One month after the death of Mao Zedong, the new Communist leadership placed “the Gang of Four” — Mao’s widow Jiang Qing, Communist Party Deputy Chairman Wang Hongwen, Deputy Prime Minister Zhang Chunqiao, and the party’s chief propaganda leader, Yao Wenyuan — under arrest, effectively bringing an end to the Cultural Revolution that had started ten years earlier in the People’s Republic of China. After two weeks without comment on rumors, the Chinese government confirmed the arrest of the group in the newspaper Jenmin Jih Pao. Confirmation of the arrest was not disclosed until the next day when the newspapers first quoted Chairman Hua Guofeng first referred to them as the Gang of Four. The cause of arrest was described in posters placed on walls in Beijing, which related that a gunman had shot at a convoy of cars earlier in the day in an attempt to assassinate Communist Party Chairman Hua Guofeng, and the gunman confessed that he had been hired by the widow of Chairman Mao.
The radicals hoped that the key military leaders Wang Dongxing and Chen Xilian would support them, but instead, Hua won the Army over to his side. On 6 October 1976, Hua had the four leading radicals and a number of their lesser associates arrested. Han Suyin gave a detailed account of their overthrow:
“An emergency session of the Politburo was to take place in the Great Hall of the People that evening. Their presence was required. Since Wang Dongxing had been their ally, they did not suspect him… As they passed through the swinging doors into the entrance lobby, they were apprehended and led off in handcuffs. A special 8341 unit then went to Madam Mao’s residence at No. 17 Fisherman’s Terrace and arrested her. That night Mao Yuanxin was arrested in Manchuria, and the propagandists of the Gang of Four in Peking University and in newspaper offices were taken into custody. All was done with quiet and efficiency. In Shanghai, the Gang’s supporters received a message to come to Beijing “for a meeting”. They came and were arrested. Thus, without shedding a drop of blood, the plans of the Gang of Four to wield supreme power were ended.”
Beginning on 21 October, nationwide denunciations of the Gang began, which culminated in the December release of files related to the Gang’s alleged crimes to the public. The party issued a denunciation of the Gang of Four as “left in form, right in essence”. Government media blamed the Gang of Four and Lin Biao for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. According to both civilian and government accounts, celebrations were prominent and nationwide, not limited to the streets of Beijing and other major cities. During the nationwide “Movement of Exposition, Criticism and Uncovering (揭批查运动)” millions of formerly “rebel faction” red guards were publicly criticized as they were thought to be related to the Gang of Four. For many Chinese, the Gang, and its head Jiang Qing in particular, were a living symbol of everything that had gone wrong during the Cultural Revolution and their downfall was taken as a sign that China was on the brink of a new era.
In San Francisco, during his second televised debate with Jimmy Carter, U.S. President Gerald Ford made a key error on national television when he declared that “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.” At the time, the nations between West Germany and the Soviet Union were occupied by Soviet troops and under control of Communist regimes that followed the guidance of the U.S.S.R.’s Communist Party. His statement, which seemed to ignore the long‐standing Soviet control of most countries in Eastern Europe, specifically said that Yugoslavia, Rumania and Poland were “independent” and “autonomous.” Yugoslavia is generally regarded as free of Soviet domination, while Rumania has been independent to a lesser extent. But Poland has been careful not to challenge any Soviet foreign policy. His contention that there was no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe brought an instant response by Mr. Carter: “I would like to see Mr. Ford convince the Polish‐Americans and the Czech‐Americans and the Hungarian-Americans in this country that those countries don’t live under the domination and supervision of the Soviet Union behind the Iron Curtain.”
[Ed: Ford’s gaffe, or at least clumsily worded line, looms large in the 1976 election. Carter’s main weakness coming in was clearly foreign policy — and indeed, he would make a hash of things over the next four years. The debacle in Iran alone is enough to paint the Carter Administration as hopelessly incompetent in foreign affairs, and it set the stage for five decades of terrorist mayhem in the Middle East. But after tonight, Ford looked out of touch himself; and rather than being able to attack Carter’s weakness, now had to play defense.]
The Soviet MiG-25 that was flown to Japan a month ago by a defecting pilot was initially hailed In Pentagon circles as an intelligence windfall. After weeks of analysis, Defense Department experts have concluded that the craft lags behind American fighter planes in advanced technology and is no match for them in speed or maneuverability.
Former Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath appeared before 5.000 party delegates in Brighton, England, and declared that Britain must face hardships to restore foreign confidence in its currency. He said prime consideration must be given to maintaining the external value of the pound. And he said union leaders deserved credit for restraining their wages during the past 18 months.
Diplomatic efforts are building up, under a public cover of traditional anti-Israel speeches, to head off another inflammatory denunciation of Israel by this year’s General Assembly. Syria’s representative called on the Assembly today to “reconsider Israel’s membership.” A similar campaign for Israel’s expulsion failed last year. The Foreign Minister of Iraq, Saadoon Hammadi, delivered an even more sweeping denunciation yesterday. Following an old practice that most Arab spokesmen have now abandoned, the Iraqi diplomat never even uttered the word “Israel,” speaking only of the “Zionist entity.”
A funeral service for desecrated Jewish Torah scrolls and holy books was held in this tense Moslem Arab city today by about 3,000 religious Jews who interred the artifacts under the protection of hundreds of Israeli soldiers. The Arab residents were nowhere to be seen. They were sequestered in their homes under a military curfew now in its fourth day in this Israeli‐occupied city of 60,000. The curfew was imposed after Arab outbreaks and after acts of religious vandalism by Arabs and Jews at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, a Herodian shrine sacred to both Muslims and Jews. The incidents have caused grave concern here, Special sessions of Parliament and of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s Cabinet were called today to discuss the matter. As prescribed by Jewish ritual, the defiled scrolls and books were given a regular funeral service, including a recitation of Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead. The service, attended by a number of leading Israelis, including Defense Minister Shimon Peres, began on the steps of the Tomb of the Patriarchs and ended in a dusty old Jewish cemetery atop a hill overlooking the deserted streets of Hebron. Busloads of religious Jews arrived to mourn under the stares of the Israeli military, who kept the Arab residents in their homes until the Jews left about two hours later.
Lebanese leftist forces tightened their grip on their remaining mountain strongholds, slapping a state of virtual military law on an area directly threatened by the Syrian army and rightist forces. The tough measures included a full mobilization, a crackdown on fifth columnists, restriction of civilian movements on the southern side of the battle front and the threat of on-the-spot court-martial for traitors.
There were indications today that Syria, while celebrating the third anniversary of the 1973 war against Israel, might be preparing for new action against Palestinian and Muslim leftist forces in Lebanon. Preparations were apparently under way in parts of Lebanon occupied by Syrian forces, now estimated at 20,000 men and at least 500 tanks. Al Baath, the newspaper of the ruling party, said today in a front‐page article that Syrian positions in “southern Lebanon” had been inspected by Air Vice Marshal Naji Jamil, Deputy Defense Minster. The last time the press publicized nich an inspection was two weeks ago, just before the Syrian drive into the mountain area between Damascus and Beirut.
President Valery Giscard d’Estaing and the Shah of Iran signed a nuclear cooperation agreement in Tehran under which France will build two nuclear reactors in Iran. Each 900 megawatt plant near the Persian Gulf port of Abadan will cost $1.2 billion. The contract also provides for a nuclear research center at Isfahan, south of Tehran, and the training of Iranian scientists and technicians.
The Indian Express English language newspaper, one of India’s last independent voices, won a court order freeing its presses from a government-ordered padlocking. The locks were removed within an hour after a two-judge panel upheld the newspaper group’s contention that the punishment for nonpayment of property taxes was improper.
An effort by international airlines to resume flights over Indochina, suspended since the end of the war there last year has been held up by a demand by Vietnam for large fees for the right to enter its airspace.
In Thailand, student protesters were killed by right-wing paramilitary troops and government forces at Thammasat University in Bangkok, while protesting the return of the nation’s former dictator, General Thanom Kittikachorn. The massacre led to the return of the military government.
Thailand’s democratic government fell in a coup by the military. The officers seized power hours after university students and policemen fought bloody battles in which 30 persons were reported killed and hundreds wounded. More than 1,700 students were arrested. In a national broadcast, the Defense Minister announced that the 1974 Constitution had been abolished, a curfew would be enforced and all newspapers and periodicals were banned.
All 73 people on Cubana de Aviación Flight 455 were killed when a bomb, placed by anti-Fidel Castro terrorists, exploded after the plane took off from Bridgetown in Barbados. The DC-8 had been loaned to Cubana Airlines by Air Canada and was flying from Guyana to Cuba, with stops at Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and Jamaica. At 2:30 in the afternoon, the pilot reported to the control tower that there had been an explosion on the plane and that he was attempting to return to Bridgetown, but plunged into the Caribbean Sea 11 miles (18 km) short of the return. Two men were arrested in Trinidad the next day after it was found that they had boarded Flight 455 at Trinidad, then got off the flight without luggage and flew back the same day. Hernan Ricardo and Freddy Lugo were both employees of a company in Venezuela, “Commercial Industrial Investigations”, that was staffed by Cuban exiles. The Venezuelan government then arrested five of that company’s staff on October 15.
Honduras and El Salvador signed an agreement turning over to mediation a long-simmering border dispute. After signing the agreement, Foreign Ministers Roberto Palma Galvez of Honduras and Mauricio Borgonoyo of El Salvador shook hands in a symbolic gesture of peace. The primary function of the mediator, to be appointed by a panel of four Latin American jurists, will be to delineate the border between the two countries and settle the status of people living in the border area.
The rain-swollen Otun River burst a dike and swept through a poor section of Pereira in west-central Colombia. Police said the raging waters killed at least 70 people and injured 26, most of whom had been sleeping. Seventeen houses were buried by tons of mud, water and rock. More than 500 people were left homeless, officials said.
Patricia Ann Erb, 19, who disappeared in the middle of September after six armed men burst into her Buenos Aires home, arrived in Miami with her mother after spending more than two weeks in captivity in Argentina. The armed men had bound and blindfolded the family and questioned Miss Erb about possible leftist connections before taking her away. Her father, the Rev. John D. Erb, a Mennonite missionary, claimed the men were police agents. Miss Erb turned up last week at a police station close to her home and then was transferred to a prison where her family visited her.
Argentine security forces killed three leftist guerrilla suspects, raising to nine the number of terrorists reported killed in two days, police sources said. Two suspects were killed when troops and police raided a guerrilla hideout, and a third suspect was killed when he resisted arrest at a highway checkpoint, police sources said. Both incidents occurred in La Plata, 35 miles south of Buenos Aires.
Prime Minister Ian D. Smith took sharp issue today with a statement by Foreign Secretary Anthony Crosland of Britain yesterday to the effect that the principal points established by Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger for establishment of majority rule in Rhodesia were negotiable.
President Ford and Jimmy Carter clashed sharply over Mr. Ford’s stewardship of American foreign policy in their second television debate of the presidential election. The Democratic challenger asserted that the United States was neither strong nor respected, and Mr. Ford replied that it was strong, respected and “at peace.”
The President, at one point, said there was “no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.” He was seeking to rebut charges that his administration had given up too much for detente.
After the debate, aides of both presidential candidates congratulated them. Peter Bourne, who first suggested to Jimmy Carter that he run, remarked, “He was so good, so good.”
Senator Walter F. Mondale said today that he had “no doubt that in the last week this campaign has turned around” and that the next national polls would show a “substantial shift” in voter sentiment toward the Carter-Mondale ticket.
As October slowly slips by and the national polls show a tightening in the Presidential race, Senator Robert J. Dole of Kansas, the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee, has settled into a pattern of steadily escalating attacks on his Democratic rivals.
Ford Motor Company employees prepared to vote on a tentative three-year contract that was generally characterized as a “toe in the door” to a four-day work week. It was understood that the accord would, in effect, give Ford workers a four-day week five times in 1977-78 and seven times in 1978-79. Ratification that would end the strike may take up to 10 days.
A new security and classification system for secret congressional documents was proposed by the House Ethics Committee. The panel made the request to Congress in a final report on its inquiry of the disclosure to Daniel Schorr, a former CBS correspondent, of a report by the House Select Committee on Intelligence Operations. The ethics report was critical of the state of security on the now defunct House Select Committee on Intelligence Operations headed by Representative Otis G. Pike, Democrat of Suffolk County. “The rules and security regulations adopted by the select committee were adequate,” the report stated. “They were not, however, strictly adhered to or executed.” As an example, the report stated that “a number of classified and highly sensitive documents were discovered by this committee still in the possession of select committee members and staff personnel months after that committee ceased to exist.”
A Brooklyn grand jury found that multimillionaire Seward Prosser Mellon broke no laws in the abduction of his two young daughters in a custody battle. The two girls, Catherine Leigh, 7, and Elizabeth Constance, 4, were whisked away from an armed guard in Brooklyn last March and flown to their father in Pennsylvania. The children’s mother, Karen Boyd Mellon, 32, could not be reached for comment. Mellon had won custody of the children in a Pennsylvania court in 1974. Mrs. Mellon was awarded the children in a New York court last January. Brooklyn Dist. Atty. Eugene Gold said the children were “removed from this state by persons acting in behalf of their father,” which was not a criminal act.
The defense rested its case in the Susan E. Saxe armed bank robbery-murder trial in Boston without calling a single new witness. The judge told members of the jury he expected to turn the case over to them today. Defense attorney Nancy A. Gertner said Miss Saxe’s lawyers decided not to call additional witnesses in order to prevent the prosecution from entering new evidence. The defense based its case on only one witness, called last week, and the belief it can discredit the testimony of two admitted accomplices in the 1970 robbery. Prosecution witnesses have testified that Miss Saxe, a Brandeis University honors graduate and an antiwar activist, supplied a gun and helped plan and carry out the robbery.
Former acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray III appeared before a federal grand jury in Washington to testify about his knowledge of illegal burglaries committed by FBI agents when he headed the bureau in 1972 and 1973. Informed sources said they believed Gray was asked if he had authorized the use of burglaries against radical political groups or had learned about such break-ins after they were committed. In August Gray denied publicly that he had giv gather intelligence. Earlier one of his en permission for such break-ins to former subordinates had said Gray approved such tactics.
Chicago-area Roman Catholic churches have started removing church-made copies of popular songs used in religious services as a result of an agreement with a Los Angeles music publisher. The publisher had filed a $2 million suit charging that the Chicago Archdiocese was guilty of copyright infringements. The suit was filed on behalf of F.E.L., Ltd., of Los Angeles. The letters of the corporation’s name stand for Friends of the English Liturgy, founded by Dennis Fitzpatrick, 39, a former Chicagoan. The F.E.L. lawyer said that for a $100 a year payment a church could have unlimited copying privileges of the 1,150 musical selections F.E.L. handles.
Two Philadelphia men were shot to death and three persons were wounded during a 20-mile police chase led by a man who defied his companions’ pleas to stop, authorities said in Marlton, New Jersey. Driver Jose (Bunny) Sanchez, 25, and George Harper, 28, died in the front seat of a pickup truck that pulled a camper at speeds up to 100 mph and overturned while trying to crash through a roadblock of fire trucks and police cruisers. Two other men and two women, all Philadelphia residents and friends of the dead men, were in the camper but were not charged with a crime. Neither authorities nor Sanchez friends had any immediate explanation of what drove Sanchez berserk.
New York Senator James Buckley used a section of the Federal Communications Act to force WNET-TV and seven other public education TV stations in New York State to run political commercials for the first time. Officials of Channel 13 reluctantly agreed to broadcast a five-minute Buckley commercial Sunday evening for $1,000 under a threat to the station’s license.
Three years after airlines were first required to provide separate seating for non-smokers, the Civil Aeronautics Board is asking the public whether it should put a stop to all smoking on commercial planes. The C.A.B. cited a Government report that showed the public was much less tolerant of smokers than it was five years ago. Seventy percent of 12,000 people interviewed in 1975 for the report by the Health, Education and Welfare Department said that cigarette smoking should be allowed in fewer places. In connection with a proposal to stop smoking of pipes and cigars aboard planes, the agency is seeking comment through November 8 on the possibility of banning all smoking aboard commercial aircraft. A spokesman said today that the request to ban cigar and pipe smoking had been submitted by a Washington-based public interest group called Action on Smoking and Health.
Analysis of fresh milk samples at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York, and at a number of other laboratories has shown no substantial buildup of radioactivity from fallout attributed to a Chinese atomic weapons test on September 26. Health officials say that the levels are well below those considered to be a cause for concern. In Pennsylvania, which apparently received the heaviest dose of fallout, samplings from dairies near Philadelphia and Harrisburg contained only low or undetected levels of radiation, researchers found.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Washington gave the Public Service Co. of New Hampshire permission to begin construction of a nuclear power plant at Seabrook, New Hampshire, pending a hearing and review. The agency said it had stayed an order of its appeals board that construction of the plant be suspended. The commission has scheduled an October 26 hearing in the case. Some objections involve the possible impact the plant would have on the environment.
John Holmes, one of the late Howard R. Hughes’s longtime personal aides, failed to appear for a deposition scheduled for today in a lawyer’s office here. Superior Court Judge Neil Lake, presiding over the probate matter at stake in the beginning rounds of litigation over the Hughes estate, refused the initial requests for issuance of a bench warrant for Mr. Holmes. He agreed to issue an order directing Mr. Holmes to show cause why he should not be held in contempt.
From the easternmost promontory of Maine to the western tip of Guam, Americans are being urged to roll up their sleeves this month for the swine flu vaccine. But while this message of preventive medicine is being bull‐horned into one ear, there is a steady muttering of dissent going into the other. It is not clear if the dissent is widespread. It has certainly been well publicized. Is the program safe? Is it worthwhile? The interested citizen can get any answer he wants by shopping around a little. Yet every adult citizen will have to make a decision about getting the vaccine, even if the decision is a defaulting shrug. Furthermore, although most of its victims recover promptly, influenza is not a trivial illness.
A national debate is increasing over liquefied natural gas, paralleling the debate over nuclear safety. Around the country, officials and specialists are seeking workable guidelines to protect the public from conceivable disasters in docking LNG tankers from abroad and storing the gas. Large-scale imports of the highly condensed gas are believed inevitable in the view of many utility executives to avert what they foresee as disruptive shortages in energy supplies.
Cold air moving into the United States from the north brought snow to parts of Nebraska and Colorado. Rain fell from central Kansas to northern Oklahoma and showers and thunderstorms continued from the lower Great Lakes through Florida. Strong thunderstorms persisted along the Gulf Coast. Skies were mostly cloudy east of the Mississippi River, except for a strip of partly sunny skies along the Atlantic Ocean. Cloudy skies prevailed over the central Rockies and the Northern Plains states.
The stock market continued its downtrend in more active trading amid worries over the slowness in the economic recovery. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 7.07 points to 959.69. In the last eight sessions the index has lost 49.62 points. Credit prices rose steeply in active trading amid a growing expectation that the Federal Reserve would allow short-term interest rates to fall.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 959.69 (-7.06, -0.73%)
Born:
Freddy García, Venezuelan MLB pitcher (World Series champions-White Sox, 2005; American League ERA leader, 2001; All-Star, 2001, 2002; Seattle Mariners, Chicago White Sox, Philadelphia Phillies, Detroit Tigers, New York Yankees, Baltimore Orioles, Atlanta Braves); in Caracas, Venezuela.
Barbie Hsu, Taiwanese actress (“Meteor Garden”), Mando-pop singer, and television personality, born in Taipei City, Taiwan (d. 2025).
Died:
Gilbert Ryle, 76, English philosopher, author of the 1949 book “The Concept of Mind”, coined the phrase “ghost in the machine”.
