Secretary of State Henry Kissinger reviewed the year-end report on foreign policy. Kissinger stated that the Geneva peace conference is well underway, but warned that the outcome is unpredictable. Asked about the Arab oil embargo to the United States, he said that the embargo is “improper.” U.S. relations with Western Europe are disappointing, and the administration has fallen behind schedule in making decisions with the Soviets regarding nuclear weapons.
Kissinger said yesterday that improved American relations with the Soviet Union were possible only so long as Moscow maintained a “responsible course” in the Middle East. He firmly linked the Middle East to other areas of Soviet-American interest and seemed particularly concerned that Moscow not try to upset the peace talks in Geneva. He stressed, however, at a Washington news conference, that at the present the United States had no ground for complaint because the Soviet performance at the Geneva conference “has been constructive.”
The headquarters of the United Nations truce forces in the Middle East reported that Israel had complained anew of Egyptian troop advances along a sensitive sector of the cease‐fire lines. The reported Egyptian moves might be aimed at supply lines that run through the corridor that Israeli troops established in pushing across the Suez Canal north of Great Bitter Lake in the final days of the October war.
Egypt’s second army reportedly built causeways across the Suez to strengthen bridgeheads. Heavy fighting was reported on the Suez front; an Israeli soldier was allegedly killed last night.
Five Arab guerrillas who staged the hijacking attack at Rome’s airport last week will be interrogated in Kuwait by a special guerrilla committee, officials of the Palestine Liberation Organization said today. Ali Yassin, head of the Kuwait office of the Palestinian guerrilla organization, said that a four‐man committee appointed by Yasir Arafat, the organization’s head, would begin the interrogation Saturday. The committee, he said, was in contact with the Kuwaiti Minister of Interior and Defense, Sheik Saad Abdullah, and his deputy, Abdullatif Thuweini, who briefed the committee members on the investigation conducted by Kuwaiti authorities.
The five hijackers have refused to reveal their names or the guerrilla group to which they belong. Their attack resulted in the killing of 32 persons in the Rome and Athens airports and the hijacking of a West German airliner that finally landed here December 18. Mr. Arafat has condemned the attack as a crime. Mr. Yassin said that there was a “tacit agreement” between Kuwait and the Palestine Liberation. Organization for turning over the five guerrillas for trial by a special court of the organization. No date has been set for the transfer, he added. The official Moroccan news agency reported over the weekend that Kuwaiti authorities had already turned the five men over to the Palestinian group. But that report proved to be unfounded.
Northern Ireland police were searching for a missing German electronics company executive described by a high police official as the apparent victim of a kidnapping by the Irish Republican Army. Police identified the missing businessman as Thomas Neidermayer, managing director of the Grundig Electronics Co. in Northern Ireland. They refused to link his disappearance with a report of a man being abducted from a Belfast street Thursday.
A U.S. Army board in Frankfurt, Germany, decided that a homosexual soldier can serve out his active duty time on the grounds that the military might be able to rehabilitate him. The discharge proceeding against the unidentified soldier was initiated by his company commander after the soldier admitted he was a homosexual. The soldier will be transferred to another unit until his release in June. Homosexuality is normally grounds for exemption from military service, but the soldier told the board he was not asked if he was a homosexual when he was drafted in 1972.
Three Jewish former Red Army colonels from Minsk said in Moscow they were subject to “continuing reprisals” for seeking to emigrate to Israel and two of them declared they were formally renouncing Soviet citizenship. The three — Colonel Yefim A. Davydovich, Colonel Naum Alshansky and Lieutenant Colonel Lev Ovsishcher — also alleged they had been threatened with arrest and trial for “anti-Soviet activities” unless they muted their campaign to win exit visas.
Spanish newspapers accused French authorities of harboring the assassins of Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco and said the government undoubtedly would ask for their extradition. The press attacks followed the report in a Paris newspaper of a clandestine news conference by ETA, the Basque separatist guerrilla organization that says its members killed Carrero December 20. “Meanwhile, Spain’s Council of the Realm met in Madrid to help Chief of State Francisco Franco choose a new prime minister.
French authorities said tonight that group of Turks arrested December 20 in the midst of an arsenal in a villa outside Paris had been trained by Palestinians for terrorism and revolution in Turkey and elsewhere. Counter intelligence agents are reportedly sifting through a half-ton of seized documents that the police said include an assassination list of diplomats, chiefly Turkish. Guns, grenades, letter bombs booby‐trapped books and plastic explosives were also found in the turreted mansion in Villiers‐sur‐Marne, 48 miles east of the French capital, police sources said.
Thirteen young people —10 Turks, 2 Palestinians and one Algerian — were arrested in the week‐old raid disclosed by the police yesterday. They are now in separate cells at Fleury‐Mérogis prison, charged with possession of weapons and counterfeiting passports, the police reported. Investigators said that the Turks, including two women, had been instructed in terrorist tactics by Palestinian extremists “like Japanese and Europeans before them.” Their ultimate goal was said to be the overthrow of the Ankara Government and the establishment of a revolutionary regime.
The island of Basilan was made one of the provinces of the Philippines by Presidential Decree No. 356 of Ferdinand Marcos, effective March 7, 1974.
The Chilean military junta announced the first sentencing of women prisoners convicted by military courts of being leftist extremists. Of the 14 women tried in the small northern port city of Pisagua, 12 were found guilty and sentenced to jail terms of 90 days to five years. The two others were found innocent. In an unusual ruling, the prisoners were granted “provisional liberty” until January 10 to settle their personal affairs, afterward paying their own transportation to prison. Two were sentenced to prisons at Chile’s southern tip, 2,500 miles from Pisagua. The specific charges against the women were not listed.
Reports that President Juan D. Peron of Argentina is suffering from cancer of the prostate gland and will soon leave for treatment in Spain were confirmed by a ranking official of the Argentine government, the Chicago Daily News reported. A dispatch from Mexico City said doctors recently diagnosed a malignancy and the purpose of a recent trip to Spain by Peron’s wife was to make arrangements for surgery, according to the unnamed source. The source said Peron probably would return to Buenos Aires for follow-up radiation therapy, and the question of his remaining in office depends on whether he suffers any complications.
Mexico police have killed a terrorist leader who masterminded a series of bombings and kidnappings that forced the government to call out the army last month, the state governor of Jalisco said in Guadalajara. Gov. Alberto Orozco Romero said Pedro Orozco Guzman, no relation, confessed he was the leader of a terrorist group that kidnapped U.S. Consul Terrance Leonhardy, honorary British consul Anthony Duncan Williams and industrialist Fernando Aranguren. He also directed eight bombings since August, most of them against banks and government buildings, the governor said. Guzman was fatally wounded Christmas Eve when he tried to shoot it out with police who stopped his car during a routine check, officers said.
Federal energy adviser William Simon announced a contingency gasoline rationing plan, but stated that the energy crisis is not as serious as expected. He said that if Americans continue to cooperate voluntarily, rationing won’t be necessary. Simon asked teenagers to respond to the energy crisis by giving up their cars. Students generally reacted negatively to the idea. Airlines were also not pleased with Simon’s announcement; they are still unsure of the fuel allocation for next month and schedules are in disarray. The immediate future of air travel appears grim. Simon, the director of the U.S. Federal Energy Office, outlined a gasoline rationing program that he emphasized was not being implemented but that would be “on standby” and that would not be implemented earlier than March 1, 1974, subject to approval by Congress. Under the rationing plan, each licensed driver 18 years old or over would be issued a coupon to purchase 35 gallons per month of gasoline, with the right to purchase extra coupons at a higher price or from other drivers.
New England is down to last its bit of fuel oil for utilities as Simon and Congress remain at odds over an emergency energy bill. Simon’s office will set up a committee to verify figures released by the major oil companies regarding the energy crisis.
President Nixon began a post‐Christmas vacation at his San Clemente estate, convinced as one aide said, that his trip across the country by commercial jet had “scored points with the public.” However, both the Secret Service and the Federal Aviation Administration expressed considerably less enthusiasm about the United Airlines flight, apparently the first ever made by a President on a scheduled airliner.
President Nixon’s decision to fly on a commercial flight to California has become controversial. The news media is complaining and Federal Aviation Administration director Alexander Butterfield is dismayed. The President’s actions came as a surprise. Nixon is now secluded again at the Western White House although he chatted with passengers during the commercial flight on United Airlines. Press secretary Ron Ziegler said the flight was “friendly”.
The Justice Department filed a civil antitrust suit against Mid‐America Dairymen, Inc., one of three big Midwestern milk marketing cooperatives that made heavy contributions to President Nixon’s re‐election campaign. The suit charges Mid‐America with “attempting to monopolize and unreasonably restrain the sale of milk in a 10‐state area.” The Government previously brought antitrust charges against two other cooperatives — Associated Milk Producers, Inc., and Dairymen, Inc.
Incoming Ohio Senator Howard Metzenbaum denied that he needed to settle unpaid back taxes with the IRS.
The FBI reported that violent crimes are on the increase; property crimes have increased also.
Gun control laws remain a controversial issue. New York City Mayor John Lindsay said he would like to stop America’s “romance” with guns, adding that children should be kept away from violent, gun-slinging television movies. Estimates of the number of privately owned guns in the United States are staggering. Many hunters and target shooters have fiercely resisted government attempts to control the sale of guns. Congress has done little to control the manufacture and sale of guns, and prospects for any new gun control legislation are nil.
Billionaire Howard Hughes was indicted by a Las Vegas grand jury on charges of conspiracy and stock manipulation. A Federal grand jury in Las Vegas handed up a nine‐count criminal indictment naming Howard R. Hughes, the reclusive billionaire, two of his top aides and two of his associates. The charges included stock manipulation, conspiracy and wire fraud in connection with the acquisition by Mr. Hughes of Air West, an airline, in 1968–1970. Hughes would have to be extradited from the Bahamas to face the charges.
New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s accusation that election fraud prevented his reelection was dismissed by Judge Thomas A. Early who ruled that Garrison had no cause for action in his suit. Harry Connick defeated Garrison by about 2,200 votes in the December 15 election. Garrison was expected to appeal Early’s ruling.
Methods used to extract confessions from cadets during a 1972 cheating scandal at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, included midnight awakening and lengthy interrogations in which cadets were denied sleep, according to a military lawyer. The lawyer, Captain Michael R. Rose, a 1969 graduate of the academy who is based at McGuire Air Force Base., New Jersey, said the resulting confessions, which led to the resignations of 39 cadets, probably would be tossed out by any civilian court because of unethical and possibly illegal coercion. His remarks are contained in a book to be published soon. Rose drew immediate criticism from Lieutenant Colonel James J. Jones, academy information director, who called him an “ill-informed and ill-advised young graduate” and said his book was a “very shallow and nonsubstantive document.”
The annual-rate retail cost of a typical food market basket went up $14, or 0.9%, in November, to $1,634, the Agriculture Department reported, as food industry middlemen increased their profits of the third straight month. The report showed that consumer food bills would have declined 1% instead of rising in November had food processors and retailers passed on the latest decline in farm prices. The typical market basket is based on food needed by a hypothetical household of 3.2 persons.
James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of Martin Luther King, filed a lawsuit against the state of Tennessee. Ray, convicted of assassinating the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is being transferred from a state to a federal prison for “security reasons,” the Justice Department said in Washington yesterday. Mr. Ray, convicted of shooting the civil rights leader with a rifle from ambush in Memphis on April 4, 1968, will be imprisoned in one of the six Federal maximum‐security prisons under an agreement with the state of Tennessee, the Justice Department said. Neither state nor Federal officials would explain why he was not considered to be safe in the Tennessee maximum security prison at Nashville where he has been serving a 99‐year term since pleading guilty in 1969 to the killing.
Police say that the 90-year-old couple who were found dead in their Schenectady, New York, home had enough money to pay the power company bill. Electricity was cut off because the bill remained unpaid; Mr. and Mrs. Frank Baker may have frozen to death.
A Georgia judge ruled that the law requiring alimony is unconstitutional. The case involved 26-year-old Vince Murphy. Murphy said that some wives use alimony as a weapon; his ex-wife refused comment. Peg Nugent of the Feminist Action Alliance stated that she hopes all alimony laws will be rewritten. The judge’s decision is expected to be appealed.
A police corruption study concludes that systematic extortion of bribes by groups of New York City police officers has been substantially reduced in recent years. But the study ordered by Donald F. Cawley, the outgoing Police Commissioner, notes that allegations about illegal involvement in narcotics by individual officers has increased. Another key finding is that officers still are reluctant to act against corrupt policemen.
The comet Kohoutek, a new visitor from far beyond Pluto, should help mankind learn much about the origin and evolution of our solar system, according to the comet’s discoverer, Dr. Lubos Kohoutek. He told a Washington news conference that recent observations had given scientists information never obtained from any previous comet.
The Los Angeles Dodgers announce their home night games will start at 7:30 instead of 8:00 to save energy.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 851.01 (+13.45, +1.61%).
Born:
Raúl González, Puerto Rican MLB outfielder and pinch hitter (Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati Reds, New York Mets, Cleveland Indians), in Santurce, Puerto Rico.
Jamal Robinson, NBA small forward (Miami Heat), in Jamaica, New York.
Wilson Cruz [Echevarría], American stage and screen actor (“My So Called Life”; “Party of Five”), in Brooklyn, New York, New York.
Died:
Thomas Niedermayer, 45, West German industrialist and West Germany’s honorary consul to Northern Ireland, was kidnapped from his home in West Belfast by two members of the IRA. His body would not be located until 1980. John Bradley would plead guilty to manslaughter in 1981.
Lucy Partington, 21, British student and cousin of novelist Martin Amis, was abducted and murdered by serial killers Fred and Rosemary West. Her fate would not be confirmed until the discovery of her remains more than 20 years later, in 1994.
History Diaries 