SEQUEL TO ATTEMPT TO KILL U.S. PRESIDENT

Wanganui Chronicle, 4 November 1950, Page 5

SEQUEL TO ATTEMPT TO KILL U.S. PRESIDENT

Guards For Many Other People

WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 (Recd. 6pm) —Twenty - four - hour guards were posted today to protect General Eisenhower, Mr. Warren Austin, and other important Americans who the authorities fear might be marked for assassination by fanatical Puertorican revolutionaries. Simultaneously, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and secret service agents and police, scoured squalid tenements in New York’s Puertorican sections, searching for more conspirators in the plot to kill President Truman.

A Federal Grand Jury investigation of the attempted assassination was indicated late today when subpoenaes were issued to Juan Pinto Gandia, self-proclaimed leader of the Puertorican Nationalist Movement in New York, John Corea, a member of the movement, and Juan Cortes Cordero, an uncle of Mrs. Collazo. They had been questioned earlier today.

eManwhile in San Juan, leaders of the Nationalist and Communist Parties were locked up in a wide round-up, and scores of others are falling into the Government net. The Puertorican District Attorney, Angel Viera Martinez, said Pedro Albizu Campos, president of the Nationalists, was being held for investigation and no charge would be filed until the investigation was complete.

San Juan, for a time after the arrest of Campos was virtually under a state of siege, but the city gradually returned to normal.

The Governor of Puertorica, Luis Munoz Morin, in announcing that conditions on the island are rapidly being restored, added that casualties in this week’s revolt were 29 killed, including 10 police and National Guardsmen, and 17 Nationalists. Thirty-one were wounded, comprising 13 police and Guardsmen, 12 Nationalists and six civilians.

At Lake Success today, Puertorican Nationalists declared that the situation in Puertorica was not a domestic matter, but an issue involving international peace and security. They requested the Secretary-General, Mr. Trygve Lie, to bring the matter before the United Nations.

At his Press conference in Washington today, President Truman reiterated his support for greater independence for Puertorico. A correspondent read a summary of a speech Mr. Truman made in Puertorico in 1948, declaring that the people of Puertorico had a right to determine themselves the island's political relationship to the United States. The President said that was still his feeling about the Puertorican situation.

Carmen Torresola, aged 22, wife of Griseleo Torresola, who was shot yesterday when he attempted to shoot his way into Blair House, disappeared today while F. 8.1. agents were looking for her. Agents traced her to a Manhatttan Hotel, but before they got there she had gone, taking her six-months-old baby girl with her.