News stories from Saturday July 21, 1973

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

President Nixon has told Senator Sam Ervin, chairman of the Senate Watergate committee, that he will not provide Senate investigators with presidential papers because he is convinced the committee is seeking to incriminate him, reliable sources reported. Senator Ervin, a North Carolina Democrat, said the President's position was making it "more difficult" for him to "continue to cling to the presumption" that Mr. Nixon was not involved in the Watergate conspiracy. The President conferred with his counselors at Camp David, Md., preparing what aides intimated would be an "irrevocable" statement rejecting the committee's request for tape-recorded conversations and White House documents. [New York Times] Republican candidates, organizers and fund raisers across the country are feeling the political impact of the Watergate scandal. In California, Robert Finch, once one of President Nixon's closest advisers, is worrying that his connection with the White House will hamper his political career. In Polk County, Iowa, the party's annual door-to-door fund raising campaign is down 50%, and one official said, "A lot of our neighbors are embarrassed to go out and ask their friends and neighbors for money for the Republican party." [New York Times] Federal immigration officials have told a federal grand jury in San Diego that despite an electronic detection system, they have "lost control of the situation" along the Mexican border where the influx of illegal aliens has become a surging flood. Criminal organizations engaged in the narcotics traffic have turned to alien smuggling because the profits are large and involve fewer risks, the grand jury was told. [New York Times] Hijackers continue to hold hostage a Japan Air Lines 747 jumbo jet with its 123 passengers and 22 crew members in Dubai, a Persian Gulf sheikdom where it had been diverted from Amsterdam, and they threatened to blow up the aircraft if anyone approached it. They demanded the release of Kozo Okamoto, a member of the "Japanese Red Army" who is serving a life sentence in Israel for his part in the massacre of 26 people at the Tel Aviv airport in May, 1972. In Tel Aviv, the Minister of Transport, Shimon Peres, said that Israel would not release the terrorist. [New York Times] Gerald Greven, a former Air Force captain, said that he participated in the planned bombing of a Vietcong hospital in South Vietnam in 1969. He said in a telephone interview that he had told Senator Harold Hughes, Iowa Democrat, that the deliberate attempt to destroy the hospital was made in late March or early in April, 1969, in a Vietcong-held area in South Vietnam, near the Cambodian border. The bombing took place about a month after the U.S. begin its secret raids on Cambodia. [New York Times] Shah Mohammed Riza Pahlevi of Iran will arrive in Washington this week seeking new and more sophisticated weapons, including the $14 million F-14 Navy fighter, for his country's rapidly expanding military forces. Iran's development into the primary military power between Israel and India is causing come misgivings in the United States and Western European governments. [New York Times] France exploded the first nuclear device of her current series at Mururoa, an atoll in the South Pacific. The explosion occurred at 2 P.M. New York time. The controversial test series got underway in the face of a worldwide protest movement. [New York Times]