South Vietnamese Premier Trần Văn Hương tried today to strengthen the Saigon Government by bringing four military leaders into his Cabinet and dismissing two ministers who had drawn the fire of the opposition Buddhist faction. The United States mission immediately welcomed the military appointments as “a positive and helpful step toward stable government.” A spokesman said that it would provide military support for the Government through the participation of the generals and that this would entail a “measure of responsibility.” United States officials complained that after the December 20 coup the military had sought power without responsibility. The Cabinet reshuffle put the final seal on the compromise worked out between the Hương Government, the generals and United States officials after the military seizure of power December 20. The generals relinquished control January 10 after the United States insisted that it could not deal with a government that lacked full authority to carry out commitments.
In a coordinated move, Brigadier General Nguyễn Chánh Thi, commander of the I Corps Area in central Vietnam, told militant student groups that he would no longer tolerate anti-government demonstrations and general strikes. Except for reports of a general strike in the city of Quảng Ngãi, central Vietnam was generally quiet after days of agitation stirred by Buddhists and agents of the Communist Việt Cộng guerrillas. Trần Văn Minh, the Chief of Staff, had been appointed Minister of the Armed Forces, a Cabinet portfolio previously held by the Premier. The new minister is known as Little Minh to distinguish him from General Dương Văn Minh (“Big Minh”), the ousted chief of state.
One of the young generals who led the December 20 coup d’état was made Second Deputy Premier. He is Major General Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, commander of the IV Corps Area, which, embraces the Mekong Delta, provinces, He replaced Nguyễn Xuân Oánh, the Harvard-educated economist sometimes known as Jack Owen, who was dropped to Third Deputy Premier. Brigadier General Linh Quang Viên, the director of military security, was given the post of Minister of Psychological Warfare replacing Lê Văn Tuấn, who had held the title of Minister of Information. Brigadier General Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, commander of the air force, was named as Minister of Youth and Sports. The appointment of General Kỳ, who has been looked upon as the powerful leader of the young generals, to a nominally lesser post came as something of surprise.
The Armed Forces Council, made up of the top military leaders, had approved the Cabinet appointments. However, there were reports that General Kỳ was dissatisfied with his appointment. The nature of the adjusted power relationship among the generals, who have engineered a series of coups since the overthrow of late President Ngô Đình Diệm in November, 1963, was still unclear. Much will depend upon how much control the new military Cabinet ministers retain over troops. Informed sources said General Kỳ would remain concurrently as head of the air force, But there was less certainty about whether the other ministers would be able to wield dual power in the government and the army.
Trần Niệm, a 28-year-old potato farmer, was recently drafted into the South Vietnamese army, and he does not like it. “There has not been enough food for the past three weeks,” the new private said. Although the winds were raw on the rifle range, he was firing in his bare feet. He had never worn shoes before his induction and the boots the army issued to him had left bleeding blisters on his heels and toes. Thirty percent of the draftees inducted with Private Niem six weeks ago like the army even less than he. They have already deserted. That percentage is standard for the Đống Đa National Training Center at Phú Bài, near Huế in central Vietnam. Some recruits leave to attend to family problems, then return to camp. There is no organized attempt to pursue and punish the men who do not come back.
The Johnson Administration contended today that United States military actions in Laos, such as the air strike last Wednesday against a key bridge, were justified by Communist violations of the 1962 Geneva accords establishing Laotian independence and neutrality. It also made clear that it intended to continue using United States military force, if necessary, to maintain Laos against Communist incursions. The Administration’s position was made known in two forms — a Presidential defense message to Congress and a statement issued by the State Department.
In his defense message, the President reaffirmed that “our program remains unchanged” in Southeast Asia. He said the United States would continue to give military and economic assistance to nations such as Laos and South Vietnam, which are “struggling against covert aggression in the form of externally directed, undeclared guerrilla warfare.” In Laos, he went on, the United States has demonstrated since 1950 its commitment to freedom, independence and neutrality by “strengthening the economic and military security of that nation.” “We shall continue to support the legitimate Government of that country,” he declared. The President stressed that “the problem of Laos is the refusal of the Communist forces to honor the Geneva accords in which they entered in 1962.” Fourteen nations joined in the Geneva pact, including Communist China, North Vietnam and the United States. The State Department also said that the American military actions in Laos were “entirely justified” by the repeated Communist violations of the 1962 accords.
Whether the United States still felt bound by the 1962 agreements was questioned after it was disclosed that Americans had conducted bombing missions against key points in the supply routes used by the Communists from North Vietnam into Laos. Reconnaissance missions were acknowledged earlier. Senator Wayne Morse, Democrat of Oregon, charged last weekend that such attack and reconnaissance missions represented a United States violation of a provision of the 1962 pact. This prohibits the introduction of foreign military troops in Laos. When the question was raised last Friday, it was met by silence at the State Department. Today, however, the department was prepared with a statement providing a justification for the air missions. At the same time it still refused to confirm that the United States) had been conducting bombing missions against Communist targets in Laos.
Indonesia expects to tighten her newly formed ties with Communist China late this week when Dr. Subandrio, the First Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister, makes another visit to Peking. Dr. Subandrio said the principal reason for the visit was “to take up where Chen Yi left off.” Marshal Chen Yi, the Chinese Foreign Minister, spent a week in Jakarta in November. He met on several occasions with President Sukarno and Dr. Subandrio. It was understood that the Asian-African conference in Algiers scheduled for this spring was their main topic.
Authoritative sources said they expected Dr. Subandrio, to resume discussion of plans for a meeting of Asian and African heads of state. He is also planning talks on the same subject in Burma after his visit to Peking. These sources said they also expected Dr. Subandrio to confer with the Chinese Communists on the British military build-up along the Malaysian border.
Dr. Hurustiati Subandrio, Indonesian Deputy Minister of Health, said today that her country was not withdrawing from the World Health Organization or other United Nations specialized agencies of benefit to it.
Alex Quaison-Sackey. President of the General Assembly, urged its 115 members today to make voluntary donations to the hard-pressed United Nations treasury and to avoid the long-threatened confrontation over unpaid assessments. Mr. Quaison-Sackey told the Assembly, which reconvened after a two-and-a-half-week recess, that “as soon as possible” the Assembly should return to “normal procedures,” which would mean ending the no-vote procedures used since December 1 to avoid a showdown on the peace-keeping assessments. The President of the Assembly, who is a citizen of Ghana, one of the underdeveloped members, said that “the highly developed countries” should make “substantial contributions” to the organization. One well-informed source said that this constituted an attempt to put pressure on the United States and the Soviet Union, both of which are in the category of highly developed countries, to make donations and settle the issue.
Peking ended a lull in its ideological debate with Moscow today by publicizing an attack by the Japanese Communist party on the policy of peaceful coexistence advocated by former Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev.
Europeans are arriving in the Congo in increasing numbers to augment Premier Moïse Tshombe’s mercenary forces. Informed sources said today that more than 100 men from France, Belgium, Italy and other European countries had arrived in recent weeks to join the white units fighting the Congolese rebels.
Leaders of the European Communist world gathered in Warsaw today for a meeting of the political arm of the Warsaw Pact powers that opens tomorrow. They were led by a Soviet delegation that included Leonid I. Brezhnev, First Secretary of the Communist party, and Premier Aleksei N. Kosygin.
Eli Cohen, a spy for Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, was arrested in Damascus after more than two years of transmitting Syria’s military secrets to his Israeli handlers. Posing as Kamal Amin Ta’abat, he had successfully posed as a wealthy Syrian Muslim who returned home after making his fortune in Argentina, where he had established friendships with Syrian government officials. Ta’abat/Cohen’s downfall came when Colonel Ahmed Su’edani became chief of Syrian intelligence, and traced the origin of daily Morse code transmissions to the Mossad agent’s apartment. Even under torture, Cohen would betray no relevant information about Israeli intelligence, and he would be hanged on May 18, 1965, in a televised ceremony.
Sir Winston Churchill’s condition continues to deteriorate. He suffers through a restless night after a relatively quiet day.
French President Charles de Gaulle plans to tell West German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard at their meetings this week that West Germany must choose between negotiation for Germany’s reunification and a role in the mixed-manned nuclear force. The French leader is convinced, a highly qualified Government source said today, that West Germany cannot become a nuclear power in any way and still seek reunification. He will so inform Dr. Erhard, the source said.
A quarrel between the French Army and Air Force over which arm should have tactical nuclear weapons broke into the open today.
The Soviet Union claimed that the United States and West Germany were planning to build “an 800-mile curtain belt of atomic land mines” across the border between West Germany and the nations of East Germany and Czechoslovakia. The United States responded that there had never been any plans for “atomic land mines.”
Justice Minister Ewald Bucher was reported today to have conceded that the Government could extend the statute of limitations on Nazi crimes without violating the West German Constitution.
The Polish Government apparently is in no hurry to imprison Melchior Wankowicz, a 72-year-old writer convicted of having slandered the state and sentenced to 18 months in prison.
A new and secret Arab fighting organization claimed today to have killed 12 Israelis and wounded 19. The “General Command of Palestinian Storm Troops” announced that casualties were inflicted by the “fourth group of our third wing” in a clash “northwest of Ben Jebrin.” It said that two Arabs had been wounded, and that one had fallen into Israeli hands. Ben Jebrin is an Israeli settlement that does not show on maps available here but is believed to be near Acre. This was the third announcement by the organization, about which little is known. The fact that the first favorable notice on it was printed in the Baathist Organ Al Ahrar, and the fact that most of its activity seems to be in northern Israel, suggest that the raiders are based in Syria.
In the last month the United Arab Republic has slightly increased the number of German engineers and technicians working on its jet aircraft development and rocket research programs.
A charge of murder has been filed against a son of Pakistani President Mohammad Ayub Khan.
Communist North Korea today called the recent talks between President Johnson and the Japanese Premier, Eisaku Sato, “a new stage in the further collusion between United States imperialism and Japanese militarism in the invasion of Asia.” A broadcast from Peking, monitored in Tokyo by the Kyodo News Service, quoted a North Korean newspaper as having said that “United States imperialists were trying to make full use of Japan to avert the complete collapse of their colonial domination of Asia.”
H. L. de Vries appointed Dutch governor of Suriname.
The Kawnpui Convention concluded after three days of meetings between over 100 leaders of the Sino-Tibetan Kukir minority in northeast India, from the Paite National Council, the Vaiphei National Organisation, the Simte National Organisation, the Chin National Union, the Mizo National Union, the Hmar National Union, the Kuki National Assembly, the Gangte Tribal Union, the Kom National Union and the Biete Convention Council. Meeting under the leadership of General Secretary Holkhomang Haokip, and Chairman K. T. Lalla, at Kawnpui in Churachandpur district of the Manipur state, the diverse group agreed on a common cause of petitioning for a separate state within India. Seven years later, Mizoram would be separated from the state of Assam. On February 20, 1987, Mizoram would become the 23rd State of India.
United Nations drug experts appealed today for a more stringent watch at airports for international narcotics smugglers.
President Johnson disclosed plans today for a more powerful, more accurate ballistic missile to increase the striking power of missile-carrying nuclear submarines. The missile, to be known as the Poseidon, will have about twice the explosive power and double the accuracy of the latest version of the Polaris missile now being carried by the submarines. It will cost $2 billion to develop and produce. Plans to develop the Poseidon missile were disclosed in a special Defense Message that President Johnson sent to Congress as a prelude to the presentation of a $49 billion defense budget next week.
The President said the increased accuracy, power and flexibility of the Poseidon missile “will permit its use effectively against a broader range of possible targets and give added insurance of penetration of enemy defenses.” One specific military purpose of the missile would be to knock out the hardened missile bases — underground and heavily protected being built by the Soviet Union.
With the combination of its bigger warhead and greater accuracy, the missile, according to high Administration sources. will have about eight times more “kill capability” against hardened sites than the present Polaris A-3 missile, The A-3 has a 2,800-mile range and carries a thermonuclear warhead with an explosive power of about 800 kilotons. A kiloton is the equivalent of a thousand tons of TNT.
While the accuracy of the Polaris missile is secret, it is believed able to hit within a fraction of a mile of its target. The special message, containing information normally included in the Budget Message. was largely a restatement of the Administration’s defense policies. By an unusual separate message to Congress, the Administration re-emphasized the military power built up in the last four years.
The New York Times also reports:
“The new budget, the President disclosed, will request more than $300 million for extending the life and improving the capabilities of the aging B-52 bomber. At the same time two B-52 squadrons, equipped with the earliest model of the decade-old plane, will be eliminated. The President announced, however, that the Pentagon would begin to develop a new short-range attack missile that could be carried by the B-52 or tactical bombers to increase their striking power against enemy defenses.”
[Ed: The “aging” B-52. Sixty years later, it’s still aging and still flying.]
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was punched and kicked by a white man today in Selma, Alabama while he was registering as the first Black guest of a hotel built more than a century ago by slave labor. The attack, which came without warning, set off a brief disturbance in which a lamp was overturned and a crystal chandelier was set to tinkling in the lobby of the Hotel Albert, a magnificent old building copied after the Doge’s Palace in Venice. The civil rights leader, here to lead demonstrations against segregation and voter discrimination, was standing at the registration desk surrounded by 11 other Blacks and a group of reporters, cameramen and policemen. Suddenly a tall gaunt man who had cofronted Dr. King a few minutes earlier at the Dallas County Courthouse wormed his way through the crowd and said: “I want to talk to you.” Then he drew back and struck Dr. King twice on the right temple. John Lewis, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, pinned the attacker’s arms to his sides. The man then kicked Dr. King twice, catching him lightly on the thigh near the groin, and the group of struggling men surged across the red carpet.
A white woman in tight slacks and a leather jacket stood in a corner shouting to the white man, “Get him, get him!” Wilson Baker, the city’s Director of Public Safety, pushed in and collared the man and dragged him to a patrol car. The attacker was identified as James Robinson, 26 years old, of Birmingham, a member of the National States Rights party, a small segregationist group that has been active in Alabama for several years. He was charged with assault and disturbing the peace.
Dr. King, winner of the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for his leadership in the nonviolent civil rights movement, said later that he had suffered no more than a headache as a result of the attack. He and his party were assigned hotel rooms. The only other disturbance during a tense day of integrating public accommodations and marching on the courthouse was the appearance of a member of the American Nazi party in black face, top hat and tights. Mr. Baker, a large genial man who had pledged to maintain the peace “some way somehow,” found the man, identified as Robert Lloyd of Richmond, Virginia. in the Selma-Del Restaurant, across the street from the Albert.
Lloyd, the Nazi who burst into the House of Representatives last week wearing black face, had come here with George Lincoln Rockwell of Alexandria, Virginia, head of the American Nazi party. Mr. Rockwell had promised to express his contempt of the Negro demonstrations by staging a blackface show on the street while the Blacks were lined up to register to vote. Instead, Mr. Baker kept Mr. Lloyd, still in blackface, behind bars during the demonstrations.
Selma, a city of 28,000 in the Alabama “Black Belt,” has been a center of white supremacy and the scene of frequent violence against Blacks. Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee are using it to focus attention on Alabama’s alleged discrimination against Negro registration and voting. In bright but freezing weather, about 400 Blacks assembled at a church and followed Dr. King, several of his aides, and Mr. Lewis to the courthouse, where Sheriff James Clark was waiting. Sheriff Clark, a large man in green uniform and cap complete with “scrambled eggs,” met Dr. King and his party standing near the entrance. He led those who wanted to register to vote through the courthouse into an alley cordoned off with ropes.
In front of the courthouse, while numbers of helmeted policemen looked on, both Rockwell and Robinson approached Dr. King and questioned him about what he was doing. During the exchange, Dr. King said both would be welcome to speak at a Black mass meeting tonight. A few minutes later, Robinson turned on Rockwell and accused him of being a spy for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “Where are your Nazis, Mr. Ratwell?” the Alabamian asked. J. B. Stoner, the Atlanta attorney for the Ku Klux Klan who harangued crowds in St. Augustine, Florida, last summer, arrived and announced that a rally for white segregationists would be held tonight on the outskirts of town.
This evening Rockwell was arrested on a charge of disturbing the peace outside the church where the Black rally was being held. When told that he could not enter by officers guarding the church door, he insisted and was promptly taken to jail, Later he was freed on $200 bond. Only about 20 tough-looking whites showed up for the Stoner meeting.
Eighteen men indicted in the plotting of the slaying of three civil rights workers near Philadelphia, Miss., last summer will be arraigned January 27 at Meridian, a Federal judge ordered in Jackson today. District Judge William Harold Cox set the arraignment after conferences with John Doar, chief of the civil rights division of the United States Justice Department, and United States Attorney Robert Hauberg of Mississippi. Judge Cox also ordered that attorneys for the defendants must file motions by 9 AM, January 25 and he set January 26 for a hearing on the motions at which time the defense will seek to require the Federal Government to reveal its evidence gathered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The arraignment will be held by Judge Cox, who will hear the defendants pleas and set the trial date. The trial site is expected to be in Meridian, at the March term of the Federal Court there. Last Friday a 23-member Federal Grand Jury returned the indictments in the triple civil rights killings after a Justice Department team headed by Mr. Doar produced new F.B.I. evidence including two alleged confessions taken from eyewitnesses to the slayings. Sixteen of the 18 men, including Sheriff Lawrence Rainey of Neshoba County and his chief deputy, Cecil Price, were arrested in the Philadelphia and Meridian area Saturday by Federal marshals and later released on bond by a United States commissioner at Meridian.
The Inauguration of President Johnson and Vice President-elect Hubert H. Humphrey is off and whooping, two days before the main event. Hotels are bulging, taxis are scarce and the snow-covered capital is filling up with five-gallon hats, the trimmed-down versions of Texas cowboy hats. The first official Inaugural event, the Distinguished Ladies Reception, unrolled before the masterpieces in the marble halls of the National Gallery of Art. Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. Humphrey and Cabinet wives greeted 5,000 women at the gallery this afternoon, many of them wearing mink turbans and white dresses or suits.
The Ripon Society proposed yesterday that the Republican party step up its advocacy of civil rights, apologize to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for an incident in the Presidential campaign and categorically disassociate itself from far-right extremist groups such as the John Birch Society.
Governor Robert E. Smylie of Idaho conceives the Republican party as an all-inclusive party in the middle of the road. It offers no future, he said today, to irreconcilable extremists. Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, meantime, came down hard on a comment made by Barry Goldwater that the time might well have come for a real realignment of the two political parties into two new parties called the Liberals and the Conservatives. General Eisenhower, in a Saturday Evening Evening Post article, wrote: “Some, attempting to emphasize the important differences between the two parties, have advocated making one of the parties, presumably the Republican, into a Conservative party, with the other, the Democratic, becoming the Liberal party. With this, I flatly disagree.”
The Supreme Court set aside today a murder conviction in Louisiana because two deputy sheriffs who were principal prosecution witnesses had been in charge of handling the trial jury. Justice Potter Stewart delivered the 8-to-1 decision. Justice Tom C. Clark wrote a dissent. The decision was given on an appeal by Wayne Turner, who is under death sentence in a holdup killing at a gasoline service station near Hammond, Louisiana, on October 7, 1960.
The Supreme Court refused without comment to review the $46,500 defamation-of-character judgment against Representative Adam Clayton Powell.
The Supreme Court set aside today the convictions of the Rev. B. Elton Cox for breach of peace and two other offenses in connection with a civil rights demonstration at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1961.
A checkered financial picture is being reported by civil rights groups. Needs are mounting — but contributions have lagged in some cases, perhaps because donors count on the Civil Rights Act of 196 to solve problems.
Bitterly cold Arctic air gripped the entire Atlantic Coast today and dealt a heavy blow to Florida’s multi-million-dollar winter vegetable crop.
At Kooyong Stadium, the Australian women’s tennis team won their second straight Federation Cup. Although the U.S. team had beaten the Australians in the doubles event, it had already been mathematically eliminated after Billie Jean King lost to Margaret Smith Court in two sets.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 895.21 (+4.06)
Born:
Dave Attell, American comedian, actor and writer, in Queens, New York, New York.
Andrew McBain, Canadian NHL right wing (Winnipeg Jets, Pittsburgh Penguins, Vancouver Canucks, Ottawa Senators), in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada.
John Shannon, NFL defensive tackle and defensive end (Chicago Bears), in Lexington, Kentucky.
Todd Auer, NFL linebacker (Green Bay Packers), in Winona, Mississippi.
Richard Dunwoody, British jockey, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom.
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