News stories from Saturday May 19, 1973
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- John Caulfield, the man named by a convicted Watergate conspirator as the administration official who offered him executive clemency, money and a job to win his silence on the case, has told Senate aides, investigators say, that he made the offer on instructions from John Dean, who was then President Nixon's counsel. But Mr. Caulfield reportedly said that he couldn't remember if he had used President Nixon's name -- as the conspirator, James McCord, testified to the special Senate investigating committee. [New York Times]
- The General Accounting Office accused Maurice Stans, President Nixon's 1972 campaign finance director, of "an obvious attempt to evade the disclosure requirements" of the campaign spending act. The charge came as the agency said it has discovered at least $1.7 million in unreported cash and an even "larger total" of checks and securities collected by the Nixon campaign. The findings were turned over to the Justice Department for prosecution. [New York Times]
- Former Attorney General John Mitchell said that somebody was trying to make him the "fall guy" in the Watergate scandal. Mr. Mitchell, who has been indicted in a case growing out of a secret campaign donation, said, "I never did anything mentally or morally wrong." [New York Times]
- Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet Communist leader, and Chancellor Willy Brandt of West Germany signed a 10-year agreement calling for economic, industrial and technical cooperation between their two nations. As the two leaders toasted the agreement at the ceremony in Bonn, the police in the Ruhr industrial city of Dortmund arrested 200 people during ultra-leftist demonstrations against the Brezhnev visit. Later, Mr. Brezhnev's planned visit to the industrial city was canceled. [New York Times]
- The Soviet Union's new trade pact with West Germany and earlier agreements with the United States are arousing concern among Soviet bloc partners in Eastern Europe, according to authoritative sources. The reason? The volume of trade that the Soviet Union plans to develop with the West is so vast that the bloc nations fear that Moscow will ignore commercial commitments to its Communist neighbors. [New York Times]
- Declaring that North Vietnam had "persisted in violations" of the cease-fire agreement and had not given its promised cooperation in making a full accounting of missing American servicemen, President Nixon told an Armed Forces Day crowd alongside the carrier Independence in Norfolk, Va., that "we must and we will insist that this promise, this pledge, this solemn agreement be kept." The carrier had returned to its home port on short notice for the President's speech -- his first tough comment on the question of missing servicemen. [New York Times]
- A federal study group on land use warned that preservation of the nation's remaining open spaces would require a fundamental change in the traditional concept of property rights, with "development rights" of private property resting not with individual owners but with the community at large. The need for "tough restrictions" on the use of private land to protect and enhance environmental values was among the major conclusions of the six-month study. [New York Times]
- One of the most militant members of the radical Weathermen organization during its peak period of bomb-throwing and violence was an informer and agent provocateur for the FBI, according to government and private sources. The sources said the informer was widely known among the Weathermen for his skill in making bombs, and that he was in frequent contact with the government's chief prosecutor against the Weathermen -- a contact government sources said violated Justice Department regulations. [New York Times]
- At least a dozen persons died when a chartered fishing boat sank in the Atlantic off Rhode Island after picking up an undetermined number of passengers at North Kingston and Port Judith for a day of fishing near Block Island. There was no immediate explanation for the accident, which occurred about 8 A.M., more than four hours before it was reported to the Coast Guard when another craft radioed that she had picked up several survivors. [New York Times]
- The campaign to deny Governor Cahill renomination in New Jersey's Republican primary next month is drawing increasing support -- and money -- from the nation's conservative leaders. The man who has challenged Governor Cahill is Representative Charles Sandman, who has already raised some $225,000 for his campaign -- about as much as Governor Cahill. His chief campaign strategist? F. Clifton White of Rye, N.Y., who engineered Senator James Buckley's Conservative party victory three years ago. [New York Times]