– CBS Radio News – August 21, 1979 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
August 21, 1979 – dog days of Summer, no matter when. On this dog day of Summer in 1979, President Carter was taking a working vacation on a riverboat down the Mississippi, stopping along the way to shake hands, do interviews and take photo ops. At one point, he stopped to do a telephone call-in show, taking questions from 13 listeners, mostly about Energy conservation and national unity.
Meanwhile, back at the White House – an intensive study on the Palestinian question was going on in the President’s absence. With vice-President Mondale, Special Middle-East Ambassador Strauss, Secretary of State Vance and National security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, met with the intention of framing a new policy to present to President Carter on his return to Washington. A UN debate on the Palestinian question was to begin within days.
In the wake of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power plant disaster, earlier in the year, Pennsylvania governor Dick Thornburgh addressed a panel studying the power plant disaster, saying the decisions on where the put power plants in the future needed to be determined by the public and local officials. Thornburgh went on to say the decisions should not be left up to experts. Criticizing both Federal officials and spokespersons for the utility that ran the nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island, Thornburgh added that, during the crisis at Three Mile Island, he had no confidence in the information that either side was providing.
And this August day in 1979 appeared, at least to some Police officials in New York, to be open-season on Banks. Four had been robbed within an hour of each other earlier this day. The previous day there were 5 holdups, including one in which a teller was killed.
And that’s a slice of what happened, this August 21, 1979 as reported by CBS Radio‘s Hourly News.
