November 1, 1995

NEW YORK CITY

The Central Intelligence Agency admitted today that it knowingly, and without warning, gave the White House and the Pentagon inside information on the Soviet Union from foreign agents it knew or strongly suspected were controlled by Moscow. The information was crucial to Washington's perceptions of Moscow in the last seven years of the cold war, said members of the Senate and House intelligence committees, and may have affected decisions to spend billions of dollars on military hardware.

Paychecks Rise Only 2.7%, The Lowest Rate in Years The economic growth that has propelled stocks to record levels has not done the same for the paychecks of American workers, whose earnings rose 2.7 percent in the last 12 months, the smallest amount in the 13 years that records have been kept, the Labor Department said. Inflation was 2.5 percent, and the economy grew 3.5 percent. The amount business spent on health benefits fell by one-tenth of 1 percent; as recently as 1988, the spending was rising 14 percent a year. [Page A1.] Canadian Markets Rally Investors cheered the vote rejecting sovereignty for Quebec, even though the margin was paper-thin. The Canadian dollar rose sharply, stocks advanced in Toronto, and the Canadian central bank lowered a lending rate. [A8.]

The expanding economy that has propelled stock prices to record levels has not spilled over to the paychecks of American workers, whose earnings rose by 2.7 percent in the last 12 months, the smallest amount on record, the Labor Department reported today. In the year that ended in September, wages and salaries rose by 2.8 percent and benefits rose by 2.2 percent, resulting in the calculation of a 2.7 percent overall rise in earnings. Inflation for the same period was 2.5 percent, while economic growth was 3.5 percent.

Grant Cooper knows he lives in prison, but there are days when he cannot remember why. His crimes flit in and out of his memory like flies through a hole in a screen door, so that sometimes his mind and conscience are blank and clean. He used to be a drinker and a drifter who had no control over his rage. In 1978, in an argument with a man in a bread line at the Forgotten Man Ministry in Birmingham, Ala., his hand automatically slid into his pants pocket for a knife.