News stories from Saturday April 7, 1973

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

Administration sources said President Nixon was expected to announce that he is going to impose new "fees" on imports of gasoline and oil in the energy message the White House expects to send to Congress within 10 days. A May 1 starting date was considered likely for the fees under a long-delayed comprehensive revision of the oil-import program. The 14-year-old controversial system of mandatory quotas -- ceilings on the physical volume of imports of oil and gasoline -- would be ended. [New York Times] The week-long nationwide meat boycott ended with its leaders calling for some form of continued consumer action in the fight against high meat prices. With no significant decline in meat prices despite widespread consumer participation in the boycott, leaders of the protest urged a variety of activities, but called mostly for abstinence from meat on Tuesdays and Thursdays. [New York Times] Charles Colson, former special counsel to President Nixon, has voluntarily taken a private lie-detector test in New York to buttress his sworn testimony that he had nothing to do with the Watergate raid last June. Close friends of Mr. Colson in New York said that Richard O. Arther, president of Scientific Lie Detection, Inc., and an authority in his field, concluded that Colson had "truthfully" denied all foreknowledge of the plot. [New York Times] President Nixon dispatched Gen. Alexander Haig, one of his most trusted military advisers, to Indochina today in an effort to get a clear picture of the deteriorating military situation in the region. General Haig flew to President Nixon's home in San Clemente, Calif., to confer with the President and Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser. General Haig, Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, left for Bangkok several hours later. He will visit Vientiane, Phnom Penh, and Saigon, returning to Washington on Thursday. [New York Times] Two helicopters of the international peace-keeping commission with a total of 19 men aboard were reported missing late tonight in the northwestern corner of South Vietnam near the Laotian border. Commission officers said that one of the aircraft was believed to have been shot down and the other was believed to be undamaged. They said that the helicopters were believed to have been carrying 11 members of the International Commission of Control and Supervision -- made up of Canada, Indonesia, Hungary and Poland -- six American crewmen and two members of the Viet Cong's Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam. [New York Times]