Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Perot through the years: A trail of phantom theories Date: Tue, 27 Oct 92 13:27:07 EST Message-ID: \SE A;NATION \SS (WS) \HD Perot through the years: A trail of phantom theories \BY ASSOCIATED PRESS \DT DALLAS DALLAS (AP) - Ross Perot's past is peppered with instances in which he made conspiracy allegations that turned out to be unprovable or false. This time, he says Republican operatives drove him from the campaign in July by threatening to embarrass one of his daughters. The charge has been stoutly denied by President Bush's campaign. And as before, Mr. Perot took offense when pressed for evidence. "I am sick and tired of you all questioning my integrity without a basis for it," the independent presidential candidate told reporters in a surprise appearance at his campaign's daily news briefing yesterday. Mr. Perot repeatedly has raised allegations against competitors, clients, government officials and reporters as he built a multibillion-dollar fortune in the computer services business. He has even alleged assassination conspiracies against him and his family by enemies as varied as North Vietnam, the Black Panthers and Texas drug dealers. In the last presidential debate, Mr. Perot repeated his account that in 1970, "the Vietnamese had sent people into Canada to make arrangement to have me and my family killed. The most significant effort they had one night is five people coming across my front yard with rifles." Dallas police say there is no record of any such event. Paul McCaghren, who headed the Dallas police intelligence operations at the time, told ABC News: "It did not happen. . . . If five members of the First Baptist Church with rifles had come onto his lawn, we would have found out about it." In his latest allegations, Mr. Perot also charged that GOP operatives tried to wiretap his Dallas office. But an FBI "sting" operation against Texas Bush-Quayle chairman Jim Oberwetter turned up nothing. Mr. Oberwetter says he sent packing the undercover agent who offered to sell him, for $2,500, a purported audio tape and documents from Mr. Perot's office. Mr. Oberwetter said he told Mr. Bush about that incident and the president congratulated him on refusing the enticement and also assured him he would review the FBI's conduct after the election, according to today's editions of the New York Times. Other examples of past allegations by Mr. Perot: * When his Electronic Data Systems Corp. lost a 1980 bid to manage the data work for Texas Medicaid, he charged that the state bureaucrat who had reviewed the bids had been influenced by the winning bidder, Bradford National Corp. Investigations by state and federal prosecutors turned up nothing, but in the interim EDS was awarded the work. Ultimately Bradford was paid by the state to drop its bid and EDS continued the work without further challenge until 1988. * Upset with the Reagan administration's investigation into whether U.S. POWs still lived in Vietnam, Mr. Perot attacked the Pentagon official in charge of the matter, Richard L. Armitage. Mr. Perot's involvement included discussions with Daniel Sheehan, the head of the left-wing Christic Institute, which claimed in a federal lawsuit that Mr. Armitage was part of a huge criminal enterprise involving drug smuggling and money laundering. Mr. Armitage was cleared after an FBI investigation, and a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit as a fraud and fined the Christic Institute $1 million. * Displeased that the design contest he had helped sponsor for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial did not produce a remembrance for the war's survivors, Mr. Perot pressed for audits of the organization that raised money to build the memorial. A review by the General Accounting Office turned up no improprieties. * When General Motors bought his stake in EDS in late 1986 for $700 million, moving him out of the company, Mr. Perot told reporters he was the victim of infighting at the company. He vowed to hold the money in escrow to allow the company to reconsider. But in 1989, testifying in a court case between EDS and Perot Systems, Mr. Perot revealed he never agreed to place the funds in escrow. There are other instances of Perot storytelling that have turned out to be exaggerations or untrue. For instance, a favorite story of Mr. Perot's when he lobbied for education reform in Texas nine years ago was that a student missed 40 days of classes to show a chicken at livestock shows. Angry vocational agriculture teachers at that time pointed out there are not that many shows for students to attend. But, in last week's final presidential debate, Perot stretched the absences to 65 days and said the boy quit when the chicken lost its feathers. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM