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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (May 21, 1973)
UPI Roundup Launch set for Friday HOUSTON — Changing plans for cooling Skylab, a NASA official said Sunday the crippled space station’s first crew probably will push either an umbrella or an inflatable canopy out through an airlock in the craft’s side to shade it from the sun. The switch, made primarily for reasons of safety, backed away from earlier intentions for an astronaut to erect a huge silver and white awning over Skylab while walking in space or standing in an open Apollo hatch. William Schneider, Skylab director, said a spacewalk might still be performed if the airlock was so blocked by debris that a sunshade could not be pushed through it from inside the Skylab cabin. The three men who must perform the repairs in space, “happy with the way things are progressing,” enjoyed a lazy day of rest here Sunday before plunging into final training for their tasks. They are scheduled for launch from Cape Kennedy at 9 a.m. EDT Friday. Draft file raiders freed CAMDEN. N.J. — In a verdict the prosecutor said was a judgment on the Vietnam War itself, a federal court jury Sunday cleared 17 antiwar activists of all charges in con nection with an FBI-infiltrated raid on the Camden draft ‘ offices two years ago. The 200 persons crowded into the third floor courtroom in the Federal Building burst into cheers as the haggard jury foreman, James Lomax, slowly began to read the innocent verdict on the first defendant at 2:28 p.m. US. District Court Judge Clarkson Fisher interrupted Lomax to ask if there were any verdicts other than innocent on any of the defendants involved in the Aug. 21, 1971, raid here. Lomax replied there were not. Drug raid victims to testify CHICAGO — Members of two Collinsville, 111., families who were victims of a mistaken narcotics raid by federal agents will testify at a U.S. Senate hearinghere Friday, it was announced Tuesday. Sen. Charles Percy, R-Ill., said Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Giglotto and Donald Askew and his son, Michael, 16, have accepted invitations to tell a Senate sub committee about the raid. Federal agents, without search warrants, burst in the Giglotto and Askew homes last month and held family members at gunpoint while making a futile search for narcotics. The agents apparently were acting on false information supplied by a tipster. Percy will be chairman of a one-day hearing by members of a Senate subcommittee considering President Nixon’s proposal to consolidate drug enforcement under one new federal agency. Percy said the “same type of bureaucratic discord” that prompted Nixon to propose the consolidation “may have been responsible for the reprehensible foul-up in Collins ville.” Gardner criticixes proposal WASHINGTON — John Gardner, chairman of Common Cause, said Sunday that President Nixon’s proposal for an election study commission was “a very poor idea” and only would delay or block urgently needed action on Watergate related reforms. Gardner urged Nixon to drop the idea and support various bills before Congress which would provide fast solutions to the problems of government secrecy and the “deep corrupting power of money on politics.” Gardner, a former secretary of health, education and welfare, ad ditionally called for the resignation of Rep. Wayne Hays, D Ohio, as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Cam paign Committee. Hays also is chairman of the House Ad ministration Committee, which has jurisdiction over cam paign reforms. Gardner said this was like “sending the fox to guard the chickens.” Gardner .was interviewed on television, Face the Nation — CBS. Mitchell denies Nixon involved NEW YORK — Newsweek magazine reported Sunday former Attorney General John Mitchell has absolved President Nixon from any part in the Watergate scandal. “This was not the President’s doing.” Mitchell told Newsweek. “None of it.” However, Newsweek reported Senate investigative sources said former Nixon aide John Ehrlichman is heading a White House group seeking to place the “responsibility” for the Watergate break-in and coverup on Mitchell and John Dean III, the former counsel to the President. The magazine said the Ehrlichman group planned its move after James McCord, who was convicted in the break-in, refused to go along with the covenup “game plan.” McCord last week told the special Senate committee on Watergate that he was asked by Caulfield, a former White House aide, to keep silent about the June 17, 1972 break-in. Living with a beast9 Find a new roommate in the Emerald Classifieds. May call ex-CIA chief Ervin blasts Justice Dept, for Watergate inaction WASHINGTON UPI — Sen. Sam Ervin, D-N.C., said Sunday his Senate Watergate committee has “no competent evidence” so far to link President Nixon directly to the scandal, but will not hesitate to pursue and make public any such evidence that might turn up. At the same time, Ervin criticized the Justice Department for failing to prosecute the Watergate burglars prior to the 1972 presidential election, and said he hoped new indictments would be sought quickly by Archibald Cox, newly appointed as the government’s special Watergate prosecutor. Referring to ousted White House counsel John Dean III and Jeb Stuart Magruder, Nixon’s 1972 deputy campaign manager, Ervin suggested there was “something very sadly wrong in the in vestigatory arm of government” if federal prosecutors “haven’t accumulated enough evidence to convict these two parties in this time.“ Ervin, chairman of the seven-member Watergate committee that began public hearings Thursday, was interviewed on television Issues and Answers —ABC Returning as a star witness when the televised hearings resume Tuesday morning will be Watergate conspirator James McCord Jr., who electrified the hearings Friday by testifying he had been pressured by the White House to plead guilty and keep quiet in exchange for executive clemency. He quoted a former White House aide as saying the offer came from “the very highest level” at the White House. Ervin said Sunday he was “very much im pressed” with McCord as a witness, and that he personally would like to question former CIA Director Richard Helms about reports that the White House had sought to “blame it all on the CIA” as part of a cover-up attempt. The North Carolina Democrat said it was “highly improbable” the committee would ask Nixon to testify or to present a written statement. He repeatedly refused to speculate about the President’s possible involvement in the bugging plot or a subsequent cover-up as suggested by McCord’s hearsay testimony. “I don’t expect to reach final conclusions before all the evidence is in,” Ervin said. “And thus far, we have no competent evidence to connect the President, and as an American I sincerely hope there will be none.” Asked if he thought it would be better for his committee to “hold back just short of the Oval Office,” Ervin replied: “No, I did not agree with that. It would be my purpose as a member of the select committee to urge that the select committee go wherever the evidence in this case may lead us —to the ultimate truth, regardless of what the ultimate truth could be.” If any evidence turns up to implicate Nixon, Ervin said, it will be up to the House of Represen tatives “to determine whether there should be impeachment charges ” Under the Constitution, the House must initiate impeachment proceedings against a federal official, with any charges to be tried by the Senate. In related developments: — Cox, in a UPI interview, said he could “think of circumstances” under which it might be relevant to interview Nixon about Watergate, but that he had no plans at this point to speak to the President. He said he would meet with the Ervin Committee Monday to discuss the problem of pre-trial publicity resulting from the public hearings. —Former at torney General John Mitchell and former Com merce Secretary Maurice Stans — Nixon’s 1972 campaign manager and campaign finance chief respectively — were to be arraigned Monday morning in New York on grand jury charges of lying and obstruction of justice in connection with a government fraud investigation against Robert Vesco, a major Nixon campaign contributor. —The Los Angeles Times reported that former Internal Revenue Service agent David Stutz was “invited” to a White House meeting in 1970 while he was in vestigating large contribution to Nixon’s 1968 campaign. The Times said the invitation was relayed to Stutz by an unidentified third party in behalf of John Caulfield, the man McCord named Friday as the one who relayed White House offers of executive clemency. —The Washington Star-News reported that Helms told the Watergate grand jury last Friday that he was pressured at a meeting June 23 by three top presidential aides to provide CIA help in a Watergate cover-up. Helms was quoted as saying that then-White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman told him the request came from “higher up.” Helms, now ambassador to Iran, was to go before the Senate Froegin Relations Committee Monday for questioning. Ervin, in his broadcast interview, scoffed at suggestions that the Senate hearings were ham pering federal prosecutors. He said the “whole case would have been broken open” long ago if the five men arrested inside Democratic National Com mittee headquarters at the Watergate last June 17 had been prosecuted promptly. Ellsberg reflects on dismissal, thinks Nixon deserves fair trial WASHINGTON (UPI) — Daniel Ellsberg said Sunday that because of the entanglement of the Watergate affair with his prosecution, he now believes his revelation of the Pentagon Papers accomplished far more than he at first set out to do. Ellsberg was asked just what he thought leaking the documents had accomplished, since it had not resulted in immediately ending the war. “A few months ago, I thought my actions had had a rather limited effect,” Ellsberg said. “And during the bombing last December, I was despairing, as a citizen, that they had ac complished anything. "When I did it, of course, I just thought it was what I ought to do. “But lately, since my trial led to the revelation of the burglary of my psychiatrist’s office, the violation of the doctor-client privilege and the invasion of a citizen’s privacy, I think these revelations have been very important.” Ellsberg was interviewed on NBC’s Meet the Press. He said he believed that “quite a bit of what we learn about Watergate will have come from the revelations from my trial.” The former strategic analyst for the Rand Corp. and the Defense Department said when he copied the papers he believed he was breaking a law against revealing classified documents to the U.S. Senate or to newspapermen. “I have learned, through two years of a very expensive education, that no such law exists,” Ellsberg said. “I have met no lawyer who could say that my actions violated any laws.” Ellsberg said that he and his attorneys decided to press for dismissal of the charges against him because of government misconduct instead of waiting for a jury verdict, because they “didn’t want to be a party to wiping the board clean of that government misconduct.” Ellsberg said that although his co-defendant, Anthony Russo Jr., feels strongly that President Nixon should be impeached, he believes that the matter should be left up to the Congress. “I don’t believe the President should be impeached on the basis of my opinion or anyone else’s opinion. “He is entitled to a fair trial and to be removed only if con victed. I think the facts are pointing to the fact that he should have a day in court, and I think he will. “If the facts prove to be what they now appear to be, I think he will be impeached,” Ellsberg said. He added that “Nixon knows the truth, and if he knows that the allegations against him are true, then I think he should resign.”
