Word: commandant
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Lieut. Edward Tidrick was hit in the throat when he jumped into the water. Another bullet hit him as he lay on the beach. He gasped out a last command: "Advance with the wire cutters!" There were no wire cutters; they had been lost in the blood-streaked water...
...death squads are not a monolith controlled by a diabolical handful. Some are composed of soldiers, while others are made up of "off-duty" policemen, sons of wealthy landowners or simply hired thugs. Though some of the military brass may sympathize with and tolerate the teams, a chain of command has never been proved. Last fall, peasant union leaders accused the directors of the intelligence departments of the treasury police, the national guard and the national police of being linked to the squads; after Washington pressed for their removal, Defense Minister Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova transferred them...
Nicolás Carranza, head of the treasury police, admits that some of the intelligence-gathering cells under his command evolved into hit squads, but he denies direct knowledge. National Police Director Colonel Carlos Reynaldo López Nuila insists that he knows nothing about the murders, but nonetheless, suspects are tortured and killed in police compounds. Even Defense Minister Vides Casanova is not untainted: from 1979 to 1983 he served as director of the national guard...
...visit by foreign journalists, Hanoi brings out several military heroes of the Dien Bien Phu siege. Lieut. Colonel Van Luyen, 52, who commanded an artillery unit, shows the newsmen the refurbished French command bunker where the Viet Minh proclaimed their victory by waving a red Vietnamese flag from its corrugated and sandbagged rooftop. Farther out lie two of the eight major French perimeter command posts, code-named Beatrice and Eliane by the garrison commander, General Christian de Castries. After three decades, U.S.-made artillery, including 155-mm and 105-mm howitzers, which were supplied to the French by Washington...
...North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which is responsible for providing early warning against aerial attacks, estimates that some 3,800 pieces of junk are currently circling the earth.* Total weight of this space-age garbage: six tons. Two-thirds of the nuts, bolts, oxygen cylinders, broken solar panels, dead satellites, spent rocket boosters and other litter is in geosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles from the earth's surface, where it will remain indefinitely. One-third of the circling scrap is in low earth orbit, only 120 to 300 miles overhead...