News stories from Saturday February 10, 1973
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- The Pentagon announced the names of the American military prisoners of war in the first group scheduled to be released from Communist camps in North and South Vietnam, after notifying the prisoners' relatives. Of the 134 servicemen, 19 will be freed in South Vietnam and 115 in Hanoi. The list included the name of Lt. Cmdr. Everett Alvarez of Santa Clara, Calif., the first pilot captured by the North Vietnamese. His plane was shot down on Aug. 5, 1964. The State Department said it had received a list of eight government civilian employees who would be among the first group of prisoners to be freed in South Vietnam. [New York Times]
- The Nixon administration is reportedly planning to withdraw 5,000 to 6,000 troops from Taiwan but, at the same time, is moving to enable the Nationalist Chinese regime there to become self-sufficient in modern jet fighters. Both actions, according to well-placed administration sources, are likely to be discussed by Henry Kissinger during his visit to Peking on Feb. 15 to 19. The troops, out of a total military contingent on Taiwan of about 8,600, have provided logistics support for the Indochina war. [New York Times]
- Herbert Kalmbach, President Nixon's personal lawyer, has been described in court papers in Washington as "essentially the principal fund raiser" of Mr. Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign until last February, when former Secretary of Commerce Maurice Stans assumed direction of the President's campaign finances. Mr. Kalmbach was previously identified in sworn testimony and in new accounts as chief solicitor of hundreds of thousands of dollars for the 1972 Republican presidential campaign from the dairy farm industry. The extent of his fund-raising responsibilities became known with the release of testimony of Hugh Sloan, a former White House aide. [New York Times]
- The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ordered the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to hold further hearings on the automobile industry's request for a one-year postponement of the 1975 standards on two exhaust pollutants. The Clean Air Act of 1970 permits such a delay. Last April, Ford, Chrysler and General Motors petitioned William Ruckelshaus, the environmental agency's administrator, to grant the delay on the ground that technology for meeting the 1975 emission standards for carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons would not be available for 1975 cars. [New York Times]
- A long report by the Senate Commerce Committee staff confirms that the Penn Central Railroad, the nation's biggest, is in desperate straits. The 750-page report also says that the Penn Central is only the sickest railroad in a dangerously unhealthy industry throughout the northeastern part of the country. It concludes that formal government participation in running the railroads in the Northeast may be imperative. [New York Times]