U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk told reporters that he expected that China would explode a nuclear weapon “in the near future”, a prediction that would be borne out on October 16. His statement was based on an official estimate that the explosion could occur at any time, perhaps as soon as Thursday, the 15th anniversary of Communist rule on the Chinese mainland. The Peking Government, officials said, is in an advanced stage of preparation and readiness for an aboveground nuclear test. Secretary Rusk promised that if the explosion occurred “we shall know about it and will make the information public.” At the same time, he pointed out that “the detonation of a first device does not mean a stockpile of nuclear weapons and the presence of modern delivery systems.”
In the opinion of analysts who have long expected a Chinese nuclear explosion at about this time, it will be at least five years and more likely 10 before Peking is able to produce enough plutonium for a sizable stockpile of nuclear bombs and some reasonably advanced vehicles capable of reaching distant targets. The Administration’s latest estimate of China’s nuclear weapons program was reached in recent days on the basis of information obtained from several sources, officials said. Some of that information was received from other Governments. Some is thought to have been gathered by U‐2 reconnaissance planes flown by Chinese Nationalist pilots from Taiwan, and some by satellites and other forms of technological and conventional espionage.
United States officials said they have the impression that the Soviet Union now agrees with Washington’s estimate. Until a few months ago, Soviet experts and diplomats had said in informal discussions that they did not expect a Chinese nuclear test so soon as the Americans expected it. Secretary Rusk’s statement, an unusual anticipation of a foreign event, was said to have been issued to head off surprise, presumably within the United States as well as abroad.
President Johnson gave reassurance tonight to the allies of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization of America’s readiness and willingness to defend Europe with its nuclear‐missile and manned-bomber force. The President got his message across to the Western allies by means of a visit to Strategic Air Command Headquarters here. The Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Manlio Brosio of Italy, accompanied him. At the base, Mr. Johnson demonstrated the SAC communications system, talking over one of the telephones to a United States air base near Madrid. Mr. Johnson identified himself and was answered by an Air Force sergeant 5,000 miles away.
Mr. Brosio, the highest‐ranking civilian official of the treaty organization, received with the President a top‐secret briefing from SAC officers on the means and methods for use and deployment of the nuclear retaliatory force. He learned details of target selections and missile emplacements never before disclosed to a foreign official of comparable rank. Official Government sources said the purpose of the inspection tour was not only to reassure the NATO allies, but also to reinforce those among them who support the United States position against President de Gaulle’s concept of an independent nuclear force.
The official visit was also designed to answer charges by Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, the Republican Presidential candidate, that the Johnson Administration has weakened and downgraded the Atlantic alliance. It was also noted that the trip drew added pertinency from the fact that Senator Goldwater has charged the Johnson Administration with downgrading the manned‐bomber segment of the SAC force. He has said that if the phasingout of manned bombers is continued, the result will eventually be a 90 per cent reduction in the nation’s nuclear capacity. The President and the Secretary General flew from Washington directly to Offutt Air Force Base here, the headquarters of SAC. After the briefing, Mr. Brosio said that what he had seen convinced him that “this contribution to the defense not only of the U.S.; but also of Europe by this central command base of the world is not only absolutely indispensable but decisive.”
An official United States evaluation of last week’s revolt by mountain tribes in South Vietnam’s central highlands raised serious questions today about the effectiveness of the American Special Forces program of winning over the primitive tribesmen. According to reliable sources, policy differences between the United States Army and the Special Forces have arisen, as well as continuing misgivings on the part of the South Vietnamese Government over the American role in mediating the weeklong rebellion.
A communiqué from Premier Nguyễn Khánh’s office showed Saigon’s stern attitude toward the rebels, whom it considers a small part of the tribal population. “After eight days of ineffective peaceful approaches,” the communiqué said, “the Prime Minister ordered the II Corps to encircle the rebels, call on them to surrender and wipe out these units if they refused to submit to the armed forces.”
Premier Khánh blamed “Communists and foreigners” for stirring up the tribesmen. He did not specify which foreigners — he has often used this denunciation to mean Cambodians or Chinese Communists — but, in the suspicious atmosphere of Saigon the newspapers jumped to the conclusion that he was blaming Americans. In a conversation, General Khánh denied that relations with the Americans were had, but he said: “I am young and General [Maxwell D.] Taylor is old.” He added, “I have my own way to go for the good of my people and Vietnam.” Mr. Taylor, formerly the United States Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs, is now Ambassador to Saigon.
Cambodia has charged that South Vietnamese planes fired on a Cambodian boat on the Mekong River, wounding two persons. The North Vietnamese press agency quoted a report from the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh as saying that the Cambodian Foreign Ministry made the charge yesterday.
The Soviet Union has agreed to sell anti‐aircraft weapons to the Greek Cypriot Government under an agreement to be signed tomorrow, diplomatic sources said today. The agreement was negotiated with. Soviet officials by Spyros Kyprianou, the Greek Cypriot Foreign Minister, and Andreas Araouzos, Minister of Commerce and Industry. According to the diplomatic sources, the agreement fulfills the pledge of military aid made by Premier Khrushchev to the Government of Archbishop Makarios, the Greek Cypriot President, after Turkish air raids. It was understood that the Greek Cypriots had received long‐time credits for payment.
The types of anti‐aircraft weapons involved were not disclosed. The sources refused to say whether they included rocket‐type weapons. However, it was understood that the agreement did not provide Soviet technicians or instructors to install the weapons or to train Greek Cypriot crewmen in their use.
President Sukarno of Indonesia arrived in Moscow by air today for an official visit that was announced only yesterday. He was met at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport by Premier Khrushchev and the Soviet President, Anastas I. Mikoyan, and by General Abdul Haris Nasution, the Indonesian Defense Minister, who has been here since Saturday. In a brief welcoming speech, Mr. Mikoyan recalled his own visit to Indonesia in June and then told President Sukarno: “You said then yourself that for three years already you had not met Comrade Khrushchev and other statesmen of our country and would like very much to exchange views with them. Now we will have an opportunity of discussing here all questions and, as usual, we shall find common ground on major problems of world politics.”
West Germany has drawn up a program designed to provide the six-nation European Economic Community with at least a provisional political framework. Reliable sources said the plan envisioned the creation of a political “institution” that the Common Market countries would join as sovereign powers. Formation of the institution would not wait upon the decision of Britain or any other European country outside the six‐nation group. But the door would remain open for subsequent adherence by outside countries. The sources said that a supranational political union, to which member countries would surrender some of their sovereign powers, remained the ultimate aspiration of West Germany. But Bonn has been forced to face “the reality” that a genuine federation of European powers is not now possible, they said.
In India, at least 200 residents of the town of Macherla were drowned by a 10-foot high wall of water that swept through the municipality in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, following the burst of the dam that held back the town’s reservoir. According to reports from the area, the Chandravanka River was swollen by heavy rains; many of the dead had been patients in the local hospital who were drowned when the waters swept their beds away.
Pope Paul VI hosted a group of 72 representatives of non-Catholic Christian denominations at the Sistine Chapel and, after praying with them, told them of his plans for an “interfaith study center”. “This shows you, gentlemen and brothers, that the Catholic Church, while unable to abandon certain doctrinal exigencies to which she has the duty in Christ to remain faithful,” the Pope said, “is nevertheless disposed to study how difficulties can be removed, misunderstandings dissipated, and the authentic treasures of truth and spirituality which you possess can be respected.”
Greece and Bulgaria have agreed to drop all territorial claims against each other permanently, it was announced tonight. A communiqué was issued on the return of the Foreign Minister, Stavros Costopoulos, from a five‐day official visit to Bulgaria. It said that in talks between Mr. Costopoulos and the Bulgarian Premier, Todor Zhivkov, “the ministers agreed that the two countries will utilize exclusively peaceful means for solving any question between them and excluding for all time all territorial claims.” The new cooperation between the neighbor states ”provides a strong basis for preserving peace in the Balkans and the world,” it said.
The popular comic strip Mafalda, created in Buenos Aires by Joaquín Salvador Lavado (who went by the pen name Quino), made its first appearance, as a feature of the weekly magazine Primera Plana. The strip itself would run for only nine years, but would continue to be reprinted worldwide half a century later.
The President’s committee on the Warren report held its first meeting today to organize its further study of measures for Presidential safety. President Johnson appointed the committee Sunday night immediately after the publication of the report of the Presidential commission that investigated President Kennedy’s assassination. He asked for the committee’s advice “on the execution of the recommendations” by Chief Justice Earl Warren and his commission. Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon acted as chairman of the four‐man committee today and will continue to do so, although there was no formal designation. The committee will operate on a fairly informal basis, with no independent staff. Other members present today were the acting Attorney General, Nicholas deB. Katzenbach, and McGeorge Bundy, Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. The fourth member, John A. McCone, Director of Central Intelligence, was out of the country.
The meeting lasted an hour and three‐quarters. In a statement afterward, the committee had little to say except that it would not make any further statements. It will work in private and say nothing until it makes recommendations to President Johnson. In all likelihood, the recommendations will be presented in a written report. The President is expected to meet with the committee shortly and give it a more precise idea of its function. In general, it is to scrutinize the many recommendations of the Warren commission for improving the protection of the President.
Some of the most difficult questions were deliberately left unanswered by the Warren commission, which thought the Executive branch and Congress should deal with them. For example, the commission merely raised the large issue of whether the Secret Service should continue in its present role as protector of the President. That will be a major concern of the Presidential committee, which will also consider various pieces of suggested legislation.
At the Capitol today, an effort to get one bill moving foundered. That was the longpending measure to make the assassination of the President or Vice President a Federal crime. The Warren commission endorsed it. The bill was supposed to have been discussed in the Senate Judiciary Committee, but a quorum of Senators failed to appear for the scheduled meeting. It thus became even more likely that all such matters would go over until January.
Senator Barry Goldwater charged in Cincinnati tonight that the Johnson Administration “is soft on Communism.” The Republican Presidential candidate also said the Democratic party was the party of “the corrupt, the power‐mad and the radicals of the left.” But he deleted from his speech a charge that all President Johnson knew how to do was to “acquire fortune and power” and a charge that Mr. Johnson had used a television monopoly in Austin, Texas, “so that he may build a private fortune.” It was the first time Mr. Goldwater had accused the Administration of being “soft on Communism.” His speech, delivered at a rally at the Cincinnati Gardens, was regarded in other ways, too, as the hardest‐hitting of his campaign.
The Senator this evening wound up his first day of whistle‐stop electioneering on a 14‐car special campaign train. He spoke, usually from the rear platform of the train, at Marietta, Athens, Chillicothe and Blanchester, Ohio, before reaching Cincinnati. In the next four days the train will wind through Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, making 30 more stops. Mr. Goldwater’s press secretary, Paul F. Wagner, said he had no explanation for the deletion of the charges about Mr. Johnson’s methods of acquiring a fortune. The passages were on a prompter roll that was prepared late this afternoon.
Skies were gray and occasionally a light rain fell as Mr. Goldwater traveled down the Ohio Valley. Some police officers estimated his crowds at each stop at about 3,000, but there were other estimates of up to 6,000 at Marietta. At Athens, Mr. Goldwater was greeted with the worst booing and heckling of his campaign so far — most of it from students of Ohio University in that city. A full house of 16,500 persons turned out in Cincinnati to hear Mr. Goldwater and gave him one of the most rousing, deafening receptions of the campaign. They gave particularly prolonged applause to the “soft on Communism” charge.
Acting with unusual speed, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved today a $3.3 billion foreign aid money bill. The committee acted unexpectedly at a closed session without wating for final Congressional action on the foreign aid authorization measure, which sets the ceilings for which the appropriations bill provides the actual money. The bill, as it emerged from the committee, is $16.6 million below a $3.31 billion total passed by the House. But committee attachés said both Senate and House measures reappropriate unobligated balances left over from previous appropriations totaling $133.8 million to give administrators $3,463,800,000 to spend this fiscal year, which began last July 1. It will be brought up in the Senate for action immediately after both, houses pass the authorization bill.
An “all‐out” endorsement of President Johnson was pledged in Savannah, Georgia today by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the opening of the eighth annual convention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. It was the first official endorsement of President Johnson by Dr. King. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, of which he is the president, is the dominant civil rights organization in the South. Maintaining that the Republican Presidential nominee, Senator Barry Goldwater, must be defeated, Dr. King said he would put the machinery of his organization behind President Johnson. Dr. King pledged “an all‐out effort to get all of our affiliates to move in their communities to turn out a larger Negro vote than ever before.”
A walkout of longshoremen from Maine to Texas is scheduled to begin at 11:59 tomorrow night. If the men go out, ships in Atlantic and Gulf Coast ports could be immobilized within two weeks. Thomas W. Gleason, president of the Internationat Longshoremen’s Association, said at 1:10 this morning that a management package proposal had been rejected despite an offer to withdraw a previous demand for a reduction of work crews. At 2 o’clock this morning both sides were brought together by a mediator and agreed to meet again at 10 A.M. A union spokesman said, however, that to avert a walkout, management — the New York Shipping Association — would have to come up with “something new” and that this was unlikely.
The Fort Worth Press, a newspaper in Fort Worth, Texas, revealed that a young man named Donald Wayne House had been jailed on November 22, 1963, on suspicion of the assassination of President Kennedy. House, a 22-year old truck driver, had gone to Dallas earlier in the day and watched the presidential motorcade, and had stopped at the town of Grand Prairie to get gasoline. A woman at the station asked House “whether he had heard what the killer looked like” and, after he repeated “the description he had heard on the radio without realizing at the time it also fitted him”, the woman called the police. She called the police, and House’s car was pulled over when he arrived at Fort Worth, where he was told “You are being arrested for the assassination of President Kennedy.” House was not booked, nor was his mug shot picture taken, but he was interrogated for three hours and then put in a jail cell. Hours later, after 24-year old Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested, House was released.
The LTV XC-142 VTOL experimental aircraft made its first flight. The Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV) XC-142 is a tiltwing experimental aircraft designed to investigate the operational suitability of vertical/short takeoff and landing (V/STOL) transports. An XC-142A first flew conventionally on 29 September 1964, and completed its first transitional flight on 11 January 1965 by taking off vertically, changing to forward flight, and finally landing vertically. Its service sponsors pulled out of the program one by one, and it eventually ended due to a lack of interest after demonstrating its capabilities successfully.
An X‐15 shot up to 98,000 feet today, testing a new electronic brain installed to control the rocket plane in flights into space with a star‐tracking telescope. Major Robert Rushworth of the Air Force hit a speed of 3,571 miles an hour on the checkout. The stellar camera, expected to get especially clear pictures of stars above the earth’s atmosphere, was not aboard today, but is expected to be installed before the plane’s next flight.
Pete Ward’s 22nd home run and Bruce Howard’s pitching led the Chicago White Sox to a 2–1 victory over the Los Angeles Angels tonight, and kept their American League pennant hopes alive. The victory put the White Sox in second place, 2½ games behind the New York Yankees and half a game ahead of the Baltimore Orioles, both of whom were rained out. Ward broke up a scoreless game when he opened the sixth inning with his homer into the right‐field lower deck. It came on a 3–1 pitch by Dean Chance, one of the two 20‐game winners in the league. An error by Jim Fregosi, the shortstop, on Bill Skowron’s grounder, followed, putting the eventual winning run on base. Mike Hershberger ran for Skowron and scored on Ron Hansen’s single.
Rocky Colavito’s 34th homer, a 415‐foot shot over the left‐field fence in the 15th inning, gave the Kansas City Athletics a 7–6 victory over the Minnesota Twins today. Bert Campaneris’s two‐run double with two out in the Athletics’ ninth had tied the score, 6–6. Larry Stahl, a rookie, hit two two‐run homers, his first in the majors, for Kansas City. John Wyatt of the A’s made his 78th relief pitching appearance in the fourth, tying Boston’s Dick Radatz for the single‐season record.
At a press conference, the New York Mets announce Casey Stengel, the only skipper the franchise has ever known, will continue to manage next season. Although the expansion team has finished last in all three years of its existence, the ‘Old Perfessor’ is given a raise.
In Milwaukee, the Mets lost their sixth straight to the Braves tonight, 7–6. The Mets, who now have dropped 10 of their last 11 games, still are looking for their 52nd victory of the season that would set a club record for winnings They have only five games left in which to achieve that goal, two more here against the Braves and three in St. Louis this weekend. Tom Parsons, rookie righthander, proved no puzzle to the Braves. He was tagged for four runs in the first two innings and three more in the fifth to absorb his second defeat.
The St. Louis Cardinals’ 4–2 win over the Philadelphia Phillies moves them into a first-place tie with the Reds, who lose to the Pirates. Ray Sadecki posts his 20th win for the Cards. It was the seventh straight victory for the Cardinals, who were 10 games behind one month ago, and the ninth straight defeat for the Phillies, who had held first place from July 16 until last Sunday.
The Pittsburgh Pirates dropped Cincinnati into a tie for the National League lead tonight and ended the Reds’ winning streak at nine games with a 2–0 victory built on Bob Friend’s pitching and a key ninth‐inning single by Bill Mazeroski. The Reds’ loss enabled the St. Louis Cardinals to move into a tie for first with their seventh straight victory. Friend was locked in a scoreless duel with the Reds’ rookie, Billy McCool, who was making only his third major league start. Bob Bailey started the rally in the ninth with a single — only the fourth hit off McCool. Bill Virdon struck out, but Roberto Clemente drove a double off the center‐field wall as Bailey raced around to third. McCool then walked Gene Freese intentionally and seemed to be working out of the jam when Donn Clendenon fouled out, but Mazeroski slammed a single to center, scoring Bailey and Clemente.
Masanori Murakami becomes the first player born in Japan to win a major league game. At Candlestick Park, the 20 year-old southpaw one-hits the Houston Colt .45’s over three innings in relief, and the Otsuki native gets the victory when Matty Alou, who hasn’t homered in two years, goes deep to give the San Francisco Giants a dramatic walk-off 5-4 win in the bottom of the 11th inning.
Walt Alston was rehired today as manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers for the 12th consecutive season, and absolved of blame for the “terrible” season in which the world champions slumped from first place to the second division.
Jim Stewart’s double, driving home Joe Amalfitano in the eighth inning, gave the Chicago Cubs a 4–3 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers tonight.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 875.74 (+0.28).
Born:
Brad Lohaus, NBA power forward (Boston Celtics, Sacramento Kings, Minnesota Timberwolves, Milwaukee Bucks, Miami Heat, San Antonio Spurs, New York Knicks, Toronto Raptors), in New Ulm, Minnesota.
John Tucker, Canadian NHL centre (Buffalo Sabres, Washington Capitals, New York Islanders, Tampa Bay Lightning), in Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
Tommy Sims, NFL defensive back (Indianapolis Colts), in Americus, Georgia.
Died:
Fred Tootell, American athlete and Olympic gold medalist (1924) for the hammer throw.
History Diaries 