May 29, 1996

Joined by Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, thousands of state police and other officers from around the country filled St. Denis Roman Catholic Church yesterday and spilled out into the street for the funeral of Trooper Francis J. Belleran, 32. He died on Thursday, three days after he lost control of his cruiser while pursuing a motorcycle with stolen license plates on the Garden State Parkway. Louis D. Goodman, 19, of Asbury Park, has been charged with manslaughter in his death.

Since 1939, the Legislature has grappled periodically with the vexing problem of how to choose a state song. Finally, the State Council on the Arts will disclose three finalists -- culled from 240 entries -- today. It will then be up to the Legislature to choose a winner. It is not known whether the finalists include Joseph Mascara of Phillipsburg, who has spent the last 35 years lobbying for his song, "I'm From New Jersey."

Two summers ago, the C.I.A. station chief in Croatia thought he had uncovered a terrible secret: the United States Ambassador was involved in a rogue operation to smuggle Iranian weapons to Bosnia's Muslims, defying a worldwide arms embargo. The station chief spent hours at his computer terminal, tapping out coded messages to Washington, bluntly describing his suspicions about the Ambassador, Peter W. Galbraith. The Ambassador never knew of the messages until a few weeks ago, when he spent 10 hours reading a foot-high stack of secret papers in a sealed C.I.A. vault. Mr. Galbraith, who had been given the papers to prepare to testify before Congress about Bosnia, told a colleague that it was "the most chilling day" of his life in government. He concluded that the station chief had been spying on him -- and doing a poor job. The idea that he was spearheading a smuggling operation was "typical of the phenomenal amount of misreporting" by the station chief, said an Administration official in tune with the Ambassador's views.

New Jersey Blue Cross and Blue Shield, the largest health insurer in New Jersey, with 1.9 million enrollees, has agreed to join forces with a big Midwestern company that is one of the nation's largest health insurers, people with knowledge of the deal said last night. The deal would link the New Jersey insurer, which is struggling to finance the costly expansion into managed care, with a company whose publicly traded subsidiary can raise money through the stock market. That company, the Anthem Group, is based in Indianapolis and already owns Blue Cross plans in Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky.

A Bronx man implicated in the death of a police officer last week has been indicted on the lesser of two homicide charges filed against him, causing Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani to complain, once again, that the Bronx District Attorney was not aggressively pressing the case. Rejecting the more serious charge of manslaughter, a Bronx grand jury indicted the suspect, Anthony Richard Rivers, on charges of criminally negligent homicide and assault in the death of Officer Vincent Guidice, who fell on a broken mirror while trying to handcuff Mr. Rivers after a domestic dispute. The mirror severed an artery in the officer's leg, leading to his death eight hours later.