News stories from Saturday February 1, 1975

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

President Ford announced that he would send a $349 billion budget to Congress today, under which federal spending will amount to "almost $1 billion a day." There will also be a deficit in the coming fiscal year of $52 billion -- $5-billion higher than the administration estimated just over two weeks ago. Mr. Ford said that the deficit, "large as it is, would increase by $17 billion to nearly $70 billion if the Congress does not agree to all of the reductions I have requested in this budget," for the fiscal year starting July 1. [New York Times] According to previously unpublished testimony, Richard Helms, while Director of Central Intelligence, ordered a high official of the agency to withhold Watergate information and deny the Justice Department access to a key witness in the first six weeks after the break-in on June 17, 1972. The official was Howard Osborne, who was director of security for the C.I.A. before he retired In 1973. [New York Times] The world food situation has improved sharply in the last two months, most notably for India. This was indicated in interviews with government officials and other experts in Washington and by data from United States and United Nations sources. The food gap in the deficit nations will still amount to millions of tons between now and June 30, the end of the current crop year, and untold numbers of lives continue to be threatened by malnutrition. Still, several countries that faced the most serious problems when the World Food Conference met in Rome in November have succeeded in contracting for large parts of needed food supplies. [New York Times] Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko of the Soviet Union, who left today for an official visit to Syria and Egypt, is apparently traveling with enhanced authority that some Soviet insiders say is closer to the power enjoyed by Secretary of State Kissinger. Knowledgeable Russians have confirmed that Mr. Gromyko has assumed broadened diplomatic responsibilities as a result of Leonid Brezhnev's six-week absence from public view, which has been attributed to illness. The Foreign Minister's trip is generally viewed in Moscow as a substitute for the Middle East tour that Mr. Brezhnev was to have taken last month, but was canceled. [New York Times] Syria and the Palestine Liberation Organization regard with a great deal of suspicion Secretary of State Kissinger's plan to visit the Middle East in about the middle of this month. Syrian officials and Western diplomats in Damascus are not sure what Mr. Kissinger's objective is. "Is he trying to pressure Egypt into a separate agreement for the purpose of splitting the ranks of the Arabs?" they ask. If this is so, his policy would be regarded by Syria as "a hostile action," the Syrian Information Minister, Ahmed Iskander, said in an interview. [New York Times] Secretary of State Kissinger failed to persuade key members of Congress to continue military aid to Turkey beyond Tuesday night's cutoff time. After an hour-and-a-quarter meeting at the State Department, Senator Thomas Eagleton, spokesman for the group, said that Mr. Kissinger could only report "slight progress" toward a Cyprus settlement, less than the "substantial progress" demanded by Congress to keep aid flowing. "We have no alternative but to cut off aid to Turkey," Mr. Eagleton said. [New York Times]