Reports persisted today, despite denials, that the Rockwell-Standard Corporation had sold its jet aircraft plant in Oklahoma to Israel.
A spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington denied that Israel was planning to buy the plant. In New York, Israel’s Minister for Economic Affairs, Nachum Shamir, said he knew nothing about the purported transaction. But, in Oklahoma City, a local newspaper quoted Col. Willard F. Rockwell, founder and chairman of the corporation, as saying that the plant had been sold to Israel for $25,000,000 and that “everything about the sale is final, except that we have not signed the contract — but the contract is agreeable to everyone.”
In Pittsburgh, Donald McLeod, vice-president and general counsel of the corporation, said: “no agreement has been reached with any party — and that includes Israel.” In Oklahoma City, however. Gov. Dewey Bartlett protested to the U.S. Department of Justice against what he called a “forced” sale of the aircraft factory to Israel, fearing that the state would thereby suffer the loss of several hundred jobs. Gov. Bartlett said that Rockwell-Standard had to divest itself of the plant in order to be able to merge with a major aviation firm.
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