Change of Style: Lee Atwater, the Republican...

Change of Style: Lee Atwater, the Republican National Committee chairman with a reputation for down-and-dirty politics, recently was discovered to have a benign brain tumor, and he told the State newspaper of Columbia, S.C. it’s given him a new outlook on life. “Forget money and power . . . I had no idea how wonderful people are. I wish I had known this before.”

Take Note: A federal official may have written his own “arrest” warrant. Donald Enos, a former high official with the Agency for International Development, which funneled non-lethal aid to the Contras, has pleaded guilty in Washington to two felony counts of soliciting bribes, the agency said Friday. And the key evidence was a stenographer’s notebook that Enos carried with him everywhere. U.S. investigators videotaped a meeting in Honduras in which Enos received about $2,000 in cash and a promise of $21,000 more from New York contractor George Kraus in exchange for Kraus getting a contract with AID. Kraus cooperated with the investigation. Court documents quoted Enos: “Even if somebody got (the notebook), nobody could figure out what this is . . . . It doesn’t say where the money is coming from, where the money is going.” Investigators thought differently. They arranged for Enos to come to Washington for a meeting. He brought the notebook and was arrested.

Homeless Help: Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop has joined the advisory board of Trevor’s Campaign for the Homeless. The campaign is the brainchild of 11-year-old Trevor Ferrell, who in 1983 began handing out blankets to people sleeping on the streets of Philadelphia. The program has expanded with volunteers delivering food and clothing to the homeless in 16 cities nationwide.

Election, U.S.-Style?: Lee Ann Elliott, who heads the Federal Election Commission and who visited the Soviet Union last year, said the new politics had brought some nasty tactics to last May’s Congress of People’s Deputies election. “From what we were told, two days before the election Moscow was just papered with campaign literature, most of it saying things against candidates,” Elliott said. “From the reaction of the candidates, most of it was very rough.”