American Notes CANDIDATES

As Jesse Jackson has sprinted to the front ranks of the Democratic presidential race, Secret Service agents have checked out at least 100 death threats against him. Last week some of those ugly words proved alarming. In St. Louis a federal grand jury indicted Construction Worker Londell Williams, 30, of Washington, Mo., for boasting that he planned to assassinate Jackson "because he was getting too close to being President." Williams and his wife Tammy, 27, were also charged with possessing an automatic rifle and threatening a Government informer.

Williams, who admits he is "prejudiced against anything that isn't white," had claimed that he was acting on orders of the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord, a white supremacist group that authorities broke up in 1985. Behind bars, Williams insisted that was loose talk, and the Secret Service was inclined to agree. Said Secret Service Spokesman Rich Adams: "There is no organized plot out there to assassinate Jesse Jackson."