Communist gunners shelled South Vietnam’s largest fighter base at Biên Hòa, 15 miles from Saigon, with long‐range artillery yesterday amid indications that the North Vietnamese were moving three more divisions into the battle for Saigon. Western officials said that the use of the long‐range guns to shell Biên Hòa was ominous because it indicated that the North Vietnamese felt confident enough to move their heavy artillery close to the capital despite the high risk. It was believed to be the first time the base at Biên Hòa, a city of 300,000, had been hit by Communist artillery. It has occasionally been shelled in the past by less accurate and powerful mortars or rockets. Military sources said that 29 persons were wounded at the Biên Hòa base in the morning when a bomb storage area exploded. They said that it was unclear whether the explosion, which, also rocked buildings in downtown Saigon, had been caused by the shelling or by Communist guerrillas.
In an effort to keep the South Vietnamese off balance, Communist gunners fired morel than 100 rounds of artillery and rocket fire into Tây Ninh city, 55 miles northwest of Saigon. Reports from Tây Ninh said that the provincial civilian hospital was badly damaged, at least a dozen civilians were wounded, and 34 houses were destroyed. An army gasoline dump was also hit and it burned for several hours. Tây Ninh, the center of the Cao Dai religious sect and the northwest anchor of Saigon’s defense line, was a focus of Communist pressure until last week when the North Vietnamese units there slid away, either to Xuân Lộc or south into the Mekong delta. As a result, in the last few days government troops have recaptured a number of villages in Tây Ninh that the Communists had taken earlier this year. There was said to be no opposition by the North Vietnamese.
Western intelligence analysts said that the South Vietnamese appeared to have blunted, at least temporarily, the Communists’ drive for Saigon. But as consequence of the government’s successful defense at Xuân Lộc, where fighting continues 36 miles northeast of Saigon, and along Route 4, 30 miles south of the capital, the North Vietnamese are now bringing up reinforcements. According to intelligence reports, parts of North Vietnam’s 325th Division are reaching the battle around Xuân Lộc, joining three divisions already there — the Sixth, Seventh and 341st. The new unit previously operated in northern Thừa Thiên Province near Huế. Other intelligence reports suggested that the Communists were moving the 10th and the 320th Divisions down from the areas in the northern two–thirds of the country, which they seized in the last five weeks.
The introduction of the new divisions would give the Communists a numerical edge in the battle for Saigon, analysts believe. If the units were all to concentrate at Xuân Lộc, for example, they would be faced by only one government infantry division and a paratroop brigade. In recent days the Communists have begun a complex series of maneuvers around Saigon. Analysts think they are designed either to keep the South Vietnamese off balance or to bypass Government units and move closer to the capital. The shelling of Biên Hòa is believed to be part of these maneuvers. Early indications suggested that the long‐range guns that fired 24 rounds into the air base were situated in the jungle northeast of Biên Hòa. The guns have a 15‐mile range. They must be fired from a fixed position, and with the sophisticated American radar the South Vietnamese have, should not be difficult to locate.
Fighting continued today at Xuân Lộc, once a shabby city of 100,000 now largely reduced to rubble. A Saigon spokesman sad that 248 more Communist soldiers had been killed there and at nearby Kiệm Tân district town in battles yesterday and today. North Vietnamese gunners bombarded a government position eight miles northwest of Xuân Lộc with 1,000 artillery and mortar shells before the clash. South Vietnamese losses in the fighting were put at only 10 killed and 19 wounded. The battle for Xuân Lộc, which began last Wednesday, is considered critical for two reasons, it has been a test of whether the South Vietnamese would stand and fight, after abandoning two–thirds of their country in a mass rout, and it sits amid scrub jungle and abandoned rubber plantations, with little between it and Biên Hòa, a major suburb of Saigon.
The Saigon command said Communist attacks in the populous Mekong delta, the source of much of Saigon’s food supply, had slackened after a week of intensive fighting. But despite the drop, there were still incidents reported from nine delta provinces in which 95 Communist soldiers were said to have been killed.
Western officials said they expected the Communists to renew their attempts to cut Route 4, the critical artery linking Saigon with the delta. In a major battle in southern Long An and northern Định Tường Provinces astride Route 4 late last, week, several hundred North Vietnamese were reported killed. As evidence that they were still not far away, Communist gunners shelled Long An’s capital, Tân An, with six rockets, killing one person and wounding
On another front, reliable Vietnamese sources said the situation at Phan Rang, 170. miles northeast of Saigon, had become critical and that many government soldiers and officials were fleeing the city. Phan Rang and its air base are the northernmost positions left under government control on the central coast. Two weeks ago a Saigon spokesman said Phan Rang had been abandoned when some of its defenders panicked and ran. But it was later discovered that other troops had stayed.
Railway workers in Da Nang have repaired a damaged section of the track between Da Nang and Cau Do on the line that links the city with the former imperial capital of Huế, the North Vietnamese News Agency reported today.
Successful strikes by the South Vietnamese Air Force on Communist heavy artillery and tanks are essential to defense of the Saigon sector in the critical seven days ahead, according to United States military sources. The weight of the South’s counteroffensive may be restricted, the sources believed, by continued North Vietnamese shelling of the major air base at Biên Hòa. One report received in Washington said that a large part of the F‐5 and A‐37 fighter‐bombers based there had been immobilized by the shelling.
Only in the air does Saigon hold clear superiority over the invaders, although air power has been sparingly and, in the view of some American officers, wrongly employed. Without it, they say, the North’s superiority in men and matériel may prove decisive in the next week.
The shelling of Biên Hòa, the attacks on the supply dumps there by Communist demolition teams and the arrival of new weapons on the Saigon front appear to signal early intensification of the Communist drive in the capital sector. The military analysts noted that with a big proportion of the government’s best troops pinned down in the battle around Xuân Lộc, the Communists were exploiting their numerical superiority to mount attacks southwest of there and to move strong forces into areas north and northwest of Biên Hòa.
The best estimate available at the Defense Department is that North Vietnam has deployed 16 divisions in the Saigon and Mekong delta sectors. Analysts say, however, that only elements of many of these divisions have been committed to combat thus far. Even so, they note, the manpower ratio in every battle of the last week has favored the invaders. Their superiority has now been augmented by new weapons.
The Soviet‐made guns that shelled Biên Hòa — their size is said to be 122 or 130 mm. and their range 15 to 17 miles — are larger than anything in Saigon’s arsenal with the exception of 175‐mm. self‐propelled artillery. There were 175 of the 175‐mm. guns in Saigon’s inventory at the start of the current campaign, but there are no reliable estimates of the number in operating condition.
The cautious optimism voiced in Defense Department circles as a result of the South’s stubborn defense of Xuân Lộc seems to be evaporating rapidly. The consensus among the analysts is that a prolonged and effective defense of the capital from present positions is becoming increasingly hazardous. The fighting around Xuân Lộc, and smaller but costly defensive operations elsewhere around the capital, have reduced the effectiveness of some of Saigon’s best troops. According to one authoritative source, the high command in Saigon is finding it increasingly difficult to find “quality troops” to meet Communist forays.
Secretary of State Kissinger said the embassy in Saigon had been ordered to reduce Americans remaining in South Vietnam to a minimum level. Officials said the aim was a reduction from 6,000 to 1,000 or less within two weeks. A Senate Foreign Relations Committee proposal for a $200 million contingency fund to evacuate Americans and provide humanitarian aid to South Vietnam appeared acceptable to the White House, breaking an impasse between Congress and the executive branch. Even before the committee acted, Secretary Kissinger had told the Senate Appropriations Committee that the Administration was prepared to accept the concept of a “contingency fund” that the President could use at his discretion for humanitarian and military aid as well as for the withdrawal of Americans. Regarding the withdrawals from Saigon, Mr. Kissinger told the committee that “the number of Americans is being reduced energetically to minimum levels necessary for essential tasks.”
With as little publicity as possible, therefore, the Administration has ordered a large-scale withdrawal of Americans remaining in South Vietnam—a step long resisted by Graham A. Martin, the American Ambassador in Saigon. By today, according to estimates supplied by Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger, the American contingent in South Vietnam had been reduced by approximately one‐third, to 3,850, with 800 according to Congressional sources, leaving in the last day.
Cambodian insurgents, closing in on Phnom Penh from most directions, reached the southern edge of the city after dark tonight. Heavy fighting was in progress as government forces were brought back from the outer perimeter. Refugees poured into the capital. The government was still vowing to fight to the last man but its defenses appeared to be falling apart. Exchanges of machine‐gun, mortar and small‐arms fire were intense and flames from houses and a factory turned, the sky pink around the United Nations Bridge on the city’s southern edge. People fleeing the scene said the Communist‐led insurgents were firing bazooka‐like B‐40 rockets into government lines and also setting fire to homes. These witnesses said the government forces were using armored personnel carriers equipped with mortars and heavy machine guns to try to block the insurgents from breaking into the city.
Throughout the day, as the Government’s position steadily crumbled, its forces moved to try to halt the insurgents’ advances, abandoning posts all around the outer defense perimeter and bringing the troops back by helicopter to defend Phnom Penh. On Monday, after having been poised outside the city for weeks, the insurgents began their big push. The pullout of the American Embassy on Saturday and the simultaneous halting of the American supply airlift, which had been keeping the Phnom Penh Government alive, was apparently the signal for the insurgents to move. The initial drive came primarily from the west and northwest. Today the insurgents attacked from all sides.
For the second day, refugees by the thousands continued to stream toward the city, already swollen to more than two million people. The city, however, seemed strangely calm. The insurgents were driving from the north along Route 5, from the northwest across a marshy plain; from the west, where the airport was virtually cut off, and from the south and southeast, where government troops were reported abandoning their positions. South of the city, one unit tried to save itself by jumping into the Bassac River and swimming across to its west bank. Several men drowned. As of early evening, there was growing nervousness but no panic inside the city, and the government was still vowing to fight to the last man.
In the shifting and chaotic battlefield situation, it was difficult for newsmen to reach the actual front lines, but they could get close enough to note that the government’s defenses appeared to be falling apart. By mid‐afternoon the insurgents had driven into the southern industrial suburb of Takhmau, three miles from the city’s edge, after having subjected the area to heavy shelling. As government troops pulled back their artillery pieces and other equipment closer to Phnom Penh, a sea of fleeing refugees from Takhmau also swept north toward the city. Military police at the entrances to the city tried to block them because the Government fears that insurgent infiltrators might be slipping in with them.
Others poured toward the city from the southeast, where the Cambodian insurgents were also advancing up Route 1. These refugees, however, were blocked from entering the capital as military policemen threw barbed‐wire roadblocks across the bridge leading into the southern part of the city. At nighttime, the rebels were reported less than a mile and a half from the crowds gathering at the bridge.
On the crucial western approach, it appeared that the capital was virtually cut off from its airport at Pochentong, which had been Phnom Penh’s last supply link with the outside world. The insurgents cut the road to the airport at a point about two miles from the city by moving into part of Pochentong town, which straddles the route. The government was apparently still in control of the airfield itself, and military planes — small bombers, helicopter gunships and other strike aircraft — were still flying. But the airport, which could be observed from a distance, was being heavily shelled, and it appeared that, to escape the bombardment, some planes were using an auxiliary runway about a mile south of the airport.
Government troops were reported to have abandoned the market town of Prek Phnou six miles northwest of Phnom Penh on Route 5. In the evening an insurgent bombardment blew up a fuel depot along that highway only about two miles from the city, setting a spectacular blaze that lighted the sky and could be clearly seen in the northern part of Phnom Penh. On the east, Government troops gave up the village of Arey Khsat, their last position on the east bank of the Mekong, opposite the city. Though the river is a barrier to a large surface assault, the pullout gives the insurgents a free hand to shell the city from the east bank.
Besides abandoning several positions on the city’s outer defenses, the government was also taking soldiers from distant isolated province capitals, such as Takeo and Svay Rieng, and flying them into Phnom Penh to try to save the city. This probably means that those towns will now fall. Communication with the outside world was cut off from ate yesterday afternoon until iarly this morning because the nain communications transmision center at Kambol had been overrun by insurgents. Transmission was restored when an old Chinese transmitter was pressed into service.
Government leaders have said they will never surrender. And last night a leading Cambodian figure, Lieutenant General Sisowath Sink Matak, a former Premier who was once regarded by the Americans as the only hope for reversing Phnom Penh’s fortunes, sent a telegram to President Ford saying that Cambodians would die rather than surrender and accusing the President of abandonment and betrayal. The cablegram, alluding to the American pullout, said:
“We will struggle now alone without your support. The Khmer people have already paid a very heavy sacrifice in human lives for you Americans to enable you to disengage from South Vietnam. Your policy of abandonment of a poor country, decided brutally without warning or preparation, puts us in a position of heartbreaking betrayal.” The general said that if the insurgents break into Phnom Penh, “there will be in this capital of two million a terrible carnage. The Communists will find only ruins and desolation. We will die on our soil achieving our last desire— to die in freedom. I lay on the American conscience all Khmer deaths, present and future.”
While the American airlift has ended, two drops of supplies were made yesterday on Phnomh Penh, landing shortly after 5 PM in the Olympic stadium. These were the first since the airlift, the main source on which Phnom Penh depended for food, fuel and ammunition. Fuel supplies are now dwindling, and how long the government planes can keep flying is uncertain. The situation with ammunition may be even worse. The two main ammunition dumps sit beyond the airport, and with the road cut, the government forces cannot reach them without running a gantlet of fire.
Yesterday the government was trying with difficulty to build a defense line around the university, which is within city limits. Armored personnel carriers with mortars were pulled back from Pochentong town and positioned around the university complex. A young couple sat through it all pulling up grass and throwing it at each other. Staircases leading to the rooftops of university building were blocked by furniture barricades manned by students. This was apparently someone’s idea of preventing infiltrators from getting rooftop vantage points. As night fell, military policemen roamed the university area with loudspeakers, ordering people to stay inside their homes so that infiltrators could be easily discovered.
At the Hotel Phnom, where most of the remaining foreigners are staying, officials reported that the Defense Minister, Holt Hong had refused the request of the International Red Cross to turn the building into a protected neutral zone. The Red Cross had also sought the approval of the insurgents, and it was not known what response they had received from them, if any. Red Cross officials staying in the hotel moved out last night and returned to their residences in the city.
While there was no panic here, worry was clear on many faces. The Staff at the cable office peruased all the foreign journalists’ dispatches with all, the bad news and then went about their duties as normal. One official did ask a journalist to help him get his family out of the country.
In Tuol Kork, a neighborhood in the northwestern section of Phnom Penh, the insurgents’ rockets and shells set fire to a rubber sandal factory, sending billows rising skyward and also sending several hundred people fleeing. A jeep raced by on its way to a hospital, a badly wounded child in the back. Entire families were running, and yet an investigation showed that only one part of the neighborhood had fled in terror, the part near the burning factory. The rest of the district appeared calm.
Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the exiled Cambodian leader, said here today that the government that would be installed in Phnom Penh after victory of the insurgents would be nonaligned, democratic and progressive, not Communist. In a written statement, the Prince said there would be no changes in the leadership of the Khmer National United Front, which he heads, nor in the Royal Cambodian Government of National Union. He added that there would be parliamentary elections within a year or two. The Prince, nominal head of the Cambodian insurgents besieging Phnom Penh, said his forces controlled 97 percent of the country. A spokesman for Sihanouk said today that Khieu Samphan, the insurgent leader, would head a new government in Phnom Penh once the Cambodian capital was controlled by the insurgents.
[Ed: Norodom Sihanouk. One of the most useless, venal little cocksuckers to ever afflict Southeast Asia.]
Gunfire, rockets and bombs in the Beirut area raised the unofficial death toll to close to 100 lives in the third day of fighting between Palestinian guerrillas and the armed militia of Lebanon’s Phalangist party. The survival of Lebanon’s coalition government was uncertain. The Phalangist leader, Pierre Gemayel, has opposed Palestinian guerrilla raids that bring Israeli retaliation. Palestinian sources said 11 persons had been killed by nightfall in sectors under their control. This raised the unofficial count of the dead to close to 100, many of them bystanders. The survival of Lebanon’s coalition Government, headed by Premier Rashid al‐Solh, was uncertain tonight as the sound of guns reverberated through the dark and deserted streets while families huddled in their homes. After a Cabinet meeting that ended at 9 PM, Premier Solh said he hoped there would be “a settlement tonight,” but the shooting continued.
Young men, some in camouflaged combat dress, crouched in doorways and behind automobiles in the predominantly Muslim Chia sector. They were armed with submachine guns. At intersections leading into the Phalangist party neighborhood of Ashrafiya, armed men turned back reporters who tried to enter. A column of smoke spread from the port area, where the Phalangist party has its headquarters. A rocket reportedly exploded in a warehouse there, causing a large fire. “It is hell at night with all the shooting,” said a driver for a foreign embassy who lives in the vicinity of the Tell alZattar Palestinian refugee camp. This sector has been under fire for three days by the Phalangists who have been firing rockets into the crowded housing.
A powerful explosion, apparently caused by a bomb, demolished a men’s clothing store owned by a Palestinian family in Ras Beirut, a section of banks, hotels and embassies. The store was only two blocks from Hamra Street, the city’s main tourist center of stores, movie theaters and restaurants, These were closed or deserted. Banks, schools, offices and most stores have been closed since the fighting erupted Sunday, when members of the Phalangist militia opened fire on a bus loaded with Palestinians returning to the Tel al‐Zattar camp through Beirut’s Christian, district of Ain al-Rummaneh. Palestinians said that 27 people aboard the bus had been killed. They are demanding that the government arrest those responsible for the shooting.
Pierre Gemayel, the 70‐yearold Phalangist leader, who has long been critical of Palestinian attacks on Israel from Lebanese territory, net today with President Suleiman Franjieh, who is in a hospital here after a gall bladder operation. Mr. Gemayel, accompanied by a dozen bodyguards, said at the American University Hospital, where he talked with Mr. Franjieh, that “no one in his right mind wants to plunge the country into chaos.”
In an interview in February, Mr. Gemayel said that the armed Palestinians had introduced a “state of anarchy and indiscipline” and he called on the Government to repudiate the Cairo agreement of 1969 that authorized Palestinian guerrillas to maintain camps in Lebanon and to conduct operations against Israel.
But these views of Mr. Gemayel, while shared by some Lebanese, particularly in the Christian Community — about half of the country’s population —opposed by the many Lebanese who support the Palestinians. This support is particularly strong among Muslims. The roughly equal Christian-Muslim division of the Lebanese population makes the Palestinian issue a critical issue in the country’s political relations. The future of the Palestinian guerrillas, who were driven out of Jordan in 1970 and 1971, when they challenged the authority of King Hussein, is the main issue in the conflict here.
President Franjieh, a Christian, and Premier Solh, a Muslim, are under strong pressure from other Arab countries to avoid intensifying the conflict and bringing the Lebanese Army into the fighting. In 1973, Syria sent troops across the border to support the Palestinians. A Syrian military delegation arrived here today with instructions from President Hafez al Assad to consult with the Lebanese military on a solution to the current crisis.
The leftist government of Portugal nationalized most of that nation’s basic industries and began a land reform program. Portugal’s government nationalized basic industries and introduced a system of price controls in an effort to bring the nation’s labor movement under control. Prime Minister Vasco Goncalves said that all transportation lines, electricity companies and firms involved in petroleum and chemical industries would be completely controlled. The government also gave approval for occupation of unused farmland in the opening of a far-reaching land-reform program.
A preparatory meeting in Paris for an international energy conference this summer broke down in disagreement on the agenda and other terms. The United States, the European Economic Community and Japan insisted that it focus on energy and related economic problems, while four oil producers — Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Iran and three developing countries — Zaire, Brazil and India — insisted on addressing the whole range of demands of developing countries for a new international economic order.
Britain announced it is pulling about 200 soldiers out of Northern Ireland in response to a 10-week-old cease-fire by the Irish Republican Army. The withdrawal will leave an estimated 14,000 troops in the province. “These reductions are in keeping with the present army profile.” a British statement said. “If the need arises, reinforcements can very quickly be provided.”
The British Government announced broadly distributed tax increases today and promised future spending cuts in a strenuous effort to curb Britain’s inflation and revive her prosperity.
The engineer of a subway train that crashed and killed 41 people in London in February had been drinking before the accident at Moorgate station, an inquest was told. A forensic expert who examined the crushed remains of engineer Leslie Newson testified that the body contained the same alcohol levels at which a motorist could be banned from driving. The expert said that traces of alcohol also had been found in a milk bottle carried in Newson’s workbag.
Kidnapers in Sicily released Francesco Madonia, the 29-year-old nephew of one of the island’s richest men. after seven months of captivity. Police sources said a huge ransom was paid in installments, but the sum was not disclosed. Madonia’s uncle is Giuseppe Garda, one of Palermo’s biggest builders and landowners. Sources said Garda paid the bulk of the ransom after selling some of his properties.
Paris was without newspapers as printers staged a 24-hour strike to protest layoffs and demand that the purchasing power of their wages be maintained. Strikers distributed leaflets saying that in the past five years 100 print shops have been closed in France and several thousand people have lost their jobs.
Israel mourned its soldiers killed in four wars since the birth of the nation 27 years ago. In Jerusalem, about 10.000 people attended memorial day ceremonies under sunny skies at the national military cemetery on Mt. Herzl. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin spoke briefly at the ceremonies and told the nation on radio that it would advance toward peace and prepare for war at the same time.
The leader of South Korea’s main Opposition party, Kim Young Sam, urged the government today not to create a “wartime crisis mood” as a means of suppressing domestic political dissent. Mr. Kim’s official party statement came amid fresh reports that pro‐Government legislators were considering a new bill intended to strengthen national security, which they say is “endangered.” Sharply attacking President Park Chung Hee’s Government for the recent closing of 20 universities and the jailing of students, the Opposition leader blamed the much-criticized 1972 Constitution for the current campus unrest. Demands for democratic revision of the Constitution lie at the heart of the current political disturbances in South Korea, he said.
Japan and the Soviet Union have agreed to set salmon catch quotas in the Pacific this year at 87,000 tons for Japan and 10,000 tons for the Soviet Union, informed sources reported in Tokyo. The agreement, reached in 44 days of talks between fishery commissions of the two countries, is expected to be signed today or Thursday, the sources said.
Vice President Rockefeller was noticeably restrained in expressing American support for the Chinese Nationalist Government today as he arrived here to attend the funeral of President Chiang Kai-shek.
Australia said it had been unable to confirm allegations that Australian airmen killed American convicts in wartime experiments with mustard gas bombs. But in a statement to Parliament, Defense Minister Lance Barnard did confirm that gas experiments in which volunteers were injured took place off the northeast coast during World War II.
Prime Minister Eric Williams of Trinidad and Tobago warned members of his party. the People’s National Movement, against what he said was “recolonization of the Caribbean” now being pursued by several Latin American nations. He singled out neighboring Venezuela but charged that Brazil. Mexico and Colombia were also guilty of interfering in Caribbean affairs.
Gabon amends its constitution.
President Ford told a Republican fund-raising dinner tonight that he does not see an “unbeatable” Democrat among the men who hope to run against him next year. He pledged to win the Presidency in his own right in 1976 on a campaign for Republican principles — including “budgetary discipline,” “strong national defense” and “freedom” —and not just for his own election, he said, but “for all Republicans everywhere.”
[Ed: Not unbeatable; just a smiling Southern politician who is going to take your lunch money, Jerry.]
The defense rested its case in the bribery trial of John Connally after the former Secretary of the Treasury conceded that his memory was flawed, but insisted that he had never accepted a $10,000 payoff. He maintained that he was ill-prepared when he gave some “mistaken” testimony in 1973 and 1974 investigations.
Senate conferees yielded on major points to the House version of a farm bill tailored to increase subsidy and price-support payments while averting a presidential veto. The Senate version had been costlier and more likely to bring about a veto. Although Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz reiterated that he would recommend a veto, other Republican farm leaders said Mr. Ford had promised to give it careful consideration.
Governor Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts, saying the cost of welfare in the state has escalated “beyond belief”, proposed $311 million in welfare cuts that include denying assistance to anyone under 40 who is considered employable — an estimated 15,000 persons. The proposed regulation would save about $20 million. The state now spends one-third of its $2.8 billion budget on 560,000 persons receiving some form of welfare. Without the cuts, which would take place in the next fiscal year. Dukakis said estimates of the new welfare budget range up to $1.7 billion. A denial of a cost-of-living increase would save $84.5 million.
The White House has given sensitive intelligence documents to a special Senate committee, including the report that William E. Colby, Central Intelligence Agency director, wrote in answer to allegations that his agency engaged in domestic spying. White House Press Secretary Ron Nessen told reporters the Colby report was delivered Monday to the investigating committee headed by Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho). “As far as I know, nothing has been denied,” Nessen said. The documents included copies of all executive orders relating to the structure and charter of the CIA and some highly classified National Security Council directives.
The House voted and sent to the Senate legislation to pump $5 billion into state and federal unemployment trust funds drained by the high jobless rate. Seven states and Puerto Rico already have been forced to borrow $491 million from the government to pay unemployment insurance benefits this year.
A three-judge federal appeals court panel ruled in Omaha that the interests of consumers and meat packers require that the federal government wait at least 45 days before putting into effect its new system of grading beef. It means the nation will continue grading beef according to the same standards in use for 30 years — not according to new rules that would lower the amount of fat required in top-graded beef. The government had asked the panel to stay a lower court’s injunction banning immediate use of the new standards. The lower court said the Agriculture Department had not provided the economic impact statement on the change as required by executive order.
A Superior Court judge in East Haven, Connecticut, ordered the community’s 12 public schools to be reopened today with borrowed funds to cover an expected deficit. The school board and town officials said they had agreed that the town would find $333,000 to meet the judge’s order. Classrooms were closed Monday because officials said they had run out of operating funds. They expressed concern that a provision in the town charter might make them personally liable for deficits and asked the court to order schools to reopen.
Nancy Howe has left her position as Betty Ford’s personal assistant, the White House said. Her departure comes in the wake of the suicide last Thursday of her husband, James W. Howe, whose death prompted disclosure of a White House inquiry into who paid the expenses of a trip Mrs. Howe and her husband took to the Dominican Republic as guests of international businessman Tongsun Park. It was not made clear whether Mrs. Howe had been asked to leave or had resigned voluntarily.
San Francisco International Airport lost more than $750,000 from a three-week delay in construction caused by environmentalists, said William J. Dwyer, director of airports. Dwyer said the price tag for work stoppage on a new north terminal and expanded parking garage includes closedown and startup costs and inflationary cost increases in labor and materials. A court injunction sought by Friends of the Earth halted the two projects March 19. The injunction was dissolved Thursday by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals. The environmentalists had claimed that the projects should not be allowed to proceed without a federal environmental impact statement.
Karen Ann Quinlan, 21, collapsed after drinking several gin and tonics in addition to having already taken the tranquilizers Valium and Darvon. She would become the subject of a landmark case in the “right to die” movement, In re Quinlan. After a Massachusetts court ruled that a person could be taken off life support in cases where there was no prospect of recovery, she would be removed from the respirator on May 22, 1976. To the surprise of most people, Quinlan was able to breathe on her own, and would live, comatose, for another nine years. She would die on June 11, 1985, at the age of 31.
Mary Ure, the British actress who was found dead April 3 after opening in a play called “The Exorcism,” died accidentally from a mixture of alcohol and barbiturates, a coroner’s court ruled. The coroner specifically blamed “an incautious overdose of drugs.” Miss Ure, 42, died within hours of playing the role of a woman possessed by the spirit of another woman who had starved to death, centuries before.
The skeletal remains of a White City, Oregon, family of four, missing since last Labor Day, have been found in a brushy, timbered area in the rugged Siskiyou Mountain country of southwestern Oregon. Police in Medford said at least two members of the family had been shot. Two campers first discovered a skeleton several miles from the campsite where the Cowdens were last seen. It was identified as that of Richard Cowden. 27. Three other skeletons were discovered stuffed in a small cave. They were those of Cowden’s wife, Belinda, 22, and their son, David, 5, and daughter, Melissa, 5 months. Police had no clues as to their deaths.
Major League Baseball:
First appearance of the “San Diego Chicken” Padres’ mascot.
Houston Astros 1, Atlanta Braves 6
Milwaukee Brewers 7, Baltimore Orioles 1
Texas Rangers 6, Chicago White Sox 5
Oakland Athletics 3, Kansas City Royals 4
Cincinnati Reds 1, Los Angeles Dodgers 3
California Angels 7, Minnesota Twins 3
Boston Red Sox 5, New York Yankees 3
San Diego Padres 2, San Francisco Giants 1
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 815.08 (+8.13, +1.01%)
Born:
Elissa Knight, American voice actress (“Wall-E”), in Santa Cruz, California.
Chester Burnett, NFL linebacker (Cleveland Browns), in Denver, Colorado.
Died:
Richard Conte, 65, American actor (“The Godfather”, “Tony Rome”, “Hotel”), from a heart attack.
John B. McKay, 52, American test pilot (X-15).
History Diaries 