Newsweek magazine says it has been told by U.S. officials that thousands of people in Cambodia had been executed by the country’s new rulers in a massive bloodbath. The magazine said in a news release Saturday night that its May 12 issue, which goes on sale on Monday, reports that the executions could ultimately lead to the killings “of tens of thousands of Cambodians loyal to the Lon Nol regime.” The release said the disclosures were said to have come from interceptions of Khmer Rouge communications by U.S. intelligence.
“The first victims of the bloodbath were said to be officers of the Cambodian army and some government officials. All officers down to the rank of second lieutenant were to be killed along with their wives, the intercepts were said to indicate,” the news release said. “Sources have told Newsweek that the United States intercepted official Khmer Rouge radio transmissions in which the orders for the bloodbath were given, as well as field reports saying that the initial round of executions had been carried out. The sources say the killings were not isolated cases, but part of a full-fledged campaign.
Newsweek quoted one official as saying, “I am not speculating. I am not dealing in third-hand reports. I am telling you what is being said by the Cambodians themselves in their own communications.” The magazine says Cambodia has had no telephone or telegraph communications with the rest of the world since the fall of Phnom Penh “and U.S. intelligence officials have suggested that the bloodbath was one reason for the news blackout.”
[Ed: American and European leftists will spend years denying the Cambodian genocide and doing everything they can to smear those reporting on it, right up to the bitter end of the Khmer Rouge regime and the documentation of thousands of mass graves. Even today, Marxists on the internet claim the whole thing was an ‘imperialist hoax’. Those people are fucking bastards.]
About 500 foreigners who had been stranded in the French Embassy in Phnom Penh arrived at the Thai border after a four-day journey in open trucks. The first to cross were seven journalists, including Sydney H. Schanberg of The New York Times. All the journalists looked well and were taken immediately aboard an air-conditioned bus chartered by the French Embassy for transportation to Bangkok. The more than 500 men, women and children who arrived in Aranyaprathet, Thailand, on Cambodia’s border, refused to describe their trip by truck or their experiences in the French Embassy in Phnom Penh, where they took refuge two weeks ago when the Communist-led insurgents took over the city. The refugees, including eight newsmen, agreed among themselves not to tell their experiences until the new Cambodian government had allowed the remaining 250 foreigners in the embassy compound to leave the country.
The French military attaché in Thailand, Lieutenant Colonel Jean Roubert, said that about 100 of the more than 600 foreigners who had been stranded in the embassy in Phnom Penh had been forced to stay behind temporarily, apparently because of lack of transport. The newsmen declined to make any comment on the situation in Phnom Penh or on the health of the refugees on the ground that to do so could endanger the lives of the foreigners still in Phnom Penh. The last group of evacuees was reportedly scheduled to leave Phnom Penh today indicating that they might reach the frontier on Tuesday if they leave on scheduled and take the same length of time to make the 250‐mile journey.
The Saigon radio announced today that North Vietnam had undertaken a widespread reconstruction program in South Vietnam to provide jobs and begin reversing the devastation of 30 years of war. Customary communications channels with Saigon have been cut since Wednesday when the Communists took over the city. The broadcasts, monitored in Bangkok, Thailand, suggested that a wholesale reorganization of South Vietnam was under way. The new regime has begun organizing “Revolutionary People’s Committees,” ostensibly to protect government property. The radio said that 5,000 people had signed up for duty.
All former South Vietnamese military personnel and government officials were ordered to register with the victorious Communist conquerors or face punishment, starting with generals on May 8 and 9. One month later, all registrants would be ordered to report to reeducation camps.
The United States carrier USS Hancock sailed into the home port of the Seventh Fleet at Subic Bay in the Philippines carrying 2,000 Americans and Vietnamese evacuees plucked out of Saigon. Other vessels of the 46-ship armada that had completed the final evacuation of South Vietnam were approaching the port. In all, about 20,000 evacuees are expected to arrive there.
The trail of Vietnam war victims reaches across the American continent as a planeload of refugees wings its way into the Deep South.
A Danish tanker, packed with 3,000 Vietnamese refugees picked up from a sinking vessel, sails under “dangerous” conditions.
A spot check of nearly 50 Congressional offices shows constituent mail running heavily against admission into this country of Vietnam refugees.
Health service officials and doctors say contrary to some reports that the health of refugees is pretty good, and they represent no serious hazard.
A worldwide network of U. S. military bases, built up in the 1950s to contain the Soviet Union and Communist China, is crumbling slowly under the pressure of political change.
Portugal’s military government announced Saturday it will make an official investigation of May Day incidents that led to bitter accusations between the Socialist and Communist parties and to mass marches by the Socialists to show their strength. The May Day incidents in Lisbon, in which Communist monitors prevented Socialist party leader Mario Soares from taking his place on the speakers’ platform at a large stadium, were sharply denounced by the Socialists. They accused the Communists of threatening Soares with violence.
The leaders of the two Cypriot communities ended a week of negotiations here today under the chairmanship of Secretary General Waldheim of the United Nations by agreeing in principle to reopen Nicosia airport. They failed to come to any understanding on the future of the 200,000 refugees on the island. The two men, Rauf Denktaş, representing the Turkish Cypriots, and Glafkos Clerides of the Greek Cypriots, also announced that they would meet in Vienna again June 5 to 9 with Mr. Waldheim to resume negotiations and examine the progress of a joint working group studying their opposing proposals for an eventual central government.
The leaders were brought together in Vienna by Mr. Waldheim under instructions from the United Nations Security Council after a series of earlier negotiations between the two in Cyprus broke down Feb. 13, when the Turkish side proclaimed a separate federated Turkish state in the northern part of the island. They met with Mr. Waldheim in eight closed sessions in former cloakroom of the old Hapsburg imperial palace. usually with no aides or interpreters present. In addition, they held a number of private informal sessions and kept in touch with the Turkish and Greek governments throughout the week. In a closing news conference Mr. Clerides and Mr. Waldheim both disputed assertions that the Cyprus problem was linked to the conflict between Athens and Ankara.
An overwhelming election victory for hard‐line Protestants today dashed hopes of an agreement with Northern Ireland’s Roman Catholic minority on the political future of the province. The United Ulster Unionist Council, a three‐party Protestant coalition that opposes power‐sharing with the Catholics, won 46 of the 78 seats in a new Convention, whose main task is to write a new constitution for Northern Ireland. In its campaign for Thursday’s election, the council pledged to press for an administration that would exclude the main Catholic group, the Social Democratic and Labor party, which took 17 of the Convention seats. However, the Social Democratic and Labor party has insisted that it must have a substantial role in any new administration, and the British Government has retained the right to veto any constitutional proposal that does not have Catholic support.
Terrorists set off two bombs today near a French nuclear reactor at a power station under construction in Fessenheim, causing a fire but no casualties, the police reported. The blasts went off in a building close to the reactor, which did not yet contain fissionable material, sources said. A man phoned a local newspaper 70 minutes before the first bomb went off to give warning and to accept responsibility. He said he belonged to the Meinhof‐Puig Antich group, authorities reported. Although there was no immediate identification of the group by the police, Ulrike Meinhof is a West German woman serving an eight‐year prison sentence for helping a fellow anachist escape custody. She is accused of being a leader of the Baader‐Meinhof gang, which has been held responsible for a series of bombings and killings in West Germany. Puig Antich was a Spanish anarchist executed by the Madrid Government.
A new edition of the Chronicle of Current Events, the key, underground journal of dissident affairs in the Soviet Union, is now circulating in Moscow. The issue — No. 35 — contains 63 pages of typescript held together with a paper clip. It is dated March 31. The journal details official action against critics of the regime and religious and nationalist activists since the last edition appeared in December. it also deals with earlier events which have just come to the notice of the chronicle’s anonymous editors.
Italian Communist party leader Enrico Berlinguer told a youth rally Saturday that the governing Christian Democrats may try to use President Ford’s visit to Rome for partisan political purposes. Berlinguer questioned the “real purpose” of Ford’s planned June 3 visit and said, “We are very skeptical about the government’s intention to describe the situation in Italy faithfully and about its ability to represent the country’s interests successfully.”
The city of Jerusalem was struck by missiles for the first time, after two Czechoslovakian made Katyusha rockets, fired by Arab guerillas, struck 500 meters from the Knesset parliament building.
In a historic change of the Arab position, Jordan’s King Hussein says that Israel can have final peace and recognition with withdrawal from all “occupied” Arab lands.
General Mustafa Barzani, the former leader of Kurdish rebels, said in an interview published today that the Kurds’ battle for autonomy in northern Iraq is futile and will never be resumed. The 73‐year‐old leader told the Tehran newspaper Kayhan International that Communists — whom he called “enemies of Islam and mankind” — had started the war in Iraq and then let the Kurds go down to defeat. General Barzani said it was in the interest of neither the Kurds nor the Baghdad government to continue the secessionist war in northern Iraq. When Iran and Iraq signed a reconciliation agreement on March 6 in Algiers, Iran pledged to cut off aid to the Kurdish rebels. Shortly afterward, General Barzani gave up the battle he had been waging on and off for about 40 years and fled to, Iran. He now lives near Tehran with his family.
For the first time in years, India has denounced China and expressed worry that Peking is seeking to disturb the stability of Southern Asia.
In his last meeting of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party, Chairman Mao Zedong spoke out to reverse the disastrous Cultural Revolution. Mao criticized his own wife (Jiang Qing), along with her associates (Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen) for their instigation of the movement, telling them “Don’t function as a gang of four.” The Chairman would also call for the reversal of the persecution of intellectuals, who had been referred to by cultural revolutionaries as “the stinking number nine” (choulaojiu), the ninth group of pariahs (the first eight were landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries, bad elements, rightists, renegades, enemy agents and capitalist roaders); quoting from the Communist Chinese opera “Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy,” Mao proclaimed “We can’t do without ‘number nine’.” After Mao’s death the following year, the Party would remove and prosecute the Gang of Four (Sìrén bàng).
The Vatican is showing increasing concern over the progress and the activities of a left‐win g movement, Roman Catholic Christians for Socialism, which started in Chile four years ago and has spread to other Latin‐American countries and to Europe. The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, condemned the movement, which urges Marxist revolution as “a mistaken answer” to social problems.
A Colombian Air Force DC-3 on a commercial flight disappeared with eight persons aboard Saturday between Ocana and Cucuta in northern Colombia near the Venezuelan border. The air force began a search after all radio contact with the two-engine plane was lost 10 minutes after the plane left Ocana, the capital of the province of Santander.
Two Venezuelans, a leader of the governing political party and an oil company official. denied Saturday that Venezuelans received payoffs from the Gulf Oil Co. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission had discovered that Gulf paid some $4 million under pressure to politicians in a petroleum-producing country. The newspaper article “does not concern us,” said Gonzalo Barrios, a leader of the governing Democratic Action Party and president of the Venezuelan Congress.
Four Perónist senators formally asked the Argentine Congress Saturday to take over the huge holdings of Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Corp. subsidiaries in Argentina. The bill follows strong criticism of the companies two weeks ago by the Perónist-controlled Petroleum Workers Union and the three-million member General Labor Confederation.
More than 500 bodies have been brought to the Luanda morgue in five days of fighting between rival Angolan liberation movements, an unofficial source said Saturday, and estimates of the total dead ran up to 1,000. Many of those killed in violence that broke out Monday were not brought to the morgue. Combined patrols of Portuguese troops and liberation movement soldiers restored order to Luanda today, according to military sources. Five days of fighting among political factions are thought to have left at 1,200 dead and wounded.
David Protter, the gunman who Feized the Israeli consulate and 21 hostages here last week, made two attempts to commit suicide in his prison cell last night the police said here today. He first cut one of his wrists, the police said, and then tried to hang himself from the bars of his prison cell. Mr. Protter, a 24‐year‐old security guard at the Israeli Consulate, surrendered to the police early on Tuesday after holding the consulate for 16 hours. During the siege one person was killed and 37 people injured. Mr. Prater had been discharged from the Israeli Army in 1972 for psychological reasons.
Key administration strategists admitted that President Ford almost certainly cannot get his two-year decontrol plan for oil prices through the House and will have to seek a compromise. The administration has begun putting out feelers to House Democrats for support of a decontrol program that would take effect over three or four years and that the administration believes would have less impact on consumer pocketbooks as the average cost of domestic crude oil rose. Unpublished preliminary federal estimates indicate that a gradual removal of crude oil price controls over two years would add 9 percent to retail prices of petroleum products by the end of 1977 and one percent to the Consumer Price Index. Federal energy officials were said to regard this as moderate and acceptable.
The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, first of the Nimitz-class group of the ten then-largest “supercarriers” in the world, is commissioned. President Ford spoke at commissioning ceremonies for the U.S.S. Nimitz, the world’s largest warship, in Norfolk, Virginia, and pledged that the United States would keep its commitments abroad and would remain militarily strong. He said the Nimitz, the nation’s second nuclear-powered carrier, along with other American forces worldwide, would make “critically important contributions” toward world peace.
A bill to extend the Voting Rights Act through 1985 and broaden its protection to millions of Spanish‐Americans has cleared the House Juciciary Committee and could reach the House floor before the Memorial Day begins May 22. The bill, originally passed in 1965 and extended for five years in 1970, will expire August 6 unless Congress extends it again. It has been used to knock down election barriers, mostly in the South, and help hundreds of thousands of black citizens register and vote for the first time. The bill, cleared this week by a 27 to 7 committee vote, would extend the act to areas whose populations are at 5 percent non‐English speaking and where voter registration has been less than 50 percent among minorities.
Senators Jacob Javits and Claiborne Pell announced that they were drafting new legislation to provide funds the administration needs to move and resettle more than 120,000 Vietnamese refugees in the United States. Senator Javits said the bill would be ready tomorrow and would probably go to a House-Senate conference for quick action later in the week after committee hearings.
The number of strikes in the United States is remaining well below the amount of a year ago, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service reports. The service said figures current to May 1 showed 259 work stoppages in progress involving 70,617 workers. At the same time last year there were 321 strikes in progress involving 106,287 workers. The number of major strikes involving 1,000 or more workers also dropped, to 12 from 18 in 1974.
The nation’s struggling auto industry. trying to recover after unprecedented first-quarter losses, continues to step up production in the steadfast belief that sales will pick up this spring. Although April sales traditionally are up 4 percent over the previous month, analysts predict volumes will be down 1 or 2 percent from March this year. Domestic car sales in April were estimated at 515,000, down 1.5 percent from March and down 27 percent from April 1974. Imports were expected to show a 15 percent gain in sales over a year ago, although foreign deliveries estimated at 130,000 would be off 10 percent from March.
Rock-throwing clashes broke out today as the leftist Progressive Labor party held a march on the edge of South Boston, the neighborhood that is the heart of Boston’s antibusing sentiment. The Progressive Laborites had called for a national May Day rally to condemn what they contended was the “fascist” opposition to busing for school desegregation here. They had originally asked for a permit to march through South Boston but were turned down by the police and courts. The first clash came when Progressive Labor security guards charged at a group of South Bostonians. Later, white youths from the neighborhood threw rocks at the demonstrators and at the cars of passing black motorists. The police said that eight persons had been arrested and 10 injured.
Women are joining the United States Army in record peace-time numbers and taking over hundreds of once-male jobs, from fixing tanks to flying helicopters, and they are moving closer to an assault on the Army’s last bastion of male exclusivity — the combat arms. Women’s Army ranks have tripled in four years to 35,000 — the highest in history — and are expected to increase. The present female enrollment is 4.5 percent of the Army’s force of 780,000.
Automobile manufactures went on record this week with widely disparate views on the costs, technical feasibility and usefulness of new restrictions on automobile fume emissions. Implicit in the differences was some disagreement will the validity of the Environmen tal Protection Agency’s recent decision to delay by as much as five years the emission controts project in the Clean Air Act for 1977. The agency attributed its action to new fears that the catalytic mufflers needed to decrease emissions of hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide would aggravate the emission of yet another pollutant, sulfur compounds.
Nathan Hale did not say what most people believe he said when he was hanged by the British; Paul Revere never got to Concord on his famous ride, and George III was probably not crazy. These were among the highlights of a conference at Yale University in which Yale history professors lectured to Connecticut high school teachers on what should and should not be taught about the American Revolution.
Writer-producer Rod Serling was reported in fair condition Saturday at Tompkins County Hospital here suffering from what a hospital spokeswoman described as “chest pains.” The spokeswoman said Serling, 50, was admitted at 9:25 AM and was in the hospital’s intensive care unit.
West Ham United won the FA Cup at Wembley, beating Fulham, 2-0. Both goals were scored by Alan Taylor. The legendary Bobby Moore, who had played 16 seasons for West Ham until 1974, played for Fulham against his old team.
Christa Vahlensieck runs female world record marathon (2:40:15.8).
101st Kentucky Derby: Jacinto Vasquez on Foolish Pleasure wins in 2:02. Foolish Pleasure, sent off as the 9-5 favorite, breezes out in front at the eighth pole and gallops home the winner in the 101st running of the Kentucky Derby.
Major League Baseball:
The Reds switch Pete Rose from left field to third base, opening a lineup spot for utility outfielder George Foster. Over the next 4 seasons, Foster will average 36 home runs, 117 RBI, and a .302 BA, helping the Reds to two World Championships.
The Reds’ Gary Nolan, making a comeback after shoulder problems sidelined him in 1973–74, stops the Braves, 6–1, on five hits. It is Nolan’s first win since October 1972.
Dave Cash banged out his sixth hit of the night to drive in Terry Harmon with one out in the 11th tonight, giving the Philadelphia Phillies a 4–3 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates and a sweep of their double‐header. The Phillies won the opener, 6–2.
At Shea, Woodie Fryman (3–0) fires a one-hitter to give the Expos a 3–0 win over the Mets. John Stearns has the lone hit, a double in the 5th. Fryman is in the middle of a scoreless inning streak that will reach 33.
Rick Monday’s bases‐loaded infield single with two out in the seventh inning scored two unearned runs tonight and helped the Chicago Cubs to a 7–3 victory over the St Louis Cardinals. Chicago added two insurance runs in the ninth on George Mitterwald’s bases‐loaded single.
The Boston Red Sox sent 11 batters to the plate in the first inning today, scored six runs on just four hits and defeated the Detroit Tigers, 12–2. Jim Rice’s bases‐loaded single was the big blow off Lerrin LaGrow, who lost his first game after three straight victories.
Mickey Rivers’s two-run single highlighted five consecutive California hits in a four‐run fifth tonight as the Angels defeated the Texas Rangers, 4–2. The Angels’ Nolan Ryan, with help from Dick Lange, snapped a six‐game Texas winning streak.
The Minnesota Twins defeated the Kansas City Royals, 14–5, today as Bert Blyleven pitched a six-hitter and Eric Soderholm and Steve Brye combined to drive in eight runs.
The Brewers win a sloppy one over the Yankees, 4–3. In their victory over the Yankees today, the two teams walked 16 batters, committed six errors and left 20 runners on base.
Manager Frank Robinson drove in the tying run with pinch‐hit single in the eighth inning and scored decisive run on Frank Duffy’s single as the Cleveland Indians defeated the Baltimore Orioles, 6–1 today.
Detroit Tigers 2, Boston Red Sox 12
Oakland Athletics 3, Chicago White Sox 4
Atlanta Braves 1, Cincinnati Reds 6
Baltimore Orioles 1, Cleveland Indians 6
San Diego Padres 3, Los Angeles Dodgers 1
New York Yankees 3, Milwaukee Brewers 4
Kansas City Royals 5, Minnesota Twins 14
Montreal Expos 3, New York Mets 0
Pittsburgh Pirates 2, Philadelphia Phillies 6
Pittsburgh Pirates 3, Philadelphia Phillies 4
Chicago Cubs 7, St. Louis Cardinals 3
California Angels 4, Texas Rangers 2
Born:
Christina Hendricks, American TV actress (Joan Holloway – “Mad Men”) in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Dulé Hill, American actor (“The West Wing”; “Psych”), and dancer, in Orange, New Jersey.
Eva Santolaria, Spanish actress (“7 Vidas”), in Barcelona, Spain.
Gabe Molina, MLB pitcher (Baltimore Orioles, Atlanta Braves, St. Louis Cardinals), in Denver, Colorado.
Died:
Samuel Gonard, 78, Swiss lawyer and chairman (International Red Cross).
Dmitri Bystrolyotov, 74, former Soviet master spy.
History Diaries 