News stories from Saturday January 12, 1974
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- The Watergate special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, citing legal restrictions, has indicated that he will not make the mass of material collected by his office available to the congressional inquiry into the impeachment of President Nixon. In an interview with The New York Times, he said that he was eager to cooperate with the inquiry, but he could "see no way at the present time" to allow the congressional committee or its staff access to material that his office had obtained from the White House. [New York Times]
- A proposal that Congress grant President Nixon immunity from criminal prosecution if he decides to resign is under discussion in Washington political and social circles. The idea is that such congressional action would remove from the President's mind any obstacle to leaving the White House based on concern over possible subsequent prosecution as a private citizen. The apparent author of the proposal is Abe Fortes, the Washington lawyer who served on the Supreme Court by appointment of President Johnson from 1965 to 1969, when he resigned during a controversy over his acceptance of a $20,000 fee from a foundation while a sitting Justice. [New York Times]
- Representative Hugh Carey, Democrat of Brooklyn, charged that President Nixon had illegally used Bryce Harlow, then and now a member of the White House staff, to influence legislation for the President's benefit. Mr. Carey made the charge in an interview taped in advance for broadcast tomorrow night on WOR-TV. Mr. Carey's accusation relates to the controversy over the $576,000 tax deduction that Mr. Nixon is claiming for giving his vice-presidential papers to the National Archives. [New York Times]
- The White House told the Senate Watergate Committee last summer that a government official who participated in the investigation of the unauthorized passing of National Security Council documents to the Pentagon, had, in effect, sought to "blackmail" his way to a more important job by threatening to make the secret materials public, well-placed sources said. These sources said that the threat came during a White House investigation into what was believed to be a military spy ring. [New York Times]
- Secretary of State Kissinger flew from Egypt to Jerusalem and quickly set in motion talks between American and Israeli officials aimed at producing a concrete proposal to end the stalemate over the separation of Israeli and Egyptian troops along the Suez Canal. The officials were trying to work out a formula that Mr. Kissinger could present to President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, and the announcement that they had begun their efforts shortly after Mr. Kissinger's arrival indicated that the Secretary of State had persuaded the Israelis to quicken their efforts to agree on a concrete disengagement position. [New York Times]
- President Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia and Col. Muammar Qaddafi of Libya decided on a union between Tunisia and Libya, it was announced jointly over the radio in Tunisia and Libya. The announcement said that a referendum on the merger would be held Friday. Tunisia and Libya will be one nation, under one president and one flag with joint institutions. [New York Times]
- In a harsh crackdown after a month of liberalization, President Park Chung Hee's government in South Korea has detained at least half a dozen opposition leaders and assigned the police to accompany more than 20 others on a 24-hour-a-day basis. This followed President Park's proclamation last Tuesday of an emergency decree banning further criticism of South Korea's constitution and ordering violators imprisoned up to 15 years. [New York Times]
- While Soviet authorities have drastically reduced the size of their prison population in the 20 years since Stalin's death, Western experts believe that more than a million Soviet citizens, including about 10,000 political prisoners, remain In captivity in a network of about 900 prison and labor camps. Interest in the Soviet penal system has been raised by the publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's latest book, "The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956," which discussed the system before the prison population was cut from its Stalinist-era peak to about one million, a figure most Western experts believe has remained constant since the mid-fifties. The Central Intelligence Agency, through the use of satellite photographs, estimates a higher figure between 2.4 million and 2.5 million. [New York Times]