News stories from Saturday June 21, 1975
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- Carl Albert, Speaker of the House, conceded that with a Republican in the White House that the current Congress would be unable to enact "programs and policies that will return us to full employment, economic prosperity and durable social peace and progress." In a letter to all committee chairmen in the House, Mr. Albert said: "Try as we might, and we shall cooperate as effectively as we can with the President, frankly we cannot expect to reach these goals during the 94th Congress." He urged the chairmen to concentrate instead on developing broad policies that could be used as a basis for the Democratic platform in the 1976 election campaign and the party's legislative program beginning in 1977. [New York Times]
- Nine months after President Ford offered clemency to an estimated total of 120,000 draft resisters and military absentees of the Vietnam War he has acted on 165 applications and as of last week, only 11 men were working at "alternate service" jobs required as a condition of his pardon. While such statistics apply to only one of three components in the clemency procedure, they help reflect the program's overall lack of appeal to those for whom it was intended. [New York Times]
- American feminists, who have been unexpectedly restrained at the World Conference on Women in Mexico City, took a related meeting at the United States Embassy there to complain about the way they said the conference had ignored feminist issues. Carole De Saram, president of the New York Chapter of the National Organization for Women, said that "the true issues, the problems of women, are being forgotten here." The emphasis instead, she said, was on economic issues and world peace rather than such women's issues as equality with men, education and career choices. The election of a man as president of the conference also made the women angry. [New York Times]
- The Pentagon has told a Senate subcommittee that American manufacturers of military equipment paid more than $200 million to sales agents in foreign countries over the last two and a half years. The Defense Department's report to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations is incomplete and tentative. However, it lists more than 20 companies and includes virtually every major American arms contractor doing business overseas. Government sources said the Pentagon had classified the document as "Confidential" and that the subcommittee was trying to have it declassified. [New York Times]
- Old people in the United States are growing in number and organization and are increasingly becoming a force that Congress, the administration and the federal establishment cannot ignore. The movement, which began with the push for Medicare in the 1960's, has grown in earnest over the last four years. It has different groups and differing philosophies, but the National Association of Retired Persons (7.7 million members), the National Council of Senior Citizens (3 million members), the Gray Panthers and others have organized increasingly sophisticated lobbies. [New York Times]
- An article by an investigative reporter for the Cox Newspapers' Washington bureau said that Governor Carey of New York, during his last term in Congress, and Senator John Sparkman of Alabama, had put pressure on federal officials to approve oil export transactions that generated multimillion dollar profits last year for Mr. Carey's brother, Edward, and for an old friend of Senator Sparkman. The article said that the intercession of the two Democrats had led to the issuance of three licenses by the Commerce Department to Bart Chamberlain, Mr. Sparkman's friend, that made it possible for Mr. Chamberlain to circumvent federal price controls at the height of the Arab oil embargo. [New York Times]
- After more than a week of deliberation, Portugal's military rulers issued a declaration today in favor of democratic socialism and a pluralistic society, but it warned against any impeding of the revolution. The High Council of the Revolution indicated its alarm over the steadily deteriorating economic and political situation and stressed "the necessity for the reinforcement of a firm revolutionary authority by the armed forces." But it rejected "violent or dictatorial means" to reach its goal of a classless society. Nothing was said that would resolve two major difficulties in the present crisis -- the takeover by a group of Communist and other leftist printers of the Socialist-controlled newspaper Republica and a similar takeover of a Roman Catholic radio station in Lisbon. [New York Times]
- The divided black liberation movements of Angola issued a communique indicating that they had reached an accord in principle on the country's main problems and would cooperate to lead it to independence from Portuguese colonial rule next November. Previous agreements by three Angolan nationalist groups had broken down in violence, which eventually forced them together again in a reconciliation meeting in Kenya, called by President Jomo Kenyatta. The latest agreement was reached after six days of negotiations. [New York Times]
- In the virtual surrender of Laotian non-Communists to the Pathet Lao following the Communist victories in Cambodia and South Vietnam, no element of the Vientiane, or rightist side collapsed more quickly and more completely than the armed forces that the United States had built, trained, paid, supplied and all but commanded. Although a semblance of two separate armies -- the Royal Vientiane Army and the Pathet Lao -- continues to exist, it is conceded from the American Embassy to the Pathet Lao that the only force remaining is the Communist-led Pathet Lao. Well-placed American sources agree ruefully that the flight last month of military leaders committed to the American view was the culmination of a process that began with the truce accord of 1973. [New York Times]