oprah Winfrey's "Book Club" for multiplying book sales and perhaps reviving America's interest in literature. (posted 11/22)

Photograph of Boutros Boutros-Ghali by Peter Morgan/Reuters; photograph of CIA officer Harold James Nicholson from HO/Reuters; photograph of Alger Hiss from Archive Photos/Reuters; photograph of Albert Belle by Sue Ogrocki/Reuters

--Compiled by William Saletan and the editors of S LATE.

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Will Saletan covers science, technology, and politics for Slate and says a lot things that get him in trouble.