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In TV Guide's bicentennial issue, James Metchner describes television's plans for America's birthday.
John P. Roche looks at how TV might have covered the revolution, and distinguished Americans comment on television's future goals.
Don't miss this week's special issue of TV Guide.
Help hungry children in South Korea and Vietnam.
Contribute to the American Korean Foundation.
Box 103, Grand Central Post Office, New York, 101.
This year, if you want your money to go further, you'll have to go a little further yourself.
To Barney's summer sale.
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This is NBC Nightly News, Tuesday, June 24th, with John Chancellor reporting from the NBC News Center in New York.
Good evening. More than 100 people were reported dead in a plane crash near New York's Kennedy Airport this afternoon.
The plane was an Eastern Airlines 727, nearing the end of a nonstop flight from New Orleans.
Eastern Flight 66 was on what appeared to be a normal approach when it either exploded in the air or dove into the ground.
The amounts differ. It was raining heavily at the time. When the plane hit the ground, parts of it skidded across a highway filled with rush hour traffic, smashing cars.
The plane was carrying 116 of the passengers and a crew of seven.
As of now, at least 16 survivors have been taken to nearby hospitals.
Some of the bodies were thrown far from the plane when it split apart, blocks away in some cases.
The tower at Kennedy said that although there was rain, visibility was five miles.
Some witnesses say they think the plane was hit by lightning.
In any case, many witnesses reported a huge fireball which rose in the air 500 or 600 feet, 50 or 60 stories in the air.
There was baggage strewn throughout the area.
The plane crashed at four o'clock in the afternoon about and traffic in the area was so heavy that the police had to airlift rescue teams to the site of the crash.
There are no reports so far on whether the plane, when it skidded across the highway, injured people who were in their cars on the ground.
But that is a possibility in this crash.
Paul Moran, a local police officer, had this to say about it.
I was coming northbound at Rockaway Boulevard when I first saw the plane approaching from the east, coming west across Rockaway Boulevard.
About 50 yards out I could see a bolt of lightning come down and hit the rear part of the plane.
As soon as it hit the plane, there to the right, it wasn't a plane there, another 30 yards, started skidding on the ground and about a hundred yard flame came across Rockaway Boulevard.
Robert Hager of our staff made his way to the crash scene and here is his report.
It's raining here now at the scene heavily as it was, as the eyewitnesses said, raining at the time of the crash.
Apparently a thunder and lightning storm.
Some eyewitnesses here said they saw the plane come in very low.
They thought it hit several of the radar light approach towers before it came down here on the boulevard and skidded into a field beyond.
An eyewitness said it looked like a napalm attack.
Another said it was like an atomic bomb.
The scene here is one of incredible devastation.
Bodies still scattered all over the place.
A temporary morgue has been set up.
And here at the scene they are counting now about a hundred bodies known and it's felt that the count will go to a hundred seven.
Robert Hager, NBC News at JFK Airport.
Today's crash is the first in the United States since last January when 14 people died in the collision over California of an airliner and a private plane.
Also on the program tonight we'll hear what George Meany had to say today about the Ford administration and unemployment.
We'll also learn how many national security wiretaps the U.S. government has recently installed without court warrants.
And we'll have the latest on the president of Uganda, Edi Amin, who still says he will execute a British writer.
Those stories and others in a minute.
NBC Nightly News is brought to you by Exxon.
Nothing to get more oil out of the rock.
Water injection wells like this one pump large quantities of water deep into the oil saturated rock.
This water under pressure moves more oil through the rock toward the well.
For over 30 years Exxon has been using water flooding and other techniques to get out oil that might otherwise have been trapped forever.
Today America needs this additional oil more than ever before.
One of the big guns of organized labor turned against the Ford administration's economic policies today.
George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO, was scathing in his criticism of the present high unemployment rate which is over 9 percent.
The administration has predicted that unemployment will be in the vicinity of 7.5 percent at the end of next year.
Here's more on the Meany story from Irving R. Levine.
At a conference on unemployment organized by labor and black groups,
speakers criticized President Ford and his economic advisor Alan Greenspan for avoiding drastic steps to reduce the number of unemployed.
Mr. Greenspan has no concern it would seem in regard to the devastating effects of seven or eight million people continually unemployed for the next four years or so.
To me the attitude of Mr. Greenspan and the administration which he speaks for adds up to a callous disregard for the misery and suffering experienced by our nations unemployed.
It causes bitterness. It destroys faith in the structure of this country, economic and political.
And just as it could be ignored for a while as Vietnam was, I remind you that it will ultimately tear us apart unless we can come to grips with it.
While speakers at the $10 a plate luncheon were deploring unemployment,
some people who are actually out of work were demonstrating in front of Congress demanding jobs.
I think that it is time for us to recognize that as we approach.
On the capital steps as at the conference, speakers warned that demonstrations of unemployed people could turn violent in the months ahead
unless action is taken by the White House or the Congress to create more jobs.
Irving R. Levine, NBC News, Washington.
President Ford today vetoed the housing bill calling it inflationary.
The measure would have cost more than a billion dollars and would have provided subsidies and loans to home buyers.
At the same time, Mr. Ford said he is releasing two billion dollars in mortgage purchase authority available to the Federal National Mortgage Association.
And he asked the Congress to put another seven and three quarters billion dollars of mortgage money into the association.
Tom Brokaw has more on the story.
President Ford, accompanied by Housing Secretary Carla Hills, came to the White House press room to outline his plans for releasing additional federal mortgage money
and to announce his veto of the Congressional Housing Bill.
The steps I have announced today are the best way to meet the problems of housing in this country at the present time.
I am therefore vetoing H.R. 4485 because it will hamper the recovery now underway and will add to the oversized federal deficit.
Late today, Democratic congressional leaders conceded they don't have the votes to override President Ford's veto.
The administration housing program relies primarily on federal mortgage assistance.
Administration experts figure the two billion dollars released today will finance 65,000 mortgages, conventional or otherwise, and add 130,000 jobs to the housing industry.
Here's what it would mean to someone qualifying for a 30,000 dollar mortgage at a participating bank or savings and loan.
At 9 percent, the standard rate these days, that mortgage would cost 241 dollars a month.
President Ford's program finances mortgages at 7 and three quarters percent, a monthly payment of 215 dollars, 26 dollars below standard market conditions.
President Ford has asked Congress for nearly 8 billion dollars more to expand this program, which Housing Secretary Carla Hills says is guiding the housing industry to recovery.
Tom Brokaw, NBC News at the White House.
Mr. Ford's vetoes are likely to be raised by the Democrats as the 1976 elections get closer and so will unemployment now at a 34 year high.
And another issue will be the speed of recovery from the recession.
Charles Schultz, budget director in the Johnson administration, said yesterday that the American economy during the Great Depression bottomed out in 1933.
But after bottoming out, the economy took the rest of the decade to recover.
Fortunately for America, there are tremendous deposits of oil offshore under our continental shelf.
Unfortunately, finding this energy and getting it to you takes years.
For example, in 1966, Exxon began exploring a section of the Gulf of Mexico.
In 1970, we were able to buy rights to drill.
In 71, we began drilling to see if there really was oil down there.
There was.
But we had to drill several more wells to be sure there was enough oil to justify building a production platform.
In 72, we started constructing the platform.
In 73, we drilled four production wells and we laid an underwater pipeline to carry the oil to shore.
It wasn't until 1974 that the oil we started searching for back in 1966 finally reached your Exxon service station.
Today, our people are busy looking for the oil you may be using in the 1980s.
The Justice Department gave in to congressional pressure today and made public the number of national security wire taps installed without the authority of a legal warrant.
In 1974, 148 individuals were tapped, which is a larger number than at any time since 1969, the earliest year on the list made public today.
Since 1969, 656 individuals have been wire tapped without warrants in cases involving national security and foreign intelligence.
Attorney General Levy made these disclosures in a letter today to Senator Edward Kennedy.
Levy said in the letter that these were all legal wiretaps.
And here is what Kennedy said.
I think during the period of the last couple of years, we've seen where there has been a dramatic abuse of the power of governmental agencies and infringing on the rights and liberties of American citizens in the whole area of wiretapping.
I am very hopeful now that with this information that has been available to the Judiciary Committee and plus what is really most important, the decision by the Attorney General to testify before the Judiciary Committee,
hopefully in July or no later than September on this particular issue that we can fashion legislation which will ensure the protection of our national security and also the preservation of individual liberty.
In his letter today, the Attorney General recalled that the practice of wiretapping without warrants in national security cases was first authorized by President Roosevelt in 1940.
Yesterday, Frank Church, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said the White House was holding up the investigation of the CIA by not providing requested documents.
Today, a White House spokesman replied with some heat that the charge is just not true, that White House staff people are working overtime, going through documents, he said, to determine their relevance.
And today, the committee heard an underworld figure named John Roselli talk about his part in an alleged CIA plot against Fidel Castro.
Ford Rowan reports.
John Roselli was given heavy police protection.
The one-time member of Al Capone's gang was called to testify about an alleged CIA plot in the early 1960s to kill Fidel Castro.
The plot allegedly involved Sam Momo Giocana, who was murdered last week.
Chairman Church said Roselli gave details but did not name everyone involved.
He was worried that to name certain people other than the government people might endanger their lives.
Did Roselli give you any information to substantiate or to refute the allegations of assassination plots?
Well, there was no reputation in his testimony today.
So there was some confirmation that there is something to these allegations?
I think that the fact of the connection is already known because I have stated it previously.
I will state it again.
The committee has hard evidence that the CIA was involved in both assassination plots and assassination attempts.
Church declined to be specific but sources say the alleged plots against Castro are among the most intriguing,
involving the mafia, a former aide to billionaire Howard Hughes, the CIA, and Cuban adventurers.
The committee now is trying to find out if presidents of the United States were also involved in any assassination plots.
Ford Rowan, NBC News, Washington.
The Supreme Court ruled today that the Federal Aviation Administration may keep some airline safety records secret from the public
if the airline industry so requests.
The court overruled the lower court which had supported a request from one of Ralph Nader's organizations
that the safety records be made public.
This is the Exxon, New Orleans, steaming northeast with a load of gasoline.
On this voyage, Captain Keith Prudicker and his crew are testing a way to save fuel.
Data available from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration via satellite and other sources plays a major role in this experiment.
This data helps the navigator quickly locate the Gulf Stream.
Then he can chart a new course to put the ship into the fastest moving part of this current and move with it.
By using the energy of the Gulf Stream, Exxon ship captains hope to save both time and fuel.
This experiment is just one example of what Exxon is doing to conserve energy.
Today Exxon is well on its way to achieving a 15 percent reduction in total energy use in the United States since 1972.
It will continue to look for ways to save more energy.
This combined with your conservation efforts will help reduce our country's dependence on foreign oil.
In India, a Supreme Court justice ruled today that Mrs. Indira Gandhi may stay on as Prime Minister
while the court considers her appeal of a conviction for illegal campaign practices.
However, the judge said Mrs. Gandhi must give up her vote in Parliament while the case is being decided.
At the same time, five opposition political parties announced plans for a national campaign to drive Mrs. Gandhi from office.
Uganda's President, Edi Amin, threatened again today to kill Dennis Hills, a British writer, and kill him next week
unless British Foreign Secretary James Callahan comes to Uganda before then.
Amin made his latest threat in a telegram to Queen Elizabeth.
He made a similar threat yesterday to an envoy from the Queen, Lieutenant General Sir Chandos Blair.
David Weber describes what happened then.
Things began to go wrong last evening when the Queen's emissary was abruptly summoned to the Presidential Palace.
There, General Blair was told that unless British Foreign Secretary James Callahan paid him a personal visit,
Amin would order Hills as execution.
If Callahan does not come here, Mr. Hill will be executed by firing squad.
And the whole regiment must be in standby. Thank you.
Any new thoughts?
No comment.
Amin, however, had a comment.
He called a news conference in which he began a personal attack on his old British Army commander.
If the British is to send some officers to me,
I should not send some type of the officers who have no diplomacy like General Blair and Graham,
because they were ordering me, they were not respecting me,
and they think that they are the boss in Uganda,
and they think they were the former Buonamukubas,
who are, they used to make Africans washing their back, bottom, their feet.
This is no longer the case in Uganda.
Back in London this morning, Blair refuted Amin's later charges made via Radio Uganda
that he had behaved in a high-handed manner and was drunk.
I would make no comment really, except that I believe that anything derogatory he said
had no basis in fact, whatever.
Blair emerged with Foreign Minister Callahan, who repeated that he will not negotiate under duress.
Callahan's problem now is to find a new diplomatic ploy to win over the unpredictable Edi Amin.
David Weber, NBC News.
Mozambique tonight became the second to Portugal's three African colonies to gain independence.
Mozambique has nine million people and its government has promised to establish
what it calls a truly Marxist state.
Secretary of State Kissinger said today he had no particular country in mind
when he warned our allies that they cannot pressure the United States
by threatening to break their treaties with us.
Kissinger issued that warning in a speech last night in Atlanta.
It sounded as though it were directed at Turkey, which is threatening to close American bases.
Here's part of Kissinger's speech.
No country should imagine that it is doing us a favor by remaining in an alliance with us.
Any ally whose perception of its national interest changes
will find us prepared to adapt or to end our treaty relationship.
No ally can pressure us by a threat of termination.
Kissinger also said today that Cambodia has suffered
what he called a terrible toll of death because of the new communist government's policy
of forcing the urban population to move to the countryside.
And he said there have been rather firm reports of military clashes
between Cambodia and the new communist government of South Vietnam.
Senator Gaylord Nelson said today that Congress should have the chance to approve
or reject massive sales of American weapons to foreign countries.
Nelson said big arms sales abroad have important implications for American foreign policy.
The senator estimated that over the last 12 months,
the United States has sold more than six and a half billion dollars worth of weapons to other countries.
This is the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and today it's tuning up for a special performance.
But the audience won't have to go to the concert hall to hear it.
Instead, the music will be coming to them.
That's because today's performance is part of a series designed to help fine music reach new audiences
in parks, schools, playgrounds, hospitals, factories, and shopping centers like this one.
And one of the people who's bringing fine music out of the concert hall is conductor Michael Palmer.
Michael is one of six young conductors participating in a program being sponsored by Exxon
with the Affiliate Artists Organization and the National Endowment for the Arts.
For Michael, this means working with the Atlanta Symphony, where he's gaining valuable experience
and helping attract new audiences to the world of serious music.
Exxon, we're proud to be helping good talent get ahead and good music get around.
Clive Davis, the former president of Columbia Records, was indicted today on a charge of evading $45,000 in federal income tax.
Davis was the most prominent of 16 people indicted after a two-year investigation of alleged payola in the recording industry.
Six record companies also were named in those indictments.
Ivy Baker Priest, Treasurer of the United States during the Eisenhower administration, died of cancer last night in Los Angeles.
She was 69 years old.
The State Department said today that the United States and the Soviet Union have reached a considerable degree of agreement
on a plan to outlaw weather-changing techniques of warfare.
American officials said neither country is now doing much work on weather warfare.
They said the proposed agreement is aimed at averting future problems.
Tonight, we have the second of two special reports on the medical malpractice insurance crisis.
Tonight's report is about some of the things that can be done and are being done to improve the situation for doctors and their patients.
Mike Jackson has that story.
There we go.
Which one will be next, John?
Johnny Hollinger was a normal child five years ago, but he was the victim of medical malpractice.
He was in a hospital when he stopped breathing.
It was five minutes before the hospital staff resuscitated him, only after he had suffered irreparable brain damage.
The jury awarded him $1 million in damages.
Johnny's parents feel the lawsuit has done little to punish the doctor responsible for Johnny's handicap.
He should be held accountable for his actions, and just to go into court and have an insurance company say,
well, all right, Dr. X has proven guilty, so we have to pay.
That did not change that man's life, that doctor's life, one bit.
Waverly Smith is president of one of the nation's largest malpractice insurance companies.
He says his firm has begun to monitor the quality of care delivered by doctors.
We do work with the doctors on a review situation.
We go over the kinds of things that are happening and review them with them,
not on the highly formalized basis that perhaps it needs to be done, but then again, we don't have the clout to do that yet.
For the medical profession, the most pressing problem is being able to afford the increasing cost of malpractice insurance.
Doctors are interested in new laws to make malpractice insurance cheaper.
And AMA president Dr. Max Parrott goes one step further, saying injured patients should be compensated through a separate insurance plan.
We have to go to something like a workman's comp type of an arrangement to settle those cases of medical injury,
as opposed to outbound malpractice, which only represents, we estimate, about 15 or 20 percent of the problem.
In Indiana, the legislature has written a law which becomes effective July 1st, limiting malpractice awards to $500,000,
setting up a malpractice claims screening committee, and providing for state tax support for malpractice insurance.
What it doesn't do, of course, it doesn't focus on the flow of claims into the system.
There's no attention directed to causation, and we can't ignore that.
Eli Burnswig was executive director of a 1973 federal study of medical malpractice.
He believes the patient's welfare has been forgotten in the current malpractice crisis.
People do suffer adverse results of treatment every day in the week.
And unless the medical and hospital community begins to devote a great deal more attention to that issue,
we're never going to solve the malpractice problem, certainly not with legislation.
St. Luke's Hospital in San Francisco has been, for more than 10 years, one of the safest hospitals in California.
It spends money on preventing medical accidents by, for example, recertifying its nurses every year, even though it isn't required to do so,
and saves money in insurance premiums. It pays one of the lowest rates in the state.
I don't think you can put a price tag on it.
I don't think you can afford not to do it this way, because what is the cost of a life?
St. Luke's Hospital in San Francisco does not have all the answers,
but it is trying something that many hospitals in the United States have not yet tried.
They're worrying first about patient care, and they're finding that the extra expense they incur
from finding ways to make sure that medical accidents don't happen may be paying off,
not only in better patient care, but lower medical insurance premiums.
The jury that awarded Johnny Hollinger a million dollars decided the medical accident that crippled him was preventable.
One question the malpractice crisis has generated is whether the dollars now spent on insurance for victims
would better be spent on preventative care for patients. Thus far, the laws deal with victims, not patients.
Mike Jackson, NBC News, Chicago.
And good night for NBC News.
Exxon is developing a revolutionary way to get energy from beneath the sea.
This maze of pipes, valves, and control equipment is an offshore production system,
and it will do its job without a single person on board.
That's because it will operate while sitting on the bottom of the sea.
To prove its feasibility, this prototype is installed for testing in the Gulf of Mexico.
With this system, a ship will drill a number of wells through the unit.
The wells will be completed or hooked up by remote control.
When production begins, oil and gas can be separated by the system
and flow through ocean floor pipelines to a surface facility.
Today, conventional platforms are being used by Exxon and others to tap energy in our shallow coastal waters.
But someday, subsea systems will let us reach beyond the horizon to find new reserves in far deeper waters.
NBC Nightly News has been brought to you by Exxon.
Music
Tomorrow afternoon at 5, 4 Central, 3 Mountain, and 2 Pacific Time,
President Ford will hold a news conference at which he is expected to talk about his candidacy and the economy.
See the presidential news conference tomorrow afternoon at 5, 4 Central, 3 Mountain, and 2 Pacific Time.
Hey, help me pick the 3 Mouse transmission.
Music
Terrific! See the other finalists and vote any Lee-Mowl transmission center.
Fruit Crest has more grapes than any other jelly. With so many sweet, juicy grapes, only Fruit Crest needs no cane sugar.
Fruit Crest gives more fruit for less money.
WNBC-TV, New York.
Jeopardy! will not be seen tonight so that we may bring you the following News Center 4 special program.
Here is Chuck Scarborough.
Good evening once again.
An Eastern Airlines 727 jetliner flight 66 nonstop from New Orleans crashed on landing just short of Kennedy International Airport at 6 minutes past 4 this afternoon.
That plane carried 121 passengers and crew members. At least 100 persons are dead.
Survivors were taken to several hospitals. Our minicam and remote units have been at the scene for several hours and we hope to have direct reports for you during this broadcast.
We'll try now for Anthony Preisendorf and Robert Hager live on the scene. We do not have that report for you right now.
We've been sitting around talking about this particular crash. It happened suddenly.
The plane was making a routine flight from New Orleans. It was heading in on a routine landing in rather dismal weather, but not uncontrollable weather as far as we can tell.
There was a thunderstorm in the area. Frank Field is here with us tonight and Frank is of course our meteorologist here.
We've been discussing for the last two and a half hours Frank the possible effects of the thunderstorm on the crash of that airplane just one half mile short of the runway, aligned with the runway.
And have you anything new on that Frank?
Well Tom, it is still a matter of speculation. Tom is right here.
Chuck, it is still speculation because the weather report at JFK at exactly 4.06, three minutes before the incident occurred, stated that the ceiling was 3,000 feet, which is not bad at all.
There was a light thunderstorm in progress at the field, but of course remember the accident. The crash occurred several miles across the field from where the weather station is.
And from that point we have had many reports. We've had one gentleman who called in to tell us there was strong shifting winds at that part of the field, very strong gusty winds.
One of our NBC cameramen who is also a pilot and was on the Belt Parkway nearby at the time said that there was a thunderstorm that occurred that was intense.