News stories from Saturday May 5, 1973
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- The federal prosecutors in the Watergate case have summoned officials of the CIA to discuss the agency's role in the plot to break-in at the office of Dr. Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, sources close to the case said. The prosecutors asked the intelligence officials to appear, the sources said, after E. Howard Hunt told a federal grand jury that he had used CIA equipment, including a "safe-house" in Washington maintained by the agency's clandestine service, to prepare for the burglary attempt on the Los Angeles office of Dr. Lewis Fielding, the psychiatrist whom Dr. Ellsberg had consulted. [New York Times]
- The search for a special supervising prosecutor in the Watergate case is being quietly pressed by unidentified government officials. Sources in Washington said that the two judges of the United States Court of Appeals in New York had been approached. One was offered the job and the other was asked to comment on some proposed candidates and recommend others. The same sources said the likeliest candidate at this time was Lawrence E. Walsh, a Deputy Attorney General under President Eisenhower, a former federal District Court judge, and now a member of the New York law firm of Davis, Polk & Wardwell. Mr. Walsh was President Nixon's personal representative at the Paris peace talks, and his law firm is primary legal counsel to the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation. [New York Times]
- Egil Krogh, a former White House aide, has sent directly to the judge in the Pentagon papers trial an affidavit in which he reportedly discusses the break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg's former psychiatrist. The affidavit has arrived at the Los Angeles office of United States District Judge Matthew Byrne, and the trial's defense attorneys asked that it be turned over to them on Monday morning. [New York Times]
- After a little more than four years in office, the Nixon administration, through the use of appointments and other means, has turned the independent regulatory agencies into bastions of Nixon Republicanism. They are run by members and commissioners who generally share the President's philosophy of less interference with business and industry. They have less diversity than existed in the past, with academics, liberals and consumer activists scarce. [New York Times]
- The Mexican government has told the United States it will accept the demands of the left-wing guerrillas who kidnapped Terrence G. Leonhardy, the United States Consul General in Guadalajara, the Vice Consul there, Joseph Hayes, said today. Mr. Hayes said, "This position of the Mexican government has been conveyed to us." Mr. Leonhardy, 58 years old, was kidnapped Friday night by guerrillas who demanded 30 political prisoners be allowed to fly to Cuba in exchange for his life. [New York Times]
- High-ranking American and South Vietnamese officials say that North Vietnamese troops are preparing for an eventual offensive in the two northernmost provinces of South Vietnam. The officials, all of whom have considerable military experience, say that an attack does not appear to be imminent, but that the odds favoring a North Vietnamese offensive in the next six to 12 months seems extremely high. [New York Times]
- President Suleiman Franjieh said that Lebanon was not prepared to allow Palestinian guerrillas to terrorize and kidnap people "as if they were above the official authority." The crisis in Lebanon between the army and Palestinian guerrillas went into the second day of cease-fire with only minor skirmishes in southern Lebanon. Mr. Franjieh reportedly told representatives of Syria, Egypt and Iraq, who are acting as mediators, that Lebanon would not give Palestinian refugees and their armed guerrilla leadership any special privileges to use the country as a base to attack Israel. [New York Times]