News Blips
MutantsMichael — 7/3/24, 8:03 AM
(UPI) WASHINGTON, May 19 — President Gerald Ford today nominated Senator Howard H. Baker, Jr. of Tennessee, lately the ranking minority member of the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, for the office of the Vice Presidency of the United States. In a statement from the Rose Garden, President Ford said, "After much soul-searching and consultation with both Republican and Democratic leaders within Washington and without, I have chosen a man whose stalwart work on the recent Senate Select Committee has shown him to be a fair-minded man with a heartfelt interest in the cause of national reconciliation." The confirmation process is expected to be expedited by House and Senate leadership this summer, although some Democrats are expected to ask tough questions of Baker's record and of his support for President Nixon before the events and revelations of last month. Baker, considered a conservative Republican by most, is also known for his ability to work across the aisle with Democrats in the Senate, helping usher the Clear Air Act into law in 1970 with partner Senator Edward Muskie of Maine. President Ford was said to also have been considering former New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Republican National Committee chairman George Herbert Walker Bush, but it is believed that party hardliners such as Senators Barry Goldwater and Jesse Helms are reported to have insisted behind closed doors that the eventual Vice Presidential nominee possess conservative bona fides. Republican sources also reported that both Rockefeller and Bush's confirmation hearings could be sidelined by intimations of scandal. Rockefeller is rumored to be wary of an examination of the disposition of his massive family wealth, and Bush reportedly still carries a stigma among party insiders regarding a gift from one of President Nixon's "slush funds" during Bush's 1970 campaign for Senate from Texas, exposed in the so-called "smoking gun" tapes released by President Nixon on April 30. (edited)
July 7, 2024
MutantsMichael — 7/7/24, 1:06 PM
Intelligence Oversight Committee Eyed By Senate Democrats "Nothing is off the table": Majority Leader Mansfield By Earl Caldwell Special to The New York Times WASHINGTON, May 23 — Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield of Montana and Idaho Senator Frank Church announced today that upon return from Memorial Day recess, the Senate would undertake an immediate vote on the establishment of a Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. This proposed committee would take on further investigation of domestic abuses of American civilians by U.S. Army intelligence services, the Central Intelligence Agency, and other domestic government-affiliated and -funded intelligence and counterintelligence operations. The involvement of the FBI and CIA in the Watergate affair was the tip of the iceberg as journalists and public-interest lawyers spent the past three weeks combing through the thousands of hours of tapes and transcripts released by President Nixon immediately prior to his resignation three weeks ago. Discussions between Nixon and White House advisors as heard on the tapes clearly implicate the FBI and IRS as political instruments of the President against domestic political enemies. President Nixon's relationship with former DCI Richard Helms also has come under intense scrutiny, as several tape transcripts seem to implicate the former President in a quid pro quo scheme for CIA involvement in covering up the Watergate investigation in exchange for silence about, in President Nixon's words, "the whole Bay of Pigs thing." Journalists such as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post, Seymour Hersh of the Times, and Paul Avery and Tim Findley of The San Francisco Chronicle have published stories in the past weeks alleging direct CIA involvement in Watergate, domestic spying upon American citizens, and the involvement of California state officials—aided by CIA-connected researchers—in prison experimentation upon the late Donald "Cinque" DeFreeze of the Symbionese Liberation Army, respectively. These investigations were cited by Senators Mansfield and Church as having directly inspired Senate Democratic leadership in bringing this new select committee to a speedy vote. Majority Leader Mansfield told reporters, "Nothing is off the table in terms of this committee's oversight." Senator Church, a former member of Army Intelligence during World War II, said, "Our legislative responsibilities include checks and balances on any excesses of the executive. As public servants, our duty is to ensure that no future chief executive or agency head can abuse our country's intelligence capabilities for the purposes of settling personal or political scores. Any use of our nation's law enforcement or intelligence services to unduly and unlawfully harass, surveil, or otherwise interfere with the lives and liberties of American citizens is a first step on an inexorable march towards tyranny." President Ford has still not issued a pardon to President Nixon. Ford administration transition chairman and Acting Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld said, "Since the former President has admitted to no crime and has been accused of no crime, any need for President Ford to issue a pardon at this time is a mere phantasm in the minds of the paranoid."
MutantsMichael — 7/19/24, 12:21 PM
Daily Variety, Wednesday, May 29, 1974 WELLES TO QUESTION REDFORD'S ROVER Follows Up F For Fake Flop With Roeg/Redford Role Big casting news for Bob Redford and Nic Roeg's Jack London adaptation, as the two men have found their co-lead for The Star-Rover in Hollywood legend Orson Welles. Welles, fresh off last year's odd and off-putting F For Fake, will play the mysterious "Confessor," a government interrogator in the vein of O'Brien from 1984 who uses drugs and torturous interrogation techniques to try and break Redford's political prisoner/titular Star-Rover. Roeg is set to start lensing The Star-Rover at Shepperton Studios in Britain next month, with location shooting in Utah and Southern California scheduled as well. First-time scripter and scifi cult fave Andrew H. Krane has been engaged to adapt the novel; British Lion Films has said they expect The Star-Rover in theaters by the end of the year to be eligible for the '75 kudo season. Distrib stateside is expected to be through 20th Century Fox.