News stories from Saturday December 8, 1973
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- Two Arab oil ministers indicated that they believed that the embargo on petroleum shipments to the United States and the Netherlands would be lifted sometime in 1974. The ministers, Sheik Ahmed Zaki al-Yamani of Saudi Arabia and Belaid Ab-desalem of Algeria, have been in Washington representing nine Arab countries in talks with United States officials. [New York Times]
- President Nixon made public a voluminous amount of information, including his income tax returns for his first four years in office, which he said should lay to rest "false rumors" about his personal finances. The extensive disclosures, unprecedented for an American President, were made after several months of persistent reports that Mr. Nixon had profited improperly from his office. [New York Times]
- The White House conceded that there were serious questions about the legality of two separate aspects of President Nixon's recent tax returns and said that he and Mrs. Nixon might owe as much as $267,000 in additional federal income tax if both of his original claims were reversed. Mr. Nixon announced that he would let the congressional Joint Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation decide whether he should pay any additional tax because of the two disputed items, "I will abide by the committee's judgment," he said in a written statement.
In his first term in office, President Nixon, according to financial records released this weekend, saw his fortune grow by $150,000 a year, and by now he should be a full-fledged millionaire. With the help and advice of multimillionaire friends, Charles G. Rebozo, a Florida banker, and Robert H. Abplanalp, a New York industrialist, Mr. Nixon has bought and sold land in Florida and California, piling up large profits that he deposited in Mr. Rebozo's bank. By May 31 of this year, an audit of the President's finances showed, he had $426,000 in cash and tax exemptions were increasing this in a significant amount each day. From Jan. 1, 1969, through last May 31, Mr. Nixon's net worth increased by an average of $425 a day, the report indicated.
[New York Times] - A wealthy friend established a trust fund of more than $25,000 for Mr. Nixon's older daughter, Tricia, when her father was Vice President, according to information released by the White House. The trust fund was set up in 1958 by Elmer H. Bobst, who was then chairman of the Warner-Lambert Pharmaceutical Company, and the gift consisted primarily of Warner-Lambert stock, White House officials said. At the time of the gift, the late Estes Kefauver, then a Democratic Senator from Tennessee, was preparing extensive hearings into prices and related matters in the drug industry. When he ran for President in 1960, Mr. Nixon, like his opponent, John F. Kennedy, took a strong stand against federal regulation of drug prices, one of the key proposals that evolved from the Kefauver hearings. [New York Times]
- Service station owners and their representatives throughout the country expressed concern over a developing gasoline drought brought on by tight supplies and a run on their pumps. The situation has apparently begun developing despite gasless Sundays for which motorists again began preparing themselves today. [New York Times]
- For months, President Nixon has been citing national security as the reason for authorizing establishment of the secret White House investigation unit known as the plumbers and as justification for restricting some aspects of the Watergate inquiry. One reported fear was that Daniel Ellsberg might pass to the Soviet Union nuclear defense and other secrets far more important than any information contained in the Pentagon papers. The second major concern was said to be that a Russian K.G.B. agent, who was serving as an American counterspy, might be jeopardized. [New York Times]
- The Soviet Union has broadened its campaign to discredit China in the Third World by accusing Peking of new provocations against such smaller neighbors as Bangladesh, Burma, Malaysia, Taiwan and Hong Kong. The charge is one of a number made in the Soviet press in the last few days, marking a new wave in the offensive of words that began late last summer. [New York Times]