Officials Refuse Permit for Rally Protesting Agnew

The Boston Traffic Commission yesterday refused to grant two local peace groups a permit to hold a rally tomorrow night in front of the Sheraton Boston Hotel. where Vice-President Spiro Agnew will address the Republican Party's $25-a-plate Lincoln Day Dinner.

The Commission felt the proposed rally on Belvidere Street would further disrupt traffic in an area already crowded by Agnew admirers and people attending an engagement at the nearby War Memorial Auditorium, said John Fiske, legal counsel to the Commission.

The Commission has offered the Greater Boston Peace Action Coalition (GBPAC) and the People's Coalition for Peace and Justice (PCPJ) a permit to use Prudential Center plaza.

However, Stuart Singer, coordinator of GBPAC, said that the rally could be held only on the condition that they would conduct it without sound equipment. Singer felt that without sound equipment, the rally speakers would be unable to control the crowd.

Boston Couneilman Thomas Atkins and other politicians are working behind the scenes to obtain a permit acceptable to the two groups. GBPAC and PCPJ will continue negotiating with the Traffic Commission today.

The groups will decide whether to accept the Commission's final offer for the location of the rally, to hold it without a permit, or to cancel it at a mass meeting tonight at 7:30 in Room 224, C.B.A. Building, Boston University.

The Ripon Society and the Indochina Teach-In Committee are sponsoring an antiwar dinner-panel inside the Sheraton Boston Hotel at the same time as the official dinner. Liberal Republican Congressmen Paul McCloskey (R-Cal.) and Donald Riegle (R-Mich.), and Dan Ellsberg, a former member of the National Security Council staff, will speak at the panel.

Organizers of the panel have invited Agnew, Governor Francis Sargent, Senator Edward Brooke, and other prominent Republicans attending the official dinner to join the upstairs gathering afterwards for a discussion of American war policy.