Prime Minister Levi Eshkol will be assigned much heavier police and Secret Service protection than he was given in the course of his 1964 visit because of indications of possible violence by Black Power extremists, it was learned today.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has opened an investigation of new expressions by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) advocating attacks on President Johnson “to make him afraid to leave the White House.” The first foreign official guest of the President, following the emergence of the more extreme SNCC line, is Mr. Eshkol. In the same issue of the SNCC publication advocating violence against President Johnson, the Black Power group said it “reaffirms its political opposition to Zionism.”
Last August, SNCC published a rabble-rousing attack on Israel and Jews that drew severe criticism from Jewish groups. It was then charged that SNCC had moved from militancy to anti-Semitism.
The FBI has quietly cautioned the New York City Police Department and other security agencies to guard against possible SNCC attempts to embarrass President Johnson by extremist demonstrations or actions against Mr. Eshkol, the President’s personal guest. Mr. Eshkol makes a convenient target because he represents a nation currently under heavy fire from the leftist supporters of Arab extremism in the United States. It was learned from reliable sources that additional security measures have been instituted both in New York and at the LBJ Ranch in Texas.
The FBI probe of SNCC followed appearance in the latest SNCC publication of an article urging protesters to spit at President Johnson and “attack his limousine to make him afraid to leave the White House.” The attacks are advocated as part of a new strategy to make the President fearful of moving about in public. The article was written by Julius Lester, an associate of Stokely Carmichael and SNCC chairman H. Rap Brown. Lester is a field secretary of SNCC who recently returned from a trip to Cuba and North Vietnam.
Lester urged that the President “be spat upon wherever he goes to tell his lies. His limousine will find the street filled with tacks and thousands of people who will surge around it, smashing the windows and rocking the car until it is turned on its side.”
SNCC did not publicly urge such actions against Premier Eshkol, but the coincidence of the official visit with the announcement of the new line and the simultaneous reaffirmation of a militant anti-Israel stand were deemed adequate by security authorities to take precautionary measures.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
