News stories from Sunday August 18, 1974
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- President Ford told reporters on his way to the golf course that he will choose a Vice President on Tuesday. He said that he would have "good advisers" on the golf course on that decision. This was taken as a clue by politicians and others. One of Mr. Ford's golfing partners was Melvin Laird, an old friend, who has been supporting Nelson Rockefeller. [New York Times]
- President. Ford's intimate friends include several of Washington's most powerful corporate lobbyists, some of whom are helping to shape his administration. One of his friends is Rodney Markley, the Ford Motor Company's chief Washington lobbyist. Among others are Bryce Harlow, Procter & Gamble's chief Washington representative, and William Whyte, vice president of the United States Steel Corporation and its top man in Washington. Another friend is William Seidman, an accounting firm executive who is assisting in the President's economic planning. [New York Times]
- American Indians, encouraged by a promise of self-government made in a 1970 policy statement on Indians by former President Nixon, are stepping up demands that their reservations be given commonwealth status, but they expect the United States to continue to pay for most of the maintenance costs. [New York Times]
- Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger warned Turkey against using her military superiority to drive the new Greek government "into a corner." In the toughest diplomatic language used thus far by Washington in the Cyprus crisis, he said that Turkey had gone beyond what any of her friends or sympathizers were prepared to accept in the military advance in Cyprus. His comments also seemed intended to undercut widespread charges that the United States was "tilting" toward Turkey. [New York Times]
- The Greek Cypriote government estimates that the Turkish army now controls 40 percent of Cyprus, and that 200,000 Greek Cypriotes have been driven from their homes by the war. Despite the cease-fire declared last Friday evening, fighting has continued well south of the line that was assumed would mark the Turkish area. [New York Times]
- The Soviet Communist party newspaper Pravda printed new denunciations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and accused it of "open aggression" in Cyprus. It was the bluntest charge yet in a Soviet press campaign to depict the war in Cyprus as a result of intervention by NATO. [New York Times]
- The Israeli police arrested Archbishop Hilarion Capucci, head of the Greek Catholic Church in Jerusalem, and charged him with smuggling weapons and explosives to Palestinian guerrillas operating on the occupied West Bank. The Archbishop, who reportedly had been under police surveillance since last year, was said to be the undercover liaison between Al Fatah, the largest of the Palestinian guerrilla organizations, and West Bank guerrilla cells. [New York Times]