April 25, 1995

Federal agents call the drug "euphoria." The high was strictly theirs yesterday after a six-month investigation paid off with the arrest of three men, the seizure of 12 pounds of the so-called designer drug and the discovery of a drug-making lab in Pennsylvania, they said. In the culmination of the undercover operation by Federal and local authorities, Stephen A. Weiss of East Brunswick, and his son, William Weiss of Metuchen, were accused of selling the drug. Stephen's brother, Anthony Weiss of Upper Black Eddy, Pa., was charged with manufacturing euphoria, a methamphetamine.

Less than a week after the Oklahoma City bombing, Federal investigators have pieced together a circumstantial case against Timothy J. McVeigh based on his identification by witnesses, forensic evidence and correspondence in which he vented his rage at the Government over the deaths of members of a sect in Waco, Tex., law-enforcement officials said today. Mr. McVeigh himself has refused to cooperate with investigators, meeting their entreaties to answer questions with a rigid, stone-faced silence, the officials said. One investigator said that Mr. McVeigh had displayed no reaction even when he had been shown photographs of maimed and dead children being taken from the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

Two former loan officers of banks in southern New Jersey have been indicted in a kickback scheme. Louis A. Nemeth, 46, of Columbus, a former vice president of United Jersey Bank South in Vineland, and Edward Grieb, 54, of Vincentown, a former vice president of the failed Security Savings Bank in Vineland, were named by a Federal grand jury. Mr. Nemeth was accused of taking $144,000 from three borrowers, and Mr. Grieb, $2,500.

Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, reacting to criticism of her remarks about young black men making a game of out-of-wedlock pregnancy, announced plans yesterday for a series of meetings to discuss changes in welfare. "If I struck a nerve, I think it's a nerve that needed to be struck," she said at a news conference.

ANOTHER given in the health field came under scrutiny yesterday as an expert challenged the notion that a diet consisting of 30 percent fat, a widely promoted goal, would reduce the incidence of heart disease. The notion has only the flimsiest scientific grounding, the expert, a British cardiologist, said after reviewing the world's medical literature.