News stories from Saturday July 7, 1973

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

President Nixon formally notified the Senate Watergate committee that he would not appear personally before the committee under any circumstances to defend himself against charges that he had participated in the cover-up of the Watergate burglary. In a letter to Sam Ervin, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, Mr. Nixon also said that he would not grant the committee access to presidential files. The President based his case on an argument by former President Harry S. Truman in 1953 when the House Committee on Un-American Activities sought to subpoena him after he had left office. [New York Times] The Senate Rules Committee, meeting in secret session shortly before Congress recessed last week, voted to strip two key enforcement requirements from the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, congressional sources disclosed. These sources said that the modifying bill would be sent to the Senate floor late this month, where it is expected to provide the first major floor fight over campaign financing since the Watergate scandal erupted this spring. The amendments would remove the requirement of the listing of the address and occupation of any campaign contributors and would repeal a section of the law that prohibits individual members of a corporation or labor union from making donations to a company-controlled political fund. [New York Times] Representative Wilbur Mills, the Arkansas Democrat who as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee has been among the most powerful of congressional leaders, said that he would not seek re-election next year unless his health improves. He said that he had been suffering from a "degenerated disk," and that unless he could be relieved of the pain he could not "expect to maintain the demanding standards of service which I have always set for myself." [New York Times] A staff study by the Federal Trade Commission says that the nation's petroleum shortage is the result of anticompetitive practices fostered by government regulations and manipulated by the major oil companies to protect their profits. "In the many levels in which they interrelate, the majors demonstrate a clear preference for avoiding competition through mutual cooperation and the use of exclusionary practices," the study said. The oil companies "have behaved in a similar fashion as would a classical monopolist: They have attempted to increase profits by restricting output." [New York Times] Indications were favorable last week for this country's largest corn and soybean crops in recent years and the largest wheat crop on record. Nixon administration economists are basing their hopes for an eventual leveling-off of food prices on record crops of the three food grains. But farm forecasters doubted that corn and soybeans could overcome the handicaps of rain-delayed plantings and yield as much as the Agriculture Department predicted. [New York Times] Baghdad radio announced the execution of Col. Nazem Kazzar and 22 other alleged accomplices accused of an abortive attempt to overthrow Iraq's left-wing regime last weekend. Colonel Kazzar was director of the national public security department, a key police post, but he was not a member of the Revolutionary Command Council, the governing authority. The executions followed a swift trial before a three-member tribunal headed by Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a member of the council. [New York Times] Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, head of the Libyan government, is giving Egypt's leaders a possible foretaste of how difficult it will be to live with him if the planned merger of the two countries takes place. Colonel Qaddafi has been visiting Cairo for more than a week. He went there, he told Egyptian newsmen, without an invitation from President Anwar el-Sadat, and is seeking a showdown on the intended union. He insists that a proclamation of total union be made on schedule Sept. 1, but his own negotiators in the joint Egyptian-Libyan committees are holding out on such key issues as a single currency and free movement of labor. [New York Times]