Secretary of State Alexander Haig met with El Salvador’s vice president Friday as the administration faced a potential new embarrassment concerning its efforts to discredit Nicaragua’s leftist government. Haig and Vice President Jaime Abdul Gutierrez, an army colonel discussed the latest developments in El Salvador’s -civil war — but no details were revealed The State Department declined all comment and Gutierrez came and left by a back door at the State Department and declined to answer reporters’ questions. Their meeting followed puzzling reports that a Nicaraguan allegedly captured in El Salvador had escaped and taken refuge inside the Mexican Embassy in San Salvador. On Thursday Haig told a House subcommittee a Nicaraguan sent to El Salvador to “participate in the direction” of Salvadoran guerrilla operations had been arrested. On Friday it was not immediately clear whether the man who escaped was the same Nicaraguan that Haig had described.
Meanwhile, voter in Guatemala were set to choose a president and a congress tomorrow This is democracy of a sort. It offers hope of a sort — or more precisely the slim chance of hope Guatemala’s election also offers the possibility that this appearance of democracy will give the Reagan Administration a pretext to commit the United States to unconditional support for Guatemala’s government. Unless that government substantially and demonstrably improves the way it governs such a commitment is unwarranted. Guatemala’s government rules by brutal tyranny. It is perhaps the archetype of repressive right-wing Latin regimes. Amnesty International says flatly that Guatemala’s president Gen. Romeo Lucas-Garcia runs “a government program of political murder”.
And John Belushi, the comedian who played a manic Samurai warrior on TVs original Saturday Night Live” and a slobby fraternity brother in the movie Animal House,” apparently choked to death, said a security guard who saw the body. Belushis nude body was found about 12:15 p m Friday in bed in a $20O-a-day bungalow the 33-year-old actor rented behind the Chateau Marmont Hotel on Sunset Strip. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Los Angeles County Coroner Thomas Noguchi said an autopsy would be performed today, but Los Angeles police Lt. Dan Cooke said there was no immediate indication of foul play. It appeared to be death by natural causes, Cooke told reporters outside the bungalow. The detectives had found nothing ta make it suspicious any way. Belushis physical trainer, William Wallace, found the body after Belushi had been dead for two or three hours, Cooke said.
And that’s a small slice of what happened, this March 6, 1982 as reported by The CBS World News Roundup.
