Pravda charged today that the Defense Department was engaged in psychological warfare and arms improvements aimed at restoring American nuclear superiority, contrary to the spirit of Soviet‐American agreements. The authoritative commentary was the first extensive article on the arms negotiations to appear since Secretary of State Kissinger gave the Kremlin proposals for leveling off deployment of missiles with multiple warheads at present levels, which would give the United States some advantages.
Today’s criticism was nominally directed at Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger for his advocacy of a larger defense budget to encompass improvements in the American bomber force and submarine-based missile systems, and his plans to shift targeting of some offensive missiles from Soviet cities to Soviet missile systems. But the gist of the argument also appeared to provide a rationale for Moscow’s wary reaction to Mr. Kissinger’s proposals, advanced with Mr. Schlesinger’s concurrence, on behalf of the Nixon Administration as a whole.
President Nixon, one of the chiefs of state who attended memorial ceremonies in Paris for President Pompidou on Saturday, conferred with other heads of government over the weekend including leaders of the Soviet Union and Japan, said “au revoir” to a friendly crowd of Parisians and returned to Washington. His aides said that the trip demonstrated that Mr. Nixon, even though he is under an impeachment inquiry at home, is needed in the presidency if the United States is to continue as a leader for world peace. They were clearly relieved at the absence abroad of opposition and criticism that the President sometimes encounters at home.
Jacques Chaban-Delmas, former Premier of France, won the full backing of the powerful Gaullist party as its candidate for President. Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the finance minister and head of the Independent Republicans, allied with the Gaullists, but a personal rival of Mr. Chaban-Delmas, will announce today whether he too will run. Edgar Faure, twice Premier and now president of the National Assembly, insists that he will not back out of his declared candidacy despite enormous pressures. This means that the right will probably present three contenders to the voters May 5 against a single contender from the left — the Socialist party chief, Francois Mitterrand.
The underground leader of the outlawed Spanish Communist Party, Francisco Romero Marin, was arrested in Madrid as police continued their drive against illegal political opposition. No details of the arrest were given but police said Romero, 59, secretly entered Spain several years ago to reorganize and mastermind party activities.
British army experts defused a large gelignite bomb found outside a recruiting office in Birmingham, England, near the sites of two earlier explosions. But relative calm prevailed in Northern Ireland, prompting speculation that some terrorists were considering a truce. A woman, 21, was shot to death in Belfast, but her killing was considered a casualty of an internal Protestant feud.
Prime Minister Harold Wilson said he would make a full statement in Parliament today on recent allegations “concerning his private office.” The announcement came as a political storm built up over a British land deal involving a member of Wilson’s staff and press claims that his name was forged on a letter promoting the deal. The prime minister has already sued two newspapers which linked his private secretary, Mrs. Marcia Williams, and members of her family with the affair.
Tugs towed the luxury liner Queen Elizabeth 2 into Hamilton, Bermuda, for repair work that was expected to be finished in a few days. Oil seepage into the ship’s boiler system caused a power breakdown Thursday that resulted in the mid-ocean evacuation of 1,600 passengers.
U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) met with West German Chancellor Willy Brandt for three hours in Bonn. The main topic of the talk was believed to be the U.S. role in Europe and transatlantic relations.
Iraqi President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr issued a decree dismissing the five Kurdish members of his cabinet and appointing five others in their place. Sources said the move was part of the government’s plan to enforce its version of autonomy on the Kurdish region. Those fired were loyal to Mulla Mustafa Barzani, the rebellious Kurdish leader. The replacements were Kurds who had broken away from Barzani’s Kurdish Democratic Party.
Israeli and Syrian artillery blazed all day today in the Golan Heights area. The fighting came on the first day of the week‐long Jewish festival of Passover, when many Israelis expected Syrian offensive. It was the 27th consecutive day of artillery exchanges. A military spokesman said that one Israeli soldier was wounded by Syrian shelling during the afternoon. The Syrian artillery fire was also directed at Israeli positions on Mount Hermon, where Syrian commandos tried to infiltrate yesterday, the spokesman added.
Israeli jet planes went into action twice against the group, which was also pounded by artillery fire. An Israeli Army patrol that searched the mountain terrain early today found that all members of the Syrian unit had recrossed the lines, a military communiqué said. Yesterday’s air action, the first since the October war, marked a new stage in the month‐long clashes. But a military spokesman denied a Syrian report that Israeli planes struck gain in the Mount Hermon area today. Despite the tension on the Golan Heights, where Israeli forces have been on high alert for days, Israel’s roads were packed with holidaymakers today. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan celebrated the seder — festive Passover meal — with frontline troops on the Golan Heights after touring Israeli positions, a military spokesman said.
A Syrian military spokesman announced that Israeli jet planes today attacked a Syrian position, on Mount Hermon for the second day running. The spokesman said that the position was attacked at, 9:30 A.M. and again 22 minutes later. He said there were no Syrian casualties.
Leaders of Premier Golda Meir’s Labor party tonight discussed a plan to shuffle the Cabinet as a way to forestall a threatened vote this week in Parliament of no confidence in the Government. According to the plan, the Cabinet would resign and Mrs. Meir would form another with the same ministers but with portfolios reshuffled. Moshe Dayan would relinquish his defense post but would remain in the cabinet in another position. The plan was designed to satisfy the demands for Mr. Dayan’s resignation after a judicial inquiry blamed top military leaders for shortcomings that enabled Egypt and Syria to score initial gains in the recent war. The commission cleared Mr. Dayan of direct responsibility but his critics said he must assume ministerial responsibility and resign. Opponents of Mrs. Meir within the party have called for her resignation, which would bring down the government.
Warships began gathering off Egypt’s Port Said to begin a three-nation operation to clear the Suez Canal of mines, bombs and unexploded shells. Rear Admiral Brian McCauley, who will command the U.S. ships, said he thought the operation would take about a year. The Egyptian and British navies will also work on the job.
Diplomatic and Libyan Government sources said today that Colonel Muammar el‐Qaddafi remained the undisputed leader of Libya despite reports elsewhere in the Middle East that he had been stripped of his power. The state press agency told Libyans today that Colonel Qaddafi had turned over some of his duties to Premier Abdul Salam Jalloud, confirming reports published yesterday. But a spokesman for the state Agency said Colonel Qaddafi remained in control of the nation. And the sources said the largely ceremonial duties that Mr. Jalloud would assume should not affect Colonel Qaddafi’s position of power.
“It doesn’t look like Qaddafi’s lost any power except handing over some functions such as meeting and greeting dignitaries to Jalloud,” said a Western diplomat in Tripoli. But he cautioned that it might take some weeks to assess the developments fully. Usually well‐informed newspapers elsewhere in the Middle East said yesterday that Colonel Qaddafi, who has threatened to resign a number of times when he was displeased, had been pushed aside. Colonel Qaddafi, who has ruled Libya since taking power in a coup four years ago, is known to be disdainful of protocol duties normally reserved for heads of states.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries — the cartel that has pushed up the price of oil by 400 percent in the last year — faces serious internal problems and possible breakup by 1980 because of potential sharp conflicts of interest among its members, according to Walter Levy, an influential oil economist, whose views save been given wide attention by high government circles here and abroad.
The members of OPEC, whose representatives met in Geneva, decided to set up a special fund to help poorer developing countries, but they failed to agree on how much money to contribute. The lack of agreement reflected a political split in the 12-nation group. Iran, Venezuela and Algeria firmly sponsored the fund, but Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Arab countries resisted.
Mexican authorities said they fear more than 2,000 persons may have been murdered by a criminal gang which terrorized the city of Tapachula, near the Guatemalan frontier. Military investigators said two mass graves, one containing more than 200 corpses, had been discovered. There were reports of other clandestine cemeteries having been discovered. Sixty-six persons have been arrested. The gang, known as the Black Hand, murdered landlords to get their property and killed laborers when they demanded their pay.
Politicians opposed to the Chilean military regime have been warned they will be “crushed and made to disappear” by General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, president of the military junta. He made the warning in a speech against left-wing groups.
Donald Alexander, the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, refused to say yes or no when asked if the $432,787.13 owed in back taxes by President Nixon may have included a negligence penalty of 5 percent. Under sharp questioning on the television program “Face the Nation,” Mr. Alexander declined repeatedly to say whether such a penalty had been assessed. He based his refusal to answer the question on the principle of confidentiality between the I.R.S. and the taxpayer. But he did not invoke that principle when he said there had been no fraud penalty against the President.
President Nixon’s tax advisers were ordered by the White House to take some of the deductions from his taxable income that were later declared improper by the congressional investigation of his tax returns, according to Arthur Blech, the President’s personal accountant. “It was, ‘take 100 percent of that and take 50 percent of that,’” Mr. Blech said in an interview. The instructions, he said, had come from John Dean, John Ehrlichman and other former high Nixon aides.
On the eve of the resumption of House hearings into the Small Business Administration, the ranking Republican on the subcommittee that monitors the agency has called for the resignation of SBA Administrator Thomas L. Kleppe. Rep. Lawrence G. Williams (R-Pennsylvania) said that “despite almost daily stories of mismanagement in the SBA, Mr. Kleppe still maintains that there is nothing wrong with the agency.” He said Kleppe “cannot provide the type of leadership to clean up the mess of the SBA and restore the agency’s prestige.”
Federal and Oklahoma authorities have broken up a ring that sold war bonnets and other Indian artifacts made from the feathers of eagles and other migratory birds, the Interior Department reported. Secretary Rogers C.B. Morton said thousands of birds had been illegally killed for the manufacture of the artifacts by the ring. Birds of nearly two dozen species — including bald eagles, golden eagles and seven kinds of hawks, were killed. Eagle carcasses sold for as much as $125, he said, with up to 10 being used to make one war bonnet. A fan, selling for $650, required the tail feathers from 38 scissor-tailed flycatchers. Morton noted that it was illegal to buy, sell, barter or trade migratory birds or their parts.
Defense attorneys in the Wounded Knee incident trial, being held in St. Paul, Minnesota, have obtained a letter indicating that top Justice Department officials thought the telephone in the South Dakota village might have been monitored illegally. The letter surfaced after denials during the last three weeks that conversations on the only telephone line into Wounded Knee during the 71-day occupation last year by Indian militants had been listened to by the FBI. American Indian Movement leaders Dennis Banks and Russell Means are accused in a 10-count indictment of burglary, theft and other crimes in connection with the occupation.
Most of Hawaii’s pineapple industry employees went on strike, joining fellow union members who struck the sugar industry a month ago. The 6,000 workers, members of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, bring the total of the state’s idle agricultural workers to 15,000. There was only token picketing by the pineapple workers but full-scale demonstrations were expected today at Dole Co., the Del Monte Corp. and Maui Land and Pineapple Co. Higher wages and pensions and severance pay are at issue.
Two Michigan newspapers that backed President Nixon in the 1968 and 1972 elections called this weekend for his resignation. He is to speak in the area Wednesday. He was invited by James Sparling Jr., the Republican candidate in a special congressional race for a seat Democrats have not won since 1932. In an editorial, the Flint Journal said resignation was “the only decent, clean way out” for the President. The Saginaw News called for Mr. Nixon’s resignation because “the President’s reputation is now so seriously stained that his continuation in office presents a burden no longer tolerable…”
The issue of permitting a woman to obtain an abortion during the first three months of pregnancy still evenly divides the American public a year after the United States Supreme Court decided the matter, according to a Gallup Poll survey released yesterday. The survey indicated that 47 percent of the American people favored the court’s ruling, and 44 percent opposed it. A similar poll in December, 1972, just before the January 22 ruling, showed 46 percent of those surveyed in favor and 45 percent opposed. The survey results that were released yesterday were based on interviews with 1,582 adults 18 years old and older in more than 300 localities between March 8 and March 11 and between March 15 and March 18. This was the question asked: “The United States Supreme Court has ruled that a woman may go to a doctor to end pregnancy at any time during the first three months of pregnancy. Do you favor or oppose this ruling?”
The parents of Patricia Hearst left San Francisco today for a trip to Mexico. Ira Walsh, a family friend, said he had driven Mr. and Mrs. Randolph A. Hearst to San Francisco International Airport before dawn. Authorities at the airport said the Hearsts had boarded a private jet, which had filed a flight plan for La Paz, a fishing resort on the tip of Baja California. Asked whether the Hearsts were going to meet with the self‐styled Symbionese Liberation Army, which claims to have kidnapped their daughter Patricia on February 4, Mr. Walsh replied, “I know there’s nothing.” He said he expected the Hearsts to return to their home in Hillsborough, California within 10 days.
In an interview yesterday, Mr. Hearst said he believed that his 20‐year‐old daughter had been brainwashed by, her kidnappers, whom he described as “cruel people.” In a taped message broadcast last Wednesday, Miss Hearst renounced her family and said she was joining her captors as an armed comrade. The previous day, the S.L.A. had said it would be announcing the time and place of her release within 72 hours.
Herb Gardner’s “Thieves” premieres in NYC.
The last goalkeeper in the National Hockey League (NHL) to play without a mask, the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Andy Brown, played his final NHL game. Brown would play for three more seasons in the World Hockey Association (WHA) for the Indianapolis Racers in 1976.
Chicago in April. At Comiskey, the White Sox and Angels finally call of their game after 10-innings because of blinding sleet and snow. The game is a 4–4 tie.
At Arlington, Reggie Jackson hits a pair of 3-run homers and drives in 7 runs to pace the Athletics to an 8–4 win over the Rangers. Rollie Fingers wins with 5 innings of relief.
Born:
Anita Maxwell [Anita Skipper], WNBA forward (Cleveland Rockers), in Rome, Mississippi.
Died:
Bobby Buntrock, 21, American child actor known for portraying Harold Baxter on the TV sitcom “Hazel” starting in 1961 as a 9-year-old, was found dead inside his overturned car which had fallen into Battle Creek in the city limits of Keystone, South Dakota, the victim of a drowning.
History Diaries 