Ford to travel, but seeks more protection

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33963, 2 October 1975, Page 15

Ford to travel, but seeks more protection

(New Zealand Press Association—Copyright)

CHICAGO, September 30.

President Ford, after asking Congress today for $133 million more this year for Secret Service protection, said that he would continue travelling across the country “not in any foolhardy spirit, but by every prudent and practical means.”

Mr Ford said in remarks prepared for delivery at a Republican fund-raising banquet that his travels were intended to held him “talk straight to the American people.”

“I have also done a lot of listening,” Mr Ford said. He called “twoway communications with my friends and fellow Americans” an essential part of the Presidency.

In a supplementary spending request submitted before Mr Ford left Washington, Mr James Lynn, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, said that the $13.5 million would provide 150 additional Secret Service agents.

The President approved the request, which also would pay for additional travel costs for protective details to be assigned beginning tomorrow, to Democratic Presidential candidates.

“I intend to keep my communications open, not in any foolhardy spirit, but by every prudent and practical means,” the President said in his dinner address.

‘1 have complete faith in the good will and good sense of America and in the ability of our competitive political system to produce responsive and responsible leadership for our country’s future.” the President added. Woman with gun The tension surrounding the President’s trip to Chicago was heightened when the police learned that a woman near the Conrad Hilton Hotel where he was speaking was carrying a handgun in her purse. The woman was said by

the White House to have a permit to possess the weapon in connection with her job in a currency exchange. Mr Ron Nessen, the White House Press Secretary, said that the woman, identified as Carmen Teresa Pulido, was being questioned by the Secret Service agents and the Chicago police, but that she “does not appear to be any sort of threat to the President.” He said that she was cooperative and had readily acknowledged carrying the handgun. The woman had a card showing the gun, a ,25-ca-libre automatic: was registered, but did not have a permit to carry it. She was arrested on a misdemeanor charge and taken to a nearby police precinct house.

Despite the stringent security precautions arranged for Mr Ford’s fifth visit to Chicago as President — and his first outside the capital since an alleged attempt against his life eight days ago in San Francisco — several thousand spectators lined the John F. Kennedy expressway to watch the President drive to the central loop from O’Hare International Airport. 320 threats The Treasury Secretary (Mr William Simon) told a Senate sub-committee, which is reviewing Presidential protection measures, that Mr Ford’s life was threatened 320 times in the first 20 days of September. Mr Rex Davis, Director of

the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Unit, said that on September 20 a former mental patient had offered a Federal undercover agent $25,000 to kill the President.

Mr Davis also said that Federal authorities were searching for a former convict member of a militant Indian organisation — armed with high powered rifles — in connection with a possible threat to the President. He said that the man had told agents that his organisation wanted to discuss President Ford’s visit to Oklahoma last month.

Moore on ’phone

Sara Jane Moore telephoned the Secret Service three times on the morning of September 22, the day on which she is accused of shooting at President Ford, according to a Secret Service official.

And the Government, which has charged Moore with attempting to assassinate the President, still does not know what she wanted to say. The Secret Service intelligence chief, Mr James Burke, told a Senate subcommittee yesterday that Moore, aged 45, was interviewed by two Secret Service agents, acting on a tip from San Francisco police, the night before she allegedly fired at Mr Ford. But she was discounted as a Presidential threat, he said, because she was discovered to have been an informer for the F. 8.1.. the city police, and the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Bureau.