The Charlotte News
Friday, October 17, 1958
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Atlanta that five men had been indicted this date on charges of destroying a Jewish temple in the city early on Sunday, causing about $200,000 worth of damage but with no injuries. In Arlington, Va., it was reported that a printer who turned out anti-Semitic literature had acknowledged this date that he had written a letter which had figured in the investigation of the bombing in Atlanta. The letter had mentioned a "big blast", but the author, George Lincoln Rockwell, 40-year old former Navy pilot in World War II, said that the reference was to a picketing demonstration, not to any bombing. Mr. Rockwell, who would subsequently head the American Nazi Party which he would found the following year, said that the letter had been written the previous July to Wallace Allen in Atlanta, who was one of the five men indicted in connection with the dynamiting of the temple. Mr. Rockwell told reporters that his letter to Mr. Allen had been written the previous July at the time that plans were being made for picketing at the White House and in Atlanta against "Zionist, Communist Jews". The letter had mentioned a "fat cat" who was supposed to be helping finance the anti-Semitic material. Mr. Rockwell said that he had told the FBI that Mr. Allen had written to him opposing the picketing of the Atlanta temple "since it relates to the religious rather than to the political." Mr. Rockwell printed anti-Semitic material in the basement of his home, labeled as being from the "National Committee to Free America from Jewish Domination". Meanwhile, attorneys for the five men who had been detained prior to the indictments this date, had been seeking their release on the ground that they were being detained illegally, with hearings on petitions for writs of habeas corpus having been set for this date. The grand jury action was intended to foreclose the issuance of the writs. Meanwhile, FBI agents were assisting Atlanta police in the search for the person or persons who had actually set off the big bundle of dynamite at the temple.
In Little Rock, Ark., it was reported that the private school corporation set up to conduct private, segregated classes at three of the four closed high schools, excluding the black high school, had announced that the following Monday, it would open an all-white high school for senior students only.
Secretary of State Dulles would fly to Formosa in the ensuing few days to consult with President Chiang Kai-shek.
In Tokyo, it was reported by Pyongyang Radio that Chinese Communist troops pulling out of North Korea had formally handed over all of their installations and equipment to the North Korean Army the previous day.
In Detroit, the UAW reported this date that 84 percent of Ford's 90,000 production workers had approved the three-year contract which had been worked out by the UAW with Ford following a six-hour strike on September 17.
Also in Detroit, it was reported that American Motors workers at Grand Rapids, Mich., had walked off the job during the morning this date when contract talks between AMC and the UAW passed the deadline without an agreement. The UAW had already reached agreements with the Big Three automakers, awaiting only the actions of local unions regarding specific local issues.
On the editorial page, "Gen. DeGaulle's Encouraging Gambit" finds it a strange spectacle to see a general putting the skids under his army, and yet that was what Premier De Gaulle was trying to do at the moment as he attempted to repair the Algerian War's rips in the French political fabric.
"Traditionally, for all its mercurial shifts of allegiance, the French army has not actively played politics. But for the first time since Third Republic Radicals brought the military under state control in the 1870-1918 period, the Indochinese War brought on an urge for political tinkering among professional soldiers. After their defeat in Viet Nam the soldiers took to Algeria a grim resolution that France would not be humiliated again. The army officers in Algiers really kindled the revolt last May which overthrew the Fourth Republic and eventually brought on the Fifth last month."
It finds that Algerian Army officers' strange alliance with fanatic European colonials, who had economic interests at heart, had helped upset parliamentary control. Friends of French republicanism had been on a vigil, waiting to see what Premier De Gaulle would do about Army political power in Algeria, knowing that until he could or would do something, the domestic trouble would not begin to clear. During the current week, Premier De Gaulle had screwed up his courage and told the Army to get out of Algerian politics, off the "committee of public safety" which had run Algeria since the prior May, and to allow honest elections to occur. He had written to General Salan, the commander in Algeria: "The moment has come for the military to stop taking part in any organization which has a political character."
It finds that it did not break the vigil for French republicanism, but was an encouraging gambit, and it hopes that Premier De Gaulle had the power to move to checkmate.
Drew Pearson indicates that "Operation Soothing Syrup, installment II", had now begun. Following the first Russian Sputnik of October 4, 1957, U.S. leaders had been stunned, precipitating discussion at the White House of a plan to admit the truth to the American people, that the U.S. had fallen far behind Russia in missiles and satellites, that it was in danger of becoming a second-class power. The plan to admit the facts had been dubbed "Operation Candor", pushed, to his credit, by Vice-President Nixon, while former White House chief of staff Sherman Adams and others close to the President had not, with Mr. Adams having said, "The Administration is not interested in serving a high score in an outer space basketball game." In the end, "Operation Candor" had been nixed.
Taking its place had been "Operation Soothing Syrup", a campaign to lull the people regarding the Administration's failure to keep pace with Russia in missiles and satellites.
With the launching of the Pioneer lunar probe the prior week, the second installment of Operation Soothing Syrup had begun, continuing with the unveiling of the X-15 on Wednesday, as the White House wanted positive publicity because of the approaching midterm elections on November 4, with the Democratic tide needing to be turned.
He compares the facts with the propaganda of this new operation. The Pioneer had been hailed as a great technological triumph, and yet it carried a payload of only 40 pounds, compared to the 3,000-pound satellites which Russia had launched into space. The reason why the lunar probe had made it only one-third of the distance to its intended lunar orbit had been partly because the automatic pilot had fixed on a wrong course and partly because of insufficient rocket power at launch. The missile had generated 150,000 pounds of thrust, a weak amount compared to the 850,000 pounds of thrust which Russian rocket engines were known to generate.
Air Force scientists were presently working frantically to boost the thrust of the lunar probe rocket by increasing the smaller booster rockets in the third and fourth stages, and they hoped to be ready for another attempt at the moon by November 7 or 8. Meanwhile, U.S. technicians admitted candidly that it would take at least a year for the U.S. to match Russia's present rocket power.
The unveiling of the new X-15 had been carefully arranged before the election, although the manufacturer would not even turn the rocket-plane over to the Air Force until the following spring, at which point a team of pilots, headed by Capt. Robert White, would push the ship to new altitudes. With the boost from a Navajo rocket, they hoped to fly the X-15 into orbit around the earth.
He indicates that what the press releases would not mention, however, was that Russia expected to beat the U.S. into orbit with the first man by at least a year—actually to be by ten months. That estimate had been the conclusion of Air Force technical intelligence which claimed that Russia could send a man aloft in a satellite and bring him back alive even at the current time, though not to be demonstrated until April, 1961 with the flight of Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who would also orbit the earth. The Air Force would try again before the elections to launch an ICBM, the Titan, which would undergo preliminary testing at Cape Canaveral prior to the elections.
He finds that the sobering truth, however, was that the Russians had already fired over a dozen ICBM's the full distance, the first one having been over two years earlier, with U.S. radar having tracked warheads 4,500 miles and observed them reenter the atmosphere over the Okhotsk Sea, just across from Alaska, without disintegrating.
Administration spokesmen were pointing with pride to the spectacular undersea record set by the atomic submarines, the U.S.S. Nautilus, Skate and Seawolf, the country's most spectacular postwar naval achievement. Yet, the Navy had warned the Joint Chiefs that the country's 110 submarines, old and obsolete, were no match for Russia's 600 submarines, when all except 13 of the U.S. submarines were over 12 years old. Since World War II, the U.S. had built only 21 new submarines while Soviet shipyards had turned out 350.
As we have fallen behind, there will be no further comment on the front page or editorial page of this date, with the notes to be sporadic until we catch up.
The question of the day, incidentally, is: Who's Dylan Thomas?
We have questions: Why are private eyes driving around Los Angeles in '58 Fords and Thunderbirds with the tops down, drawing attention to themselves, and why is the guy who was a crook the prior week suddenly now the parking valet for the private eyes' office? And why is a multilingual PhD. who worked for the OSS during the war now pounding pavement as a private eye? Somebody is not sailing with a square rigging and we intend to get to the bottom of it.
Framed Edition
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