News stories from Saturday September 22, 1973

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

Henry Kissinger was sworn in as the 56th Secretary of State and was acclaimed by President Nixon as the first "naturalized citizen" to gain the office. The ceremony in the East Room of the White House was at times deeply moving. Mr. Kissinger's mother, Mrs. Louis Kissinger, who held the Bible for the swearing-in by Chief Justice Warren Berger, bit her lip to hold back tears as her son vowed to defend the United States "against all foreign enemies." [New York Times] Vice President Agnew is establishing a legal defense fund in his own behalf for use in the event that he is indicted in connection with kickbacks he allegedly received from Maryland businessmen, an aide to the Vice President said. The fund's disclosure was coupled with the information that Mr. Agnew's lawyers were preparing a possible defense of his case based on the effect of what they will contend are malicious leaks of investigative information by Nixon administration officials to the press. This was the strongest indication so far that the Vice President would resist all pressure to resign. These pressures included reported offers of a plea of guilty to reduced charges and the dropping of all charges in return for his resignation. [New York Times] Samuel Dash, the Senate Watergate committee's counsel, said that the panel, in its second round of public hearings, will focus on determining how "pervasive and systematic" the attempts were last year by supporters of President Nixon's re-election campaign to undermine the Democratic opposition. He said that the "real question" still to be answered was whether excesses that allegedly occurred in the 1972 campaign constituted "a difference in kind or in degree" from past practice in United States politics. The hearings, after a recess of seven weeks, will resume at 10 A.M. Monday with E. Howard Hunt, convicted Watergate conspirator, as the session's first witness. [New York Times] During President Nixon's first administration, while he was making heavy investments in homes in Florida and California, three persons close to him had control of a secret political fund of $1,098,000 in cash -- mostly $100 bills -- and $570,000 in checking accounts, Existence of the funds, the surplus of the 1968 presidential campaign, has been disclosed to the New York Times by sources who cannot be identified. These sources insisted that Mr. Nixon did not at any time in any way make use of the campaign surplus in his real estate transactions. However, it appears likely from facts learned by the New York Times that the way the funds were handled may have led to news stories that suggested Mr. Nixon had made personal use of the money. [New York Times] A Soviet space scientist, in an unusual break with traditional secrecy, disclosed some of the scientific goals and experiments of the Soviet caravan of four spaceships on their way to Mars. The spacecraft, launched in late July and early August, include "fly-by", "orbiter" and "lander" missions, according to the new chief of Moscow's Space Research Institute, Roald Sagdeyev. Mr. Sagdeyev said that the lander would test the physical properties of Martian soil and surface rocks and experiment with the possible transmission of television images from the planet's surface. The four craft will reach the vicinity of Mars between mid-February and mid-March after a 300 million mile journey from earth. [New York Times] Two of the Skylab astronauts, getting ready for their return to earth Tuesday, went outside their orbiting space station to retrieve film from a set of telescopes that have been observing the sun's turbulent atmosphere. Capt. Alan Bean of the Navy and Dr. Owen Garriott, a scientist-astronaut, spent two hours 41 minutes outside the Skylab. [New York Times] Thirty top aides of the late President Salvador Allende of Chile are being held prisoner on an island in the Strait of Magellan and about 7,000 persons are imprisoned in the National Stadium in Santiago, according to one of the members of the ruling military junta. "The military operations are over, and so now we have begun on a phase of national reconstruction," the junta member, Gen. Gustavo Leigh Guzman said at a news conference. [New York Times]