White House Security

Everett Ellis Briggs will leave the White House National Security Council staff to become ambassador to Portugal, it was announced last week.

A British woman, who wrote a letter to President Reagan calling him a "senile old fool" after the U.S. bombing raid on Libya, was questioned by detectives at the request of White House security officials, a police spokesman said today. But police said they were satisfied that Maureen Eyles, 54, a telephone operator from the village of Pailton, Warwickshire, was not a threat to Reagan's life. Reaction to her letter surprised Eyles. "I just wrote the letter in anger," she said.

Arthur Liman, 64, chief counsel to the U.S. Senate committee that investigated the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan administration. Liman led the questioning of Lt. Col. Oliver North and White House security advisor John Poindexter. Also, as a specialist in white-collar crime, Liman was involved in some of Wall Street's biggest cases, including representing junk-bond financier Michael Milken. He also led an investigation of the Attica prison riot of 1971.

WASHINGTON - The hunt for proof that Syrian government forces used banned chemical weapons may come down to a rotting corpse exhumed late last month from a makeshift cemetery near Damascus. The grave diggers - a Syrian doctor and several medical students - were seeking tissue from the remains of a man who had died of respiratory failure after a rocket allegedly spewed poison gas on Dariya, a suburb of the Syrian capital, on April 25. Reaching the cadaver several feet down, the team sliced open the cloth shroud, cut into the torso and removed a small piece of lung.

The Secret Service closed the lane of traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue nearest the White House late Tuesday afternoon in the most visible tightening of presidential security since the Oklahoma City bombing. "One lane of Pennsylvania Avenue is being closed down," said Secret Service spokesman David Adams. Asked if the shutdown is permanent or temporary, Adams said: "It's a strong, permanent, temporary shutdown."

Lewis Tambs, currently U.S. ambassador to Colombia, has been nominated to be the new American envoy in Costa Rica, the White House announced Tuesday. Tambs, who has served in Bogota since 1983, previously was a consultant to the White House National Security Council and director of the Center for Latin American Studies. He would succeed Curtin Windsor.

About 900 U.S. troops will deliver emergency supplies and help rescue flood victims in Mozambique, Clinton administration officials said Wednesday. The Pentagon expects to deliver equipment and supplies within the next several days, White House National Security Council spokesman David Leavy said. Administration officials said the troops were likely to be deployed from Europe.