News stories from Sunday February 17, 1974

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

President Nixon's Watergate lawyer, James St. Clair, said that a White House-sponsored technical review had refuted reports that two subpoenaed tape recordings were not authentic. In a statement issued at the presidential estate in Key Biscayne, Fla., he said that reports in the Washington Post that two of the recordings were not originals but had been re-recorded were "utterly false." [New York Times] A soldier landed a stolen Army helicopter in a hail of shotgun buckshot on the south lawn of the White House at 2 A.M. today. He was wrestled to the ground by officers of the Executive Protection Service after bouncing the helicopter to a rough landing about 100 yards short of the White House. The soldier was identified as Pfc. Robert K. Preston, a 20-year-old helicopter maintenance man from Panama City, Fla., who flunked Army flight school last year. He is undergoing psychiatric evaluation. President Nixon was in Key Biscayne, Fla. [New York Times] Nixon administration strategists said that if Congress passed the emergency energy bill, the President would veto it because he believes that its provision for a rollback of crude oil prices is inflexible. To help sustain the veto in Congress, the strategists said, the federal energy administrator, William Simon, would order a price rollback for crude oil from new wells. Such oil, not now under price controls, has been selling up to $10.35 a barrel, almost double the $5.25 ceiling on old oil. [New York Times] Secret Service agents will no longer protect former Vice President Spiro Agnew, the Treasury Department announced. "The decision was made by the treasury with prior knowledge of the White House and Mr. Agnew," a spokesman for the department said. [New York Times] After receiving what has been called an encouraging message from his kidnapped daughter, Patricia, Randolph Hearst said that he would announce a plan for the distribution of free food that would satisfy the Symbionese Liberation Army, which claims to be the kidnappers. [New York Times] Secretary of State Kissinger met separately with the Egyptian and Saudi Arabian Foreign Ministers and a Syrian representative while American officials sought to dampen optimistic speculation about the lifting of the Arab oil embargo against the United States. "The oil embargo is not the principal purpose of these discussions," Mr. Kissinger explained to reporters after escorting the Egyptian envoy, Ismail Fahmy, to his limousine. Mr. Kissinger also told reporters that "I decided to meet the Arab ministers separately because I can't handle the three of them together." [New York Times] Several thousand demonstrators gathered in Jerusalem outside the office of Premier Golda Meir to demand the resignation of Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, whom they held responsible for the "failures" of the October war. [New York Times]