Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, March 21, 1991                   TAG: 9103210559
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium

GROUP OUT TO GET SADDAM DISBANDS

And it looks as if the group, Americans for Desert Calm, may be stuck with at least $10,000 in bills.

"The American people have an increasingly short memory," said Ernest Brown, a real estate developer who heads the group. "It's just something whose time has passed."

The pledge line still works, although the message predates the end of hostilities.

The computer message says $73,888 has been pledged since the project started during the first week of March. But the machine is broken: When a caller made a pledge Wednesday, the amount wasn't recorded.

That's only the start of problems for the group.

Calling the three-minute message costs $1 a minute. Desert Calm was to receive 25 cents of that; the rest went to a Philadelphia service bureau and US Sprint.

That Philadelphia company has gone out of business, Brown said, leaving the Desert Calm group stuck with the bills.

Plus, a mechanical failure apparently kept many of the pledges from being recorded.

Brown said Desert Calm got calls from all 50 states and Japan, Australia and London. He said he and other organizers did about 45 radio talk shows, including ones in New York; Washington; Atlanta; Tampa, Fla.; and Charlotte, N.C.

A European wire service prompted a firestorm with an item saying the reward was for Saddam "dead or alive," Brown said.

Desert Calm said it would pay only if Saddam were alive; on-duty members of the military couldn't cash in. The pledges were to be collected after the Iraqi was turned over to unspecified authorities for trial.