News stories from Saturday December 13, 1975
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- Well-informed government sources say that a sharp dispute over covert operations by the Ford administration in Angola has bitterly divided the State Department and resulted in the resignation of the head of its Bureau of African Affairs. According to the sources, the bureau head, Nathaniel Davis, resigned in August as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs after Secretary of State Henry Kissinger rejected his recommendation that the United States seek a diplomatic solution in Angola and take no active role in the West African country's civil war. Mr. Davis has been appointed Ambassador to Switzerland. [New York Times]
- A Gallup poll has found that Senator Hubert Humphrey is the favorite among Democrats for the party's presidential nomination next year. In a poll conducted Nov. 21 to 24, Senator Humphrey led his party's 10 active candidates as the favorite of 30 percent of the Democratic rank and file. Gov. George Wallace of Alabama was second, with 20 percent. Gallup's last poll of Democratic favorites, in early October, rated Mr. Humphrey's party support at 23 percent, and Governor Wallace's at 19 percent. [New York Times]
- Critical remarks made by President Ford's campaign manager about Ronald Reagan angered many Southern Republican politicians. Howard Callaway, who is attending the Southern Republican Conference in Houston, accused Mr. Reagan at a news conference of ineptitude as Governor of California and of irresponsibility as a presidential candidate. Mr. Ford's supporters said privately that Mr. Callaway appeared to be panicking. Jesse Cooksey, party chairman of South Carolina, said Mr. Callaway's remarks had "irrevocably" damaged Mr. Ford.
From the moment the conference opened, the omens were bad for the President. There was a closed meeting between Vice President Rockefeller and the Southern Republican State Chairmen at which Mr. Rockefeller's bitterness over party conservatives' opposition to him erupted. They had forced him off the ticket, and now, he told them, in pungent terms, to stop sitting around and go to work to nominate President Ford. Some of Mr. Rockefeller's language was a good deal stronger than that, according to participants, and he reportedly apologized later.
[New York Times] - Australian voters took a sharp swing to the right in nationwide Parliamentary elections and put the Liberal Party of Malcolm Fraser, the caretaker Prime Minister, in office with the biggest majority in the history of the Australian federation. Early election results indicated that the conservative-oriented Liberal Party had obtained a majority in the House of Representatives. Complete election results are expected to show that the Liberals swept the Senate, too. [New York Times]
- In response to a movement for greater local government, Portugal decided to give greater autonomy to the islands of the Azores and Madeira in the mid-Atlantic, which formerly had been governed as an integral part of Portugal. A decree established the Madeira Agency for Regional Administration, and a similar agency has been set up for the Azores. [New York Times]