Defense Department officials said today that the Soviet Union had put seven airborne divisions on alert. American officials said that the eventual Soviet military intentions remained unclear and the Administration chose to make no announcement of the Soviet action and ordered no reciprocal alert for American forces. In Moscow, qualified analysts said that there were indications that the Soviet Union might have placed one division on alert, and probably not more than that.
Diplomatically, the United States applied pressure today on both the Greek and Turkish Governments in an effort to avoid a military clash between the two Atlantic alliance allies. Undersecretary of State Joseph Sisco flew into Athens for meetings with Greek civilian and military leaders, and then rushed to Ankara for more talks there.
And in Washington, the State Department announced that Secretary of State Kissinger would meet on Monday with Archbishop Makarios. At the same time, American officials said that the United States Embassy in Athens recently sent a cablegram to Mr. Kissinger that detailed the direct involvement of the Greek junta in the Cyprus coup.
Discussing the Soviet alert, some officials speculated that Moscow was trying to demonstrate its support if Turkey made any move to intervene militarily on Cyprus. According to well-placed officials, there were indications that the Soviet Union had suggested to the Ankara Government that it could count on Soviet support. As analyzed by Defense Department officials, the Turkish Government was following a deliberate, step-by-step strategy of seeming to indicate a willingness to take military action if no political solution could be reached.
Hospitalized for phlebitis, Spain’s dictator Francisco Franco signed a decree appointing Prince Juan Carlos de Borbon y Borbon as the acting chief of state. Generalissimo Francisco Franco, gravely ill, delegated his powers as ruler of Spain to his designated successor, Prince Juan Carlos de Borbon. The 81-year-old general has been under treatment for phlebitis. His physicians said that he had suffered “a setback.”
Huge crowds and traffic jams greeted Leonid I. Brezhnev, general secretary of the Soviet Communist party, when he arrived in Warsaw today to attend celebrations marking the 30th anniversary of the Communist party takeover in Poland. At the airport, Mr. Brezhnev dived into the thousands waiting to welcome him and shook hands with many. Thousands of others lined the route into Warsaw, creating jams in the city center. Mr. Brezhnev will be the chief guest at the celebrations marking the formation of a Communist state in 1944. Visits by other East European Communist chiefs have not been announced.
The Palestinian guerrilla movement rebuffed today a policy declaration by Egypt and Jordan on a role for the Palestinians in a Middle East settlement. A statement by the Palestinian news agency, WAFA, on behalf of the Palestine Liberation’ Organization, the umbrella guerrilla grouping, said the organization was the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people “wherever they may be.” The statement said that Egypt and Jordan were seeking to divide the Palestinian people and deprive them of a right to establish their own state. An Egyptian‐Jordanian communiqué, issued at the end of three days of talks in Alexandria between President Anwar el‐Sadat and King Hussein, recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization as the legitimate representative of the Palestinians except those living in the “Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.”
The sources expressed agitation because the Sadat‐Hussein communiqué supported Jordan’s insistence on the conclusion of a disengagement agreement with Israel on the Jordanian front before the Middle East conference resumed in Geneva later this year. The Palestine Liberation Organization has already expressed concern that a disengagement accord would help King Hussein to re‐establish his rule over any areas evacuated by the Israelis. The organization’s position is that the West Bank, formerly part of Palestine under British mandate before the creation in 1948 of the state of Israel, should revert to the Palestinians so they can establish an independent state there. Arab observers in Beirut believe the negative Palestinian reaction to the Alexandria communiqué is likely to prove embarrassing to Yasser Arafat, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization. He had given his support to President Sadat’s efforts to bring about a reconciliation between Jordan and the Palestinians.
Israelis welcomed today the communiqué of King Hussein and President Sadat as support for their position that a settlement should be negotiated with the Government of Jordan, not with Palestinian guerrillas. However, they reacted negatively to the Hussein‐Sadat statement that the next step in the negotiation process should be a disengagement agreement between Jordan and Israel. Officials in Jerusalem believe negotiations with Jordan should follow the next phase of talks with Egypt. Premier Yitzhak Rabin said this week that Egypt was the key to a Middle East settlement. Israel has rejected a Jordanian proposal that forces on the West Bank of the Jordan be pulled back five miles in a disengagement pact. Officials here regard the Jordan River as the best possible line of disengagement.
More than 700 Communist and Government soldiers have been killed or wounded in the heaviest 24-hour period of fighting in South Vietnam since the cease-fire agreement was signed 18 months ago, the Saigon military command said today. Two Government positions were reported overrun during the period.
The command said that 380 Communists and 106 Government soldiers were killed and 265 Government soldiers wounded in the 24-hour period ending at sunup today. Communist gunners struck an air base and military dependents’ quarters at Da Nang, 370 miles north of Saigon, the country’s second largest air force installation, at dawn today with 35 rounds of 122-mm. rockets, the command said. The rockets killed eight civilians and nine soldiers, wounded 75 others and destroyed a large quantity of gasoline, military spokesmen reported.
South Vietnam’s monetary authorities devalued the piaster today from 630 to 640 to the dollar, the official Vietnam Press Agency said. It was the seventh devaluation this year in an austerity drive to curb imports.
The coalition Laotian Government has responded to the crisis provoked by Premier Souvanna Phouma’s heart attack last week in traditional Laotian fashion— by doing nothing. The principal difficulty now facing the coalition, composed of the Communist-oriented Pathet Lao and Western-leaning rightists and neutralists, is to decide who will stand in for Prince Souvanna until he becomes well enough to preside over Cabinet meetings again. The coalition has two Deputy Premiers, one from the Pathet Lao and one from the Vientiane side, but neither is officially senior. “In Laos,” observed Sot Petrasy, the Pathet Lao Minister of Planning, “it is usually the eldest who presides.” The Pathet Leo Deputy Premier, Phoumi Vongvichit, is 63 years old while the Vientiane deputy, Leuam lnsisiengmay, is 56. The Vientiane side is now apparently willing to agree only to a dual acting premiership, with Mr. Phoumi and Mr. Leuam, both relatively moderate, striving to bring their sides to a consensus.
A prominent South Korean Roman Catholic bishop has been indicted for allegedly attempting to overthrow the government by violent means and will be tried before a secret military court early next week, Catholic sources said today. Under the emergency decrees proclaimed by President Park Chung Hee this year, the bishop, the Most Rev. Daniel Chi, faces a possible death sentence. The 53‐year‐old bishop head of the Wonju diocese east of Seoul and has long been an outspoken critic of Mr. Park’s 13‐year rule. He has also been a strong supporter of the small movement to improve conditions among South Korea’s new industrial class. Bishop Chi is currently being held in Saint Mary’s Hospital in Seoul under 24‐hour guard by agents of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. He suffers from diabetes.
American mobster Sam Giancana was arrested in Mexico after fleeing the U.S. to Cuernavaca to avoid testifying before a grand jury. He was deported from Mexico on July 21 and flown to Chicago, where he continued to live until his murder in 1975.
A military spokesman said in Kampala, Uganda today that Tanzanian troops and guerrillas had massed on the Uganda border, planning to invade early today but later pulled back to positions three miles from the frontier. The Uganda spokesman said the Tanzanian forces appeared at Utukula, scene of border skirmishes in 1971 and 1972. The spokesman said that Uganda forces would fight “to the last man and the last round” against any attack, and warned that President Idi Amin’s troops would not be stopped if war broke out.
Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 14 lands back on earth.
The House Judiciary Committee’s bipartisan senior lawyers urged the committee to recommend a Senate trial of President Nixon on one or more of five central impeachment charges. John Doar, the committee’s special counsel, reportedly told the panel as it began impeachment deliberations that he could not remain “indifferent” to what he called the “terrible deed of subverting the Constitution.”
Mr. Doar presented to the committee a 306-page summary of evidence against President Nixon that, in the view of the committee’s staff, “demonstrates” various abuses of presidential power.
A new transcript of a White House tape recording shows that President Nixon announced his decision to raise milk-price supports in 1971 after listening to arguments by John Connally, who at the time was Secretary of the Treasury. He had told Mr. Nixon that Congress would probably raise milk-price supports if the administration did not, and he warned Mr. Nixon, “If you do (veto the increase) you’ve cost yourself the money, you’ve lost your political advantage.” Mr. Nixon said, according to the transcript, “Under the circumstances, I think the best thing to do is to just, uh, relax and enjoy it.”
In its harshest attack yet on the House Judiciary Committee, the White House accused the committee’s counsel today of conducting a “kangaroo court” and challenged the right of its chief counsel to present articles of impeachment against President Nixon. Ronald L. Ziegler, the White House press secretary, charged that the committee had made “a total shambles out of what should have been a fair proceeding.” Talking to reporters outside the President’s office here, Mr. Ziegler accused the chairman of the committee, Peter W. Rodino Jr. of New Jersey, of “falsely presenting a picture of fairness.” Later, at a news briefing, Mr. Ziegler said that the committee’s chief counsel, John M. Doar, along with “radicals and partisans” on the committee, were seeking to force a “prejudgment” of Presidential guilt on other members of the committee as well as the rest of the House of Representatives by “presenting a biased and partisan case.”
The House Judiciary Committee made public voluminous documentation on “the I.T T. affair,” but no document substantiated conclusively the allegation that the administration had settled the antitrust suit in return for a guarantee of up to $400,000 in convention funds.
Ralph Nader said today that white‐collar crime by businessmen and government officials cost the American people at least $4‐billion over the last 18 months, and he called for tougher penalties for those convicted of fraud and corruption. Citing cases including the involvement of White House officials in the Watergate scandal, the loss of $300‐million by shareholders of Equity Funding Life Insurance Company, and widespread police corruption in New York, Mr. Nader said the United States was now engulfed in “a white‐collar crime wave.” The consumer advocate made his allegations during a hearing by the Senate Subcommittee on Criminal Laws and Procedures on a proposed revision of the federal criminal code.
The Labor Department reported that despite a slower rise in food costs, consumer prices generally rose 1 per cent in June, and the Consumer Price Index was 11.1 percent higher than in June, 1973. There was a seasonally adjusted increase of three-tenths of 1 percent in food prices.
Seven people were killed and 349 others injured in the U.S. by the explosion of a railroad tanker car containing isobutane, following its collision with a boxcar in the Norfolk & Western railroad yard at Decatur, Illinois. “It’s just total devastation,” police Sgt. Bradley D. Collins said. “For three quarters of a mile in any direction windows were blown out and chairs dumped outside.” The blast in a tank car containing liquefied petroleum rocked the downtown district of this city of 91,500 in central Illinois — the rich corn and soybean belt — and jolted homes as far away as 40 miles. Governor Daniel Walker surveyed the scene of devastation while flames were still jumping from freight car to freight car. He called up a unit of the Illinois National Guard to assist the battling firemen and policemen who directed the evacuation.
Some of those evacuated were permitted to return to their homes by noon, seven hours after the 5:03 AM blast. However, an area 16 blocks long and 10 to 15 blocks wide remained off‐limits to nonessential workers. A railroad spokesman said 24 of the injured were railroad employes. The railroad said that there were 26 persons in the dormitory, known as the annex, and that all of them had been accounted for. Seven of them were among the injured. The explosion cut a 500-to-600-yard path through the yard’s switching area, wrecking nearby railroad cars, the dormitory and a control tower. The blast and the inferno that followed, destroyed “several hundred” freight cars, a railroad spokesman said.
Governor Milton J. Shapp signed a no‐fault automobile insurance bill into law today and put his signature on another bill that forces government agencies to make almost all policy decisions at public meetings. The no‐fault law, which takes effect a year from now, is aimed at making it easier for auto accident victims to receive their insurance claims — regardless of who was at fault. It is also intended to reduce the cost of auto insurance. The open‐meeting law, called the “Sunshine Law,” requires that almost all government meetings be open to the public, and provides penalties for officials who attempt to write policy in closed chambers.
Lawrence and Alice Parker, who threw away their diabetic son’s insulin in the belief that he had been cured by a faith healer, were convicted today of involuntary manslaughter and child abuse. A San Bernardino, California, Superior Court jury of 10 women and two men returned the verdict after seven days of deliberations. The charges stemmed from the death of 11‐year‐old Wesley Parker last August 22, three days after his daily shots of insulin to counteract the disease had been stopped by his parents. “I’m just glad I have Jesus Christ to lean on,” Mr. Parker said after the verdict. Sentencing was set for September 3. The maximum sentence for manslaughter is 15 years and for felony child abuse one to 10 years.
The Polaroid Corporation, faced with sudden lag in profitability because of problems with its SX‐70 camera film, announced today that it would introduce a new inexpensive camera in September. The new camera, which will be called ZIP, will take square pictures in black and white only, and will retail for $13.95, the company said. But the company indicated that it still was enthusiastic about its top‐line model, the SX‐70, and was at work unraveling production problems relating to the camera and, more importantly, to the complicated film packs that it uses.
Cleveland’s Dick Bosman no-hits Oakland 4–0. He has no one but himself to blame for not picking up a rare perfect game. His throwing error in the 4th puts the only A’s runner on base. The 2 clubs combine to set an American League record with 2 runners left on base.
The Baltimore Orioles edged the California Angels, 5–4, in ten innings. Don Baylor’s fifth homer of the season won it for Baltimore in the 10th and ended California’s longest winning streak under Dick Williams — three games.
The New York Mets beat the San Diego Padres, 4–2, on the strength of a 5-hitter by Jon Matlack. Ed Kranepool and Jerry Grote had the key hits in the Mets’ 4-run sixth inning.
George Foster’s bases‐loaded single, driving in two runs in the fourth, was the key hit for Cincinnati, whose Jack Billingham and Pedro Bourbon combined their pitching talents in a 4–1 win over the Chicago Cubs. Billingham left in the sixth when the Cubs had two on base with no outs (Bourbon stopped them cold) and got his 10th victory against seven loses.
The Los Angeles Dodgers shut out the Philadelphia Phillies, 4–0. Doug Rau and Mike Marshall combined for a three‐hitter and Bill Buckner singled twice, drove in a run and scored another for Los Angeles.
Gary Matthews singled two runs in both the third and fifth to back Mike Caldwell’s pitching, and the San Francisco Giants downed the Expos, 6–2. Montreal drove Caldwell out in the eighth, but Randy Moffitt held off the Expos the rest of the way for his 14th save.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 787.94 (-1.25, -0.16%).
Born:
Preston Wilson, MLB centerfielder (All-Star, 2003; New York Mets, Florida Marlins, Colorado Rockies, Washington Nationals, Houston Astros, St. Louis Cardinals), in Bamberg, South Carolina.
Dorian Brew, NFL defensive back (Baltimore Ravens, San Diego Chargers), in St. Louis, Missouri.
Ramin Djawadi, Iranian-German Emmy Award-winning film and television composer (“Iron Man”; “Game of Thrones”; “A Wrinkle in Time”), in Duisburg, West Germany
Timur Artemev, Russian mobile phone entrepreneur who founded Euroset; in Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union.
Died:
Joe Flynn, 49, American TV and film actor best known for the comedy McHale’s Navy, of a heart attack while swimming at his home.
Stefano Magaddino, 82, Italian-born American crime boss who controlled the underworld in Buffalo, New York, of natural causes.
History Diaries 