November 20, 1993

Man Gets Life Sentence In 'Hail Mary' Strangling A 19-year-old man from Clifton, N.J., was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 40 years for the strangling of a friend, who was forced to recite the "Hail Mary" before his death. The defendant, James P. Wanger, was convicted of killing Robert A. Solimine Jr., 17. Page 23. School Acid Attack Hurts 18 A 17-year-old girl sprayed sulfuric acid in a Queens high school, injuring 18 people, the police said. Page 23.

A Central Intelligence Agency anti-drug program in Venezuela shipped a ton of nearly pure cocaine to the United States in 1990, Government officials said today. No criminal charges have been brought in the matter, which the officials said appeared to have been a serious accident rather than an intentional conspiracy. But officials say the cocaine wound up being sold on the streets in the United States.

Having promised this morning to tread "a more constructive path" in relations with China, President Clinton met this evening with President Jiang Zemin, leader of the Chinese Communist Party, in the most important contact between the two countries since the massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989. But little tangible progress was reported. "I thought we began a dialogue," Mr. Clinton said afterward when asked whether he had made any headway in persuading the Chinese Government to lower trade barriers, limit missile sales and ease up on dissidents. He appeared subdued, and made it clear that there had been no real meeting of the minds between the two.

At times expressing bewilderment and at other times turning morbidly plaintive, Edward J. Rollins Jr. spent nearly seven hours today explaining under oath the circumstances that he said led to his assertions about efforts to suppress the urban black vote in the recent governor's race in New Jersey. In a rambling soliloquy, Mr. Rollins said it was an effort to get in a dig at his rival political strategist in the race, James Carville, that ultimately led him to boast to Washington reporters about an elaborate election scheme that he now says is a lie.

The Senate today overwhelmingly passed a broad and expensive anticrime package whose leading provisions would add 100,000 police officers to the nation's streets, build a network of high-security regional prisons and create more boot camps for young offenders. But a related and more contentious piece of legislation, the Brady gun-control bill, stumbled badly when its supporters failed tonight to break a Republican-led filibuster against it. That development appeared to doom the bill's chances for two months at the very least, until after the Senate returns in late January from its winter recess.

A civil libertarian and opponent of the Vietnam War today defended himself publicly for the first time against attacks by conservative senators who said that his cold war liberalism made him unfit for a new Pentagon job. In testy exchanges that reawakened ideological animosities dating back 30 years, President Clinton's choice for the post, Morton H. Halperin, responded with controlled anger to senators who challenged his judgment and patriotism.

Pilots at American Airlines announced today that they would not walk off their jobs, saying they could better support striking flight attendants by continuing to fly empty jets, costing the carrier millions of dollars a day. The pilots' union said more than half of American's nearly 3,000 flights scheduled since the start of the strike Thursday morning had gone without passengers. The pilots contend that the strike is costing the carrier $25 million a day, but some industry analysts say the figure is much lower.

Senator Bob Packwood of Oregon, his 25-year career clouded by a yearlong inquiry by the Senate into sexual harassment charges, is now the target of a criminal investigation by the Justice Department and is considering resigning. "The Senator has not resigned," said his lawyer, James F. Fitzpatrick. "The matter is under consideration."

An article in some editions last Saturday about the arrest of three suspects in an armored car robbery in Rochester referred imprecisely at one point to one suspect, the Rev. Patrick Moloney. As the article stated elsewhere, Father Moloney is a priest in the Melkite Catholic church (Eastern rite). That church recognizes the authority of the Pope but is not usually referred to as Roman Catholic.

International 3-6 CLINTON TELLS OF CHINA DIALOGUE After President Clinton met with President Jiang Zemin, little tangible progress was cited in the most important U.S.-Chinese contact since the Tiananmen massacre in 1989. 1

A picture caption on Monday about the search for ways to dispose of plutonium described the bunker shown at a plant near Amarillo, Tex., incorrectly. It is being used to test a storage system; no plutonium is stored in the bunker now.

"Since we are convinced he already has and will in the future put American lives and interests in jeopardy, we have a constitutional and moral obligation to oppose him." -- SENATOR STROM THURMOND, referring to Morton H. Halperin. [ 9:1. ] "I resist any suggestion that I have done anything which compromises our nation's security or weakens our defenses. -- MORTON H. HALPERIN." [ 9:1. ]