News stories from Saturday August 4, 1973

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

Justice William O. Douglas of the Supreme Court ordered an immediate halt to the American bombing of Cambodia. Hours later, the court overruled him in an order issued by Justice Thurgood Marshall and supported by the seven other justices. Justice Douglas's decision upheld an injunction ordered in federal court in Brooklyn on July 25. On Wednesday, Justice Marshall ruled against that injunction by refusing to vacate a stay.The swift sequence of events in the Supreme Court left open the thorny legal question of whether the American combat involvement in Indochina was ever constitutionally justified. Justice Douglas, in his decision that was later reversed, said that "I do not sit today to determine whether the bombing in Cambodia is constitutional," although the text of his ruling made it clear that he believed that he favored those arguing that such military actions were unconstitutional. [New York Times] Capt. Gregory Camp, a B-52 pilot from Garden City, Long Island, is eagerly looking forward to the end of bombing in Cambodia. He knows that some people are worried that Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital, may fall to the Communist insurgents after the bombing stops, but that does not concern him, he says, and he notes that he does not know of anyone at the American base in U Taphao on the Gulf of Siam in Thailand who is upset that Congress is cutting off funds for the bombing. The Americans at the base display a bone-weary exhaustion with the war and they have reached a point where they do not care what happens. They just want to go home. [New York Times] Senate investigators have concluded that the Watergate break-in last year was only "one small part" of a prolonged White House effort to influence the Democratic party's selection of a nominee to run against President Nixon in the 1972 election. "The effort began almost as soon as the Nixon administration took office" in 1969 according to an official familiar with evidence gathered for the second, the "dirty tricks" phase of the Senate Watergate committee's inquiry into campaign irregularities. The "dirty tricks" phase, which will focus on alleged political sabotage, is scheduled to begin in September. [New York Times] High-resolution radar probes have broken through the thick clouds that obscure Venus and distinguished for the first time features of the surface of the planet, a landscape of huge shallow craters. The unmasking of Venus, which is concealed by a perpetual bank of clouds about 13 miles thick, was accomplished by a team of radar astronomers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Pasadena, Calif. [New York Times] Soaring prices, not shortages of beef or pork or chicken, are triggering a buildup of anger among supermarket shoppers across the nation. But a check by the New York Times has found that the anger is still relatively unfocused, that meat is still generally available, and that hoarding it -- it is called "inventory building" when government or business does it -- is under way at the meat counters. [New York Times] The Tennessee Valley Authority, created by a generation of conservationists, finds itself today, 40 years later, under attack by the new environmentalists. The spiritual children of T.V.A.'s progenitors charge that the regional development agency, the country's biggest power producer, has become too development-minded -- too committed to more dams, power and industry than is good for the people, the environment and the tranquility of the Tennessee hills. [New York Times]