7501 Newspaper Files
Title
7501 Newspaper Files
Text
=== Page 1 of 8
Scientists Have another
Premier, President, etc. 9
# 'Red Chief 'Cedes' Powers
MOSCOW (AP) -- Soviet officials were either unavailable or not talking Saturday about an Indian news report that Leonid I. Brezhnev has relinquished his duties as Communist party leader because of illness.
The Press Trust of India (PTI), quoting informed sources in Moscow, said the 68-year-old Brezhnev "has taken leave of his responsibilities" because of exhaustion, age, illness, and emotional stress caused by his mother's death last week.
The report did not say he had resigned. PTI said Brezhnev "evidently is resting and undergoing treatment not far from Moscow but is available to his colleagues for urgent counsel."
The agency did not list any specific illness.
PTI, an independent agency owned by Indian newspapers as a cooperative, said that its sources "summarily dismiss talk of a power struggle as the cause or the likely consequence of Brezhnev's withdrawal."
In a related development, British Broadcasting Corp. and another Indian news agency, United News of India, reported in New Delhi that Mrs. Gandhi had postponed a planned visit to Moscow next month. An Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman said no date for the visit had ever been set "and so the question of postponement does not arise."
Reports on Brezhnev's health have circulated in the foreign press for weeks, and he has been variously reported suffering from pneumonia, heart trouble, and leukemia.
During that time, Soviet spokesmen have refused to comment or even respond to inquires on the subject.
Tass, the official Soviet news agency, reported last week that Brezhnev attended the funeral of his 87-year-old mother and at that time described speculation about his health as "groundless inventions."
But the agency has not yet distributed promised photos of Brezhnev at the cemetery.
The Soviet press has continued to mention Brezhnev's name frequently. Saturday's edition of Pravda had it five times.
Speculation on Brezhnev's health began last month after he postponed a planned planned trip to Egypt. He failed also to meet Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam or Japanese Foreign Minister Kiichi Miyazawa during their recent visits to Moscow, although both leaders wanted to see him.
LEONID I. BREZHNEV
. . . reportedly ill
Va. Pilot
1/19/75
# Brezhnev Heart Attack Reported
L.A. Times/Washington Post News Service
WARSAW--Soviet Party Secretary Leonid Brezhnev suffered a heart attack Dec. 19, his 68th birthday, reliable sources said here Tuesday.
The sources said Brezhnev, a heavy smoker, had suffered two previous heart attacks.
The sources said Brezhnev is resting and will officially resume his activities when British Prime Minister Harold Wilson visits Moscow next month. The sources said the heart attack had not affected Brezhnev's position in the ruling Soviet Politburo.
They added, however, that because of his health Brezhnev is thinking of stepping down next year after the Soviet Communist Party Congress. He would still keep his Politburo seat.
The sources named as his likeliest successor as party leader Fedoro Kulakov, a member of the Politburo and central committee in charge of agriculture.
1/22/75
... SI WORK ON PREMIERS, ETC.
=== Page 2 of 8
FROM THE DESD OF
Mr. Ted Owens (PK MAN)----------
Box 43
Cape Charles, Virginia
23310
Jan. 27, 1975
Dr. Edis, quon sus amigos Dris Martin and Mucho...
A note in two parts...first to thank you fellows for repairing this busted mechanism. Am grateful for it. (Bilateral hernia repair.) Second...wanted to give you some suggestions that I think would be helpful for patients like myself having the same thing done. A brochure, I think...would be most helpful given to them just pre-op...so that they would know what to expect, and how to handle it.
The evening before my operation...I used auto-hypnosis...and filled in for my subconscious mind...what was going to happen. I told it...that my body was going to be violated...cut upon...but not to be concerned about it because it would be done safely, and would be done to repair my body...a necessity. Then I used mental imagery to show my subconscious what the actual operation would be like...pictures shown in a medical book of the hernia repair. So...it was ready and there should have been no typical shock or bodily reaction, since the subconscious was alerted and ready to cooperate.
Next...I was operated on between 3 and 4, I think, on Monday afternoon. All that evening and night...I deferred on pain shots...every time the nurse offered me them (which seemed like on the hour, but I was drowsy and could be wrong on that.) The point is...I was trying to take advantage of the fact that my body actually had pain. You see, normally...our body is not filled with pain. But an operation of this sort...gives one a priceless opportunity to learn about bodily pain; and to test the pain-threshold. I found that I could stand pain rather easily.
=== Page 3 of 8
2
S'posin that ten years from now...I'd get stomach cancer or something like that. Well, after experimenting after your operation...I have a good idea of the amounts of pain I can stand...and over what period of time. In other words...if, after such an operation...one wills to go without pain shots or pain pills...just in order to learn what one can of pain in the body...how much one can stand...then one is way ahead of the game. Furthermore...I made a game out of it. I made friends with the pain. Joined it, rather than tensed against it. Told it it was welcome...and to blend in with me. This seemed to work...I felt pain, but it didn't hurt.
After I found out what I wanted to know...about Tuesday evening, I think it was...I took a red pain pill and dropped my pain learning program, since it was no longer necessary.
(And by the way...you sent me home to Virginia with a large bottle of red pain pills. I've been home now for about ten days, and have only used two pills out of the bottle.)
Next...as you know, I got out of bed and began to walk the morning after the operation. Which is as it should be. That was Tuesday morning. And I practiced a lot that day, walking up and down the hall. That evening the nurse that went off at 8:30 came in and ordered me to walk again. I told her that I'd do better than that...and sprung up into the air and danced around the room...then ran out into the hall and ran down the hall to the desk at the far end, then ran back again to the room. Ran, not walked. I was curious in my mind to see if I could...and it was easy to do. Now, I do not know if anyone could do that the day after a double hernia repair...but it was easy for me to do. (I was concerned the next day, after thinking about it...that I might have pulled stitches loose...but you reassured me on that.)
Another point...you know how the nurse has to lift the patient's legs up onto the bed after an abdominal operation? Mine did, and it irked me. Because I felt that I'd recuperate faster if I had no help like that. But as you know...that's a long distance to swing one's feet up onto a bed, after such a painful operation. Okay. It can easily be done by the patient...without any help from the nurse...allowing the patient to get in and out of bed on his own at any time. Simply sit on the bed...hook a toe underneath the stool nearby...drag it over...swing the left foot up and onto the stool...then the right foot...then slide the stool with the feet over beside the bed...and repeat...left foot up onto the bed, right foot up onto the bed. And that's that. Simple. Yet I am sure most patients would not figure that out, or know about it...which is why a little brochure would teach them about it...and free the nurse from those bothersome calls to help the patient get in and out of bed. (To get out of bed, the process is simply reversed, using the sliding stool.)
Finally...the nurses could not understand why I had the heat turned off in the room...and the room was ice-cold. Simple. Remember...I was working in full cooperation with my subconscious mind...and that was what it wanted. Why? Because my body was building up heat...to repair the cutting done on it. Heat outside my body....in the room...worked against the process. The inner healing process. Like a teeter-totter, inner heat for healing purposes...balanced nicely against the coolness, or cold, outside my body. A teeter-totter in balance, I should add. Balance. That was the thing. Temperature balance. Inside against the outside.
Thank you all again.
Best regards....
Ted Owens (PK Man)
Owens
=== Page 4 of 8
8 CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, Sun., Jan. 5, 1975
# If the rich are like us, Hunts prove we're in trouble
By Charles Foley
The Observer, London
Jan. 24, 1975
Scientists
I've been genuinely framed twice in my life... once in Fort Worth, Texas... once in Dallas, Texas.
Hunt... was my enemy. This is the Si way... of handling things.
- Owens
XPK Man X
DALLAS--People at the Texas State Fair a few years back were startled to find, at a modest booth displaying his products, the lofty figure of Haroldson Lafayette Hunt, smiling benignly at the world of which he owned so large a slice and doling out 3 pound plastic bags of goodies.
"Takers found inside copies of Hunt's book 'Alpaca,' which explains why the rich should inherit the Earth; a packet of his 'Life Line Freedom Talks,' which told how the Communists will probably do so instead, and a free sample of Gastromatic, an H. L. Hunt product guaranteed to dispel painful gas, of which the oil billionaire was a victim.
In blue bow-tie, with tufts of white hair at his ears, Hunt looked like the kindly judge in an Andy Hardy movie. "I'm here to save the Republic," he affirmed, in reedy tones. "The Kremlin plans to take us over in three years. Read my books and you'll see!"
Now Hunt is dead, at 85, and the horrendous tangle of lawsuits, charges and countercharges, dirty linen and uncloseted skeletons he has left to his heirs indicate that, if the Hunts are typical American zillionaires, the rich are in grave trouble.
The lid has come off a bizarre family feud for the old man's money. It involves wiretapping, purloined papers, charges of bribery, plea-bargaining in high places and an exotic dash of international high politics that pits Al Fatah's guerrillas against the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
A hush-hush yearlong investigation into the affair by the Justice Department is about to end with a string of indictments. Caught in the web of the inquiry are a ranking senator from Texas; its former governor, John B. Connally; a brace of Richard M. Nixon's attorneys-general and, of course, the former President himself, without whom no scandal these days is complete.
Among the Big Rich of Big D -- as Dallas residents like to call their city--it was long believed that the Hunt problems began some two decades ago when HLH's first wife, Lyda Bunker, was dying of cancer. Hunt grew dependent on his personal secretary, Ruth Ray Wright, who was 30 years his junior. The first Mrs. Hunt had been dead two years when, in 1957, HLH married the girl. This move confronted the six children of his first bed--Lamar, Nelson Bunker, W. Herbert, H. L. Jr., Margaret and Carolyn--with a stepmother in their own age bracket and four healthy young rivals in the next-of-kin stakes: her children, Ray Lee, June, Helen and Swanee.
The four were at first attributed to "a former marriage," but some time after Hunt formally adopted them, the second Mrs. Hunt revealed--apparently to strengthen their claims on the inheritance--that her husband was, indeed, their father. Ruth, an enthusiastic member of the local Baptist choir, set her mind to converting HLH--no more gambling or cigars--and eventually led the old man, along with his new family, to Dallas' First Baptist Church, the largest in the world, where under the egis of Billy Graham all six were baptized by immersion together.
=== Page 5 of 8
In the course, Ray Lee left college to go into real estate, a Hunt sideline; June went on tour as a gospel singer and Helen and Swanee married. Their husbands were taken into the business. Both branches of the family presented the patriarch with grandchildren and great-grandchildren until the total of punitive beneficiaries rose to 40.
Hunt, a onetime farm boy, lumberjack and cowhand, struck it rich in the 1920s. Old hands swear that he got his start by staking $50,000 in poker winnings on a property that turned out to cover a lake of oil 45 miles by 9 miles. When the money rolled in, he would risk thousands on a horse or the turn of a card. The money still rolls in today on an ever-mounting tide, in line with the high profits throughout the oil industry. Immense reserves await tapping, when prices soar still further. All this is in addition to real estate holdings, timber, a canning plant, drug companies, ranchland and cattle.
Hunt refused to bid for anything he could not own outright. He must have absolute control: no pesky shareholders, directors, balance sheets for public disclosure. Hunt Oil was a private company, and so were its affairs. "Rich men are ill-advised to call attention to their wealth in any way," he snapped, when asked why there were No Hunt foundations for health, education, the arts.
HLH did spend some millions on the fervidly anti-Communist 'Life Line' broadcasts he sponsored on 541 radio stations, but because they enjoyed tax-exempt status, this favorite hobby horse was exercised entirely at Uncle Sam's expenses.
Four years ago, Hunt's grip on his affairs began to slacken. He was confined first to a wheel chair, tended always by Ruth, then to a hospital bed. The old guard at Hunt Oil began getting orders from plump Vice President Nelson Bunker, the heir-apparent, and his closely allied brother, Herbert.
One executive who resented the change was Paul M. Rothermel Jr., for 15 years HLH's confidant, bodyguard and whipping boy. Rothermel, a former FBI man and an attorney, had known and admired the second Mrs. Hunt throughout that time.
He also knew that Hunt, while putting enough in trust funds to make his first six children multimillionaires in their own right, had given scant thought to Ruth's family. "Mr. Hunt relied on my judgment," he said. "He even gave me a letter approving transactions I might make on his behalf. So I felt a duty to persuade him in 1969 to change his will to benefit the second family. But when the first lot heard of this, some odd things happened."
Rothermel's wife, Joyce, wondered about two men in a red Thunderbird always outside her home. The driver, questioned by police, turned out to be a private eye, one J.J. Kelly. "When I asked if he was on a divorce case" a policeman said later, "he stepped on the gas and took off. If he hadn't panicked, none of this would have come out."
In the car were $40,000 worth of tapping equipment and some 100 tapes of bugged conversations. But J. J. Kelly stayed defiantly mute, even when the FBI discovered wiretaps on Rothermel and the homes of three other Hunt Oil executives. Kelly and his lieutenant, Patrick McCann, were confident that "dollar power" would see them through. Instead, they received three years apiece. Furious, they turned state's evidence, and proudly disdaining hush money, according to their story -- at last named their paymasters.
Bunker and Herbert were brought to court, Texas style, in steel bracelets and chains, to be indicted on wiretapping charges. Kelly confessed that he'd been beguiled by "men of vast fortunes who merely wanted to escalate their wealth and power."
NELSON BUNKER HUNT
LAMAR HUNT
W. HERBERT HUNT
The Hunts recovered the legal initiative with a suit against Rothermel -- who had by now left their father's employ -- and two executives associated with him. It was alleged that they siphoned off scores of millions of dollars into dummy companies, and it was simply to trace these funds that the detectives had been hired.
The two executives protested in court that groundless embezzlement charges had been brought "simply to discredit and coerce us as pawns in the struggle for the Hunt fortune." They also raised some eyebrows by contending that, on behalf of the Hunts, they had undertaken numerous clandestine deals involving "holders and seekers of office, labor leaders, professional sports figures."
Then Kelly sued Bunker and company for $100 million complaining they had ruined his reputation and career, even threatened him with force. Not to be left out, the Rothermels stepped in with a $1.5-million suit against the Hunts. Mrs. Rothermel, a psychiatrist's aide, complained of eavesdropping on her patients. Rothermel, who had access to the old man's files for years, is busy on a book about it all -- he'd like the world to know more about "the man who played God."
Rothermel said HLH allowed his sons to bring their suits "to keep peace in the family" -- a somewhat forlorn hope. Now that his influence has gone, Bunker's instincts will take over. A weighty, more aggressive chip off the old block, Nelson Bunker Hunt, 48, is the family's business brain. His gambling streak has lately been channeled into the commodities market in silver and sugar, as well as into racehorse owning and breeding on an international scale.
The Hunt lawyers allege that originally Nixon and his men promised Bunker immunity in exchange for certain (unspecified) favors. "Our clients performed," they say, "but indictments were handed down anyway." The deal, according to Hunt Oil sources, was a perfectly proper tradeoff. Wiretap charges would be dropped if the Hunts give the FBI a list of Al Fatah agents in the United States.
At that time, in 1972, the Nixonites had evidence that Al Fatah was seeking a foothold in America. They even feared an attempt on Mrs. Golda Meir, who was soon to visit New York. The FBI had burgled the offices of the Arab Information Center in Dallas, where the Hunts had contacts -- with what success is not known. Next the FBI turned to the Hunts, who were in a position to know Al Fatah personnel in the U.S. Bunker had high-level friends in the Arab world, who were trying to help him dissuade Libya's Col. Mummar Kadafi from taking over the Hunt oil wells in the Libyan desert.
Libya was Bunker's fief. He had negotiated in person the deals that had given Hunt International its vast holdings there, and he had celebrated the inauguration of the empire with a ball for 500 (tax deductible) guests in London with three name bands flown there from the United States.
Because of the dispute with Kadafi, which had promised to deal America, in the shape of Bunker Hunt, "a slap in its cold, arrogant face," there had been threats from Al Fatah, which the Libyan revolutionary subsidized. Bunker was a target for
=== Page 6 of 8
my predict banks will fail it's beginning. everywhere soon, Owens
A2 Virginian-Pilot, Monday, January 20, 1975
# Foundering Bank Is Sold
WASHINGTON (UPI) -- The Security National Bank of Hempstead, N.Y., with $1.8 billion in assets and facing failure, was sold today to the giant Chemical Bank of New York City, the nation's seventh largest bank.
All depositors of Security National will automatically become depositors of the Chemical Bank, which takes over "virtually all other liabilities," said James E. Smith, U.S. comptroller of currency.
Chemical said it paid $40 million in cash to acquire Security National, the nation's 55th largest bank. Details of the purchase were to be announced by Chemical Bank today.
The purchase had to be approved by the Federal Reserve Board and the New York state superintendent of banks after Smith's finding that "external forces and public confidence have adversely affected the operations and condition of Security to the point that an emergency exists," the FRB said.
Bill Foster, a spokesman for the comptroller, said, "Security was faced with probable failure unless the takeover could be arranged. That finding (by Smith) was necessary in order to permit the Boards of Directors to enter into the transactions without prior approval of the shareholders."
The FRB said that Chemical Bank's action "will minimize the secondary effects of uncertainty and doubt on banking and financial markets generally."
Chemical has assets of $17.8 billion. As of Monday, all 98 offices of Security were to become branches of Chemical, which already has 181 offices in the New York area.
The surprise deal was worked out Saturday and Sunday by the Boards of Directors of the two banks, who were given approval by New York state superintendent of banks, the Federal Reserve Board, and the U.S. comptroller, whose office oversees all national banks.
Smith said the purchase was a "very constructive result for the Security National Bank shareholders and depositors for the Chemical Bank and for the public interest in a stable and healthy banking system."
It was third major banking failure in recent months. The Franklin National Bank of New York, the nation's 20th largest, was declared insolvent by the federal government last October after it lost nearly $40 million in foreign currency dealings. The bank was taken over by a consortium of six large European banks.
The worst previous bank failure came in late 1973 when the U.S. National Bank of San Diego went into receivership.
Get your money out of banks. liquidate your stocks.
Owens
1/24/75
=== Page 7 of 8
of course, Ray Lee left college to go into real estate, a sideline; June went on tour as a gospel singer and Helen and Swanee married. Their husbands were taken into the business. Both branches of the family presented the patriarch with grandchildren and great-grandchildren until the total of putative beneficiaries rose to 40.
Hunt, a onetime farm boy, lumberjack and cowhand, struck it rich in the 1920s. Old hands swear that he got his start by staking $50,000 in poker winnings on a property that turned out to cover a lake of oil 45 miles by 9 miles. When the money rolled in, he would risk thousands on a horse or the turn of a card. The money still rolls in today on an ever-mounting tide, in line with the high profits throughout the oil industry. Immense reserves await tapping, when prices soar still further. All this is in addition to real estate holdings, timber, a canning plant, drug companies, ranchland and cattle.
Hunt refused to bid for anything he could not own outright. He must have absolute control: no pesky shareholders, directors, balance sheets for public disclosure. Hunt Oil was a private company, and so were its affairs. "Rich men are ill-advised to call attention to their wealth in any way," he snapped, when asked why there were No Hunt foundations for health, education, the arts.
HLH did spend some millions on the fervidly anti-Communist 'Life Line' broadcasts he sponsored on 541 radio stations, but because they enjoyed tax-exempt status, this favorite hobby horse was exercised entirely at Uncle Sam's expenses.
Four years ago, Hunt's grip on his affairs began to slacken. He was confined first to a wheel chair, tended always by Ruth, then to a hospital bed. The old guard at Hunt Oil began getting orders from plump Vice President Nelson Bunker, the heir-apparent, and his closely allied brother, Herbert.
One executive who resented the change was Paul M. Rothermel Jr., for 15 years HLH's confidant, bodyguard and whipping boy. Rothermel, a former FBI man and an attorney, had known and admired the second Mrs. Hunt throughout that time.
He also knew that Hunt, while putting enough in trust funds to make his first six children multimillionaires in their own right, had given scant thought to Ruth's family. "Mr. Hunt relied on my judgment," he said. "He even gave me a letter
NELSON BUNKER HUNT
LAMAR HUNT
W. HERBERT HUNT
The Hunts recovered the legal initiative with a suit against Rothermel -- who had by now left their father's employ -- and two executives associated with him. It was alleged that they siphoned off scores of millions of dollars into dummy companies, and it was simply to trace these funds that the detectives had been hired.
The two executives protested in court that groundless embezzlement charges had been brought "simply to discredit and coerce us as pawns in the struggle for the Hunt fortune." They also raised some eyebrows by contending that, on behalf of the Hunts, they had undertaken numerous clandestine deals involving "holders and seekers of office, labor leaders, professional sports figures."
Then Kelly sued Bunker and company for $100 million complaining they had ruined his reputation and career, even threatened him with force. Not to be left out, the Rothermels stepped in with a $1.5-million suit against the Hunts. Mrs. Rothermel, a psychiatrist's aide, complained of eavesdropping on her patients. Rothermel, who had access to the old man's files for years, is busy on a book about it all -- he'd like the world to know more about "the man who played God."
Rothermel said HLH allowed his sons to bring their suits "to keep peace in the family" -- a somewhat forlorn hope. Now that his influence has gone, Bunker's instincts will take over. A weighty, more aggressive chip off the old block, Nelson Bunker Hunt, 48, is the family's business brain. His gambling streak has lately been channeled into the commodities market in silver and sugar, as well as into racehorse owning and breeding on an international scale.
The Hunt lawyers allege that originally Nixon and his men promised Bunker immunity in exchange for certain (unspecified) favors. "Our clients performed," they say, "but indictments were handed down anyway." The deal, according to Hunt Oil sources, was a perfectly proper "tradeoff. Wiretap charges would be dropped if the Hunts give the FBI a list of Al Fatah agents in the United States.
At that time, in 1972, the Nixonites had evidence that Al Fatah was seeking a foothold in America. They even feared an attempt on Mrs. Golda Meir, who was soon to visit New York. The FBI had burgled the offices of the Arab Information Center in Dallas, where the Hunts had contacts -- with what success is not known. Next the FBI turned to the Hunts, who were in a position to know Al Fatah personnel in the U.S. Bunker had high-level friends in the Arab world, who were trying to help him dissuade Libya's Col. Mummar Kadafi from taking over the Hunt oil wells in the Libyan desert.
Libya was Bunker's fief. He had negotiated in person the deals that had given Hunt International its vast holdings there, and he had celebrated the inauguration of the empire with a ball for 500 (tax deductible) guests in London with three name bands flown there from the United States.
Because of the dispute with Kadafi, which had promised to deal America, in the shape of Bunker Hunt, "a slap in its cold, arrogant face," there had been threats from Al Fatah, which the Libyan revolutionary subsidized. Bunker was a target for
approving transactions I might make on his behalf. So I felt a duty to persuade him in 1969 to change his will to benefit the second family. But when the first lot heard of this, some odd things happened."
Rothermel's wife, Joyce, wondered about two men in a red Thunderbird always outside her home. The driver, questioned by police, turned out to be a private eye, one J.J. Kelly. "When I asked if he was on a divorce case" a policeman said later, "he stepped on the gas and took off. If he hadn't panicked, none of this would have come out."
In the car were $40,000 worth of tapping equipment and some 100 tapes of bugged conversations. But J. J. Kelly stayed defiantly mute, even when the FBI discovered wiretaps on Rothermel and the homes of three other Hunt Oil executives. Kelly and his lieutenant, Patrick McCann, were confident that "dollar power" would see them through. Instead, they received three years apiece. Furious, they turned state's evidence, and proudly disdaining hush money, according to their story -- at last named their paymasters.
Bunker and Herbert were brought to court, Texas style, in steel bracelets and chains, to be indicted on wiretapping charges. Kelly confessed that he'd been beguiled by "men of vast fortunes who merely wanted to escalate their wealth and power."
=== Page 8 of 8
Scientists Have another
Premier, President, etc.
Red Chief 'Cedes' Powers
MOSCOW (AP) -- Soviet officials were either unavailable or not talking Saturday about an Indian news report that Leonid I. Brezhnev has relinquished his duties as Communist party leader because of illness.
The Press Trust of India (PTI), quoting informed sources in Moscow, said the 68-year-old Brezhnev "has taken leave of his reponsibilities" because of exhaustion, age, illness, and emotional stress caused by his mother's death last week.
LEONID I. BREZHNEV
. . . reportedly ill
The report did not say he had resigned. PTI said Brezhnev "evidently is resting and undergoing treatment not far from Moscow but is available to his colleagues for urgent counsel."
The agency did not list any specific illness.
PTI, an independent agency owned by Indian newspapers as a cooperative, said that its sources "summarily dismiss talk of a power struggle as the cause or the likely consequence of Brezhnev's withdrawal."
In a related development, British Broadcasting Corp. and another Indian news agency, United News of India, reported in New Delhi that Mrs. Gandhi had postponed a planned visit to Moscow next month. An Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman said no date for the visit had ever been set "and so the question of postponement does not arise."
Reports on Brezhnev's health have circulated in the foreign press for weeks, and he has been variously reported suffering from pneumonia, heart trouble, and leukemia.
During that time, Soviet spokesmen have refused to comment or even respond to inquires on the subject.
Tass, the official Soviet news agency, reported last week that Brezhnev attended the funeral of his 87-year-old mother and at that time described speculation about his health as "groundless inventions."
But the agency has not yet distributed promised photos of Brezhnev at the cemetery.
The Soviet press has continued to mention Brezhnev's name frequently. Saturday's edition of Pravda had it five times.
Speculation on Brezhnev's health began last month after he postponed a planned trip to Egypt. He failed also to meet Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam or Japanese Foreign Minister Kiichi Miyazawa during their recent visits to Moscow, although both leaders wanted to see him.
Va. Pilot
1/19/75
Brezhnev Heart Attack Reported
L.A. Times/Washington Post News Service
WARSAW--Soviet Party Secretary Leonid Brezhnev suffered a heart attack Dec. 19, his 68th birthday, reliable sources said here Tuesday.
The sources said Brezhnev, a heavy smoker, had suffered two previous heart attacks.
The sources said Brezhnev is resting and will officially resume his activities when British Prime Minister Harold Wilson visits Moscow next month. The sources said the heart attack had not affected Brezhnev's position in the ruling Soviet Politburo.
They added, however, that because of his health Brezhnev is thinking of stepping down next year after the Soviet Communist Party Congress. He would still keep his Politburo seat.
The sources named as his likeliest successor as party leader Fedoro Kulakov, a member of the Politburo and central committee secretary in charge of agriculture.
1/22/75
... SI WORK ON PREMIERS, ETC.
Scientists Have another
Premier, President, etc. 9
# 'Red Chief 'Cedes' Powers
MOSCOW (AP) -- Soviet officials were either unavailable or not talking Saturday about an Indian news report that Leonid I. Brezhnev has relinquished his duties as Communist party leader because of illness.
The Press Trust of India (PTI), quoting informed sources in Moscow, said the 68-year-old Brezhnev "has taken leave of his responsibilities" because of exhaustion, age, illness, and emotional stress caused by his mother's death last week.
The report did not say he had resigned. PTI said Brezhnev "evidently is resting and undergoing treatment not far from Moscow but is available to his colleagues for urgent counsel."
The agency did not list any specific illness.
PTI, an independent agency owned by Indian newspapers as a cooperative, said that its sources "summarily dismiss talk of a power struggle as the cause or the likely consequence of Brezhnev's withdrawal."
In a related development, British Broadcasting Corp. and another Indian news agency, United News of India, reported in New Delhi that Mrs. Gandhi had postponed a planned visit to Moscow next month. An Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman said no date for the visit had ever been set "and so the question of postponement does not arise."
Reports on Brezhnev's health have circulated in the foreign press for weeks, and he has been variously reported suffering from pneumonia, heart trouble, and leukemia.
During that time, Soviet spokesmen have refused to comment or even respond to inquires on the subject.
Tass, the official Soviet news agency, reported last week that Brezhnev attended the funeral of his 87-year-old mother and at that time described speculation about his health as "groundless inventions."
But the agency has not yet distributed promised photos of Brezhnev at the cemetery.
The Soviet press has continued to mention Brezhnev's name frequently. Saturday's edition of Pravda had it five times.
Speculation on Brezhnev's health began last month after he postponed a planned planned trip to Egypt. He failed also to meet Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam or Japanese Foreign Minister Kiichi Miyazawa during their recent visits to Moscow, although both leaders wanted to see him.
LEONID I. BREZHNEV
. . . reportedly ill
Va. Pilot
1/19/75
# Brezhnev Heart Attack Reported
L.A. Times/Washington Post News Service
WARSAW--Soviet Party Secretary Leonid Brezhnev suffered a heart attack Dec. 19, his 68th birthday, reliable sources said here Tuesday.
The sources said Brezhnev, a heavy smoker, had suffered two previous heart attacks.
The sources said Brezhnev is resting and will officially resume his activities when British Prime Minister Harold Wilson visits Moscow next month. The sources said the heart attack had not affected Brezhnev's position in the ruling Soviet Politburo.
They added, however, that because of his health Brezhnev is thinking of stepping down next year after the Soviet Communist Party Congress. He would still keep his Politburo seat.
The sources named as his likeliest successor as party leader Fedoro Kulakov, a member of the Politburo and central committee in charge of agriculture.
1/22/75
... SI WORK ON PREMIERS, ETC.
=== Page 2 of 8
FROM THE DESD OF
Mr. Ted Owens (PK MAN)----------
Box 43
Cape Charles, Virginia
23310
Jan. 27, 1975
Dr. Edis, quon sus amigos Dris Martin and Mucho...
A note in two parts...first to thank you fellows for repairing this busted mechanism. Am grateful for it. (Bilateral hernia repair.) Second...wanted to give you some suggestions that I think would be helpful for patients like myself having the same thing done. A brochure, I think...would be most helpful given to them just pre-op...so that they would know what to expect, and how to handle it.
The evening before my operation...I used auto-hypnosis...and filled in for my subconscious mind...what was going to happen. I told it...that my body was going to be violated...cut upon...but not to be concerned about it because it would be done safely, and would be done to repair my body...a necessity. Then I used mental imagery to show my subconscious what the actual operation would be like...pictures shown in a medical book of the hernia repair. So...it was ready and there should have been no typical shock or bodily reaction, since the subconscious was alerted and ready to cooperate.
Next...I was operated on between 3 and 4, I think, on Monday afternoon. All that evening and night...I deferred on pain shots...every time the nurse offered me them (which seemed like on the hour, but I was drowsy and could be wrong on that.) The point is...I was trying to take advantage of the fact that my body actually had pain. You see, normally...our body is not filled with pain. But an operation of this sort...gives one a priceless opportunity to learn about bodily pain; and to test the pain-threshold. I found that I could stand pain rather easily.
=== Page 3 of 8
2
S'posin that ten years from now...I'd get stomach cancer or something like that. Well, after experimenting after your operation...I have a good idea of the amounts of pain I can stand...and over what period of time. In other words...if, after such an operation...one wills to go without pain shots or pain pills...just in order to learn what one can of pain in the body...how much one can stand...then one is way ahead of the game. Furthermore...I made a game out of it. I made friends with the pain. Joined it, rather than tensed against it. Told it it was welcome...and to blend in with me. This seemed to work...I felt pain, but it didn't hurt.
After I found out what I wanted to know...about Tuesday evening, I think it was...I took a red pain pill and dropped my pain learning program, since it was no longer necessary.
(And by the way...you sent me home to Virginia with a large bottle of red pain pills. I've been home now for about ten days, and have only used two pills out of the bottle.)
Next...as you know, I got out of bed and began to walk the morning after the operation. Which is as it should be. That was Tuesday morning. And I practiced a lot that day, walking up and down the hall. That evening the nurse that went off at 8:30 came in and ordered me to walk again. I told her that I'd do better than that...and sprung up into the air and danced around the room...then ran out into the hall and ran down the hall to the desk at the far end, then ran back again to the room. Ran, not walked. I was curious in my mind to see if I could...and it was easy to do. Now, I do not know if anyone could do that the day after a double hernia repair...but it was easy for me to do. (I was concerned the next day, after thinking about it...that I might have pulled stitches loose...but you reassured me on that.)
Another point...you know how the nurse has to lift the patient's legs up onto the bed after an abdominal operation? Mine did, and it irked me. Because I felt that I'd recuperate faster if I had no help like that. But as you know...that's a long distance to swing one's feet up onto a bed, after such a painful operation. Okay. It can easily be done by the patient...without any help from the nurse...allowing the patient to get in and out of bed on his own at any time. Simply sit on the bed...hook a toe underneath the stool nearby...drag it over...swing the left foot up and onto the stool...then the right foot...then slide the stool with the feet over beside the bed...and repeat...left foot up onto the bed, right foot up onto the bed. And that's that. Simple. Yet I am sure most patients would not figure that out, or know about it...which is why a little brochure would teach them about it...and free the nurse from those bothersome calls to help the patient get in and out of bed. (To get out of bed, the process is simply reversed, using the sliding stool.)
Finally...the nurses could not understand why I had the heat turned off in the room...and the room was ice-cold. Simple. Remember...I was working in full cooperation with my subconscious mind...and that was what it wanted. Why? Because my body was building up heat...to repair the cutting done on it. Heat outside my body....in the room...worked against the process. The inner healing process. Like a teeter-totter, inner heat for healing purposes...balanced nicely against the coolness, or cold, outside my body. A teeter-totter in balance, I should add. Balance. That was the thing. Temperature balance. Inside against the outside.
Thank you all again.
Best regards....
Ted Owens (PK Man)
Owens
=== Page 4 of 8
8 CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, Sun., Jan. 5, 1975
# If the rich are like us, Hunts prove we're in trouble
By Charles Foley
The Observer, London
Jan. 24, 1975
Scientists
I've been genuinely framed twice in my life... once in Fort Worth, Texas... once in Dallas, Texas.
Hunt... was my enemy. This is the Si way... of handling things.
- Owens
XPK Man X
DALLAS--People at the Texas State Fair a few years back were startled to find, at a modest booth displaying his products, the lofty figure of Haroldson Lafayette Hunt, smiling benignly at the world of which he owned so large a slice and doling out 3 pound plastic bags of goodies.
"Takers found inside copies of Hunt's book 'Alpaca,' which explains why the rich should inherit the Earth; a packet of his 'Life Line Freedom Talks,' which told how the Communists will probably do so instead, and a free sample of Gastromatic, an H. L. Hunt product guaranteed to dispel painful gas, of which the oil billionaire was a victim.
In blue bow-tie, with tufts of white hair at his ears, Hunt looked like the kindly judge in an Andy Hardy movie. "I'm here to save the Republic," he affirmed, in reedy tones. "The Kremlin plans to take us over in three years. Read my books and you'll see!"
Now Hunt is dead, at 85, and the horrendous tangle of lawsuits, charges and countercharges, dirty linen and uncloseted skeletons he has left to his heirs indicate that, if the Hunts are typical American zillionaires, the rich are in grave trouble.
The lid has come off a bizarre family feud for the old man's money. It involves wiretapping, purloined papers, charges of bribery, plea-bargaining in high places and an exotic dash of international high politics that pits Al Fatah's guerrillas against the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
A hush-hush yearlong investigation into the affair by the Justice Department is about to end with a string of indictments. Caught in the web of the inquiry are a ranking senator from Texas; its former governor, John B. Connally; a brace of Richard M. Nixon's attorneys-general and, of course, the former President himself, without whom no scandal these days is complete.
Among the Big Rich of Big D -- as Dallas residents like to call their city--it was long believed that the Hunt problems began some two decades ago when HLH's first wife, Lyda Bunker, was dying of cancer. Hunt grew dependent on his personal secretary, Ruth Ray Wright, who was 30 years his junior. The first Mrs. Hunt had been dead two years when, in 1957, HLH married the girl. This move confronted the six children of his first bed--Lamar, Nelson Bunker, W. Herbert, H. L. Jr., Margaret and Carolyn--with a stepmother in their own age bracket and four healthy young rivals in the next-of-kin stakes: her children, Ray Lee, June, Helen and Swanee.
The four were at first attributed to "a former marriage," but some time after Hunt formally adopted them, the second Mrs. Hunt revealed--apparently to strengthen their claims on the inheritance--that her husband was, indeed, their father. Ruth, an enthusiastic member of the local Baptist choir, set her mind to converting HLH--no more gambling or cigars--and eventually led the old man, along with his new family, to Dallas' First Baptist Church, the largest in the world, where under the egis of Billy Graham all six were baptized by immersion together.
=== Page 5 of 8
In the course, Ray Lee left college to go into real estate, a Hunt sideline; June went on tour as a gospel singer and Helen and Swanee married. Their husbands were taken into the business. Both branches of the family presented the patriarch with grandchildren and great-grandchildren until the total of punitive beneficiaries rose to 40.
Hunt, a onetime farm boy, lumberjack and cowhand, struck it rich in the 1920s. Old hands swear that he got his start by staking $50,000 in poker winnings on a property that turned out to cover a lake of oil 45 miles by 9 miles. When the money rolled in, he would risk thousands on a horse or the turn of a card. The money still rolls in today on an ever-mounting tide, in line with the high profits throughout the oil industry. Immense reserves await tapping, when prices soar still further. All this is in addition to real estate holdings, timber, a canning plant, drug companies, ranchland and cattle.
Hunt refused to bid for anything he could not own outright. He must have absolute control: no pesky shareholders, directors, balance sheets for public disclosure. Hunt Oil was a private company, and so were its affairs. "Rich men are ill-advised to call attention to their wealth in any way," he snapped, when asked why there were No Hunt foundations for health, education, the arts.
HLH did spend some millions on the fervidly anti-Communist 'Life Line' broadcasts he sponsored on 541 radio stations, but because they enjoyed tax-exempt status, this favorite hobby horse was exercised entirely at Uncle Sam's expenses.
Four years ago, Hunt's grip on his affairs began to slacken. He was confined first to a wheel chair, tended always by Ruth, then to a hospital bed. The old guard at Hunt Oil began getting orders from plump Vice President Nelson Bunker, the heir-apparent, and his closely allied brother, Herbert.
One executive who resented the change was Paul M. Rothermel Jr., for 15 years HLH's confidant, bodyguard and whipping boy. Rothermel, a former FBI man and an attorney, had known and admired the second Mrs. Hunt throughout that time.
He also knew that Hunt, while putting enough in trust funds to make his first six children multimillionaires in their own right, had given scant thought to Ruth's family. "Mr. Hunt relied on my judgment," he said. "He even gave me a letter approving transactions I might make on his behalf. So I felt a duty to persuade him in 1969 to change his will to benefit the second family. But when the first lot heard of this, some odd things happened."
Rothermel's wife, Joyce, wondered about two men in a red Thunderbird always outside her home. The driver, questioned by police, turned out to be a private eye, one J.J. Kelly. "When I asked if he was on a divorce case" a policeman said later, "he stepped on the gas and took off. If he hadn't panicked, none of this would have come out."
In the car were $40,000 worth of tapping equipment and some 100 tapes of bugged conversations. But J. J. Kelly stayed defiantly mute, even when the FBI discovered wiretaps on Rothermel and the homes of three other Hunt Oil executives. Kelly and his lieutenant, Patrick McCann, were confident that "dollar power" would see them through. Instead, they received three years apiece. Furious, they turned state's evidence, and proudly disdaining hush money, according to their story -- at last named their paymasters.
Bunker and Herbert were brought to court, Texas style, in steel bracelets and chains, to be indicted on wiretapping charges. Kelly confessed that he'd been beguiled by "men of vast fortunes who merely wanted to escalate their wealth and power."
NELSON BUNKER HUNT
LAMAR HUNT
W. HERBERT HUNT
The Hunts recovered the legal initiative with a suit against Rothermel -- who had by now left their father's employ -- and two executives associated with him. It was alleged that they siphoned off scores of millions of dollars into dummy companies, and it was simply to trace these funds that the detectives had been hired.
The two executives protested in court that groundless embezzlement charges had been brought "simply to discredit and coerce us as pawns in the struggle for the Hunt fortune." They also raised some eyebrows by contending that, on behalf of the Hunts, they had undertaken numerous clandestine deals involving "holders and seekers of office, labor leaders, professional sports figures."
Then Kelly sued Bunker and company for $100 million complaining they had ruined his reputation and career, even threatened him with force. Not to be left out, the Rothermels stepped in with a $1.5-million suit against the Hunts. Mrs. Rothermel, a psychiatrist's aide, complained of eavesdropping on her patients. Rothermel, who had access to the old man's files for years, is busy on a book about it all -- he'd like the world to know more about "the man who played God."
Rothermel said HLH allowed his sons to bring their suits "to keep peace in the family" -- a somewhat forlorn hope. Now that his influence has gone, Bunker's instincts will take over. A weighty, more aggressive chip off the old block, Nelson Bunker Hunt, 48, is the family's business brain. His gambling streak has lately been channeled into the commodities market in silver and sugar, as well as into racehorse owning and breeding on an international scale.
The Hunt lawyers allege that originally Nixon and his men promised Bunker immunity in exchange for certain (unspecified) favors. "Our clients performed," they say, "but indictments were handed down anyway." The deal, according to Hunt Oil sources, was a perfectly proper tradeoff. Wiretap charges would be dropped if the Hunts give the FBI a list of Al Fatah agents in the United States.
At that time, in 1972, the Nixonites had evidence that Al Fatah was seeking a foothold in America. They even feared an attempt on Mrs. Golda Meir, who was soon to visit New York. The FBI had burgled the offices of the Arab Information Center in Dallas, where the Hunts had contacts -- with what success is not known. Next the FBI turned to the Hunts, who were in a position to know Al Fatah personnel in the U.S. Bunker had high-level friends in the Arab world, who were trying to help him dissuade Libya's Col. Mummar Kadafi from taking over the Hunt oil wells in the Libyan desert.
Libya was Bunker's fief. He had negotiated in person the deals that had given Hunt International its vast holdings there, and he had celebrated the inauguration of the empire with a ball for 500 (tax deductible) guests in London with three name bands flown there from the United States.
Because of the dispute with Kadafi, which had promised to deal America, in the shape of Bunker Hunt, "a slap in its cold, arrogant face," there had been threats from Al Fatah, which the Libyan revolutionary subsidized. Bunker was a target for
=== Page 6 of 8
my predict banks will fail it's beginning. everywhere soon, Owens
A2 Virginian-Pilot, Monday, January 20, 1975
# Foundering Bank Is Sold
WASHINGTON (UPI) -- The Security National Bank of Hempstead, N.Y., with $1.8 billion in assets and facing failure, was sold today to the giant Chemical Bank of New York City, the nation's seventh largest bank.
All depositors of Security National will automatically become depositors of the Chemical Bank, which takes over "virtually all other liabilities," said James E. Smith, U.S. comptroller of currency.
Chemical said it paid $40 million in cash to acquire Security National, the nation's 55th largest bank. Details of the purchase were to be announced by Chemical Bank today.
The purchase had to be approved by the Federal Reserve Board and the New York state superintendent of banks after Smith's finding that "external forces and public confidence have adversely affected the operations and condition of Security to the point that an emergency exists," the FRB said.
Bill Foster, a spokesman for the comptroller, said, "Security was faced with probable failure unless the takeover could be arranged. That finding (by Smith) was necessary in order to permit the Boards of Directors to enter into the transactions without prior approval of the shareholders."
The FRB said that Chemical Bank's action "will minimize the secondary effects of uncertainty and doubt on banking and financial markets generally."
Chemical has assets of $17.8 billion. As of Monday, all 98 offices of Security were to become branches of Chemical, which already has 181 offices in the New York area.
The surprise deal was worked out Saturday and Sunday by the Boards of Directors of the two banks, who were given approval by New York state superintendent of banks, the Federal Reserve Board, and the U.S. comptroller, whose office oversees all national banks.
Smith said the purchase was a "very constructive result for the Security National Bank shareholders and depositors for the Chemical Bank and for the public interest in a stable and healthy banking system."
It was third major banking failure in recent months. The Franklin National Bank of New York, the nation's 20th largest, was declared insolvent by the federal government last October after it lost nearly $40 million in foreign currency dealings. The bank was taken over by a consortium of six large European banks.
The worst previous bank failure came in late 1973 when the U.S. National Bank of San Diego went into receivership.
Get your money out of banks. liquidate your stocks.
Owens
1/24/75
=== Page 7 of 8
of course, Ray Lee left college to go into real estate, a sideline; June went on tour as a gospel singer and Helen and Swanee married. Their husbands were taken into the business. Both branches of the family presented the patriarch with grandchildren and great-grandchildren until the total of putative beneficiaries rose to 40.
Hunt, a onetime farm boy, lumberjack and cowhand, struck it rich in the 1920s. Old hands swear that he got his start by staking $50,000 in poker winnings on a property that turned out to cover a lake of oil 45 miles by 9 miles. When the money rolled in, he would risk thousands on a horse or the turn of a card. The money still rolls in today on an ever-mounting tide, in line with the high profits throughout the oil industry. Immense reserves await tapping, when prices soar still further. All this is in addition to real estate holdings, timber, a canning plant, drug companies, ranchland and cattle.
Hunt refused to bid for anything he could not own outright. He must have absolute control: no pesky shareholders, directors, balance sheets for public disclosure. Hunt Oil was a private company, and so were its affairs. "Rich men are ill-advised to call attention to their wealth in any way," he snapped, when asked why there were No Hunt foundations for health, education, the arts.
HLH did spend some millions on the fervidly anti-Communist 'Life Line' broadcasts he sponsored on 541 radio stations, but because they enjoyed tax-exempt status, this favorite hobby horse was exercised entirely at Uncle Sam's expenses.
Four years ago, Hunt's grip on his affairs began to slacken. He was confined first to a wheel chair, tended always by Ruth, then to a hospital bed. The old guard at Hunt Oil began getting orders from plump Vice President Nelson Bunker, the heir-apparent, and his closely allied brother, Herbert.
One executive who resented the change was Paul M. Rothermel Jr., for 15 years HLH's confidant, bodyguard and whipping boy. Rothermel, a former FBI man and an attorney, had known and admired the second Mrs. Hunt throughout that time.
He also knew that Hunt, while putting enough in trust funds to make his first six children multimillionaires in their own right, had given scant thought to Ruth's family. "Mr. Hunt relied on my judgment," he said. "He even gave me a letter
NELSON BUNKER HUNT
LAMAR HUNT
W. HERBERT HUNT
The Hunts recovered the legal initiative with a suit against Rothermel -- who had by now left their father's employ -- and two executives associated with him. It was alleged that they siphoned off scores of millions of dollars into dummy companies, and it was simply to trace these funds that the detectives had been hired.
The two executives protested in court that groundless embezzlement charges had been brought "simply to discredit and coerce us as pawns in the struggle for the Hunt fortune." They also raised some eyebrows by contending that, on behalf of the Hunts, they had undertaken numerous clandestine deals involving "holders and seekers of office, labor leaders, professional sports figures."
Then Kelly sued Bunker and company for $100 million complaining they had ruined his reputation and career, even threatened him with force. Not to be left out, the Rothermels stepped in with a $1.5-million suit against the Hunts. Mrs. Rothermel, a psychiatrist's aide, complained of eavesdropping on her patients. Rothermel, who had access to the old man's files for years, is busy on a book about it all -- he'd like the world to know more about "the man who played God."
Rothermel said HLH allowed his sons to bring their suits "to keep peace in the family" -- a somewhat forlorn hope. Now that his influence has gone, Bunker's instincts will take over. A weighty, more aggressive chip off the old block, Nelson Bunker Hunt, 48, is the family's business brain. His gambling streak has lately been channeled into the commodities market in silver and sugar, as well as into racehorse owning and breeding on an international scale.
The Hunt lawyers allege that originally Nixon and his men promised Bunker immunity in exchange for certain (unspecified) favors. "Our clients performed," they say, "but indictments were handed down anyway." The deal, according to Hunt Oil sources, was a perfectly proper "tradeoff. Wiretap charges would be dropped if the Hunts give the FBI a list of Al Fatah agents in the United States.
At that time, in 1972, the Nixonites had evidence that Al Fatah was seeking a foothold in America. They even feared an attempt on Mrs. Golda Meir, who was soon to visit New York. The FBI had burgled the offices of the Arab Information Center in Dallas, where the Hunts had contacts -- with what success is not known. Next the FBI turned to the Hunts, who were in a position to know Al Fatah personnel in the U.S. Bunker had high-level friends in the Arab world, who were trying to help him dissuade Libya's Col. Mummar Kadafi from taking over the Hunt oil wells in the Libyan desert.
Libya was Bunker's fief. He had negotiated in person the deals that had given Hunt International its vast holdings there, and he had celebrated the inauguration of the empire with a ball for 500 (tax deductible) guests in London with three name bands flown there from the United States.
Because of the dispute with Kadafi, which had promised to deal America, in the shape of Bunker Hunt, "a slap in its cold, arrogant face," there had been threats from Al Fatah, which the Libyan revolutionary subsidized. Bunker was a target for
approving transactions I might make on his behalf. So I felt a duty to persuade him in 1969 to change his will to benefit the second family. But when the first lot heard of this, some odd things happened."
Rothermel's wife, Joyce, wondered about two men in a red Thunderbird always outside her home. The driver, questioned by police, turned out to be a private eye, one J.J. Kelly. "When I asked if he was on a divorce case" a policeman said later, "he stepped on the gas and took off. If he hadn't panicked, none of this would have come out."
In the car were $40,000 worth of tapping equipment and some 100 tapes of bugged conversations. But J. J. Kelly stayed defiantly mute, even when the FBI discovered wiretaps on Rothermel and the homes of three other Hunt Oil executives. Kelly and his lieutenant, Patrick McCann, were confident that "dollar power" would see them through. Instead, they received three years apiece. Furious, they turned state's evidence, and proudly disdaining hush money, according to their story -- at last named their paymasters.
Bunker and Herbert were brought to court, Texas style, in steel bracelets and chains, to be indicted on wiretapping charges. Kelly confessed that he'd been beguiled by "men of vast fortunes who merely wanted to escalate their wealth and power."
=== Page 8 of 8
Scientists Have another
Premier, President, etc.
Red Chief 'Cedes' Powers
MOSCOW (AP) -- Soviet officials were either unavailable or not talking Saturday about an Indian news report that Leonid I. Brezhnev has relinquished his duties as Communist party leader because of illness.
The Press Trust of India (PTI), quoting informed sources in Moscow, said the 68-year-old Brezhnev "has taken leave of his reponsibilities" because of exhaustion, age, illness, and emotional stress caused by his mother's death last week.
LEONID I. BREZHNEV
. . . reportedly ill
The report did not say he had resigned. PTI said Brezhnev "evidently is resting and undergoing treatment not far from Moscow but is available to his colleagues for urgent counsel."
The agency did not list any specific illness.
PTI, an independent agency owned by Indian newspapers as a cooperative, said that its sources "summarily dismiss talk of a power struggle as the cause or the likely consequence of Brezhnev's withdrawal."
In a related development, British Broadcasting Corp. and another Indian news agency, United News of India, reported in New Delhi that Mrs. Gandhi had postponed a planned visit to Moscow next month. An Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman said no date for the visit had ever been set "and so the question of postponement does not arise."
Reports on Brezhnev's health have circulated in the foreign press for weeks, and he has been variously reported suffering from pneumonia, heart trouble, and leukemia.
During that time, Soviet spokesmen have refused to comment or even respond to inquires on the subject.
Tass, the official Soviet news agency, reported last week that Brezhnev attended the funeral of his 87-year-old mother and at that time described speculation about his health as "groundless inventions."
But the agency has not yet distributed promised photos of Brezhnev at the cemetery.
The Soviet press has continued to mention Brezhnev's name frequently. Saturday's edition of Pravda had it five times.
Speculation on Brezhnev's health began last month after he postponed a planned trip to Egypt. He failed also to meet Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam or Japanese Foreign Minister Kiichi Miyazawa during their recent visits to Moscow, although both leaders wanted to see him.
Va. Pilot
1/19/75
Brezhnev Heart Attack Reported
L.A. Times/Washington Post News Service
WARSAW--Soviet Party Secretary Leonid Brezhnev suffered a heart attack Dec. 19, his 68th birthday, reliable sources said here Tuesday.
The sources said Brezhnev, a heavy smoker, had suffered two previous heart attacks.
The sources said Brezhnev is resting and will officially resume his activities when British Prime Minister Harold Wilson visits Moscow next month. The sources said the heart attack had not affected Brezhnev's position in the ruling Soviet Politburo.
They added, however, that because of his health Brezhnev is thinking of stepping down next year after the Soviet Communist Party Congress. He would still keep his Politburo seat.
The sources named as his likeliest successor as party leader Fedoro Kulakov, a member of the Politburo and central committee secretary in charge of agriculture.
1/22/75
... SI WORK ON PREMIERS, ETC.
Collection
Citation
“7501 Newspaper Files,” Archive Home, accessed June 27, 2026, https://www.pkman.org/archive/items/show/607.