News stories from Monday February 25, 1974
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- President Nixon's personal attorney Herbert Kalmbach pleaded guilty to illegal campaign fundraising activities. Two of the charges date back to the 1970 elections. Kalmbach won't be further prosecuted for other offenses since he has agreed to testify for the government in the other Watergate trials. Jack Gleason and H.R. Haldeman were named as accomplices in one charge. Prosecutor Thomas McBride reviewed another charge involving an ambassadorship for J. Fife Symington, Jr. [CBS]
- The Senate Watergate Committee filed a brief in a U.S. court of appeals in an effort to obtain five White House tapes. [CBS]
- President Nixon in a televised news conference tonight at the White House said he had sought to avoid confrontation with Moscow over the expulsion of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from the Soviet Union in order to further detente with the Russians. He said: "If I thought that breaking relations with the Soviet Union. . . would help him or help thousands of others like him in the Soviet Union, we might do that."
At his news conference the President also asserted that the House of Representatives could not impeach him without first finding evidence that he had violated criminal law, a position that put him in direct conflict with the staff of the House Judiciary Committee. He hinted that he would refuse to give the committee all the tapes and documents it wants for the impeachment inquiry.
The President conceded that "the paperwork" required to legalize the big tax deductions that he had taken for the gift of his pre-presidential papers to the National Archives "apparently was not concluded" until after the deadline for making such gifts. He went a step further than he had gone before in acknowledging that the gift, and therefore the tax deductions totaling $576,000, may be legally defective.
Mr. Nixon at his news conference said that the nation's fuel shortage would continue to be a serious problem, but he declared that "the crisis has passed." There is a "much better than even chance" that gasoline rationing will not be necessary, he said, and he predicted that the long lines at gasoline stations would become shorter in the spring and summer.
[New York Times] - The Watergate special prosecutor has begin an inquiry into President Nixon's handling of the military snooping on the White House in 1971, sources said. Investigators from the office of Leon Jaworski, the special prosecutor, have been permitted to see the highly classified White House report on the spying compiled by David Young of the White House "plumbers" group, the sources said. [New York Times]
- The Shah of Iran claimed that the United States is getting the same amount of oil now as before the embargo. Federal energy czar William Simon was upset by the statement made by the Shah on the program "60 Minutes".
Simon insisted that imports are monitored precisely, and he called the Shah's comment "irresponsible". However, Representative Charles Vanik said that the Shah raised a legitimate point, and Congress will require Simon to testify on the matter.
[CBS] - The Federal Trade Commission investigated a complaint that the major oil companies stifle competition within the industry. Commission staff lawyers made recommendations to assure competition. [CBS]
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Stock Market Report
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 851.38 (-4.61, -0.54%)
Arms Index is the ratio of volume per declining issue to volume per advancing issue; a figure below 1.0 is bullish. | |||||||||||||||
| Market Index Trends | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Date | DJIA | S&P | Volume* |
| February 22, 1974 | 855.99 | 95.39 | 16.36 |
| February 21, 1974 | 846.84 | 94.71 | 13.93 |
| February 20, 1974 | 831.04 | 93.44 | 11.67 |
| February 19, 1974 | 819.54 | 92.12 | 15.94 |
| February 15, 1974 | 820.32 | 92.27 | 12.64 |
| February 14, 1974 | 809.92 | 90.95 | 12.23 |
| February 13, 1974 | 806.87 | 90.98 | 10.99 |
| February 12, 1974 | 806.63 | 90.94 | 12.92 |
| February 11, 1974 | 803.90 | 90.66 | 12.93 |
| February 8, 1974 | 820.40 | 92.33 | 12.99 |