The White House said early today after a long night conference between President Johnson and his top diplomatic and military advisers that the United States welcomes talks with Panama to settle the current crisis, but cannot allow operations of the Panama Canal to be imperiled or impaired. The President received a full report on the anti-American demonstrations by Panamanians and defensive actions by American troops guarding the Canal Zone. Rioting erupted Thursday and caused many casualties. The report was given by Thomas C. Mann, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, who headed a special United States mission sent to Panama Friday by the President.
Mann and Secretary of the Army Cyrus R. Vance returned to Washington from Panama last night and went directly to the White House to report to the President on their fact-finding and talks with Panamanian government leaders. Called to the White House to hear Mann’s report and discuss United States moves and policies in the Canal Zone were Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara; John A. McCone, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and McGeorge Bundy and Ralph A. Dungan, special assistants to the President. Dungan was a member of the group the President sent to Panama. The White House meeting lasted nearly 2½ hours, breaking up after midnight. After the President met with his advisers, the White House issued a statement saying Mann emphasized in his report that United States military forces “have behaved admirably under extreme provocation by mobs and snipers attacking the Canal Zone.”
Panama has not denounced the three Canal Zone treaties with the United States, but diplomatic relations remain broken, Foreign Minister Galileo Solis told a press conference tonight. He said President Roberto E. Chiari will announce within 24 hours what nation will handle Panama’s affairs in Washington. Solis said American representatives here no longer have diplomatic status, but that consular relations will continue because they are commercial. Panama apparently is piqued because it did not get a promise from Assistant Secretary of State Thomas C. Mann that the United States would negotiate a new treaty as demanded by President Chiari. Mann flew back to Washington today. Flag Peace Restored Peace has been restored to the Canal Zone boundary. The flag war is over, but it has been replaced by the treaty war.
Hundreds of thousands of organized marchers parade in Peking, capital of Red China, shouting anti-American slogans and waving banners picturing caricatures of President Johnson. The strife in Panama is “eloquent proof the aggressive nature of United States imperialism never will change,” the chairman of the nation’s peace committee tells a Peking rally.
A shivering Fidel Castro stepped off a Russian-built airliner in sub-zero cold today and ran into the open arms of a bear-hugging, cheek-kissing Nikita Khrushchev. The Cuban dictator arrived in early morning darkness on a nonstop flight from sunny Havana to begin a surprise hunting vacation with the Soviet premier. Between game hunting forays in the wilderness, Castro and Khrushchev were expected to discuss a wide range of topics, including economic ties between Cuba and the Soviet Union and ways and means to exploit the Panama crisis as a propaganda weapon against the United States.
The Viet Cong take over two strategic hamlets in Pleiku province, burning 135 houses and kidnapping seven officials. A South Vietnamese spokesman identified the hamlets as Phi Thông Nhà and Phi Tế Nào in the jungled central highlands. He did not say whether the hamlets were defended by Government forces or local forces or whether there was any fighting. The spokesman said the Viet Cong attacked a government militia outpost in Ba Xuyen Province south of Saigon Saturday night, killing six militiamen and three civilians. Six other militiamen were wounded and eight were missing. The Viet Cong losses were not reported. A Vietnamese spokesman said 27 government militiamen were missing after a band of Viet Cong attacked the Mang Tra outpost in Kiến Hòa Province south of Saigon Saturday night. Viet Cong losses were not reported.
All 13 member nations of the Arab League met in Cairo at the invitation of President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, still referred to at the time as the United Arab Republic. An Israeli historian would later comment that “The summit conference was, without a doubt, one of the more momentous events in the history of the Arab world,” and the leaders voted to establish three new organizations in preparation for removing the Jewish state of Israel from the Middle East. One was the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) which would give the Palestinian people in Israel a role in ridding their homeland of Zionism; another was the United Arab Command to strengthen the military might of all the member nations, and the third was the Jordan River Authority, which would make plans to divert the waters of the Jordan River to prevent its use by Israel. Nasser of Egypt, president of the United Arab Republic, urges the Arab states to establish a joint army command and be prepared to destroy Israel’s military forces if Israel persists in its plan to divert waters of the Jordan River to irrigate the Negev desert. Nasser addresses leaders of the 13 Arab league countries, their long-standing differences submerged in a common hatred of Israel.
President Johnson is sending Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy on a special mission to confer with President Sukarno of Indonesia in Tokyo this week, the White House announced tonight. Kennedy, who carried out similar overseas assignments for his brother, the late President Kennedy, will discuss his Far East trip with President Johnson in the White House tomorrow morning and leave by plane later in the day.
Sukarno is visiting Japan this week. Andrew T. Hatcher, associate White House press secretary, said Kennedy expects to meet with the Indonesian chief-of-state in Tokyo Thursday. Details of the attorney general’s trip are to be announced tomorrow. Hatcher said Kennedy and Sukarno will take up the potentially explosive Malaysia issue and other “topics of mutual interest.” President Johnson recently sent a personal letter to Sukarno expressing his concern over the Indonesian president’s proclaimed intention to crush the new federation of Malaysia.
Cyprus unexpectedly vetoed a U.N. peace plan for the troubled east Mediterranean island.
New fighting flares in Calcutta. The death toll in the worst Muslim-Hindu riots since the partition of India passes the 100 mark. More than 1,000 persons are under arrest and 73,000 are homeless. Police fire on mobs of Hindus and Muslims rioting in Calcutta and the suburban and rural areas stretching up to East Pakistan. The religious riots have turned into mass waves of organized arson and looting.
Willy Brandt was named by Socialist leaders for the chancellorship of West Germany and as leader of the Social Democratic Party.
Yugoslavia is busily trying to win friends — and customers — by setting up an aid-by-credits program with the “underdeveloped nations of Africa and Asia.
A United States destroyer removes 61 Americans from the island of Zanzibar as the revolutionary African regime bans the former ruling parties and exiles the deposed sultan for life. Zanzibar’s neighbors Kenya and Uganda-recognize the new regime despite fears that Zanzibar may become a pro-Peking copy of Cuba.
Greek Queen Frederika will leave Wednesday for the United States, where she will receive an honorary degree at Barnard college and dine with President Johnson. The queen and her daughter, Princess Irene, 20, will fly to France to board the liner United States at Le Havre. The ship is due in New York on January 21.
Karol Wojtyla becomes archbishop of Krakow, Poland; he later becomes Pope John Paul II.
U.S. and Canadian negotiators have reached agreement on the huge Columbia River hydro and flood control project, it was announced in Ottawa.
The U.S. Army will fly 4,000 troops across the Pacific next month to test a new concept for stopping aggression within hours.
A United States Air Force B-52D Stratofortress carrying two Mark 53 nuclear bombs lost its vertical stabilizer in turbulence during a winter storm and crashed on Savage Mountain near Barton, Maryland. Only two of the five crewmen survived. The bombs were recovered two days later. The B-52D was returning to Georgia from Massachusetts after an earlier Chrome Dome airborne alert to Europe. Near Meyersdale, Pennsylvania, on a path east of Salisbury, Pennsylvania; and after altitude changes to evade severe turbulence; the vertical stabilizer broke off. The aircraft was left uncontrollable as a result; the pilot ordered the crew to bail out, and the aircraft crashed. The wreckage of the aircraft was found on the Stonewall Green farm. Today, the crash site is in a private meadow of Elbow Mountain within Savage River State Forest, along the public Savage Mountain Trail just north of the Pine Swamp Road crossing.
While the official DOD description of the accident says that the two thermonuclear weapons “were relatively intact in the approximate center of the wreckage area,” an account from William L. Stevens, a safety engineer at Sandia National Laboratories, says that “both bombs broke apart on impact.” Stevens further said that an Explosive Ordnance Demolition team from the military was planning to remove the bombs quickly “to reduce media coverage”, under the protest of Sandia engineers who felt it was unsafe to do so until the state of the bombs was fully known. The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission eventually developed a “carefully considered process” for removing the bomb pieces to an AEC facility.
The Senate finance committee lops another half billion dollars from the tax relief measure adopted by the House. Business, working mothers, persons over 65, and employees of firms such as the American Telephone and Telegraph company and the International Business Machines corporation are the biggest beneficiaries.
Senate investigators of Bobby Baker brought out stories today of high finance and high jinks in the fabulous business of peddling drinks by machine. But they never did find out where Baker fitted in the confused picture. They were told, however, that he insisted on payoffs in cash for his business favors. Ralph Lee Hill testified that he paid Baker $5,600 — sometimes at a rate of $650 a month — for influence Hill thought Baker used to keep Hill’s thriving soft drink concession in an electronics plant and to enable Hill to raise his price from 5 to 10 cents. Hill is former president of Capitol Vending Company.
Baker is the former $19,600 secretary for the Senate Democratic majority who resigned after the disclosure of his meteoric rise to wealth while occupying his powerful and confidential post. The Senate Rules Committee is investigating to determine whether Baker had a conflict of interests between his work for the Senate Democrats and his outside money making. As pictured by Lennox P. McLendon, committee counsel, the major element in the mystery is Serv-U corporation, a recently organized vending machine company that is winning lucrative contracts in war industry plants.
The United States Supreme Court knocks down a Louisiana law requiring election ballots to identify each candidate as to race (Caucasian, Negro, etc.). Justice Tom C. Clark, speaking for the court, says the 1960 law violates the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. The decision reverses a finding by a three-judge federal court sitting in Louisiana.
Senator Barry Goldwater will get an opportunity early in February to confront Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara directly with his explosive accusation that American ballistic missiles are undependable.
The Johnson Administration moved within sight of the finish line in its drive to push the biggest tax cut in history through the Senate Finance Committee.
The Veterans Administration will instruct staff doctors in 167 hospitals to advise their patients to quit smoking. The VA later may ban gift cigarettes.
In Manchester, New Hampshire, 14-year-old Pamela Mason was murdered after being lured from her home on the pretext of a babysitting job. Pamela and an acquaintance both had placed their telephone numbers on a bulletin board in a local laundromat and advertised their availability for babysitting, and both girls had received phone calls from a man; one declined because she was busy, and referred the man to Pamela, who was seen climbing into an automobile at 5:45 that afternoon. Pamela’s body was found eight days later along a highway.
Edward Coolidge, Jr., whose mother had recently purchased the laundromat, would be arrested on February 19, and would be tried and convicted of the crime. The conviction would be set aside in 1971 by the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding the Fourth Amendment, Coolidge v. New Hampshire. After a Supreme Court ruling that evidence seized from Coolidge’s car without a warrant had been improperly admitted, the case would be sent back for a new trial. On December 29, 1971, Coolidge would plead guilty to second degree murder and sentenced immediately to a term of 25 to 40 years in the state penitentiary where he had been incarcerated since 1964.
Towns were isolated and thousands of motorists were stranded, particularly in Illinois and Indiana, by heavy snowfalls and raging blizzards that plastered much of the country yesterday. Tens of thousands of persons were snowbound in their homes in remote areas as the winter’s worst weather set records in many places. Snow up to 22 inches, drifts more than 12 feet deep, and temperatures as low as 40 degrees below zero struck blow after blow. While New York City was being blasted by a 60 mile an hour blizzard and nearly a foot of snow, snow and ice glazed the southland, where snow fell in Pensacola, Florida, for the first time in five years. Schools were closed in a dozen states. Stalled cars, trucks, and buses were trapped in mile-long lines. Two motorists froze to death in Illinois.
Australian Championships Men’s Tennis: Roy Emerson retains title; beats fellow Australian Fred Stolle 6-3, 6-4, 6-2.
Australian Championships Women’s Tennis: Australian Margaret Smith beats doubles partner Lesley Turner 6-3, 6-2 for her 5th Australian singles crown.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 773.12 (-1.21).
Born:
Penelope Ann Miller, American actress (“Awakenings”; “Chaplin”; “Kindergarten Cop”), in Los Angeles, California.
Billy Jo Robidoux, MLB first baseman and outfielder (Milwaukee Brewers, Chicago White Sox, Boston Red Sox), in Ware, Massachusetts.
José Núñez, Dominican MLB pitcher (Toronto Blue Jays, Chicago Cubs), in Jarabacoa, Dominican Republic.
Chris Pike, NFL defensive tackle (Cleveland Browns, Los Angeles Rams), in Washington, District of Columbia.
[Ed: The entire U.S. team had to start from scratch after everyone died in the 1961 airliner crash in Belgium. They will have only the most modest achievements in 1964. But pay attention to that one girl on the right in 1968…]
History Diaries 