August 12, 1995

Iraq's Leader Is Still Strong The defection of Saddam Hussein's relatives could give the West valuable intelligence, but it does not necessarily mean that he is about to lose power. News analysis, Page 4. Paying Them to Take It Away While many cities make money by selling recycled metal, plastic and glass, New York pays companies to remove the same material. Page 23. New Strength in Dollar The dollar has been rising on foreign-exchange markets, although analysts say it remains a fundamentally weak currency. Page 33.

Four high-ranking officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation were suspended today after the Justice Department opened a broad new criminal investigation into the possibility of a high-level cover-up of what really happened during a deadly 1992 standoff with a white separatist in Idaho. Among those suspended today by the F.B.I. Director, Louis B. Freeh, was Larry A. Potts, Mr. Freeh's close friend whom he had made the bureau's No. 2 official before demoting him recently because of his role in the Idaho shootout.

It is just one person's opinion about abortion, these shifting feelings of Norma Leah McCorvey, the 47-year-old Dallas woman who describes herself as a reform school dropout, sexual-abuse victim, and lesbian activist as well as former carnival barker, bartender, alcoholic, drug dealer and cleaning woman living on the edge of poverty. But Norma McCorvey is also Jane Roe, the woman who was at the epicenter of the landmark case that firmly established a woman's right to abortion 22 years ago. And so when Jane Roe declares that abortion is "killing" and that it is "wrong," that American women "have literally been handed the right to slaughter their own children," people listen.

President Clinton called today for a permanent ban on all nuclear testing in an effort to prevent more nations from developing nuclear weapons. Calling his decision "an historic milestone in our efforts to reduce the nuclear threat," Mr. Clinton said the move, which comes 50 years after the United States dropped the first nuclear bomb, was intended to speed negotiations for a treaty that would end testing worldwide.

Profoundly disenchanted by politics and politicians, Americans are simultaneously attracted to and leery of the idea of a third party, according to a new New York Times/CBS News Poll. The poll, which was completed on the eve of this weekend's gathering in Dallas of supporters of Ross Perot's independent political movement, United We Stand America, suggested that Gen. Colin L. Powell would run more strongly than other potential third-party nominees against President Clinton and Senator Bob Dole, the Republican front-runner. In a trial race, the three finished in a virtual dead heat.

President Clinton used his second veto to block legislation to end U.S. participation in the arms embargo against Bosnia, and the White House hopes new peace talks on the Balkans will draw enough support in Congress to sustain the veto. Article, page 5.

"The man's off his rocker," Claude B. French said of President Clinton, and that was one of the milder reactions today among the tobacco farmers who serve on the board of a cooperative representing 180,000 growers in five Southern states. Tobacco farmers have long been accustomed to attacks on smoking from health groups and Government agencies. But Mr. Clinton's proposed regulations to reduce teen-age smoking, announced on Thursday, provoked an unusual level of anger as the board met here at the Flue-Cured Cooperative Stabilization Corporation offices, where visitors are greeted by a sign: "Thank You for Smoking."

The Giuliani administration yesterday began soliciting proposals from private companies for taking over the operation of part or all of the city's jail system. The initiative, a nonbinding "request for expressions of interest," was mailed yesterday to more than 200 companies, including several that now operate prisons across the country.

The nation's most powerful politicians, with only President Clinton absent, began trooping to Dallas today for a weekend of paying homage to Ross Perot and the mass of independent voters who may determine the outcome of the 1996 elections. By just about any political measure, what is under way here at a convention of the Perot-founded organization United We Stand America is a remarkable parade of elected officeholders and would-be officeholders.

An obituary of Jerry Garcia on Thursday reversed the names of an early financial backer of his band, the Grateful Dead. The backer was Owsley Stanley.

Articles in Business Day yesterday and on Aug. 2 and 3 about the previous day's trading in the stock market misstated the closing price of the UAL Corporation each day. It was $148 on Thursday, not $48; $148.50 on Aug. 1, not $48.50; and $144.125 on Aug. 2, not $44.125.

An article on the Media Business page on Tuesday about Broadway Books, a new division of Bantam Doubleday Dell, misstated the probable timing of its first books. They will appear in the fall of 1996 or the spring of 1997, not 1995-96.