The Daily Telegram from Eau Claire, Wisconsin • Page 1

'vii-ueov No, 20 Pnw TELEGRAM CUlUfe, WISCONSIN, FRIDAY AFTERNOON, JAN, 24, 1969 Asioclotid 3 SECTIONS Net Tiit CsrHl Tortured Pueblo Captain Confessed to Save Crew ie confessed blood-chilling SCENfe DEVASTATION This aerial view shows the section of Hazlehurst which suffered tile worst blow from tornadoes that swirled across three counties in central Mississippi early Thursday. With the job of digging out under way, it appears the death toll is 29. In addition, hundreds were injured or left homeless, or both. Ten of the victims died in the area pictured, (AP Wirephoto) Negro Leader Joining Ray's Defense Team MEMPHIS, Tenn. A top aide to slain civil rights leader Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr. has paid a jail cell visit to James Earl Ray, King's accused killer, and says he will aid in Ray's defense. The move was backed by the Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, King's successor as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. "Brother Ray has asked me to defend him and I intend to do it," the Rev.

James Bevel told a meeting of about 50 ministers Thursday night after his jail visit. Bevel said last week he was convinced Ray was innocent in the slaying of King here last April 4. In Atlanta, Abernathy said he vewed Bevel's action as a way of moving "nonviolence into new dimension in American life." The SCLC head added, "Rev. Is the real that it is not who killed Dr. King, but what killed him." Bevel visited with Ray in the top-security cell on the third floor of the Shelby County Jail, accompanied by Ray's attorney, Percy' Foreman of Houston, Tex.

Bevel said he was convinced of Ray's innocence before he met with him I am now even more convinced that Ray was about as capable of killing King as I am of flying to the moon." In answer to a question, the bearded, balding Bevel said he had been accepted by Ray to assist in the case and that Foreman would remain as chief counsel. Four Lives Lost in Chicago Fire CHICAGO (AP) Four per sons died and 17 were injured early today when an extra- alarm fire swept an upper floor of a luxury highrise apartment building on North Lake Shore Drive. Firemen and policemen searched the burned-out section of the 36th floor of the 40-story Hawthorne House for other possible victims. Eight policemen were among those treated for injuries or smoke inhalation. All the dead were residents of the building.

Mississippi Starts Tornado Cleanup HAZLEHURST, Miss. (AP) Massive clean-up operations began today in central Mississippi where tornadoes killed 29 persons as they carved a path of destruction across three counties. twisters, roaring in from the west Thursday morning, injured more than 150 persons and left approximately 300 homeless. Damage was estimated in the millions. The first area struck was a predominantly Negro settlement just outside south Hazlehurst in Copiah County.

The tornadoes then moved northeastward into rural areas of Simpson and Smith counties about 30 miles away. Utility crews worked into the night Thursday to reptpj'e) most of the and telephone service. The Hazlehurst Hospital alone treated 128 persons. Many others were taken to hospitals in Jackson and Brookhaven. About 200 homeless persons spent the night at an emergency center set up at the National Guard Armory in Hazelhurst.

Governmental and private agencies quickly moved into the area to care for the hungry and the homeless. "We are ready to feed, clothe and shelter all of them," said George Sheffield, central Mississippi Red. Cross disaster chairman. The U.S. Department of Agriculture in Atlanta and the State Welfare Department in Jackson volunteered to provide food where needed.

Gov. John Bell Williams; on a tour of the stricken area, pledged state aid. Sen. James 0. Eastland, D- announced in Washington the tion would make three per cent loans available to business and residential areas.

Sen. John Stennis, urged the government to declare the region a federal disaster area. COftONADO, Calif. (AP) -I The (Japtain of the Pueblo says 'to spying' after mental torture, and then tried to drown himself in a bucket of water. Tears streaming, his voice Breaking with anguish, Cmdr.

Lloyd M. -Bucher told a Navy court of inquiry Thursday that North Koreans finally broke lim by threatening to shoot his crewmen one-by-one in front of 1 the youngest sailor and saying they would start with him. Closed Session Today Bucher's account of the terror least for jublic He went be- bre a closed session of the court today to give and will be followed, the Navy said, by Rear Adm. Frank L. Johnson, comimander of U.S.

naval forces Japan at the time the Pueblo was seized. Bucher has said he radioed desperately for help as North Korean gunboats surrounded the Intelligence ship, but it never, arrived. The Navy said Johnson would testify after closed-door accounts from one or more of three captains under his command in Japan when the Pueblo was seized off North Korea last year. Summaries of all secret sessions will be prepared, deleting all classified information, and made available to newsmen, a Navy spokesman said. Open court sessions a scheduled to resume Wednesday.

After describing why he confessed, Bucher said Thursday, Sometime during the night I attempted to commit suicide by drowning myself in a bucket of water in my was unable to accomplish this." Embarrassed Nation "Mentally, I was quite dis- Police Nab 420 at Campus Rally SAN FRANCISCO (UPI)-A force of 300 policemen firmly backed acting President S. I. Hayakawa's hard-line stand against strikers at San Francisco State Thursday, making the largest mass arrest in the city's history. Under a barrage of rocks, bottles and sharpened clubs thrown by screaming demonstrators, the helmeted riot police took 420 persons into than twice the total number previously arrested since a strike by minority groups Nov. 6 touched off 11 weeks of violence and disruption.

Rallies Banned Police moved in as strikers gathered on the campus for a rally, one of the activities banned by Hayakawa in his efforts to restore order to the campus. 'The San Francisco State violence erupted less than 24 hours after a $500,000 fire, set by arsonists, gutted an auditor' ium on the University of California's nearby Berkeley nearly 800 per- sons were arrested five years ago during a free speech movement. Picketing began at Berkeley Wednesday morning in support of the strike at San Francisco State. At a news conference, Haya kawa, a noted semanticist who is acting as the college's seventh president within the past eight years, called the rally "an act of desperation" by militants. The forbidden noon rally the first since students returned from the Christmas break was announced Tuesday by the Third World Liberation Front, comprised of non-Negro minorl ty students.

The student strike began with demands by the Third World and Black Students Union for a college of ethnic studies, a black studies department, admission of all-minority applicants re gardless of qualifications, and reinstatement of twice-suspended Black Panther George Mur ray, a graduate student who urged students to bring guns to school. Russians Saying No More About Motorcade Incident MOSCQW (UPD-The Soviets today lowered a curtain of secrecy around a gunman's attack on a Kremlin motorcade, leaving unclear whether the target was the nation's space heroes or Us political leaders. A brief official announcement said only that several shots were fired Wednesday at a closed automobile carrying Soviet cosmonauts in a triumphal motorcade honoring the Iour Soyuz spacemen who led the parade in an open limousine. Htaformed sources said a burst of five bullets from the attacker's two pistols critically wounded a chauffeur and a motorcycle policeman but hit ao one else. Communist party General Secretary Leonid I.

Brezhnev and President Nikolai Podgorny were said to have been riding in closed cars behind the cosmonauts. Some sources however said the two leaders had left the motorcade shortly before the shooting in order to take a faster route to the Kremlin for an awards ceremony awaiting the cosmonauts. The two top leaders had greeted the four Spyuz spacemen at a Moscow airport. They then joined a motorcade to the Kremlin with thje spacemen, Vladimir Shatalov, Boris Volyn- ov, Yevgeny KMrunov and Alexei Yelisyev whe last week performed history's first multi- man walk in space plus the docking of two orbiting ships. Official Soviet sources said the attacker was "mentally deranged." Grabbed by others in the crowd and hustled away by security men, he vanished into the unpublic world of Soviet security.

There has been no authoritative word on the attacker's motive. Another unanswered question was where he got two pistols. A Soviet citizen has no constitutional right to hear arms. Arras are strictly controlled and the penalties for illegal are applied with heavy hand. his over with now," Bucher replied.

He was trembling. Bucher said he was taken to another building and shown a tortured man strapped to a Wall. "They told me he was a South Korean spy. He was alive but had a compound frac- of his upper right arm with the bone sticking out. He was stripped to the waist.

He had completely bitten through Bucher's voice broke, and af- er a long pause he continued: completely bitten through his lower lip. It was hanging down. His right eye had been iut out. His head was hanging down. There was a lot of (Bucher's voice failed for a minute) ning down his right cheek.

He was under three spotlights. I do not remember leaving that building." Threatened with Same He said his captors told him, "That's what happens to spies, of the embarrassment he thought his confession caused the United The typewritten confession said Bucher was A CIA agent that his ship intruded into North Korean waters and that he was trying to put South Koreans ashore. "And I realized," he said, "they (North Koreans) needed me alive more than anyone else in the crew for public appearances that I was Afraid of and knew were coming." The court warned Bucher Wednesday he may have violated regulations by surrendering the ship. Bucher was in his fourth dajTof testimony and ha: been unusually calm, sometimes tense, until he came to describing an interrogation before he confessed. As he talked he began trembling.

"They made me kneel on the floor," Bucher said. He said a North Korean he nicknamed Super Colonel, or "Super seemed desperate. Given Two Minutes "'You have two minutes to decide to sign the confession or be shot'," Bucher said he was told "I spent two minutes on the floor and I repeated over and over" the skipper's voice broke and he paused, "I love you, Rose, I love you, Rose." His blonde wife Rose sobbed and rubbed her eyes at that point in his testimony. "At the end of the two minutes he asked me to sign," Bucher said. "I said I wouldn't.

He told a guard at my side to move so when I got shot and the bullet passed through my head, he would not be hit." the son of a Bucher said a North Korean shouted. "The gun clicked but it didn't fire. I had fully expected to be shot. But when the slide was drawn back, presumably to insert another bullet, did not hear any bullet hit the floor and I damn well knew it was a game they were playing." Two more minutes went by, Bucher said, and "the officer said, 'He's not worth a and told me I would be beaten to death. Two guards beat me to the floor and kicked me and worked me over real good.

I lost consciousness after a few minutes I asked to go to the all I could urinate was blood." Recess Rejected At one point, as Bucher appeared near collapse, the Navy's counsel, Capt. William Newsome, asked he wanted a recess. "No! No! I would rather get black matter run and you are spies, and you will get exactly the same." "I passed out," Bucher said. Bucher said he revived in his interrogation room. 'We will now begin to shoot your crew and shoot them in your presence until you he said Super told him.

'And even then if you will not sign, I will make you Bucher said the North Koreans summoned the youngest member of his crew, 21-year-old Fireman 2.C. Howard Bland; "I was not prepared for them to shoot my crew," Bucher said. "I was convinced they would do it. They were animals. I was not prepared to go through things like that." Bucher was stammering.

He paused, wiped his eyes, took a drink of water. Rewarded with Food "I was not prepared for this type of mental torture," he said. "I told them at this time, 'I will sign this I did sign it. I was taken back to my room and a big plateful of food with egg arid other goodies was brought to me I did not touch it." Bucher began trembling. Court was recessed for 90 minutes.

When it resumed, Bucher said his confession finally softened Super enough to make him answer his (Bucher's) continuous demands to know whether his wounded men were being treated. He quoted the colonel as saying "I can tell you that the wounded are being taken care of. "This as it turned out was a lie. "My primary thought was, as long as I was kept alive, to get a message back to the United States that our ship had not intruded, regardless of what coerced confession would come out of this captivity." CMDR. LLOYD BUCHER State Solon Hopes to Avoid Election Disputes in Future MADISON (UPI) Assemblyman Stanley York, head of the Assembly Elections Committee, said Thursday he will have a bill drafted in an effort to prevent a recurrence of the disputed balloting in a Claire.

The dispute was all but settled in surprising fashion earlier Thursday when the m- mittee reversed itself and recommended that Assemblyman Joseph L. Looby, D-Eau Claire, retain his seat. On a unanimous vote, the committee reconsidered and then killed a request it had made Wednesday to investigate the Novi 5'election hi Eau Claire County's 1st; Assembly District. The investigation would have enabled Republicans controlling the Assembly to oust Looby and seat former Assem- olyman Wilmer Waters, R-Eau Claire. Looby defeated Waters a single vote after a e- count of the election.

Action came after a GOP caucus in which Waters' backers failed to muster the necessary votes. The GOP has a 52- there are errors by election officials of which the voter could not be aware." Looby personally members of the committee. "I just want to thank you for being fair," he said after the vote. "I had confidence in you and you rewarded me." Nixon Intends to Seek Batch of New Laws WASHINGTON (AP) President Nixon hopes to start send- ing a si legislative Inro 48 edge in the Assembly, but! York said he was convinced nearly unanimous su pport Looby was the real winner would have been needed loathe disputed election. program" to Congress within several weeks, according to the President's newly named chief White House staff member.

The statement from Arthur F. Burns gave added substance to launch an investigation. Looby had been declared the of other indications that Nixon intends to present the Democratic York, R-River Falls, in the original count, the some ballots were not and in a circuit court ed. because a clerk had test. placed his initials on them.

York said he would like a bill introduced that would make voters' intentions paramount in spite of errors election officials. said the law must "protect the right of the voter to have his ballot counted when York said changed its the mind committee because of a "discussion of the issues and looking at the problem that Waters expressed kfefin disappointment. He said he still feels he got two niore votes than Looby did. Senators to 'Keep Watch' on Hickel WASHINGTON (AP) The Nixon administration has easily won its first congressional test, gaining confirmation of Walter J. Hickel as secretary of interior over the opposition of nearly all the Senate Democratic leadership.

But indications were that Democrats in Congress will be watching-the Alaska governor's every move after he is sworn in at the White House ceremonies today. "Mr. Hickel is on notice from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue," said Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield after Hickel was confirmed Thursday by a vote of 73 to 16. Hickel, whose views on conservation and water pollution had stirred a storm of controversy, was the last of Nixon's 12 Cabinet appointees to be approved. The others were sworn in Wednesday.

Also confirmed Thursday was multimillionaire California industrialist David R. Packard as deputy secretary of defense. The vote was 82-1. Tennessee Democrat Albert Gore, de claring the nomination consti- tutes "a conflict of interest as plain as the nose on your face," cast the single "nay." Packard's $300-rnillion stock holdings in an electronics company he helped begin raised the conflict-of-interest questions. Dividends and any increase in the stock's value will go to charity and education, but he can reclaim it' when he leaves government service.

Several lesser appointees won quick approval, but the Senate Armed Services Committee put off action until next week on nominations of John H. Chafee as Dr. 999th Yank Copter Shot Down by Foe SAIGON (AP) The U.S. Command announced today a medical evacuation helicopter was shot down in the central highlands killing seven and bringing the war's total of choppers lost in combat to 999. Marine Colonel The command also belatedly announced that a helicopter shot down Jan.

15 south of Da Nang killed Col. Michael M. Spark, 41, Alexandria, commander of the 3rd Marine Division's 3rd Regiment. Six others, including of the Navy and' Robert C. Seamans Jr.

as' secretary of the Air Force. Today's Index Editorials 4A Obituaries 5A Women's 6A Sports 1-2-3B Comics 4B Classified 5-6-7 Governor's Aide Kept Busy Denying Rumors MADISON (AP)-Reports that Gov. Warren P. Knowles might be considering marriage were described Thursday by an aide as "vicious" and "absolutely untrue." Executive secretary Paul Hassett's denials of the report were seconded by Claude Jasper of Madison, former state Republican chairman who said he had introduced Knowles to Anna Chenuault years ago. "He's an attractive fellow," Jasper said.

"I suppose he'd better get used to this sort of Chennault, cropped up during 91st Congress with an ambitious legislative program as soon as possible, perhaps by March. A decision yet to be reached is how and exactly when Nixon will, make his legislative propos- on, special State of the Union message it probably will come within 30 or 40 days, Burns said. The alternative would be a series of special messages. The other indications that Nixon wants to get his proposals to Congress as soon as possible included his creation of nine special panels within the Council of Urban Affairs to submit recommendations on what he called "near term" issues requiring quick action. Budget Changes Eyed In addition, Budget Director Robert P.

Mayo has disclosed that the President will send to Congress recommended changes in the $195.3 billion bud- gel submitted by former President Johnson. Another likely proposal will be a recommendation for at least a partial dismantling of the Office of Economic Opportunity, the agency chiefly responsible for the War on Poverty. Daniel P. Moynihan, Nixon's assistant for urban affairs, said officer" died with him "There clearly has arisen a ore- the flaming crash. Spark was disposition in favor of locating first Marine regimental: in established departments those functions developed commander killed in Vietnam The medical evacuation helicopter was downed Thursday in by the OEO which have proven successful." the central highlands 23 miles i Nixon has also advised the northwest of Pleiku.

Three (Senate that he is pulling back wounded Americans and the nominations made by crewmen were killed. The com- President Johnson at the end of mand said it was clearly his term and still pending. marked with red crosses. In addition to the number ofi helicopters lost in combat, thej U.S. Command said 1,316 others, wlS CONSIN-Variable cloudi- "ess and quite cold tonight and 1961, due to mechanical failure, enemy barrages that caught Saturday.

Occasional snow flurries, mostly in northeast. them on the ground and other i MIN SOTA Cloudy" catuse Jcolder tonight with winds i- In the only significant ground minishing Partial cle arin and fighting reported today, he! cold SatBurd with occaBsional South Vietnamese said their i snow troops killed 44 Viet Cong the Mekong Delta Thursday 103 miles southwest of Saigon. Only one South Vietnamese soldier! the gubernatorial inauguration was reported wounded, which Mrs. Chennault A few scattered shellings Knowles accompanied her to were reported during the night. President Nixon's inaugural in; Washington last weekend, and'Fire Disables Ship their association was publ rr cized by a nationally circulatedMKrying NEW YORK (AP) Agents for the Fairseas, a Liberian- magazine.

Hassett and Mrs. described Chennault good friends." Knowles as "just thing." Rumors linking the Hassett also denied a rumor that Knowles was in line for appointment as ambassador to Japan. owned vessel adrift 900 miles oft the coast of Panama with 986 passengers, said today the company would have the ship towed to Balboa if it could not continue Republicans recently governor has "on its own steam." have said the In New York, A. S. Price, gen- no intention of eral manager of Navcot READING divorced governor and Mrs.

leaving his office while the leg- i the agent, said he had no report Chennault, widow of World War islature works on budget and on the progress of repairs on the II Flying Tiger General Clare tax issues. I ship's engine, disabled by fire. COMING YOUR WAY JANUARY 27, 1969.