News stories from Saturday August 2, 1975

Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:

President Ford and Leonid Brezhnev held their second meeting today in Helsinki without an apparent breakthrough in negotiations to curb the nuclear arms race. But they said "progress" had been made as they emerged, buoyant and smiling, from the Soviet Embassy. Mr. Ford later told newsmen accompanying him on his flight from Helsinki to Bucharest that his meetings with Mr. Brezhnev were "encouraging." But he said prospects for a meeting with Mr. Brezhnev later this year in Washington, where both sides had hoped to reach a final agreement on strategic nuclear weapons, were no more certain than before the meetings in Helsinki. [New York Times] A source close to the family of James Hoffa, former president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said that members of the family and the police have been told the names of two men whom Mr. Hoffa was supposed to have met, along with Anthony Giacalone, a reputed Mafia figure in Detroit, last Wednesday, the day he disappeared. The source said the men were identified by an employee of a friend of Mr. Hoffa's to whom Mr. Hoffa had spoken before he left to meet the two men. The employee, the source said, recalled the names when a psychologist hired by the Hoffa family put him under hypnosis. He had been unable to recall the names when the police questioned him earlier. [New York Times] The Federal Bureau of Investigation is said to have started in the early 1950s a secret list, known as the "Security Index," of American citizens "targeted for detention" in a national emergency under the Subversive Activities Control Act. This was made known by two sources claiming direct knowledge of the operation. They said that the list, which at one time contained about 15,000 names, included, in addition to suspected agents of hostile governments, virtually all known members of the American Communist party. The emergency detention provisions of the act under which the index was established were repealed by Congress in 1971. Nevertheless, one of the sources said that the index, now much smaller, was still being maintained by the F.B.I. in anticipation of the reinstatement of such authority. [New York Times] All categories of serious crime reported to the police, except murder, rose sharply in New York City in the first six months of the year. The rate of major crimes rose 13 percent in the first half of the year over the same period last year, according to the Police Department. The increase, nevertheless, was apparently slower than in most other large cities. [New York Times] The West German government's stalled reconciliation with the Communist states made a major advance when Poland agreed in Helsinki to let 120,000 to 125,000 ethnic Germans emigrate over the next four years. Edward Gierek, the Communist party leader in Poland, and Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of West Germany, also agreed that Bonn would give the Poles $500 million to satisfy outstanding pension claims and an additional $400 million trade credit at low interest rates. The pension claim agreement was regarded as atonement by West Germany for the Nazi occupation of Poland in World War II and a settlement of accounts with Poles who worked in Germany during the war. [New York Times] Chile's government-controlled press has listed more than 100 leftist extremists as having been killed fighting among themselves or against security forces in Argentina. There is substantial evidence, however, that they have been detained by the Chilean government. [New York Times]