News stories from Saturday September 20, 1975
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- An authoritative source said that the arrest of Patricia Hearst and the remaining members of the so-called Symbionese Liberation Army, in San Francisco was the result of what Walter Scott, the 42-year-old brother of the radical sports figure Jack Scott told an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation about a hideout in Pennsylvania. A bureau source said that Walter Scott had told the F.B.I. a rambling story, and the agents had found a lot of what he said to be unreliable, but they checked it all. [New York Times]
- The Central Intelligence Agency secretly tape-recorded two telephone conversations between Lee Harvey Oswald and the Cuban and Soviet Embassies in Mexico City about eight weeks before President Kennedy was shot to death in Dallas, according to government sources. One call, to the Soviet Embassy, alerted the C.I.A. to Oswald's presence in Mexico City, and on Oct. 10, 1963, the agency warned the Federal Bureau of Investigation. There is no indication that the F.B.I., which was investigating Oswald, ever followed up on the information. The other call, to the Cuban Embassy, was not connected with Oswald until after the assassination on Nov. 22, 1963. [New York Times]
- Sargent Shriver, brother-in-law of Senator Edward Kennedy, announced in Washington that he was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. He left no doubt in an announcement speech to about 500 well-wishers that he intended to run as the Kennedy candidate in 1976. He has the support of Senator Kennedy's mother, sisters, and the Senator's sisters-in-law, Ethel Kennedy and Jacqueline Onassis. At a news conference, Mr. Shriver, who will be 60 years old on Nov. 9, denied that he was a stalking horse for Senator Kennedy, putting a campaign together so that his brother-in-law could take it over if he decided to run. [New York Times]
- Tension between Egypt and her Arab critics over the new Egyptian-Israeli agreement has lasted longer and continued to run deeper than Egyptian officials had expected. The Egyptians had hoped that after an initial show of temper, the Syrian and Palestinian leaders would accept the accomplished fact and stop their propaganda campaign against President Anwar Sadat. The opposite has happened. Meanwhile the Egyptian press has increased its attacks on the Palestinian and Syrian leaders, especially against Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Movement, and Abdel Halim Qaddam, the Syrian Foreign Minister. Today, for the first time, a substantial number of people held a street demonstration in Cairo against the Palestinians. [New York Times]
- Secretary of State Kissinger, apparently annoyed by Pentagon criticism, said that he wanted to put "in perspective" the American military relationship with Israel. He said that all of Israel's major requests for arms, including the medium-range Pershing missile, were submitted to the United States a year ago and had been under study since then. His remarks, many of which he volunteered, were made to newsmen after a breakfast meeting with Defense Minister Shimon Peres of Israel. They were clearly aimed at rebutting Pentagon statements of the last few days expressing surprise that, in the recent Sinai negotiations, Mr. Kissinger had agreed that the United States would give sympathetic consideration to providing Israel with the Pershing missile, which up to now has only been deployed with a nuclear warhead. [New York Times]
- Two years after the bloody coup that toppled the Marxist coalition government of late President Salvador Allende, the military junta that governs Chile has developed a siege mentality against critics of its harsh economic recovery program and its continuing violations of human rights. Unemployment is at its highest level in at least 40 years and industrial production has dropped sharply this year. But the junta has vowed to continue an austerity program aimed almost entirely at dampening the perennial inflationary spiral and diminishing the government's role in the economy. Arbitrary arrests and reports of torture have declined in recent months, but the secret-police apparatus remains pervasive. [New York Times]