May 20, 1995

The drunken rampage by several dozen New York City police officers attending a memorial service in Washington this week was hardly the first, and the Police Department had issued a stern directive early this month warning officers attending the ceremony to behave themselves. At a news conference yesterday, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani called on the District of Columbia police to carry out a full criminal investigation of the episode. "They've done terrible damage to themselves and needless damage to others," the Mayor said of the New York officers involved.

Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, is unyielding on this point: The Federal budget must be balanced, and sacrifices must be made all around. But Ms. Snowe is unyielding on some other points, too, like the absolute necessity of restoring money to the budget for a Job Corps center in Limestone, a town of about 2,000 in northern Maine.

The space agency said today that it would make deep cuts in its work force and streamline its operations as its budget shrinks in a new era of austerity. Under the plan announced by Daniel S. Goldin, Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the agency would cut about 28,000 Civil Service and contractor positions, restructure each of its 10 centers -- several would lose 20 percent to 30 percent of their workers -- and start a process that would eventually turn over operation of the space shuttle program to private industry. Industry officials have said they could run the shuttle program for less money than the Government and still maintain safety.

An Army buddy of Timothy J. McVeigh has told Federal authorities that he and Mr. McVeigh inspected the Federal Building in Oklahoma City as a bombing target several days before the blast, law-enforcement officials said today. The man, Michael Fortier, a close friend of Mr. McVeigh from their days at Fort Riley, Kan., also told the authorities that Mr. McVeigh confided to him about plans for the bombing months earlier in Kingman, Ariz., where they both lived at the time, the officials said.

An independent panel yesterday released a proposal that recommends dramatically restructuring New York City's special-education system. The plan would take thousands of children who are currently segregated in separate schools or classrooms and return them to regular classrooms, where they would receive extra help. The draft report, presented to Schools Chancellor Ramon C. Cortines, offers a blueprint for remaking what is widely regarded as a bloated and costly special-education bureaucracy that now consumes more than 22 cents of every education dollar in New York City, includes one quarter of all school employees and funnels a disproportionate number of black and Hispanic boys into segregated classrooms.