THE
Mi&chilgan Daily

Vol. LXXXIV, No. 20-S

Ann Arbor, Michigan-Wednesday, June 5, 1974

Ten Cents

Sixteen Pages


A,

Reinecke falls behind
in California primary
Brown holds slim
lead over Alioto

LOS ANGELES (M - State Con-
troller Houston Flournoy jumped
to a 2-1 lead last night over indict-
ed Lt. Gov. Ed Reinecke in early
returns from the California Repub-
lican primary for governor.
Just 46 minutes after the polls
closed at 8 p.m., television station
KNBC of Los Angeles declared that
its computer predicted Flournoy
would win over Reinecke, charged
by a Watergate grand jury with ly-
ing to the Senate Judiciary Com-
mittee about the ITT case.
ON THE DEMOCRATIC side, Secre-
tary of State Edmund Brown held a
slim lead over San Francisco Mayor
Joseph Alioto. Most of the returns were
from Northern California, where the
mayor was expected to run well.
Proposition 9, the Watergate-inspired
political reform measure, was running
well ahead in the early returns.
With 100 of the state's 24,082 precincts
reporting Flournoy had 6,855 votes and
Reinecke 2,731.
BROWN HAD 5,451 to 5,219 for Alioto
and 2,706 for Assembly Speaker Bob
Moretti.
With 255 precincts reporting Proposi-
tion 9 was leading 41,424 to 22,699.
Meanwhile, a former prisoner of war
dedicated to the political downfall of
Sen. George McGovern won the Repub-
lican senatorial nomination in South
Dakota; and a civil rights figure of a
decade ago reached a runoff for a Dem-
ocratic congressional nomination in
Mississippi.

IN SOUTH DAKOTA, Leo Thorsness, a
retired Air Force colonel who spent six
years in a North Vietnamese prison
camp, defeated two opponents in the
Republican senatorial primary. Ie faces
McGovern, whom he vowed to unseat
because of the senator's antiwar views
during the 1972 presidential campaign.
James Meredith, whose enrollment at
the University of Mississippi in 1962
touched off riots, outpolled five other
candidates in a Democratic congres-
sional primary in Mississippi. But Mere-
dith failed to get 50 per cent of the vote
and will face runnerup Kenneth Dean,
a white civil rights advocate, in a run-
off June 25.
IN IOWA, State Rep. David Stanley
took an early lead in the search for a
Republican candidate to run for the
Senate seat being vacated by Harold
Hughes.- Rep. John Culver was unop-
posed for the Democratic nomination.
Reinecke, who announced in 1969 he
would seek this year to become gov-
ernor of California, was the central fi-
gure in his state's primary.
Less than a year ago, Reinecke was
the undisputed front-runner, with Flour-
nav last in the six-man field.
THEN CAME the April 3 indictment
from Watergate special prosecutor Leon
Jaworski. It charged Reinecke lied in
Senate testimony about when he first
told former Atty. Gen. John Mitchell
about a $400,000 offer from the Sheraton
Corp. to underwrite the 1972 GOP Na-
tional Convention in San Diego.

Yawn ...
Gov. Malcolm Wilson (R-N.Y.) finds it hard to stay awake yesterday during
the morning session of the National Governor's Conference in Seattle, Wash.
The governors meet during the day and tour the Seattle hot spots at night

White House tape gap due
to 5 erasures, experts say

- WASHINGTON (4P)-A panel of experts
concluded, in a report released yester-
day, that an 181-minute section of a
White House tape recording was erased
by someone operating the keyboard
manually at least five times.
But, the panel said, its report "draws
so inferences about such questions as
whether the erasure and buzz were made
accidentally or intentionally, or when,
or by what person or persons."
IT SAID "questions of who. made the
buzz, or when, or why, did not come
within the scope of our investigation."
White House lawyer James St. Clair

immediately took issue with the tech-
nical findings, saying the report "creates
the false impression that all portions of
the erasure were done manually and
Deliberately."
St. Clair and an expert hired inde-
pendently by the White House objected
to the panel's conclusion that a faulty
power supply part could not have caused
the erasure.
THE SECTION is in a recording of a
:onversation President Nixon had with
:hen Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman on
June 20, 1972-three days after the
Watergate break-jn. It was disclosed

last year when the White House pre-
pared to turn over subpoenaed tapes to
U.S. District Judge John Sirica.
St. Clair had asked Stanford Research
Institute to provide technical consulta-
tion to the panel, which was selected
jointly by the White House and the
special Watergate prosecutor. Michael
Hecker, senior research engineer, pre-
sented the institute's review of the re-
port:
"The substance of our disagreement is
that the panel finally and irrevocably
lismissed the possibility that a faulty
machine was involved in producing the
Irasure. We believe that the Uher 5000

:ape recorder . . . was electronically
faulty at the time when the erasure was
produced."
THE PANEL SAID it did consider a
aulty machine part as a possible cause
-as well as other reasons advanced by
others who had not tested the tape-and
rejected.
"The buzz sound probably originated
in electrical noise on the electric power
line that powered the recorder," the
report said. "Any speech sounds pre-
viously recorded on this section of the
tape were erased in conjunction with the
recording process . . . the erasure is so
See TAPE, Page 14