For the Record

Lots of political activity last week. Citizens for Reagan, Sen. Paul Laxalt of Nevada, chairman, is starting to line up support for Reagan; but Reagan himself, not having formally announced, can continue his radio broadcasts on 310 stations around the country, and his TV appearances, without coming under equal time provision of the law. Laxalt says Reagan will go into the race against Gerald Ford a 40 to 60 underdog; latest Harris survey, three weeks ago, showed Ford leading Reagan 40 to 17 among Republican and independent voters. . . . Young Republican leaders, in talk with Ford campaign manager Howard Callaway, have refused to sign up with presidential camp. Their support for Ford will depend, they say, on whether Reagan actually does run and whether Ford “returns to the conservative principles of the Republican Party.” . . . On Democratic side, Sargent Shriver is moving too, has set up a fund-raising operation. Shriver has roped a bunch of New Frontiersmen and other celebrities into his group, including actor Paul Newman, Wimbledon champ Arthur Ashe, author Kurt Vonnegut, women’s libber Sissy Farenthold, and former Under Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance.

In the week that Gerald Ford refused to see Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, for fear of derailing detente, Izvestia, the newspaper of the Soviet government, Pravda, the newspaper of the Soviet Communist Party, Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star), the newspaper of the Soviet army, and two other official Soviet journals lit into Defense Secretary James Schlesinger for his remarks about the use of tactical nuclear weapons, attacking him as an “enemy to the spirit of detente.” . . . Ford stumbled badly in his rebuff to Solzhenitsyn—incoming White House mail on the subject was 100 per cent against the President. . . . (Going the Washington rounds: Ford will now see Solzhenitsyn if Solzhenitsyn can fit a meeting into his busy schedule.) . . . Sen. Ernest Hollings (D., S.C.) was so outraged he started a move to invite the Russian exile to speak to both Houses of Congress. . . . The AFL-CIO, which sponsored Solzhenitsyn’s big talks in both Washington and New York, reports it has been deluged by requests for copies of both speeches. The Communist Daily World predictably blasted Meany for playing host to Solzhenitsyn; “such highhanded operations by the Meany bureaucracy are an intolerable abuse of the AFL-CIO, a slap in the face of its members, a degradation and perversion of its functions and purpose.” . . . The World also reported that AFL-CIO press spokesman Allan Zack explained away the presence of “labor-baiting” Sen. James Buckley at the New York Hilton talk by telling reporters: “Buckley was invited by Solzhenitsyn, not by us.” . . . And in the skies overhead Apollo chased Soyuz, caught her, linked up with her, and, over a Germany half slave half free, the astronauts and cosmonauts exchanged handshakes on July 17—half way through Captive Nations Week.

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Presidential Election

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Lots of political activity last week. Citizens for Reagan, Sen. Paul Laxalt of Nevada, chairman, is starting to line up support for Reagan; but Reagan himself, not having formally announced, can continue his radio broadcasts on 310 stations around the country, and his TV appearances, without coming under equal time provision of the law. Laxalt says Reagan will go into the race against Gerald Ford a 40 to 60 underdog; latest Harris survey, three weeks ago, showed Ford leading Reagan 40 to 17 among Republican and independent voters. . . . Young Republican leaders, in talk with Ford campaign manager Howard Callaway, have refused to sign up with presidential camp. Their support for Ford will depend, they say, on whether Reagan actually does run and whether Ford “returns to the conservative principles of the Republican Party.” . . . On Democratic side, Sargent Shriver is moving too, has set up a fund-raising operation. Shriver has roped a bunch of New Frontiersmen and other celebrities into his group, including actor Paul Newman, Wimbledon champ Arthur Ashe, author Kurt Vonnegut, women’s libber Sissy Farenthold, and former Under Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance.

In the week that Gerald Ford refused to see Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, for fear of derailing detente, Izvestia, the newspaper of the Soviet government, Pravda, the newspaper of the Soviet Communist Party, Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star), the newspaper of the Soviet army, and two other official Soviet journals lit into Defense Secretary James Schlesinger for his remarks about the use of tactical nuclear weapons, attacking him as an “enemy to the spirit of detente.” . . . Ford stumbled badly in his rebuff to Solzhenitsyn—incoming White House mail on the subject was 100 per cent against the President. . . . (Going the Washington rounds: Ford will now see Solzhenitsyn if Solzhenitsyn can fit a meeting into his busy schedule.) . . . Sen. Ernest Hollings (D., S.C.) was so outraged he started a move to invite the Russian exile to speak to both Houses of Congress. . . . The AFL-CIO, which sponsored Solzhenitsyn’s big talks in both Washington and New York, reports it has been deluged by requests for copies of both speeches. The Communist Daily World predictably blasted Meany for playing host to Solzhenitsyn; “such highhanded operations by the Meany bureaucracy are an intolerable abuse of the AFL-CIO, a slap in the face of its members, a degradation and perversion of its functions and purpose.” . . . The World also reported that AFL-CIO press spokesman Allan Zack explained away the presence of “labor-baiting” Sen. James Buckley at the New York Hilton talk by telling reporters: “Buckley was invited by Solzhenitsyn, not by us.” . . . And in the skies overhead Apollo chased Soyuz, caught her, linked up with her, and, over a Germany half slave half free, the astronauts and cosmonauts exchanged handshakes on July 17—half way through Captive Nations Week.