Tacit

The Commerce Department announced new rules Monday designed to prevent abuses of its overseas trade missions, amid charges that Clinton administration officials have favored political contributors when choosing business executives to invite on such trips. The new regulations specifically prohibit any consideration of a firm's political contributions in selecting the companies whose executives will take part in such missions.

The Air Force has unveiled a unique "stealth" airplane built more than a decade ago in California in the strictest of secrecy. Parts of its pioneering radar-evading design live on in today's B-2 stealth bomber. Meant to be a surveillance plane that could fly close to a battle front with minimal risk of being detected by radar, the plane was test flown 135 times from 1982-85 but then scrapped. It has been in secret storage ever since.

As French President Jacques Chirac extolled breakthroughs in nuclear security and East-West relations "due to the personality of Boris Yeltsin," the beaming Russian president was on hand to take the bows. Yeltsin was out of earshot for more subtle praise from President Clinton, who described him as a partner in the quest for prosperity and peace.

Re "Huntington Beach Strip Is Skinheads' Nighttime Haunt," Feb. 7: To me, as an Asian American born and raised in Huntington Beach for 17 years, the recent attack on a Native American only adds to a pattern of hate crimes that has proven endemic to the city. On June 15, 1991, for example, three Japanese women were attacked by a group of Caucasian women outside the Huntington Beach Red Onion Restaurant. On June 15, 1992, three white men attacked four Asian American youths on Beach Boulevard.

On Dec. 7, 1941, Imperial Japan attacked the U.S. naval fleet at Pearl Harbor. When Americans were commemorating this date 20 years ago, Indonesia invaded the newly independent country of East Timor--with U.S. weaponry and approval. Dec. 7 is a day of double infamy.

Representatives of the broadcasting, cable, production and syndication industries gather in Los Angeles today for a "summit" on television violence. The conference is billed as a voluntary effort by the entertainment community to police itself. In reality it is an attempt to stave off possible congressional legislation. At best the summit is "coerced voluntarism."

It is no surprise that Gunn is dead. It's been leading up to this for a long time. The Reagan-Bush administrations have winked at terrorism by foes of abortion, silently standing by for clinic bombings, intimidation and the harassment of doctors and patients. As much as they may try to distance themselves from the incident, groups such as Operation Rescue and others have set the stage for murder by their ugly rhetoric and their tacit approval of violent acts. These fringe groups are home-grown terrorists and should be treated as such.

Three British business executives were cleared Monday of charges that they illegally sold arms-making equipment to Iraq, ending a trial that had raised new questions about the support of Saddam Hussein's regime by Western governments before the Persian Gulf War.

A scathing report released Thursday by the Navy inspector general blasted Navy brass for allowing sexual assaults of women who attended the 1991 Tailhook Assn. convention in Las Vegas, where 26 women reported they were attacked during a three-day binge of drinking and sexual misconduct by Navy and Marine officers. According to the 10-page report, Navy admirals had "tacitly approved" the questionable and, at times, illegal activity at previous Tailhook conventions.