News stories from Saturday February 17, 1973

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

President Nixon nominated L. Patrick Gray 3rd to be director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, possibly bringing a confrontation between the Senate and the White House. Mr. Gray, who has been acting F.B.I. director since the death of J. Edgar Hoover last May, is a long-time political ally of the President. Congressional critics of the nomination have seen "cronyism" in what was supposed to be a non-political position. [New York Times] Most congressmen were out of town when President Nixon sent to the Capitol last week his message calling for the elimination of the central features of the farm subsidy program that has a mostly Democratic past. But the absences did not prevent the first rumble of protests from Democratic veterans of the old farm wars. [New York Times] Postmaster General Elmer Klassen confirmed that mail delivery had "deteriorated seriously" in December and January. He said he was "hell-bent" to pinpoint where and why and had started overhauls. He summoned the nation's 85 postal-district managers to an unprecedented three-day conference in Washington this month when he found complaints addressed to him tripling -- to 700 a week. [New York Times] Representative Charles Sandman announced he would challenge Governor William Cahill in the New Jersey Republican gubernatorial primary election in June. Mr. Sandman's candidacy was announced at a highly secretive gathering of Republican conservatives in Trenton, and virtually guarantees another divisive battle between the Republican right wing in the state that bitterly opposes Governor Cahill's liberal, first-term record. [New York Times] Henry Kissinger and Mao Tse-tung met for nearly two hours today in what were described as "frank and far-ranging conversations in an unrestrained atmosphere," the Florida White House announced. Mr. Kissinger reportedly talked with Chairman Mao for nearly twice as long as President Nixon did when he met Mr. Mao in Peking a year ago. The White House said the Kissinger-Mao talks took place in Chungnanhai, Mr. Mao's home at the edge of Peking's Forbidden City. [New York Times] Half the members of the tiny Jewish community in Baghdad have applied for passports to leave Iraq in recent weeks following a crackdown by Iraqi authorities, according to a first-hand account. The description of the current wave of arrests and intimidation of Jews was provided in an interview last week with a 54-year-old Baghdad shopkeeper who fled Iraq with his wife and seven children in late January. The shopkeeper confirmed reports that 10 prominent members of the Jewish community were seized by Iraqi security men in September and taken away. None has been heard of since, and Baghdad Jews assume, the former Iraqi resident said, that all or most of them have been executed. [New York Times] According to information supplied to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, President Marcos of the Philippines believes that last fall, shortly before he imposed martial law, he was the target of a right-wing assassination plot involving a hired killer from the United States. As described in a document given to the committee by a Philippine government official, key figures in the plot were Vice President Fernando Lopez and Sergio Osmena, Jr., President Marcos's opponent in the 1969 presidential election. [New York Times]