THE NATION

The Violence in Miami

Some scenes reverberated in the memories of those who had been attacked. White motorists could only jam down their accelerators, duck their heads and try to speed away from the fusillade of bricks, bottles and bullets. "There's one, that's a white one!" a black screamed as a yellow Toyota passed an intersection. The driver spun his wheels frantically in an oil slick before escaping the approaching mob. Recalled white Motorist Jim Davis: "The police had put up a roadblock. I couldn't get around it. I went into a U-turn, but my car stalled and they came running at me. I heard them scream, 'Honky!' I got the car into gear and knocked them out of the way. I heard gunfire. I saw a police officer and I screamed, 'What should I do?' He said, 'I've been shot at all night. Do what you have to to get out.'"

Witnessed Miami Herald Reporter Earni Young: "A late-model green car--I think it might have been a Chevrolet Impala--deliberately drove over one of the bodies. I think I saw it rip the man's arm off. The crowd cheered and yelled."

--June 2, 1980

Three Mile Island

In the dead of the night, the hulks of four 372-ft. cooling towers and two high-domed nuclear reactor container buildings were scarcely discernible above the gentle waters of the Susquehanna River. Inside the brightly lit control room of Metropolitan Edison's Unit 2, technicians on the lobster shift one night last week faced a tranquil, even boring watch. Suddenly, at 4 a.m., alarm lights blinked red on their instrument panels. A siren whooped a warning. In the understated jargon of the nuclear power industry, an "event" had occurred. In plain English, it was the beginning of the worst accident in the history of U.S. nuclear power production, and of a long, often confused nightmare that threw the future of the nuclear industry into question.

At week's end officials insisted that the danger of a meltdown was receding. Nevertheless, suspense as to the eventual outcome buttressed the claims of nuclear power's foes that all the wondrous fail-safe gadgets of modern technology had turned out to be just as fallible as the men who had designed and built them. Declared Nuclear Power Critic Ralph Nader: "This is the beginning of the end of nuclear power in this country."

--April 9, 1979

Desert Debacle

Two lines of blue lights etched the outlines of the remote landing strip. Suddenly flames illuminated the night sky, then gradually flickered out. On the powdery sands of Dasht-e-Kavir, Iran's Great Salt Desert, lay the burned-out hulk of a lumbering U.S. Air Force C-130 Hercules aircraft. Nearby rested the scorched skeleton of a U.S. Navy RH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter. And in the wreckage were the burned bodies of eight American military air crewmen.

The fire and the fury dramatized the dimensions of a new American tragedy--the inability of the U.S. to extricate 53 American hostages held by Iranian militants. In a startlingly bold but tragic gamble, President Jimmy Carter had ordered a courageous, specially trained team of American military commandos to try to pluck the hostages out of the heavily guarded U.S. embassy in Tehran. The supersecret operation failed dismally.

--May 5, 1980