News stories from Sunday August 4, 1974
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- President Nixon summoned his principal defense lawyer, James St. Clair, other aides and speechwriters to Camp David, indicating that some new move was contemplated in the congressional impeachment drive. [New York Times]
- Secretary of the Treasury William Simon suggested that the Nixon administration would continue its present economic policy of budget and monetary restraint even if unemployment level, now at 5.3 percent, went above 6 percent -- the rate that in the past has been considered recessionary. Mr. Simon and Kenneth Rush, the President's counselor for economic policy, in separate television appearances, each rejected forecasts that the rate would go over 6 percent in the coming months. [New York Times]
- Herbert Kalmbach, President Nixon's former personal lawyer, has told the House Judiciary Committee that John Ehrlichman was trying to leak a story that the Democratic party chairman, Lawrence O'Brien, was in trouble with the Internal Revenue Service weeks after Mr. Ehrlichman knew that the I.R.S. had found no basis for auditing Mr. O'Brien's tax returns. Mr. Kalmbach said that Mr. Ehrlichman had told him that "I am being pressured" to get the story defaming Mr. O'Brien. [New York Times]
- A nationwide strike by the Bell Telephone System's employees was averted tonight as union and management negotiators tentatively agreed on terms of a new three-year contract about two hours before the midnight strike deadline. [New York Times]
- Steve Cirillo, 31 years old, believed to be a member of the Joey Gallo Mafia group, was shot and killed while attending a fundraising "Las Vegas Nite" at the synagogue of the Congregation B'nai Israel at Ocean and Jerome Avenues in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. His death may have been connected with a struggle for control of the Gallo group. Since July 1, one other member of the group has been killed and three others have been wounded. [New York Times]
- At the end of a two-day conference in Lisbon, Secretary General Waldheim announced that Portugal was ready to recognize the territory of Portuguese Guinea as an independent state and to support its entry into the United Nations. Thus ended Portugal's long estrangement from the United Nations. Mozambique and Angola are expected to follow Portuguese Guinea into independence from Portugal and representation in the United Nations. [New York Times]
- Turkish troops arrested the able-bodied men and expelled the women and children from the last Greek Cypriote havens in the Turkish-occupied area of northern Cyprus. Before leaving for Athens to consult with the Greek government, Glafkos Clerides, President of the Greek Cypriote administration, sent a message to Secretary General Waldheim and members of the United Nations Security Council complaining that 20,000 Greek Cypriotes had been expelled from the Turkish sector between Nicosia, the capital, and Kyrenia, the coastal city 12 miles to the north. [New York Times]
- Greek leaders conferred with the President of Cyprus, Glafkos Clerides, and it was assumed that they were planning the strategy for the second round of Geneva talks on Cyprus, which begin Thursday. Some Greek soldiers were reported recalled from leave when an unidentified Turkish ship was sighted off the Aegean island of Chios. The Turks have previously made geological surveys in the area and have threatened to do more, to back their claims on oil exploration rights in the Aegean Sea. [New York Times]