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News stories from Saturday September 8, 1973
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- Vice President Agnew, in an address prepared for a Republican rally and dinner at the Kane County fairgrounds in the Chicago suburb of St. Charles, reflected President Nixon's view that the government was badly diverted from vital tasks by its preoccupation with Watergate. He said that the Republican party was healthy, had survived the worst of Watergate, and that "morbid preoccupation" with it indirectly obstructed the will of the American people because it distracted the government from other necessary tasks. Mr. Agnew made no direct mention of his own difficulties in Maryland. [New York Times]
- President Nixon asked the White House to fly one of the Watergate tapes to his home in California at midnight on one of the five days that John Dean testified before the Senate Watergate committee, congressional investigators disclosed. Committee officials said that the President discarded the plan after being advised that there was not a convenient courier plane, but had one of his Watergate lawyers listen to the recording at the White House the same night and then brief Mr. Nixon on its contents. Senate sources said that this was only one of several instances in which Mr. Nixon permitted aides to listen to Watergate tapes or to be briefed on their contents. [New York Times]
- A criminal trial of historic significance is scheduled to start Tuesday in Federal District Court in New York, with two of President Nixon's former cabinet members as defendants. Former Attorney General John Mitchell and former Secretary of Commerce Maurice Stans are accused of obstructing a major fraud investigation of Robert Vesco, a fugitive financier, in return for his secret $200,000 cash contribution to the Nixon campaign last year. [New York Times]
- President Nixon urged states and cities to relax environmental rules this winter to avert what he said could be "a very serious" shortage of heating oil. This was one of Mr. Nixon's key points in a general statement on energy to reporters after his two-hour meeting at the White House with 15 senior administration officials. Officials disclosed that a change in Cost of Living Council pricing rules, to be announced this week, would lead to a general rise of two cents a gallon for heating oil as distributors import more oil at prices above those charged domestically. The new regulation will permit averaging of domestic and foreign prices. [New York Times]
- Five Palestinian guerrillas, who had been holding four Saudi Arabian hostages aboard an airliner at the Kuwait airport, surrendered their prisoners unharmed, according to the Kuwait radio. The gunmen gave up after Kuwaiti officials firmly refused to consider their demand for release from prison in Jordan of Mohammed Daoud Odeh, a Palestinian guerrilla leader who is serving a life sentence. [New York Times]
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