The Atlanta Constitution from Atlanta, Georgia • 1

THE ATLANTA CONSTITUTION For 107 Years the South's Standard Newspaper FIFTEEN CENTS Price May Be Higher Outside Retail Trading Zone ATLANTA, GA. 30302, WEDNESDAY, JULY 9, 197S 52 PACES, 4 SECTIONS P.O. BOX 4689 VOL 108, NO. 20 'NO CONCLUSIONS' DENVER 3, ATLANTA 0 Hawks Lose No. 1 Pick aydDF Pelts Prospective Hawks buyer Simon S.

Selig Jr. strongly hints that his deal with the Hawks may be off. Page 1-D. A "more comfortable there." He was referring to Thompson's knowing general manager Carl Scheer and coach Larry Brown when that franchise was based in Greensboro, N.C. Also, Nugget player Bobby Jones performed at North Carolina and is a close friend.

And then there was Monte Towe, Thompson's N.C. State roommate with virtually no chance of making it in pro basketball. 7 The 5-7 Towe was given a $50,000, one-year, no-cut contract by Denver strictly as an enticement to The shakiness of the Hawks ownership, weakened even further by a $400,000 fine levied by the NBA, per- See THOMPSON, Page 14-A By GEORGE CUNNINGHAM Constitution Swtt Writer David Thompson turned thumbs down on the Atlanta Hawks Tuesday when college basketball's player of the year revealed he will play pro basketball for the Denver Nuggets of the American Basketball Association. It was a bitter defeat for the Hawks, already reeling from the loss to Denver several weeks ago of seven-foot center Marvin Webster, their other first round draft pick. Never before had the National Basketball Association, of which Atlanta is a member, lost a No.

1 pick to the eight-year-old ABA. Another embarrassment is that the NBA signed all but two of its first-round draft choices this year. Atlan- Priority in Perry Lime ta's Webster and Thompson were the only losses. Hawks Coach Cotton Fitzsimmons said, "We have been informed by Larry Fleisher, Thompson's agent, that David has made a decision to play in the ABA with Denver." Fleisher, reached in his New York office, said, "David called me at 11:30 this morning from Providence, where he is attending a basketball camp. He said he had decided to play for Denver." According to Fleisher, Thompson selected Denver because he felt RECORD CONTRACT David Thompson PROBE FINDING Ford Makes It Official CIA Paid Ashland Oil $98,968 WASHINGTON (NYT) President Ford announced formally Tuesday that he will seek the Republican nomination for the Presi- dency in 1976 "in order to finish the job I have begun." Seated at the same 1858 desk in the White House Oval Office from which former President Richard M.

Nixon announced his resignation exactly 11 months earlier, Ford Dledeed 1 'v FORD I x- i 4 I 1 4 -ilni A- I I 4 f1 i 't I i I i i -it I 1 -11 1 I -y 1 I I i I yr 1 I ..,..7:,,: By SHARON BAILEY and GARY HENDRICKS Mayor Maynard Jackson said late Tuesday night that if MARTA does not give priority to a rail line into Perry Homes, he is going to be "down there knocking on MARTA's door." Jackson, speaking from Boston where he is attending a national mayor's conference, -joined with City Council President Wyche Fowler in decrying what they called MARTA's backsliding on commitments. Fowler earlier blasted the authority for "reneging on its commitments" to the Perry Homes area. "MARTA made a commitment to many people, especially those living in Perry Homes, and that commitment was to build that line. I consider that to be as important almost as much as the commitment to the 15-cent fare until 1979," Jackson said. "I think promises must be kept." However, the mayor added that he received a late report that MARTA was only considering a delay in the Perry Homes rail line and he was not going to "jump to any He said he was prepared to wait and see what MARTA was talking about in regard to the Perry Homes line.

"The report I have is that MARTA has not made a decision not to build and that the matter is still under consideration," Jackson said. "If the inclination is not to build, then I'm going to be down there knocking on MARTA's door." He said he wanted to "understand precisely" what MARTA's position is. Fowler, however, was more adamant about what MARTA had done. Fowler urged the MARTA board of directors "to consider or reconsider I'm not sure which word is right the decision" and said he will ask the City Council's Transportation Committee to study it. "The decision seemed to be made solely on the basis of budgetary and engineering have a special responsibility to the poor and elderly.

The (transit) system is not primarily a suburban system," Fowler said in a quickly called press conference. MARTA recently decided to delay construction of the rail system's three-mile Proctor Creek branch that goes into Perry Homes in order to speed up construction of the north-south subway line through downtown Atlanta. MARTA General Manager Alan F. Kiepper said the Proctor Creek branch was pushed back on the construction timetable because only limited federal funds are available for first phase construction. The downtown subway segment will serve more patrons and relieve more traffic congestion, Kiepper said, adding that it also will cost more and jack up MARTA's budget more through inflation if built later.

Fowler said he had talked to Kiepper by telephone and found the transit executive's arguments "not persuasive." Throughout his press conference, the council president referred to the MARTA decision to delay the Proctor Creek line as a decision to "cut it out" or "drop it." But Kiepper emphatically denied MARTA dropped plans altogether to build the line. "There was never any suggestion or See MARTA, Page 14-A "an open and above-board campaign" unlike the one that brought his predecessor to grief. "I want every delegate and every vote I can get that can be won to my cause within the spirit and the letter of the law," Ford said. He asked for the support of "all who believe in the fundamental values of duty, decency and constructive debate on the great issue we face together as a free The expected declaration, by the first American ever to attain the White House through appointment, was deliberately brief, muted, and in official setting meant to underline Ford's stated determination "never to neglect my first duty as President." He said that he had authorized his campaign officials to wage a campaip for him with "three qualifications, which I want all Americans to know." The qualifications Ford cited were that his candidacy be waged openly and lawfully, that it reflect his pledge to be "President of all the people," and that it take into account his obligation to put his off ice before politics. WASHINGTON (AP) Ashland Oil Inc.

received $98,968 secretly from the Central Intelligence Agency during a 4-year period ending in 1973, it was disclosed Tuesday. A spokesman at the company's headquarters in Ashland, declined comment on the matter, refusing to disclose the purpose for which the money was paid. The matter came under scrutiny by the U.S. Senate immediately Tuesday. A spokesman for Sen.

Frank Church, D-Idaho, said his subcommittee on multinational corporations would investigate the CIA payments to Ashland. Church heads both the multinational panel and a special Senate committee investigating the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies. The disclosure was made in two pages included in a twovolume report filed with government authorities by Ashland after a month-long internal investigation of its own illegal domestic political contributions and payments to government officials in Africa and the Caribbean. Bare details of the CIA money were tucked away in a few paragraphs of a 'report submitted to Ashland's own investigating committee by the independent auditing firm of Coopers Lybrand.

The auditors reported they had discovered cash payments to Ashland of $10,557 in December 1968; $9,911 in July 1969 and $30,000 in February 1971. Additional payments by check went from the CIA to Ashland in the amount of $37,500 in June 1972 and $11,000 in March 1973. Coopers Lybrand said the three cash payments totaling $50,468 "had been put into a safe at Ashland's home office and not recorded on the corporate books until October 1973, when a total of $56,800 was taken from the safe and deposited in a corporate bank account." This was nearly five years after Ashland received the first money from the CIA, and only a few months after the Watergate Special Prosecution Force had begun investigating Ashland's illegal political contributions. Some of those contributions were made from a cash fund kept in a safe at Ashland's headquarters. Coopers said Ashland kept no record of the CIA cash.

It based its account of the spy See CIA, Page 14-A CIA Director William Colby releases the report he sent to the President last December, but it contains no surprises. Page 2-A. Sen. Frank Church says his Senate committee, which is looking into CIA activities, may try and question Richard Nixon Page 12-A. In Georgia 9 1 Former California Gov.

Ronald Reagan loomed high in the saddle among many Georgia Republican leaders Tuesday, but the state GOPs may find themselves backing a horse that won't run. Reagan Tuesday denied public reports that he is committed to an effort to wrest the GOP presidential nomina Turning Over New Leaves Buyers, bid on first-day offerings at the Moultrie penny less than last year's first-week, prices, but tobacco market, one of the largest in the south farmers seemed generally pleased with the money Georgia-north Florida tobacco circuit Prices Tues- their first-harvested crops brought. Story on Page 6- day for the flue-cured tobacco averaged almost a A. (Staff Photo-Jerome McClendon) HEARD TALK HERE NEWS THIS MORNING tion from President Ford, who officially announced earlier in the day he will be a presidential candidate next year. Reagan, interviewed in Los Angeles termed "absolutely incorrect" published reports in Knight flint fsmii ft Auk Eaves' King Conspiracy Probe Is Old to FBI servation, Georgia drivers are taking to the roads in record numbers, Page 9-A.

NATION GOOD MORNING! Most Georgians can expect, cloudy skies and warm temperatures Wednesday with highs across the state ranging from the mid 80s to near 90. Afternoon or evening thundershowers are likely. Details on Page 2-A. ATLANTA iicw3jja(jcia mat ha ho a riiviifofl BLINDFOLDING JUSTICE-Law enforcement agencies battling "new left" terrorists find their hands tied by legal obstacles to electronic surveillance. Special Writer Eugene Methvin reports in the fourth of his series on "The Secret WarTerrorism in the U.S." Page 11-A.

WORLD RESETTLMENT-Soviet planes begin the transfer of nearly 200,000 famine-stricken Somali nomads in what may be the biggest planned resettlement in African history. Page 13-A. INDEX to run. REAGAN "It will be announced sometime this year," Reagan said of his possible presidential candidacy. However, many Georgia Republican officials expressed the opinion that Reagan could easily carry the state and the entire South against Ford if the presidential primary were held today.

"Ford's a good old boy," one state party leader said Tuesday, "but what we need is a forceful leader. Ford up until now has been mor' of an appeaser than a leader." "Reagan commands a great amount of support among Georgians," said Dr. Lloyd Darby of Vidalia, GOP chairman of the First Congressional District, which recently passed a resolution urging Reagan to get into the race. One Republican leader felt that, as of today, Reagan could beat Ford two-to-one in every state in the South. Buckhead Art gallery where he was working in March, 1968, a week to the day before the April 4, 1968, King slaying.

James Earl Ray was convicted and later sentenced to life imprisonment for the killing. The statement said Watson heard a television news broadcast from the room describing Dr. King's leadership of a Memphis garbage workers' strike and heard one of the men in the room say he was "going to shoot that damn King in the head and frame a jailbird, just as they had Kennedy." Another voice from the room set the date for King's killing at a week from that day, the Watson statement continued. Mrs. Watson, who said she picked up her son at the gallery after the alleged conspiracy was hatched, said he told her about the date specified.

And when it came true, they were both too frightened of a "syndicate" of dope smugglers and assassins they thought were involved in the incident to come forward. At the time, Robert Watson was a 14-year-old freshman at North Fulton High See EAVES, Page 14-A By BARRY HENDERSON The "new information" on a conspiracy theory in the 1968 death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. announced by Atlanta Public Safety Commissioner A. Reginald Eaves in a June 20 statement has turned out to be information investigated in 1971 by the Atlanta FBI office and, apparently, discarded.

Atlanta police sources confirmed Tuesday that the leads they were investigating at Eaves' suggestion came from Robert Byron Watson, 21, a twice-convicted violator of federal narcotics laws, who. is incarcerated in the federal youth center at Ashland, just beginning a five-year sentence. James B. O'Keefe, assistant to the special agent in charge of the Atlanta FBI office, said, "We had the (Watson) story in 1971, and it was referred to the Justice department, and we have not been advised to investigate it further since that time." Watson, in a lengthy statement attributed to him by his mother, Mrs. R.

W. Watson, described a conversation he overheard among men in an anteroom of a IN AGREEMENT-The man who decided Grady Hospital's diabetes clinic should quit using controversial diabetes pills four years ago hasn't changed his mind and is in agreement with the FDA's warning that they have extremely harmful side effects. Page 1-C. GEORGIA DECISIONS, DECISIONS-Former state Sen. Bobby Rowan says he hopes to reach a decision by the end of the year on whether he will seek a post on the Public Service Commission in 1976.

Page 8-A. NEA "CONDEMNS" The 1.7-million-member National Educational Association has "condemned" the Georgia General Assembly and Gov. George Busbee for cutting teacher pay raises from the state budget. Page 8-A. ON THE ROAD Faced with ever-higher gas prices and oft-repeated pleas for energy con- 4-B Bob Harrell 1-C Business 3-C Celestine 3-B Comics, Jumble.

6-D Crossword 6-D Dear Abby 2-B Deaths 8-C Editorials 4-A 4-B Features 1-B Good Health Goren on Bridge. 6-D Jesse 1-D Movies 5-B People 1-B Reg 4-A 1-D 2-C Want 9-C Weather 2-A.