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– February 2, 1995 – CBS World News Roundup – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
February 2, 1995 – A typical news day, if job numbers and bizarre testimony is typical. But on this February 2nd it was. Beginning with news that Boeing was raising its job-cut target. Boeing, one of the biggest employers on the West Coast said it was planning on trimming its workforce by 7,000 jobs in 1995 – that was more than previous expected. The reason, according to company spokespeople; customers weren’t beating down the doors for new 737’s and 767’s. They were predicting, since the end of 1994, that 1995 was going to be a tough year and that it would continue, with most layoffs taking place in Washington State.
The OJ Simpson murder trial was undergoing a battle-of-wits of sorts. The battle which began the previous day, was expected to continue today, as Simpson’s lawyer focused on what they called “damage control”, from testimony by former policeman and friend of Simpson’s who claimed Simpson “had dreams” of killing his ex-wife Nicole during a bedroom conversation the day after she and Ronald Goldman were murdered. Defense attorneys were busy hammering Shipp, who had known OJ Simpson for 26 years and who admitted he withheld the “dreams incident” from police before relating it anonymously to the author of a new book. In his questioning, Defense attorney Carl Douglas portrayed Shipp as an opportunistic, lying Simpson hanger-on. But the fact that Douglas so aggressively cross-examined Shipp was a reflection of Defense seeing Shipp’s testimony as quite damaging and wanted to do everything they could to cast doubt on Shipp’s credibility. At some point, it was expected the Defense would ask that Shipp’s testimony be thrown out and that, according to Johnnie Cochran, Shipp’s testimony on dreams wasn’t worth much.
And legendary British Character actor Donald Pleasence died earlier this day. Pleasence, who had enjoyed a long and successful career as a screen bad-guy, died in France of natural causes. He was 75.
And that’s just a taste of what went on, this February 2, 1995 as reported by The CBS World News Roundup.
