News stories from Saturday May 12, 1973
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- The day after charges against them of espionage, theft and conspiracy were dropped, Dr. Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo, defendants in the Pentagon Papers trial, were tired but jubilant, and said that the 89 days of their trial had served the purpose of "telling the truth, the very painful truth" to the American people.
Henry Kissinger suggested strongly that he had seen the result of the wiretap that contributed to the dismissal of the Pentagon Papers case. He was asked at a White House news briefing whether he had any knowledge of the tap on the home telephone of Dr. Morton Halperin, his former subordinate, and whether he had seen any of the results of the wiretap. Mr. Kissinger said of Mr. Halperin, "I never received any information that cast doubt on his loyalty and discretion." When asked whether he had received any information at all from the tap, he refused comment, leaving the clear implication that he had.
[New York Times] - In light of recent revelations in the Watergate case, California Democrats are now remembering a series of strange incidents that occurred during the presidential primary in Los Angeles last June. They have no proof, but the politicians suspect the incidents may have been the work of a Republican-financed campaign of "dirty tricks" aimed at harassing Democratic candidates. Meanwhile, it was learned that Herbert Kalmbach, long President Nixon's personal lawyer, was under federal investigation in Los Angeles for possible violation of election financing laws. [New York Times]
- Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet Communist party leader, will visit the United States from June 18 to 26 for talks with President Nixon, the White House announced today. Mr. Brezhnev's visit, in return for Mr. Nixon's trip to the Soviet Union last May, will be "overwhelmingly a working summit," Henry Kissinger told newsmen at a White House briefing after the joint announcement in Washington and Moscow. [New York Times]
- Rep. Mario Biaggi's testimony before a federal grand jury in 1971 was released and it directly contradicts his assertions over several months that he did not invoke the Fifth Amendment and that the questions were not related to his finances. The minutes showed that he had refused to answer 16 questions by invoking his constitutional rights. [New York Times]
- William Ruckelshaus, who earned the title of "Mr. Clean" while head of the Environmental Protection Agency, is now trying to use his broom on the dusty recesses of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But his avowed aim of achieving "full disclosure" of the Watergate scandal as the FBI's acting director has not been made easier by senior bureau officials who resent him as an "outsider," and who are putting pressure on the White House to name his successor from within their ranks. [New York Times]
- President Nixon is expected to ask Congress this week for a bipartisan commission to recommend ways of cleaning up American election practices in the wake of the Watergate scandals. The commission would be asked to recommend major reforms in election campaigns and to set guidelines under new laws and voluntary agreement to insure fair election practices. [New York Times]
- Reports of improper and possibly illegal White House pressure on the ostensibly independent National Transportation Safety Board have touched off a full-scale investigation by the Senate Commerce Committee. The board's five members have been summoned to a public hearing scheduled May 21 as part of an effort to determine whether the board's independence, mandated by federal law, has been compromised. [New York Times]
- The cease-fire between the Lebanese Army and the Palestinian guerrillas was broken by one incident along Lebanon's northern border with Syria when a group of armed men fired rockets and mortars at a customs post. One customs guard was reported killed and six soldiers and two policemen wounded at the post at Chadra. Meanwhile, normal life was returning in the capital of Beirut with the reopening of the Beirut International Airport, whose commercial flights had been canceled for five days. [New York Times]