News stories from Sunday August 20, 1978

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

Three police sharpshooters using two rifles and a .38-caliber revolver re-enacted the assassination of John F. Kennedy in an attempt to determine how many bullets were fired in Dealy Plaza the day Kennedy was murdered. The acoustical experts who recorded the shots for the House Assassination Committee were employed by the same company that investigated the 18½-minute gap in a key Watergate tape. [Chicago Tribune] Former CIA Director William Colby denied he leaked the explosive story about the intelligence agency's illegal involvement in domestic surveillance. But Colby, who headed the CIA from 1973 to 1976, conceded that he confirmed the story to New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh before its publication in 1974. The story led to four government investigations of the CIA, opening some of the agency's hush-hush activities to public scrutiny. [Chicago Tribune] Ballots will be opened beginning at midnight Monday to determine whether letter carriers accept a new three-year contract or begin preparation for a nationwide postal strike that could come as early as next week. Postal union leaders and White House officials cling to the hope that workers will endorse the pact. [Chicago Tribune] Vice President Mondale spent Sunday in Illinois defending the Carter administration's economic policies and campaigning for three Democratic congressional candidates. Mondale stopped in Mattoon for state Sen. Terry Bruce, in Waukegan for Democrat Fred Steffen, and wound up his trip in Evanston stumping for Rep. Abner Mikva. [Chicago Tribune] President Carter attended Sunday church services in Americus, Georgia, and heard the Rev. Clennon King, a member of the audience, accuse him of interfering with King's efforts to build his own church. King, a black minister who was denied membership in the Plains Baptist Church almost two years ago, followed the President into the Fellowship Baptist Church here and stood up during the service, alleging that Carter had stopped construction of the church King planned to build in Carter's hometown of Plains, 10 miles away. "I did not even know about it," Carter told reporters after the service. "I hope he gets his church built." [Chicago Tribune] A little-known Defense Department policy will let thousands of homosexual veterans apply for honorable discharges, a spokesman said Sunday. The rules still demand that homosexuals leave the military, but a Pentagon spokesman said a temporary policy allows veterans with a less-than-honorable discharge, homosexual or not, to apply for upgraded discharges, based on their service record. [Chicago Tribune] Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union show the FBI in 1961 passed along information about two Freedom Rider buses to a Birmingham, Ala., police sergeant who was a known Ku Klux Klan agent. The documents indicate the FBI knew that Sgt. Thomas Cook of the Birmingham police department's intelligence branch was passing the information the FBI gave him on the activities of civil rights workers to the Klan's top leadership. Cook and Birmingham Public Safety Director Eugene "Bull" Connor reportedly conspired with Klan leaders to allow physical attacks en Freedom Riders when the buses arrived at terminals in Birmingham. [Chicago Tribune] United Airlines will ask the Civil Aeronautics Board Tuesday for approval of flight service from eight U.S. cities, including Chicago, to mainland China. The board denied a similar request from United in 1971, but a spokesman for the airlines said approval is more likely this time because the CAB is "more permissive." [Chicago Tribune] In Abadan, Iran, suspected Moslem fanatics flooded a movie theater with gasoline, locked the doors, and set the building ablaze, burning 377 people to death as they screamed and clawed at the blocked exits, officials said. "The air was torn apart by shrieks of people wanting to escape the fire," one witness said. The Information Ministry said at least 391 people were inside the rundown "Rex" cinema. Police reportedly arrested the theater's doorkeeper on charges of collaborating with the arsonists. [Chicago Tribune] World chess champion Anatoly Karpov leaped to a 3-1 advantage Sunday over Viktor Korchnoi in the 13th world, chess championship, stunning the challenger with two quick victories in previously adjourned games. It took the champion from the Soviet Union less than three hours of playing time to win the adjourned 13th and 14th games. The first player to win six games is the champion and gets $350,000 in prize money. The loser will take home $200,000. [Chicago Tribune] Premier Salim Hoss blames the United States for Lebanon's inability to control tension-ridden southern Lebanon, the Beirut weekly Monday Morning reported. The English-language magazine quoted Hoss as saying: "I was assured of U.S. intervention" to help Lebanon solve its problems with the Christian militias supporting the Israelis in the south. He said the Lebanese government "feels let down by the Americans. . . because the United States was one of the countries that encouraged us to dispatch the army unit to the south." [Chicago Tribune] Violence was once a way of life for Joe Namath, but the former football player turned actor says he's glad it's all behind him. "In football, there are guys on the other side who are trying to disrupt you and foul you up . . . butt you in the head and grab you. In this business, we're working together." These days, teamwork to Namath means playing a high school coach in "The Waverly Wonders," a television series to be aired this fall. Even portraying a secret agent in his last movie bothered him, he said, because he got carried away in the violent scenes: "I don't like the ugly feeling that goes through my body . . . the feeling of anger I got." [Chicago Tribune]