News stories from Sunday December 22, 1974
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- Senator William Proxmire said he would demand a full investigation by the Justice Department of alleged domestic spying operations of the Central Intelligence Agency and called for the resignation of Richard Helms, the American Ambassador to Iran, and the former director of Central Intelligence. The Wisconsin Democrat reacted to a report in the New York Times that Mr. Helms had established intelligence files on 10,000 American citizens. [New York Times]
- President Ford said that he had informed the Central Intelligence Agency that he would not tolerate its conducting any intelligence operation within the United States in violation of its charter, He said he had had some "partial information" about an extensive illegal intelligence operation by the C.I.A. under the Nixon administration. [New York Times]
- A $13 billion stimulus for the economy through a one-time 10 percent reduction in the federal income tax due in April has been proposed by Andrew Brimmer, a former member of the Federal Reserve Board, to President Ford and congressional leaders. Government officials have privately expressed interest in his idea. Big tax cuts were also proposed by the Congressional Joint Economic Committee and Walter Heller, who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. [New York Times]
- A 24-year-old woman was fatally wounded early today in the East New York section of Brooklyn when she was caught in the crossfire between a Housing Authority officer and a Correction Department officer who were exchanging shots in a dual case of mistaken identity. Both officers were wearing street clothes, and each one thought the other was a robber. The dead woman was identified as Maria Pellet of 749 Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive. [New York Times]
- A year after the proclamation of Project Independence, the project to make the country self-sufficient in energy, the projected contribution of nuclear energy in the next years has fallen drastically. This development is said by backers of nuclear power to foreshadow additional pressure on a hard-pressed coal industry, and a delay in converting electric power stations from costly imported petroleum. It has also increased the danger of power shortages in some areas, and, possibly of a delayed recovery from the recession. [New York Times]
- A 16-year-old American girl on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land was injured when a grenade struck the bus in which she was riding. In Beirut, a Palestinian guerrilla group took responsibility for the attack and warned Christmas visitors "not to go to occupied Palestine as we are not responsible if they get hurt during the escalation of the commando activity against the Israeli enemy." [New York Times]
- Efforts toward detente between the West and the Soviet Union have not brought the hoped-for kind of East-West accommodation that would open up Soviet society, bringing reform and liberalization in many walks of life. It is apparent that the Soviet leadership has found a formula for achieving the foreign policy and economic dividends of accommodation with the West without paying the price of relaxing controls. [New York Times]