December 23, 1990

Exploiting a web of front companies and secret military alliances on four continents, Iraq has managed to buy much of the hardware and acquire the skill for an assembly line that could produce atomic weapons within the decade, Western law-enforcement and intelligence officials say. The Iraqi purchasing network worked with virtual impunity for nearly 10 years, using deception and, some critics charge, murder to skirt Western safeguards on nuclear technology. In turn, Iraq's enemies have arrested and killed its agents and tried for years to sabotage the bomb program, with some success.

Now and then, Harriette Ternipsede stands up, defying the stream of calls pouring into her telephone. When she does, she said, her supervisors at the Trans World Airlines reservations office here call across the rows of sales agents and tell her to sit down. Although standing up slows production, it gives her relief from two-hour stretches of sitting at a computer terminal, and, she says, "It's a way to show I'm a person."

PRESIDENT BUSH lighted the National Christmas Tree the other night, a custom dating back to Calvin Coolidge. The capital is awash in Christmas cards and gifts, since politicians and lobbyists are in the business of friendship, and the holiday parties have built to a low, alcoholic roar. But there is a tremor to the times, an anxiety at the edges of the seasonal cheer. Rarely have peace and prosperity looked so fragile. Never has the Bush Administration looked so besieged by problems at home and abroad -- many of which are of its own making.

THE BLACK CHURCH IN THE AFRICAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE By C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya. 519 pp. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Cloth, $47.50. Paper, $18.95.

The chairman of the K.G.B. today warned the Soviet Congress to be wary of foreigners offering to help the Soviet economy, suggesting that Western businesses and governments represent a hidden danger to the country's security. The K.G.B. chief, Vladimir A. Kryuchkov, charged that economic contacts were often a pretext for compiling strategic information about Soviet industry and resources, for cheating unwitting Soviet partners, and for imposing an alien capitalist outlook.