News stories from Saturday January 11, 1975

Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:

National Republican congressional leaders said that President Ford's new antirecession programs would include quick tax relief for the American people. The President will describe the details of his economic proposals Wednesday afternoon in his State of the Union Message to a joint session of Congress. [New York Times] Reporting on a two-year study of the major international oil companies and American foreign policy, a Senate subcommittee recommended that Congress consider legislation that would shrink the power of the oil companies to negotiate long-term price and supply arrangements with oil exporting nations. The Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations also advised that President Ford initiate a deep but gradual mandatory reduction in oil imports requiring gasoline rationing. [New York Times] An Air Force selection board has recommended the selection of the General Dynamics-designed F-16 as the next standard lightweight fighter, according to government spokesmen. The General Dynamics plane had been tested for six months against a design by the Northrop Corporation. The Pentagon is scheduled to make the official announcement next week. [New York Times] Fred Harris, former Oklahoma Senator, announced in Concord, N.H., that he would join the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976. He will have a "new populist" platform. "Privilege is the issue," he said. This will be his second presidential campaign. He conducted a brief campaign in 1971. He is the third Democrat preparing to enter the New Hampshire presidential primary, about 14 months away. [New York Times] Secretary of State Kissinger denied that he had expressed regret to the Pentagon that a naval task force that left the Philippines early this week had not initially sailed toward Vietnam to signal American determination to North Vietnam. Robert Anderson, the State Department's spokesman, said that Mr. Kissinger had informed him that there was "no basis of fact" in a report to that effect in yesterday's edition of The New York Times. [New York Times] The controversy over charges of domestic spying in the United States by the Central Intelligence Agency has aroused considerable interest in West Germany, where similar activities were uncovered last October. But in Bonn, as in Paris, Rome and London, occasional disclosures of questionable activities of security agencies have few lasting effects and the intensity of public reaction in the United States always surprises Europeans. "You don't have a country over there, you have a huge church," a diplomat in Bonn remarked. [New York Times] Reports that the Central Intelligence Agency engaged in domestic spying have been seized by the Soviet press as the basis of a campaign to convince Russians that they are better off than Americans. The campaign took on international ramifications when the official press agency, Tass, hinted that Western nations pushing for a fuller discussion of human rights at the 35-nation European security talks in Geneva should look at the United States for violations of basic liberties. [New York Times] The Senate Armed Services Committee raised the possibility that public hearings would be held on allegations of domestic spying by the Central Intelligence Agency as it summoned William Colby, the agency's director, to testify Thursday. Senator John Stennis, the committee chairman, said that "in-depth hearings" into the alleged domestic spying "would be held in open session to the extent possible." [New York Times]