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News stories from Saturday May 18, 1974
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- Patricia Hearst was not among the five persons killed during Friday evening's gun battle with the police in Los Angeles, according to the county coroner. He identified the five victims as Donald DeFreeze, the black leader of the so-called Symbionese Liberation Army who styled himself General Field Marshal Cinque; Nancy Ling Perry and Patricia Soltysik, two of the S.L.A.'s white women leaders; and William Wolf, a white S.L.A. member. A fifth body, that of a young white woman, was later identified as Angela Atwood. [New York Times]
- Reacting to complaints from the Northern Cheyenne Indians, the Interior Department has reportedly decided to cancel valuable strip-mine coal leases covering some 260,000 acres of the tribe's vast Montana reservation. The reported move, which is seen as a blow to the Nixon administration's plans for rapid coal development in the Plains States, followed tribal complaints that the Bureau of Indian Affairs had cheated the Indians in negotiating the leases -- potentially worth billions of dollars -- with four major energy corporations and two groups of land speculators in Montana. [New York Times]
- "I am 21 years old, very conservative but very radical. I am supporting you and praying for you." Those words from a letter to President Nixon from a college student (name deleted by the White House) typify the attitudes of a network of grassroots activists across the country who are working to prevent the resignation or impeachment of the President. The letter, expressing a plaintive hope that "silent voices" might somehow "start a chain reaction across the country," echoed a common theme of the loosely organized movement: a sense of alienation and of outrage. [New York Times]
- India became the sixth nation to explode a nuclear device when she conducted a successful underground test that put her in the exclusive nuclear ranks with the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France and China. Few details were supplied by the government, but Dr. H.N. Setha, chairman of India's Atomic Energy Commission, said the device had been in the range of 10 to 15 kilotons, or somewhat smaller than the low-yield bomb dropped by the United States on Nagasaki in 1945. The government announcement called it a "peaceful nuclear explosion experiment," stressed peaceful uses of the nuclear program such as mining and earth moving, and said India had "no intention of producing nuclear weapons." [New York Times]
- Secretary of State Kissinger scored an apparent breakthrough in his efforts to bring about an Israeli-Syrian troop separation agreement, and announced that he would extend his Middle East mission for several days to wrap up the negotiations. As his party returned to Israel from Syria, a senior American official summed up the optimism: "I think now we can get it." [New York Times]
- A day after terrorist bombs killed more than 25 people at the height of the Dublin evening rush hour, the Irish government decided to recall the 340 Irish troops stationed in the Sinai as part of the United Nations peace-keeping force, and to use them to intensify security along the border with Northern Ireland. In addition, officials pledged a series of tighter security measures, including new checkpoints at the border, and possibly on the outskirts of Dublin.
The bombs that rocked Dublin Friday afternoon have shattered, perhaps permanently, the mental barriers erected by the southern Irish to keep the problems of Ulster out of their minds. The blasts, widely believed to have been the work of Protestant extremists, may change this complex attitude of long-standing indifference. [New York Times]
- The Defense Department has acknowledged to Congress that the Navy and Air Force participated in extensive rain-making operations in Southeast Asia in an attempt to slow the movement of troops and supplies through the Ho Chi Minh trail network from 1967 to 1972. Testimony just made public showed a considerable disagreement within the Pentagon about the military value of the top-secret effort, and it was also disclosed that former Defense Secretary Melvin Laird had apologized to Congress for his categorical denial that such rain-making efforts had been going on. [New York Times]
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