The United States, according to senior Defense Department officials, has begun a review of its military position in the world after the defeat of South Vietnam’s government forces. The officials emphasized that the review would deal more with the deployment of military units that support the nation’s treaty commitments than with the political commitments themselves. They said that they did not expect any change in the nation’s treaty commitments in the western Pacific and Europe but that they did expect lively discussion on questions such as how much strategic air power should be maintained in southern Asia and whether the United States should concentrate more men, ships and aircraft in the troubled Mediterranean. “This is a time, once again, for America to choose,” Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger said in an interview recently. “We will have to decide whether, even with our disappointments of the Vietnam war, we are going to maintain our position in the world and provide the necessary strength for a worldwide military equilibrium.”
Daniel P. Moynihan warned yesterday that the ability of third world nations to retain their independence and nonCommunist character depended on a power balance between the United States and the Soviet Union. Mr. Moynihan, who is reported to have been chosen to be the next head of the United States delegation at the United Nations, said that “Americans have suffered an erosion of belief in the value of liberty, and the defense of democracy, along with a weariness with the international role.” These attitudes, Mr. Moynihan said, “could weaken the influence of the United States and could lead third world countries in the direction of the Soviet Union.”
The death toll in the siege of West Germany’s embassy in Stockholm last month rose to four with the death of one of the captured guerrillas. The federal attorney’s office in Bonn said Siegfried Hausner, 23, died in the hospital of Stuttgart’s top security Stammheim Prison. He had suffered burns and head injuries in the siege, during which guerrillas blew up the embassy after Bonn refused demands for the release of a group of anarchists. Four other terrorists were flown to Bonn from Stockholm and are awaiting trial. A sixth member of the group and two diplomats were killed in the siege.
Nearly a third of West Germany’s voters gavel Chancellor Helmut Schmidt’s coalition parties clear gains in two key state elections today, ending the losing trend of the last 15 months. The coalition of Social Democrats and Free Democrats in North Rhine‐Westphalia, the country’s largest state, kept its narrow majority in the legislature. In the smaller, border state of the Saar, the ruling Christian Democrats lost seats and ended up in a tie with the two other parties. The Social Democrats and Free Democrats there had campaigned for a state coalition modeled after the one in Bonn.
The miracle of reconstruction that made West Germany the strongest economic power in Europe following the devastation of World War II has long since become a commonplace. The 30th anniversary of the collapse of the Nazi Reich on May 9, 1945, is approaching. Have the Germans, who inflicted so much death and suffering and endured so much themselves, earned the right at long last no longer to be condemned for their history? The West Germans who replied to that question feel able now to talk to Americans in condescending, even morally superior tones, at the end of a painful period in United States history.
The nine-year-old daughter of a Soviet diplomat said that she had been abducted and tortured Saturday night by three men and an armed, Russian-speaking woman, all wearing ski masks, at the new Soviet diplomatic residence in Riverdale (New York). The police said that they had not received any corroboration of the incident, which was originally reported to them by a Soviet official. Three men and a woman wearing ski masks invaded the Soviet residence compound in New York City. threatened a group of children with a gun, then dragged the 9-year-old girl off and beat her, police disclosed. They said the incident occurred Saturday evening at the 20-story residence tower in the Riverdale section of the Bronx but was not reported by Soviet officials until hours later.
The Soviet Union’s recently accelerated efforts toward resumption of the Geneva conference on the Middle East appeared to falter today, after three weeks of intermittent consultations here between Kremlin leaders and Arab officials. The indication that the Kremlin had not achieved substantial, if any, progress came in a communiqué issued early today at the end of talks between Soviet leaders and Yasser Arafat, the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The communiqué failed to include the usual Soviet call for the earliest possible resumption of the Geneva conference. It also failed to include any indication that progress had been made on the key issue of Palestinian representation at a reconvened Geneva conference. Nor was there any indication that the Kremlin had decided to recognize the P.L.O. as the sole representative of the Palestinian people, a recognition that Mr. Arafat has already won for his organization from the Arab nations.
Libyan leaders attempted in late 1969 or early 1970 to buy a nuclear bomb from Peking for use in the war against Israel, according to extracts from a book by Mohammed Heikal, one of Egypt’s leading journalists. Heikal, formerly editor of the Cairo newspaper Al Ahram, said the Chinese turned down the request but offered research assistance so Libya could eventually build its own nuclear weapons.
The Saigon radio said today that the Military Management Committee administering the city had freed former President Dương Văn Minh of South Vietnam, who surrendered the country to the Revolutionary Government, and that 18 other high officials of the former South Vietnamese government had also been released. Among the officials were former Vice President Nguyễn Văn Huyên and former Premier Vũ Văn Mẫu, the broadcasts said. The decision to release them reportedly was made by the 11-member North Vietnamese military committee.
Hồng Vân Hoàng was one of South Vietnam’s elite. He had a thriving business, a young wife, 12 children, two large houses, four cars and seven servants. He is now a refugee, impoverished, dazed and bewildered. He was one of 343 South Vietnamese who arrived at Florida’s Eglin Air Force Base at Valparaiso in the northwest part of the state. Most of the refugees, like Mr. Hồng, were well-dressed and well-educated. They were, a United States diplomat said, an “accidentally representative cross section of the Vietnamese middle class, who, because of their links to us, had reason to run.”
Another refugee, Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, former Premier and Vice President of South Vietnam, said the United States is not to blame for his country’s fall. “Concerning America, and the American people, in the last 10 years you did a lot for us — too much, in my opinion,” Mr. Kỳ said when he arrived in Guam. “But unfortunately,” he said, “we were not brave enough to overthrow Mr. Thiệu.”
American military equipment estimated to be worth $100-million is strewn like a gigantic junkpile along the Huế estuary where Saigon’s defeated armored and infantry forces tried to escape by sea in late March.
There were 15 tons of gold in the vaults of the Central Bank when Saigon surrendered, according to an American official aboard the Blue Ridge, the command ship of the U.S. flotilla bringing refugees out of South Vietnam. It was, he said, part of the gold left behind by the French when Vietnam was granted independence in the 1950s. North Vietnam is expected to be recognized as the legal owner of the bank store and may get about $6 million in gold that was deposited in Switzerland by South Vietnam as part of international monetary agreements, the official theorized.
Time magazine reported that 80 high-ranking officers of the defeated Cambodian army had been executed by the new Khmer Rouge government. Time said it based the report on information in a private conversation between President Ford and a group of Republican leaders. In the conversation, Mr. Ford reportedly said: “They killed the wives, too. They said the wives were just the same as the husbands.” Newsweek magazine earlier had reported a massive bloodbath under way in Cambodia.
Weeks after taking control of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge began a fight against the new Communist regime in Vietnam, seizing control of South Vietnam’s Phú Quốc Island and making the first attacks in what would lead to the Cambodian–Vietnamese War.
Senator Henry M. Jackson (D-Washington), a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, said he would support full U.S. military intervention to prevent aggression against South Korea. Jackson said in an interview that he would back the use of American troops and bombers and “whatever we would need to do to make it clear that we are going to defend that country.”
The United Nations has warned foreign companies to quit taking natural resources out of South-West Africa without U.N. authorization. The decree was made available to newsmen by delegates to the 34-nation Commonwealth conference in Kingston, Jamaica. It was signed by Sean MacBride, the U.N. commissioner for South-West Africa — also called Namibia — and winner of last year’s Nobel Peace Prize. The order was reportedly sent to U.S., British, Canadian and South African companies with interests in the African territory.
The Portuguese air force began flying supplies of perishable food from provincial centers to the Angolan capital of Luanda, where an estimated 500 to 1,000 people have died in five days of fighting involving rival African liberation movements sharing power in the transitional government which is ruling Angola prior to full independence from Portugal.
The energy crisis is worse today than it was before the 1973 Arab embargo, and a new cutoff of foreign oil might bring gasoline rationing within 90 days, said Frank G. Zarb, federal energy administrator. “Everything is going the wrong way” in America’s energy equation, he said in an interview in the current issue of US News & World Report. “Production in this country is declining and at the same time demand is rising. Imports make up the difference,” he said. “The crisis, when you look at the facts, is worse than before the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74. We are now vulnerable to the extent that 38% of our supply comes from abroad and this soon will rise to 40%.”
Democratic Party Chairman Robert S. Strauss said there was “a very good chance” the party’s nominating convention would deadlock over the choice of a presidential candidate. leaving men like Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Governor George C. Wallace of Alabama to act as brokers. But Strauss insisted Kennedy would not accept the nomination himself. Speaking on ABC’s Issues and Answers, Strauss said, “I take at full face value Sen. Kennedy’s statement that he has no intention whatsoever of seeking or accepting the nomination.”
American companies doing business abroad are spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year for agents’ fees, commissions and outright payoffs to foreign officials. The practice is defended by many businessmen as the only way they can compete effectively abroad. Some such payments are officially sanctioned by the United States government. Bribes are getting increased scrutiny in the United States. The Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on multinational corporations has begun an investigation involving several large corporations.
The government was charged by the General Accounting Office with being so lax in enforcing its own orders requiring private concerns doing business with the government to follow nondiscriminatory employment practices that the government has no list of all the contractors subject to the requirement. The G.A.O., auditor and overseer of the performance of the executive branch for Congress, said this could lead government contractors to believe “that the compliance agencies do not intend to enforce” the regulations against discrimination.
Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wisconsin) said congressional auditors had turned up a $225 million cost overrun by Rockwell International on research for the B-1 bomber. The General Accounting Office, according to Aspin, found also that General Electric-which is providing the B-1’s engines-might have a cost overrun of up to $100 million. The $225 million overrun for research, Aspin said, was in addition to the $1.35 billion contract originally awarded to Rockwell to develop five B-1 bombers for the Air Force.
Exxon Corp., the world’s largest oil company, has ended General Motors Corp.’s 40-year ranking at the top of Fortune magazine’s top 500 companies. In its latest edition, Fortune also said that oil companies had captured five of the top seven slots in its annual ranking of industrial corporations. Fortune has been publishing the annual ranking by sales since 1955, but it said a study showed General Motors had led the field in sales since 1935. Exxon, with $42.1 billion in sales in 1974, led second-place GM, with sales of $31.5 billion. Ford Motor Co. held on to third, Texaco moved to fourth and Mobil Oil, Standard Oil of California and Gulf Oil followed in that order.
The Federal Energy Administration has granted “exceptional relief” from its regulations to an oil company headed by a brother of New York Governor Hugh L. Carey, a top FEA official confirmed. FEA Dep. Administrator John A. Hill said the exemption, worth an estimated $5 million a month, was granted to New England Petroleum Co., whose president is Edward Carey, because the firm had shown that FEA rules put it at a competitive disadvantage in the East. Coast residual oil market. Hill defended the decision as a “fair ruling” and added: “It’s one of those things you have to do even though you know a lot of people are going to be unhappy about it.”
An armed inmate at the city jail of Norfolk, Virginia, surrendered to policemen and released three guards he had been holding hostage at the facility, police said. No injuries were reported. Police said Donnie Jackson of Norfolk had pulled a pistol on three guards who were escorting him from the maximum security cells for a shower. Jackson demanded his freedom and $1 million ransom, police said, but gave up after a detective convinced him the cause was hopeless.
Almost everyone who has taken notice has tried to help make life comfortable for two families of Vietnamese refugees in New Hartford, Connecticut. The refugees‐two brothers, their wives and eight children ‐are in the vanguard of the refugees from the Vietnam war who might eventually settle in the United States. While some are said to be running into resentment in other parts of the country, almost no resentment has been felt in this attractive old town of 4.000 people, in the wooded hills of northwestern Connecticut, where dozens are already helping the newcomers.
A key witness in the extortion and conspiracy trial of former Senator Edward J. Gurney of Florida has testified that the Federal Bureau of Investigation began investigating his shakedown of home builders in Florida within two or three months after it began in 1971. But nothing came of the investigation after Attorney General John N. Mitchell, said he’d “take care of it,” the witness, Larry E. Wiliams, testified this week. The Government has charged that from February, 1971, until some time in 1973 or 1974, Mr. Williams, who at that time was an aide to Mr. Gurney, collected hundreds of thousands of dollars from home builders seeking Federal Housing Administration grants or mortgage insurance in Florida.
At least 40 to 50 percent of veterans who received less than honorable discharges over the last 15 years and some who received them earlier could get their discharges upgraded if they had strong legal representation, a new book by the American Civil Liberties Union contends.
An environmentalist organization, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said in Washington, D.C., that it intends to file a suit to force the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission to act on the question of whether aerosol sprays are destroying the atmosphere’s protective layer of ozone. “We are taking this urgent step,” an NRDC spokesman said, “in the interest of public health. The Consumer Product Safety Commission has the power to ban these products and we believe it should take this important first step.” Scientists contend that aerosol sprays using fluorocarbon gases as propellants eat away the ozone which protects the earth’s surface from some of the sun’s harmful radiations.
Ed Bullins’s stage drama “The Taking of Miss Janie” opens in NYC.
Italian film “Seven Beauties” directed by Lina Wertmüller, starring Giancarlo Giannini, and Shirley Stoler released – first film directed by a women to be nominated for an Academy Award.
Major League Baseball:
The one millionth run in Major League Baseball history was scored by Bob Watson of the Houston Astros, during a game against the Giants in San Francisco. By the end of the 1973 season, sportscaster Mark Sackler calculated that 981,823 runs had been scored since the National League began play in 1876 and the American League in 1901; and before the start of the 1975 season the mark was 997,869. When the count reached 999,500 MLB set up a center in New York City to record each additional run at the moment that the batter finished rounding the bases. The Giants beat the Astros 8–6 in the first game of a doubleheader at Candlestick. In the 2nd inning, Houston’s Bob Watson scores what is calculated as Major League baseball’s one-millionth run of all time (the Philadelphia Nationals Wes Fisler scored the first run on April 22, 1876) as Milt May hits John Montefusco’s first pitch to drive him home. The Reds Davey Concepcion homers about the same moment and races around the bases, but Watson, on second base, scores seconds ahead as the Reds beat Atlanta, 3–2. On third base in the Twins game, Rod Carew also tried for the millionth run on a short fly to left. Not only is he thrown out, but he injures his leg. A record is also set in game 2 as the Astros walk over the Giants, 12–8. Each team walks 13 times and the 26 sets the National League mark for two teams. Starters J.R. Richard (6 IP, 11 BB) and John D’Acquisto (3.2 IP, 9 BB) contribute the most.
Concepcion, although denied the honor of scoring the millionth run, made up for it with a banner day at bat to lead the Reds to their second straight triumph. Besides the homer (his second of the year), he singled and scored Cincinnati’s first run, then broke up a 2–2 tie with a run‐producing double in the seventh inning.
The Cubs pushed their lead in the Eastern Division to four games with their eighth triumph in 10 games, downing the Cardinals, 8–6. With Reggie Smith belting his third and fourth home runs‐from opposite sides of the plate‐the Cards built a 4–2 lead. But the Cubs exploded for five runs in the seventh inning to win.
The Padres beat the Dodgers, 10–7. Gene Locklear opened San Diego’s seventh inning with his first homer of the season, starting a seven‐run rally that he capped with a two‐run double. That rally wiped out a 6–3 Dodger lead and cut Los Angeles’ lead over Cincinnati In the Western Division to two games.
The Philadelphia Phillies traded Willie Montanez, a first baseman, to the San Francisco Giants today for Garry Maddox, an outfielder.
At Busch Stadium, Reggie Smith is 5–for-5, with 2 homers, and 5 RBIs, but the Cardinals all little else as they lose to the Cubs, 8–6.
Mets outfielder Cleon Jones is arrested in St. Petersburg, Florida, after the police find him naked in a van with a teenage girl who is holding a stash of narcotics. Jones tells the cops that he is “C. Joseph Jones, a laborer.”
A double by Frank Duffy and a single by George Hendrick in the 11th inning enabled the Indians to win 4–3 and split a doubleheader after Baltimore ended a six‐game losing streak in the opener, beating the Tribe, 11–1.
Harmon Killebrew returns to the Met wearing the visitors Royals uniform. His #3 is retired before the game, and the Killer then brings the crowd to its feet when he unloads a homer in his first at bat. Minnesota wins 6–3, behind Jim Hughes.
The Milwaukee Brewers completed a three-game sweep of the Yankees today by amassing 16 hits for an 11-4 victory. So the New Yorkers left for Baltimore wondering what went wrong after they finally had begun resembling the pennant contender they were supposed to be.
The Rangers edged the Angels, 1–0. Jeff Burroughs, last season’s most valuable player, slammed his fifth home run just inside the right‐field foul pole in the fourth inning, and three Texas pitchers protected the slim lead the rest of the way.
The White Sox squeaked past the A’s, 3–2, as Jim Kaat picked up his fourth victory this season and his 11th in a row since August 31, although he needed relief help from Terry Forster. Jorge Orta led the White Sox with a double and two singles. Reggie Jackson hit his fourth homer of the year for Oakland.
Oakland Athletics 2, Chicago White Sox 5
Atlanta Braves 2, Cincinnati Reds 3
Baltimore Orioles 11, Cleveland Indians 1
Baltimore Orioles 3, Cleveland Indians 4
San Diego Padres 10, Los Angeles Dodgers 7
New York Yankees 4, Milwaukee Brewers 11
Kansas City Royals 3, Minnesota Twins 6
Houston Astros 6, San Francisco Giants 8
Houston Astros 12, San Francisco Giants 8
Chicago Cubs 8, St. Louis Cardinals 6
California Angels 0, Texas Rangers 1
Born:
Laci Peterson, American murder victim, in Modesto, California (d. 2002).
Died:
Moe Howard, 77, leader and last survivor of The Three Stooges. Born Moses Horwitz, he outlived his brothers Curly Howard (Jerome Horwitz) and Shemp Howard (Samuel Horwitz). The other part of the famous team of Moe, Larry and Curly— Larry Fine (Louis Feinberg) — had died three months earlier.
History Diaries 