News stories from Saturday August 18, 1973

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

The retired controller of a consulting engineering firm under investigation in Maryland denied that he had contributed to Vice President Agnew's 1966 campaign for governor despite an official contributions report showing that he gave $2,500. He is Frank R. Taylor, 76 years old, who was an employee of the J.E. Grenier Company for 23 years until his retirement in 1965. When he denied making the contribution, he said "I wouldn't give those people the sweat off my brow." Another retired Grenier official, Harry M. Brown, now dead, also was listed as having given $2,500. At the time of the contribution Mr. Brown's address was given as being in Baltimore, but already he had been retired for 10 years and was living in Florida. [New York Times] About 44% of the people who watched President Nixon's Watergate address on television Wednesday night found the speech "not at all" convincing, while 27% concluded it was "completely" or "quite a lot" convincing, according to a Gallup poll commissioned by The New York Times. Half of those who watched the address did not believe the President's statement that he had no involvement in the planning or cover-up of the Watergate burglary; 56% believed he should give the Senate Watergate committee tape recordings of his meetings with his aides, and 58% disagreed with the President's statement that civil rights and antiwar protests helped create the atmosphere that led to the Watergate crimes. The poll was conducted by telephone among 810 adults across the country. [New York Times] A journalist who posed as a member of the press corps traveling with Senator George McGovern during the 1972 presidential campaign has revealed that she was assigned to accompany the Democratic nominee as a $1,000-a-week spy for President Nixon's Re-election Committee. Mrs. Lucianne Goldberg said that the secret project on which she worked was personally directed by Murray Chotiner, a former adviser to President Nixon. [New York Times] A federal appellate court upheld the beef price freeze, rejecting contentions of the meat industry that the Cost of Living Council was arbitrary and capricious and had exceeded its authority. A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals said that it was clear that the Pacific Coast Meat Jobbers Association, Inc. and the National Association of Meat Purveyors, Inc., "had not made the showing necessary to entitle them to a preliminary injunction" against the freeze. [New York Times] Nearly three-fourths of the rent paid by the federal government for space leased in the Baltimore area during the Nixon administration goes to a small group of businesses associated with prominent Democrats who switched their support to President Nixon during the 1972 campaign. An examination of records of the General Services Administration, the government's acquisition and housekeeping agency, shows that of the $4,744,000 paid every year in rent under leases awarded by the G.S.A. in the Baltimore area since January, 1969, 73.6% of it goes to this group. [New York Times] The worldwide food relief programs of private United States agencies will be abandoned or cut back in coming weeks because they no longer will have the commodities -- basically wheat, flour and vegetable oil -- to continue helping 80 million to 100 million needy people in 100 countries. The agencies have been told by Washington officials that the Department of Agriculture will not be able to purchase commodities for the Food for Peace program in August, and possibly not in September. Among the agencies affected are the Cooperative for American Relief Everywhere (CARE) and Catholic Relief Services. [New York Times] The United States has decided to sell eight British-made fighters to Spain, touching off a political controversy in London. The Spanish government, unable to buy arms from Britain for years, will purchase eight British Harrier vertical take-off jets, worth about a total of $30 million, under the existing defense agreement with the United States. The planes are made for the United States Marine Corps. Harold Wilson, leader of the Labor party opposition, denounced what he called a "back door sale" and noted the longstanding policy in Britain against selling weapons to "Fascist Spain." [New York Times] The truckers' strike that has poisoned life in Chile went into its 24th day with new violence and the resignation of one of President Salvador Allende Gossens's new military ministers. Gen. Cesar Ruiz Danyau quit as Minister of Public Works and Transport reportedly because the government would not give him power to end the strike. [New York Times]