SSG Mitchell was a highly decorated veteran of the Korean War, having served as a rifleman while fighting in two major winter campaigns in that conflict. SSG Mitchell was a 34 year old married father of one son and one daughter when he died. Ralph is buried at New Zion Baptist Church Cemetery in Blanch, North Carolina. He is remembered on the Wall at Panel 1E, line 68.
Aleksey Nikolayevich Kosygin, the new Premier of the Soviet Union, received the United States Ambassador, Foy D. Kohler, in Moscow today and reiterated assurances that “peaceful coexistence” remained the basis of Moscow’s foreign policy toward the West. Mr. Kohler was the first Western envoy to be received by Premier Kosygin. United States Embassy sources said that Mr. Kosygin’s remarks had not gone beyond similar assurances voiced publicly by the Soviet leaders and privately to President Johnson by Ambassador Anatoly F. Dobrynin.
The Soviet leaders have been putting great emphasis on the theme of continuity in foreign policy. The same theme was stressed today in an article in Novoye Vremya (New Times), a foreign affairs weekly, which wrote that the “personal changes” in the Soviet leadership had been misrepresented in the Western press as a forerunner to a new orientation in Soviet foreign policy. This interpretation, the journal said, has been refuted by the public statements of Premier Kosygin and Leonid I. Brezhnev, the new Communist party chief, as well as by editorials in Pravda, the Communist party organ.
It added that Western observers were wrong in their interpretations of Soviet affairs because they did not understand the principle of “collective leadership” as the basis of the removal of Nikita S. Khrushchev last week. Mr. Khrushchev has been seen strolling in Moscow and riding in the limousine he used while Kremlin leader, United Press International reported.
The Soviet Communist party “paid dearly” for the departure from the principle of “collective leadership” during Stalin’s rule, the journal said. It added that the party was “determined not to tolerate a repetition.” Like all previous press comment on the ouster of Mr. Khrushchev, the article did not mention the deposed leader by name.
The 20 military officers and civilians on trial in Saigon, charged with an attempted coup 13-14 September, are acquitted. This is clearly an attempt by Nguyễn Khánh to placate dissidents in the armed forces. Khánh also appoints to high posts the five generals arrested when he seized power in January. General Khánh apparently was trying to forge a solidly united military establishment to insure that the military voice in the new government was not dissipated through internal feuds.
At the same time reliable sources reported that several key commanders, the so‐called “young Turks” who stood by the government in helping crush the attempted September coup, were being proposed for promotion to brigadier general, a two‐star post in Vietnam. Major General Dương Văn Đức and Brigadier General Lâm Văn Phát, two leaders in the abortive coup, were among the defendants acquitted today. Their lawyers had argued that the charges of having attempted to topple the Government were not valid since no high Government officials had been harassed and no military installations had been occupied. Thirteen military officers and seven civilians were tried. The civilians included Trần Quốc Bửu , leader of a major labor organization, the Vietnamese Workers Confederation.
The South Vietnamese Government announced today that it would file a formal protest with Cambodia over the capture of an American and three Vietnamese by uniformed troops alleged to have entered the country from Cambodia. South Vietnam will demand the return of the prisoners, who were last seen yesterday being taken toward Cambodia in sampans. The incident occurred Thursday morning while Special Forces men were in action against Communist installations close to the Cambodian border. Saigon said a military post in Cambodia opened fire on Vietnamese troops during the operation.
A United States Army enlisted man died today of wounds suffered from a land mine that exploded under his jeep in Quangduc Province October 16. The soldier’s name was temporarily withheld pending notification of his relatives; he would soon be revealed to be Staff Sergeant Ralph Mitchell, from North Carolina. His was the 204th battle‐connected death for United States forces in South Vietnam’s war against Communist guerrillas.
The U.S. Administration indicated today that it had no interest in any new round of international negotiations with Communist China. Peking’s suggestion for a world summit conference to prohibit nuclear weapons, put forward last week after the Chinese Communists detonated their first atomic device, was described by State Department officials as a “sucker” proposal. They said it was neither serious nor constructive. In gentler language, officials also rejected a proposal by U Thant, the United Nations Secretary General, that the five nations possessing nuclear arms meet next year. Mr. Thant asked that they discuss the prohibition of nuclear tests, measures to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, and other disarmament questions. Many channels are already open for Peking to demonstrate interest in serious talks, the State Department said. It cited the presence of British, French and Soviet diplomats in Communist China and the periodic meetings between the Chinese and United States Ambassadors in Warsaw. Officials reiterated their view that China would have to participate in negotiations and agreements “at some stage” if there was ever to be progress toward disarmament. But they emphasized that they saw no early likelihood of changes in Peking’s policies that would persuade Washington to support Chinese membership either in the Geneva disarmament conference or in the United Nations.
President Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan repeated tonight India’s longstanding view that Communist China should be admitted to the United Nations. In a broadcast to the nation on the eve of United Nations Day, the Indian leader condemned the Chinese Communist explosion of an atom bomb October 16. He said it was “most unfortunate” at a time when nations should work for complete nuclear disarmament. But he added that if China was brought into the United Nations, proposals for the banning of nuclear weapons “might have some effect on her.”
The United Kingdom’s Labor Government was reported today to be preparing new proposals for an allied nuclear force, to embrace the concept of both mixed‐manned and nationally manned ships and planes. The British contribution would include the Polaris‐armed nuclear‐powered submarines now being built. The Polaris missiles are to be sold to Britain by the United States under the 1962 Nassau agreement between President Kennedy and Harold Macmillan, who was then Prime Minister. London’s proposals were said to provide for a much smaller fleet of Polaris‐armed surface ships than is now being discussed by the United States and seven of its allies — Britain, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece and Turkey. A fleet of 25 ships has been proposed by the United States. British thinking, it was reliably reported, is that there need be no more than 10 or 15 surface ships in the international fleet if other elements are included in a broadened allied nuclear command.
President Johnson, noting the 19th birthday of the United Nation tomorrow, pledged in a television statement made in the White. House studio today that the United States “will never withdraw from the U. N. and we will never do anything to weaken it.” He said the United States would try to be the first among those who work to make the United Nations grow in strength and in service to peace.
The Roman Catholic hierarchy was reminded today that Pope Paul VI had reserved to himself judgment on the issue of the church’s position on birth control. Therefore, it was indicated to the more than 2,200 prelates at Ecumenical Council Vatican II, the Council cannot go into too much detail on that point in its current discussions of a schema, or draft, on “The Church in the Modern World.”
Three Hungarians, one a member of his country’s Olympic canoeing team, have defected to the United States. They left tonight by air for their new homeland. The canoeist was identified by the Japanese police as 24‐year‐old Andras Toro. He had placed fourth in the men’s canoeing singles event. The two other Hungarian defectors were identified as Denes Kovas, 42, an electrical engineer, and Karoly Molnar, 35, electrical technician, both tourists here for the Games.
Just after the three left, the Japanese police reported that a Chinese Nationalist Olympic pistol marksman, Ma Chingsan, 38, sought to defect to the East to join his parents in mainland China. The police took him into custody, as Tokyo does not have diplomatic relations with Peking, but it was expected he would be allowed to go to the mainland.
Four East Berliners escaped to the West today through a hole in the Berlin Wall, the West Berlin police reported. The men, aged 21 to 26, broke open the wall of the Bergman-Borsix locomotive factory. The factory formed part of the barrier between East Berlin and the French sector. The police said that the four, all workers in the factory, escaped Wednesday after three weeks of preparation. They dug a hole about 18 inches square in the factory wall directly under their workbench, then replaced the bricks to conceal the escape route.
The body of Herbert Clark Hoover, the 31st President of the United States, lay in state today where the young 35th President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was mourned less than a year ago. The coffin of the man who had lived longer than any President except John Adams — 90 years and 71 days — was met at Union Station by a somber President Johnson and his wife, dressed in black. It was then carried to the Rotunda of the Capitol for two days of homage. This day was full of intimations of the recent past — the same caisson and the same catafalque that bore the body of President Kennedy on a cold, sunny Sunday in November, the military marching stiffly in slow step, the thump of cannon.
The Rev. Dr. Frederick Brown Harris, Senate chaplain, was the only man to speak under the Capitol dome within a circle of distinguished citizens of this and other nations. The sentence in his eulogy that captured the essence of the contrast and the continuity was: “Tenderly this day of the nation’s grief we bear the worn, bodily tenement of the oldest Chief Executive to this highest pedestal of honor where so recently lay the martyred form of the youngest.” John Adams, the second President, died in 1826 at the age of 90 years and 247 days. President Kennedy was slain at the age of 46. Dr. Harris closed his prayers with “Father in the blessings keep me, leave we now thy servant sleeping — amen.” Then he gave the ancient benediction: “The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and I give you peace.”
President Johnson then stepped forward to place a wreath of red and white carnations at the coffin’s foot. He bowed, his head a moment and then returned to his wife’s side. In the hushed ring of officials were former Vice President and Mrs. Richard M. Nixon, who had traveled down from New York by train with the funeral entourage; Secretary of State Dean Rusk and other Cabinet officers, and Chief Justice Earl Warren, gravely standing with the Associate Justices.
Nine white men arrested in the bombings of three Negro homes in McComb, Mississippi, were freed on probation today after they pleaded guilty or no contest to charges that could have brought the death penalty. Circuit Judge W. H. Watkins gave the defendants suspended sentences up to 15 years. He said they were “unduly provoked” by civil rights workers in the area and deserved a second chance.
However, Judge Watkins fined six of the men $500 each and warned them they would not be allowed to possess firearms, live ammunition or dynamite during the probation period. Judge Watkins also told the defendants that he would revoke clemency if racial violence broke out anew in McComb, whether or not the defendants were responsible for it. The felony convictions were believed to be the first in recent years against whites involved in the continuing violence against Blacks in Mississippi.
The fines and suspended sentences were handed down in the Pike County courthouse in Magnolia, a small town near McComb, after an agreement was worked out between defense and prosecuting attorneys. The defendants were arrested by state and Federal authorities last month on information gathered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They were charged with unlawful use of explosives under a state law that calls for punishment ranging from a brief prison term to death. Sixteen Negro buildings have been bombed and several churches burned in the McComb area since last April.
Meanwhile, in another development, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit announced it would conduct a hearing in Jacksonville, Florida, Monday regarding contempt proceedings brought against Justice Department officials by Federal Judge Harold Cox of Jackson. It was disclosed that Judge Cox’s action yesterday stemmed from the department’s refusal to prepare perjury indictments against Negro witnesses in civil rights cases at the request of a runaway grand jury.
Only one officer in the Secret Service’s White House security force was aware of the 1959 arrest of Walter W. Jenkins, and he “did not evaluate” it as “involving a serious matter,” Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon said today. The officer had access in 1961 to a report on the incident, made to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. At that time, he was head of the protective research section of the Secret Service in the White House. Mr. Dillon did not name him. Treasury Department sources said the records showed that Robert I. Bouck was special agent in charge of the protective research section when the incident occurred in 1961. He was routinely transferred to the research and development unit last April, the sources said. He is now the head of that unit. Mr. Dillon’s summary confirmed what had already been known—that the Secret Service had not been alerted to the fact that the arrest involved a morals offense.
Senator Barry Goldwater charged today that “150 persons in the State Department alone have been given emergency clearance to deal with secret matters without waiting for a full field investigation.” He also charged that the White House had shown a “careless disregard of security procedures” in the Walter W. Jenkins case. In Washington, the State Department said that the emergency clearances had been given in 1961 when the Democrats took over the Administration. They were followed, the department said. by complete investigations and the 150 “received a full security clearance.”
The summary of the FBI report on Mr. Jenkins was released last evening shortly after reporters with Senator Goldwater had been handed excerpts of a speech he was to make today during a whistle‐stop trip from Los Angeles to San Diego. In the summary, the bureau’s director, J. Edgar Hoover, said the investigation had found no evidence that Mr. Jenkins had ever “compromised the security or the interests of the United States in any manner.” Mr. Goldwater said today that while the report cleared Mr. Jenkins of any actions endangering national security, “it I did not, of course, clear up the matter of careless disregard of security procedures.” In the advance text of his speech, Mr. Goldwater had asked that reports by the bureau on both Mr. Jenkins and Robert G. Baker, former secretary to the Senate Democratic majority, be released “prior to election day.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s report on Walter W. Jenkins was derided today by Representative William E. Miller, the Republican VicePresidential nominee. He called it “ridiculous.” In a breakfast speech at Cherry Hill, New Jersey, he said: “All we know is that anyone so inclined is very susceptible to blackmail and any Communist agent could have discovered the facts in the police station in Washington.”
International events have overshadowed the Walter W. Jenkins scandal to increase by 2 percent President Johnson’s lead over Senator Barry Goldwater, Louis Harris, the polltaker, said today. The latest Harris poll showed the President ahead of his Republican opponent, 60 percent to 34 percent, with 6 percent undecided. In his copyrighted report in The Washington Post, Mr. Harris said: “It is not so much that the American people are unmoved by the Jenkins episode. Rather, the question of which candidate shall be in charge of foreign policy during the next four years clearly has superseded every other issue in this campaign.”
A private Republican poll shows that Senator Barry Goldwater leads President Johnson in electoral votes, 261 to 258, Dean Burch, the Republican National Chairman, said last night. A total of 270 electoral votes is needed to elect a President. In an address to a $100‐a‐plate fund‐raising dinner, Mr. Burch said the poll showed Mr. Goldwater ahead in 29 states and Mr. Johnson leading in 18. Three other states with a total of 19 electoral votes are tossups, but they “should be Republican,” Mr. Burch said. In Washington today the Democratic National Chairman, John M. Bailey, scoffed. “Mr. Burch had better check the dates on his reports,” he said. “I think they must be left over from 1956.”
President Johnson said today that he had studied the report of the Council on Pennsylvania Avenue and believed that it should be accepted “as a worthy and challenging goal for our nation’s most important street, our nation’s ceremonial drive.” The plan of the council called for an ambitious refurbishing of the avenue, the main route between the Capitol and the White House.
A special Federal grand jury suspended its investigation of racketeering yesterday to concentrate on the kidnapping of Joseph Bonanno. The 59‐year‐old Brooklyn Mafia leader, known as Joe Bananas, was abducted in front of a Park Avenue apartment building shortly after midnight Wednesday, only hours before he was to appear before the panel. Yesterday, the eldest of his three children, Salvatore Bonanno, was reported by the police as missing from his Long Island home. However, they discounted the possibility of violence.
The first land was purchased for the site of the future Walt Disney World in rural Orange County, Florida, near Interstate 4 highway (I-4), using a holding company called the “Ayefour Corporation” in order to prevent speculators from finding out that Walt Disney was buying up property. The first sale was for five acres of land. Over the next 12 months, Disney would acquire 21,000 acres in Orange County and about 9,000 adjacent acres in Osceola County.
Inventor Sidney A. Heenan of Park Ridge, Illinois, applied for the patent for the reflective raised pavement marker that marks traffic lanes in much of the world, describing his invention as “a marking visible from an oncoming vehicle on a generally horizontal roadway surface” by means of a “reverse light receiving and reflecting face provided with a plurality of retrodirective reflector elements of the cube corner type for receiving light emanating from the oncoming vehicle and incident upon the obverse face in a generally horizontal direction of incidence and reflecting such light to return the incident light generally parallel to the direction of incidence.” U.S. Patent Number 3,332,327 would be granted on July 25, 1967.
Eight weeks after J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers had released its hit ballad, “Last Kiss”, about a boy whose date was killed in a car accident, several of the band members were injured and their manager was killed when their car collided head-on with a tractor-trailer near Kenton, Ohio. Sonley Roush was driving Wilson and his band to Lima, Ohio, for an appearance.
World Championship Wrestling, the first large scale professional wrestling circuit in Australia, made its arena debut at the Sydney Stadium. The Australian WCW was organized by American promoter Jim Barnett and Australian Johnny Doyle, who had shown bouts from the Melbourne studios of the Nine Network for the previous month. The highlight was a “world championship bout” between Killer Kowalski and Dominic DeNucci.
Dutch 10th dan judoka Anton Geesink wins Open gold medal in the first ever Olympic judo competition in Tokyo; prevents clean sweep of the gold medals by Japan.
Hungary beats Czechoslovakia 2-1 to win the men’s football gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics.
Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia finish 8-1 in inaugural Olympic men’s volleyball competition in Tokyo; Soviets win 10 team round robin on count back of sets won-lost.
Japan beats the Soviet Union 3-0 to claim the inaugural Olympic women’s volleyball gold medal in Tokyo; undefeated in 6-team round robin competition.
Japanese gymnast Yukio Endo wins the parallel bars gold medal in the Tokyo Olympics; his 3rd gold medal of the Games (individual all-round and team); 4th career gold (1960, 1964).
Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina wins the floor exercise gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics; her 2nd gold of the Games (team) and career 9th (1956, 1960, 1964), a gymnastics record.
Czech gymnast Věra Čáslavská wins the balance beam at the Tokyo Olympics; her 3rd gold medal of the Games with individual all-round and vault victories.
Future undisputed world heavyweight boxing champion Joe Frazier dominates German Hans Huber for an easy points win and the Olympic heavyweight gold medal in Tokyo.
The United States beat the Soviet Union, 73–59, in the Olympic basketball final and maintained its record of never having lost in the Olympics.
AFL Football:
Kansas City Chiefs 7, Boston Patriots 24
A Boston flanker, Jimmy Colclough, a stand‐in for the injured Art Graham, caught two touchdown passes from Babe Parilli and set up another score tonight as the Patriots scored a 24–7 American Football League victory over the Kansas City Chiefs. Colclough caught a 37‐yard touchdown pass in the first quarter and captured a carom off Duane Woods’s hands in the third for an 11‐yard score. His 46‐yard catch and sprint carried the ball, to the Chiefs’ 7 and made possible Ron Burton’s 1‐yard touchdown plunge in the final period. The Patriots’ defensive unit, stung by the 43 points they surrendered last week and by the tongue lashings of Coact Mike Holovak, swarmed over the visitors, forcing fumbles that either led to scores or prevented them. Ron Hall pounced on a fumble by Curtis McClinton in the early minutes and gave Parilli and Colclough an opportunity to put 7 points on the board. Colclough faked Wood beautifully at the 10 and made an over-the-shoulder catch.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 877.62 (+0.61)
Born:
Robert Trujillo, American musician and songwriter (Metallica), in Santa Monica, California.
Camilla Henemark, Swedish singer, actress, model and political spokesperson, in Stockholm, Sweden.
Brent Williams, NFL defensive end (New England Patriots, Seattle Seahawks, New York Jets), in Flint, Michigan.
Galand Thaxton, NFL linebacker (Atlanta Falcons, San Diego Chargers), in Mildenhall Air Force Base, United Kingdom.
Everett Gay, NFL wide receiver (Dallas Cowboys), in Houston, Texas.
Bobby Curtis, NFL linebacker (Washington Redskins), in Macon, Georgia.
Died:
David Box, 21, American musician who took over as lead singer for The Crickets after Buddy Holly was killed in a 1959 plane crash, was killed in a plane crash along with three other people.
Arthur Creech Jones, 73, British politician who served as Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1946 to 1950.
Frank Luther Mott, 78, American historian and journalist.
History Diaries 