July 20, 1999

One of the five candidates to head the troubled New Jersey State Police is a Federal agent who was widely criticized for his role in shutting down the surveillance of a group of terrorists several months before they succeeded in bombing the World Trade Center. The candidate, Carson Dunbar, was assistant special agent in charge of the counter-terrorism squad in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's New York office before the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He has been cited by other investigators as largely responsible for a critical misstep in the trade center inquiry: the investigators' decision to remove an informer from a cell of suspected terrorists in July 1992. Officials in Gov. Christine Todd Whitman's administration said today that they had been unaware of Mr. Dunbar's role in that investigation until a reporter brought it to their attention.

Reviving the ''Pac-Man'' defense against hostile takeovers -- gobble up the company that wants to gobble up you -- the big French oil company Elf Aquitaine S.A. made a $50 billion counteroffer today for the rival Total Fina S.A. The move came two weeks after Total Fina stunned Elf Aquitaine with a hostile bid worth about $43 billion. It was also another reminder that the clubby world of Europe's corporate elite is becoming as combative and unpredictable as that in the United States.

Octavio Dotel's performance tonight suggested that he could be attractive enough, all by himself, for the Mets to trade him for a top starter before the July 31 trading deadline. But now the Mets must decide if they want to keep him instead. In his fourth major league start, Dotel, a 23-year-old right-hander, stymied the Baltimore Orioles on one run and three hits over seven innings in the Mets' 4-1 victory.

NEWS Honor Bound Arthur Miller will receive a silver medallion and some $200,000 as this year's recipient of the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize. The award, in recognition of the lasting impact on the American literary landscape of Mr. Miller, whose plays include ''Death of a Salesman'' and ''A View From the Bridge,'' will be presented in New York on Oct. 14. The prize, established in 1994 under the will of the actress Lillian Gish, recognizes outstanding talent in the arts. Previous winners included the author Isabel Allende (1998) and the singer-songwriter Bob Dylan (1997).

An Old Drug Is Found To Aid Heart Patients A 30-year-old medicine that has been passed over in favor of treatments that were more recently developed has been found to be very effective against life-threatening congestive heart failure. PAGE A11 G.O.P. Defection Protested Virtually all of the aides to Representative Michael P. Forbes of Long Island resigned en masse in protest of his decision to become a Democrat, which one staffer denounced as ''a cowardly move.'' PAGE B7