– CBS World News Roundup – July 23, 1965 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
Another unstable day for Planet Earth, this July 23rd in 1965.
With briefings continuing at the White House over Defense Secretary Robert McNamara‘s fact-finding tour of Vietnam, there was continuing concern over our escalating role in Vietnam as indications and briefings of increased bombings of North Vietnam made it obvious there was no easy way out.
Meanwhile, there was instability going on in other parts of the world.
In Greece, where only days earlier, on the 15th of July, Prime Minister Georges Papandreou resigned, heralded by the dissolving of Parliament by King Constantine, throwing Greece into a state of near-panic – or as it came to be known, Apostasia which began a state of political instability that had overtaken Greece, and would do so until a Military coup assumed power in 1967 – but that’s in the future.
On this day, a funeral in Athens for a slain student protestor and the mass outpouring of grief and anger towards the government. Papandreou tried to appeal to public opinion with the slogan “The King reins but the people rule” but it didn’t do lot to quell anger and frustration that had spilled over to the streets.
And on the Cold War front – the Soviet newspaper Pravda charged the U.S., by way of the CIA, was attempting to finance some Russian emigres in Europe who wanted to overthrow the Soviet Union. The report went on to say the CIA wasn’t getting their money’s worth, as Russian counteragents, posing as members of a group known as MTS, or Popular Labor Alliance, duped the CIA by transmitting fabricated reports to Washington, then feeding substantiating tips anonymously to London and Bonn. All of this comes as the result of a trial of accused British teacher Gerald Brooke who pleaded guilty to charges he was a member of MTS and was facing a 5-year prison sentence on espionage charges.
That was just a sample of what went on this July 23rd in 1965 – 50 years ago today, as reported on the CBS World News Roundup.
