News stories from Monday September 5, 1977
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- Bert Lance's resignation as Budget Director was urged on President Carter by Senator Abraham Ribicoff and Senator Charles Percy. They told the President that they had received "allegations of illegality" about Mr. Lance. Mr. Ribicoff, a Democrat and chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, and Mr. Percy, a Republican and the committee's vice chairman, refused to give reporters details on what they had reported to Mr. Carter. Mr. Ribicoff said that the President indicated that Mr. Lance intended to stay and fight.
Bert Lance's involvement "in any way" in the embezzlement of about $1 million from the Calhoun First National Bank in Georgia was "impossible," sources close to the bank said. Mr. Lance had been the bank's president and chairman. The sources responded to reports that the convicted embezzler, Bill Campbell, who is serving a prison term, implicated Mr. Lance in illegalities in statements to investigators of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.
[New York Times] - Margaret Thatcher, Britain's Conservative Party leader, will come to the United States tomorrow for talks with President Carter and a number of other national and regional leaders in Washington, New York and Houston. She and her advisers hope her current tour of world capitals will overcome criticism that she lacks a world view. Mrs. Thatcher, confident that one day she will be Britain's Prime Minister, told a group of American journalists: "I'm the next government. I think I should meet your cabinet." [New York Times]
- Gunmen in West Germany kidnapped a prominent industrialist, Dr. Hanns-Martin Schleyer, and killed four of his bodyguards in a machine gun attack on his automobile in Cologne. The kidnapping was confirmed by Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in a television broadcast. Dr. Schleyer, 62 years old, is president of the West German Confederation of Employers Associations and president of the Federation of West German Industries. An anonymous caller was reported to have called a newspaper, saying that Dr. Schleyer would be killed unless Andreas Baader and other convicted terrorists were released from prison. [New York Times]
- Federal influence in higher education is sharply contested as the academic year opens. The prospect of a Supreme Court ruling over minority preference in admission to medical school is one of many issues. Others include alleged misuse of federal funds in university research, refusal of a Michigan college to comply with a federal law on sex discrimination and the plan of 18 medical schools to drop part of their federal aid rather than accept a quota of foreign-trained Americans. [New York Times]
- F.B.I. efficiency, not abuses, will be the biggest challenge to the bureau's new director, in the opinion of many officials familiar with its operations. A Justice Department. official, for example, said the bureau was operating with an old-fashioned management structure and that Frank Johnson, the designated successor to the post now held by Clarence Kelley, would have to impose effective management techniques. [New York Times]
- In the Geneva trade talks, overcoming the rising protectionist trend is the big job that faces the new deputy United States negotiator, Alonzo McDonald. He is from Georgia and was representative abroad and then managing director of the management consultant concern of McKinsey & Company. He will aid in the stepped-up American effort to get the long-stalled international trade negotiations into a decisive phase. In an interview he outlined the United States position, saying that time is running out on the ability to hold the protectionist wave. "Our trading partners are even more nervous than we are," he said. [New York Times]
- Tax-exempt bonds last week were at their lowest interest levels in nearly three and a half years as investment bankers completed a record offering of $31 billion of new state and local securities through the first eight months of this year. The rates were extremely favorable for states, cities and other local governments in need of borrowed funds. [New York Times]