News stories from Saturday May 2, 1970
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- Well placed administration sources said that the United States has carried out a large bombing raid in North Vietnam. The raid, on large supply dumps just above the demilitarized zone, involved more than 100 American planes. It was authorized Thursday by President Nixon after his nationwide television address, according to government sources. A spokesman for the administration said that the raid was meant as "protective reaction". [New York Times]
- Former President Lyndon Johnson said that some of the men who were holdovers from the Kennedy administration "did not share either the desire or the hopes that I had for the country or for the government." In a television interview, Mr. Johnson accused these unnamed officials of undermining his administration, but he said that he didn't know whether there was a clique and if it had a political objective in this undermining. [New York Times]
- The wildcat Teamsters strike in the Cleveland area has now lasted a month and the impact can be felt by tens of thousands of workers who have been laid off their jobs across the country and millions of dollars worth of production that has been halted as a result of the walkout. The impact appears to be spreading rapidly. An economist for the Greater Cleveland Growth Association predicted that if the strike lasts another 10 days, "it will practically cripple our manufacturing system." [New York Times]
- Volunteer crime-fighting groups made up of Negroes, whites or both seem to have sprung up spontaneously in neighborhoods across the country where crime was rampant, and the police were unable to control it. The groups were often formed in the face of indifference or open hostility from local police departments, but many have now won acceptance by the police. [New York Times]
- Diplomatic specialists feel that Soviet-Chinese border talks may have been imperiled by recent violent verbal exchanges between the two countries. Peking has denounced the Soviet party chief, Leonid Brezhnev, as a "new Hitler" and charged that the Soviet Union has become a "Nazi-type state." Moscow has replied with stinging attacks on Chairman Mao Tse-tung that accuse him of "cruelty, selfishness and lust for high position." [New York Times]
- The weekend rally supporting the Black Panthers was abruptly adjourned a day before it was scheduled to end. As the series of meetings drew to a close, thousands of youths on the New Haven (Conn.) Town Green called for a nationwide student strike against United States military operations in Asia and an end to the "systematic oppression" of political dissidents at home.
Columbia University president Andrew Cordier told a newly formed group of students and faculty members called the University Coalition that Columbia would support a one-day moratorium on classes Monday to protest President Nixon's decision to send American troops into Cambodia. Columbia's action came as other student groups across the nation started planning massive strikes.
[New York Times] - Premier Lon Nol of Cambodia told Senator Benigno Aquino Jr. of the Philippines that American military intervention in his country represented a positive response to Cambodia's appeal for help. The Premier avoided a specific expression of approval but indicated that he was happy with President Nixon's assurance that the United States supported Cambodia's neutrality. [New York Times]
- A joint task force of United States and South Vietnamese soldiers began a painstaking search of the Fishhook area of Cambodia amid increasing indications that enemy forces had already evacuated the area. The allies discovered battalion-sized bases and substantial stores of rice but found no sign of the elaborate underground headquarter facility that is believed to house the high Communist command. [New York Times]