This Day In 1970's History: Monday February 4, 1980
- Senate leaders pledged a "full" and expeditious investigation of allegations that some memers of Congress, including a Senator, were involved in bribery. Senator Howard Heflin, former Chief Judge of Alabama and chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee, accompanied by Representative Charles Bennett, head of the House Ethics Committee, talked with top federal law enforcement officials in efforts to obtain evidence the Federal Bureau of Investigation said it had developed in an undercover operation.
Federal grand juries will soon receive evidence of criminal activity by public officials, including eight Congressmen, law-enforcement authorities said. Evidence will be presented to juries in New York, Philadelphia, New Jersey and Washington. [New York Times]
- Ayatollah Khomeini condemned the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and, in his first statement opposing it, pledged "unconditional support" for the Moslem insurgents fighting the Soviet-backed government. The Ayatollah also inducted Abolhassan Bani-Sadr as the first President of the Iranian republic. [New York Times]
- Syria announced it would withdraw its peacekeeping troops from Beirut, raising the prospect of the renewal of Lebanon's civil war, but the withdrawal, scheduled to be made within 36 hours, was delayed for "a few days" following a protest by Prime Minister Selim al-Hoss. The Prime Minister rushed to Damascus in an attempt to persuade President Hafez al-Assad to change his mind. [New York Times]
- Two political prisoners who fled Argentina told Amnesty International that hundreds of people have been jailed, tortured and killed in the last three years under the repressive military government. They described five secret concentration camps in the Buenos Aires area where they said they were held for 15 months. [New York Times]
- Fifty convicts who survived the carnage and destruction by inmates at the New Mexico State Penitentiary stood outside the smouldering prison yelling about the horrors they had witnessed. "They killed, they butchered,"one man shouted. Inside was a scene of utter destruction, and 35 bodies had been recovered in the worst prison rioting in modern American history. [New York Times]
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