In response to growing pressure from the military to widen and ‘Americanize’ the war in South Vietnam, President Johnson tells the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Just let me get elected, and then you can have your war.”.
At Szolnok, Hungary, at the Paládicspuszta rail station, a crowded passenger train ran past a warning signal during a heavy early morning fog, and smashed into a freight train. Forty-five people, most of them were Christmas shoppers returning from Budapest, were killed. On April 2, the engineer would be sentenced to 11 years in prison.
Greek & Turks continue to riot in Cyprus. Greek and Turkish Cypriotes agreed late tonight to a cease-fire in their four days of armed clashes. The noise of gun battles that raged on Christmas Eve ended at midnight. The truce followed a joint effort by the Governments of Britain, the United States, Greece and Turkey to end the fighting. United States experts have agreed to help in maintaining peace, Archbishop Makarios, the President of Cyprus, announced yesterday. The British-American intervention spurred the peace moves, but only after continued fighting. In the last few hours before the cease-fire there was heavy fighting. The trouble erupted last Saturday.
Charges that the crew panicked and fought for room in lifeboats marked the landing of hundreds of survivors from the burning Greek cruise ship Lakonia today. One woman charged that crewmen took advantage of the chaos to loot her cabin. Several American and British passengers said there were disgraceful lapses in discipline and that normal safety precautions for lifeboats had been violated on the Christmas cruise that ended in tragedy Sunday night. Operators of the Lakonia said 76 persons were dead and 15 still missing. They said 945 persons survived. The 20,314-ton vessel, which was on its holiday run from Britain toward Madeira when disaster struck, carried 1,036 passengers and crewmen. Passengers demanded a full investigation. British transport authorities said action was up to the Greek government, as a signer of the international convention on safety of life at sea.
At a deserted Berlin street corner the melody of “Silent Night, Holy Night,” played by a one-armed organ grinder, broke the silence. The frost on the trees, the snow in gardens and the glow of candles on Christmas trees softened the ugliness of the wall that runs across this tortured city like an aching wound. The five holes the communist East German regime broke through the wall to permit limited family reunions over the holidays tonight were deserted, too.
All day long, from pre-dawn until late afternoon, a steady stream of happy, expectant people had passed through them. They carried gifts, food, delicacies, flowers and fir branches. They were on their way to spend Christmas eve, the first since 1960, with spouses, parents, children, and other relatives from whom they have been forcibly separated by the communist border barrier. But all had to return again by midnight, when the wall again became the deadly barrier that has kept tens of thousands of families in this divided city apart.
Chou En-lai, premier of Red China, today met President Ahmed Ben Bella for two hours in their third session of talks since Chou arrived Saturday on a seven-day visit. Earlier today, Chou and his party were caught in a rainstorm which drowned three children in the Algiers area. The visiting Chinese party drove through the storm to see orphanages at Sidi Ferruch, one of which houses children sent there by the president. Ben Bella removed shoeshine boys from the streets and put them in a home to teach them a trade. The rain set off landslides on steep mountainsides on which Algiers is built. The three children were swept away by floodwaters.
The South Vietnamese government issued a decree today confiscating the property of the former ruling Ngô family and its close collaborators, including some former high-ranking officials of the deposed regime, government sources said today. It affects three brothers of slain President Ngô Đình Diệm — Archbishop Ngô Đình Thục, who is in Italy; Ngô Đình Luyện, who is in London, and Ngô Đình Cẩn, former overlord of central Vietnam who is in jail awaiting trial on charges of abuse of power and corruption. The decree also affects the property of Madame Ngô Đình Nhu, who is in France.
Pope Paul VI, in a Christmas midnight mass, urges diplomats from around the world to tear down “the walls which divide the peoples.” The pontiff’s remarks apparently are aimed at the walls that split Berlin and Jerusalem, the Holy Land city that he will visit in January. It was the first of three Christmas masses the pope is celebrating. He will say Christmas morning mass in Rome’s Pietralata suburb and follow with another Christmas day mass in St. Peter’s Basilica.
House Democrats today delivered a Christmas present to President Johnson — and, Republicans said, one to Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev — as they passed a 3-billion-dollar foreign aid bill with authority to the President to guarantee credit for wheat to Russia. The wrangle which had delayed the year-end adjournment of Congress for five days came to an end shortly before 9 a.m. as the wheat provision of the aid bill was approved on a roll-call vote 189 to 158. It carried with the votes of 187 Democrats and 2 Republicans. Opposed to it were 133 Republicans and 25 Democrats.
“I commend the House of Representatives for its constructive action in adopting the report on foreign aid,” President Johnson said. “Men and women of good will put their country first — some at great sacrifice — to see that the national interest was served. I am grateful to them and I am sure the nation is grateful to them.” The House met at 7 a.m. — some members said the earliest in history — to complete its work in time for a delegation to go to Philadelphia for the 11 a.m. funeral of Rep. William Green (D-Pennsylvania), who died Saturday.
The disputed wheat provision authorizes the President, if he determines that it “would be in the national interest,” to allow the Export-Import bank, a government agency, to guarantee the credit arrangements Russia, or any of the 18 communist-dominated countries, may make with American grain dealers to buy wheat here. Republicans, with the help of southern Democrats in the House, had voted last week to impose a flat prohibition on the Export-Import bank providing credit guarantees to any communist country in the purchase of United States products. The Senate rejected this. The Senate-House aid bill conferees finally agreed on the language adopted today which provides that such credit guarantees are banned “except when the President determines that such guarantees would be in the national interest and reports each such determination to the House of Representatives and the Senate within 30 days.”
Rep. Gerald F. Ford Jr. (R-Michigan) said adoption of this wheat provision makes the American taxpayers the “guarantors” of the mortgage notes Russia and its satellites sign when they buy American grain. “I seriously question whether the American taxpayers want an agency of this government to be the guarantor of a loan for 17 or 18 communist-dominated countries,” Ford said. He said those notes might conceivably be guaranteed under these arrangements for Russia, Cuba, Rumania, and Outer Mongolia (Mongolian People’s Republic).
President Johnson tonight spent Christmas eve with his family on his ranch west of here. The President and Mrs. Johnson arrived in Austin earlier today to start a Christmas and New Year holiday vacation which had been delayed 36 hours by the foreign aid bill snarl in the House of Representatives. Before the chief executive reached his LBJ ranch, he flew from Washington to Philadelphia to attend the funeral of a ranking Democratic Pennsylvania political leader; paid a call on Governor John B. Connally of Texas who is recuperating from a bullet wound inflicted when President Kennedy was assassinated, then went deer hunting with A. W. Moursund, the owner of a neighboring ranch.
President Johnson told reporters today he never felt better physically, despite an 18-hour-a-day White House work schedule. As he started his deer hunt, he remarked that now he was in the Texas hill country in which he was born and raised, he was “feeling better already.” The President and his neighbor aimed their rifles several times at deer as they rode around the ranch in an automobile, but they did not fire a shot. After a visit to Moursund’s ranch house, Johnson left for his own ranch 25 miles away. On the drive to the airstrip the President went deer hunting again briefly, but again shot no game. Johnson’s helicopter finally reached his ranch at 6:26 p.m.
The New York International Airport, commonly referred to as “Idlewild”, was officially renamed as John F. Kennedy International Airport, popularly referred to as “JFK”. The president’s brother, Edward Kennedy, attended the ceremony.
The government’s economy drive brings a decision to confine the development of nuclear-powered space flight to ground research on engines until more technical problems are solved. The reactor-in-flight test program, usually referred to as R.I.F.T., is canceled. Flight tests with the vehicle, including landings in the Atlantic, had been scheduled for 1967-68, with the goal of using it to land large payloads on the moon and helping man explore the planets.
Record-shattering cold settles on the snow-covered American South as a fast-moving storm dumps 10 inches of snow on New England. Memphis becomes the nation’s ice box, with 13 below zero — the coldest in 91 years of record keeping. Arkansas experiences one of its coldest December nights in history, 1 below zero at Little Rock, breaking a 5 above record set in 1917. Gilbert, Arkansas, reports 8 below, Batesville 7 below, and Fort Smith a record 3 above. The gulf coast shivers in 19 degree cold.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 756.86 (-1.44).
Born:
Mary Ramsey, American singer and violinist (10,000 Maniacs), born in Washington, District of Columbia.
Caroline Aherne, British comedienne, writer and actress (“The Royale Family”), born in London, England, United Kingdom (d. 2016)
Tod Murphy, NBA power forward and center (Los Angeles Clippers, Minnesota Timberwolves, Detroit Pistons, Golden State Warriors), in Long Beach, California.
Timo Jutila, Finnish National Team and NHL defenseman (Team Finland, Olympics, 1984, 1992, Bronze medal 1994; Buffalo Sabres), in Tampere, Finland.
Tom Brown, NFL wide receiver (Cincinnati Bengals), in Princeton, Minnesota.
Keith Radecic, NFL center (St. Louis Cardinals), in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Chris Morris, footballer for the Republic of Ireland team from 1987 to 1992, including the 1990 World Cup; in Newquay, England, United Kingdom.
Died:
Mikhaylo Parashchuk, 85, Ukrainian sculptor.
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