American Notes

LABOR More Pressure on Presser

For 32 months, 23 members of a federal grand jury in Cleveland have investigated the local dealings of Jackie Presser, 58, the blunt-spoken, 300-lb. president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the nation's largest labor union. More than half a year has passed since the Justice Department's strike force in Cleveland recommended to its superiors in Washington that Presser be indicted for fraud and conspiracy. But the Justice Department seemed to be dragging its heels in asking for an indictment. Last week the jurors decided to take matters into their own hands. In an extraordinary move, they asked to examine a 100-page memorandum that the Cleveland strike force sent to Washington last January.

There is a suspicion that some Administration officials do not wish to see Presser indicted. He has cultivated ties with Administration figures, notably Attorney General Edwin Meese. Presser has also served as a much valued informer for the FBI on Teamsters-related matters. One Justice official said the department's approval of an indictment against Presser seemed certain until last month. "Up to then, the light was green," he said. "But then somebody threw a switch." TERRORISM Offering a Reward for Killers

The Administration's increasingly tough words about terrorism have seemed up until now just that: words. Last week, however, the U.S. invoked for the first time a section of a 1984 anti-terrorist law to help track down the gunmen who sprayed bullets into a San Salvador cafe last month, killing four Marines and two other U.S. citizens. Proclaimed the State Department: "The U.S. Government announces a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading to the effective prosecution and punishment of those responsible for the murders."

The announcement seemed partly directed at Nicaragua, which U.S. officials charge with supporting the leftist guerrillas thought to be responsible for the attack. Washington last week also issued a warning directly to the regime in Nicaragua, which was celebrating the sixth anniversary of its Sandinista revolution, saying that it would be held responsible for future attacks against Americans in the region. The State Department did not say why the first offer of a reward came in response to the Salvadoran shooting rather than to the hijacking of the TWA passenger jet to Beirut last month, after which a reward was discussed but never offered. ESPIONAGE A Family of Smugglers

To their upper-middle-class San Diego neighbors, Insurance Salesman Franklin Agustin and his travel agent wife Julie seemed a conventional, hardworking couple. But according to U.S. Customs Service and FBI agents who arrested the two last week, the Agustins were ringleaders of an international smuggling operation. For at least two years, the pair allegedly shipped stolen replacement parts for F-14 Tomcat fighter aircraft to Iran, a country that has not legally received U.S. weapons since the takeover by Ayatullah Khomeini in 1979. Customs officials say an anonymous source tipped them to Franklin Agustin, an illegal alien from the Philippines.

According to Customs affidavits, Saeid Asefi Inanlou, an Iranian national based in London, would phone Agustin with a list of needed parts. Two of Agustin's accomplices, Philippine Immigrants Primitivo Cayabyab and Pedro Quito, would help pilfer the goods from Navy ships and warehouses where they worked. The Agustins then used fictitious shipping companies to transport the machinery to London. Agustin's brother Edgardo is said by the Customs Service to have managed the ring's East Coast operations. MILITARY Acquittal for a Spy Fund Manager

"In a bombing raid you can lose your life," said retired Air Force Major General Richard Collins, a former Viet Nam combat pilot. "All you can lose in this courtroom is your reputation." But the two-star general's honor remained intact last week, when a Florida jury acquitted him on federal charges of embezzling money from a secret military fund that he administered in 1975-78. The Justice Department had accused Collins, 55, of tampering with the interest on $450,000 in U.S. Government money while he transferred the sum from one Swiss bank account to another. The jury rejected the prosecution's contention that the general had pocketed $19,000 in interest for himself.

Collins testified that the account was a CIA spy fund that financed covert operations in Asia. The general said that he personally had made only two withdrawals: a payment of $8,654 to purchase intelligence from an informer and an unspecified sum that went to a clandestine U.S. base at which East bloc weaponry is evaluated. Collins, a much decorated war hero who flew 104 missions over North Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos in 1969-70, had described the fund as "a political time bomb," set to go off if its existence were ever made public. The secret account was closed five months before the general retired in 1978. JUSTICE Kiss on the Wrist for the Madam

Her name was listed in the Social Register and her ancestors came over on the Mayflower, but Sydney Biddle Barrows, 33, achieved prominence last year by another route. She was arrested on charges of running a 20-girl, $1 million-a-year prostitution ring from a brownstone on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Dubbed the Mayflower Madam by the press, Barrows had been as thrifty and practical as her Pilgrim forebears could have wished, claiming 60% of each call girl's earnings. Last week, after plea bargaining, the trim blond pleaded guilty to promoting prostitution. The surprisingly solicitous arrangement allowed her to keep more than $150,000 in profits from her escort agencies and fined her only $5,000 (she could have been sentenced to a year in jail).

As a result of the legal deal, the names of her 3,000 clients, ranging from Arab princes to U.S. corporate kings, will remain secret. Barrows suggested in a news conference that her power ful patrons had pressured Manhattan D.A. Robert Morgenthau into the lenient agreement. Her attorney termed the decision a "kiss on the wrist." Barrows depicted herself as a Robin Hood, who by plea bargaining had saved "a lot of innocent people" from being exposed.