Panel seeks new tape
WASHINGTON 0P) - The House Judiciary Commit-
tee plans to subpoena the tape of a pre-Watergate
White House meeting to see if President Nixon had ad-
vance knowledge of the plan to bug Democratic head-
quarters.
The tape of the April 4, 1972 meeting, which the White
House has refused to deliver, is needed to plug a gap
in the evidence relating to that question, one of the
allegations under investigation in the committee's im-
peachment inquiry.
THE MEETING between Nixon, his former chief of
staff, Ii. R. Haldeman, and former Atty. Gen. John
Mitchell took place four days after Nixon's re-election
campaign aides had approved a plan for electronic
surveillance of the Democrats.
The President has stated repeatedly that he first
learned of the involvement of his aides in the Water-
gate break-in nearly a year later, on March 21, 1973.
The missing link in the chain of evidence being pre-
sented to the committee was pointed out Thursday by
chief counsel John Doar, who said he would request
a subpoena*at the committee's next business session.
THE TAPE is one of 76 dealing with Watergate that
the committee requested last April 19. Earlier this
week, the White House said no more Watergate mater-
ial would be surrendered.
Instead of issuing a blanket subpoena for all 76 tapes,
the committee plans to see how the missing material
affects the case as it is being presented and then sub-
poena the tapes it feels are vitally needed.
The announced refusal of the White House to deliver
any more Watergate material could lead to a consti-
tutional confrontation if a subpoena is issued. But the
committee's present intention is to take any unanswer-
ed subpoenas into consideration when it votes on ar-
ticles of impeachment, rather than seek to enforce
them.
THE APRIL 4 tape assupies importance because of
the testimony of Jeb Stuart Magruder, former deputy
director of Nixon's re-election campaign committee,
who has pleaded guilty to a charge of obstructing jus-
tice.
Magruder said the plan to bug Nixon's political op-
ponents and the Democratic national headquarters was
approved March 30, 1972, and that Haldeman's chief
aide, Gordon Strachan, was so informed in a memo-
randum.
Strachan, who is awaiting trial on charges of con-
spiracy and obstruction of justice, has testified he men-
tioned the plan in a paper prepared for Haldeman to
See JUDICIARY, Page 11
THE
Michigan Daily
Vol. LXXXIV, No. 4-S Ann Arbor, Michigan-Saturday, May 11, 1974 Ten Cents Twelve Pages
Govt. upset widespread
POMPIDOU:,The end of Gaullism?
BRANDT: Detente threatened?
TRUDEAU: Economic difficulties
Inflation causes internationa distress
By WILLIAM L. RYAN
Associated Press
The year isn't half over and already it's made its
mark in history by producing a startling epidemic of
falling governments that presages agonizing uncertain-
ties for the months ahead.
Only this week West Germany, Canada and Iceland
joined an ever-growing Political Uproar Club wherein
any leader in trouble finds he has lots of company.
FRANCE, about to shed its Gaullist shell after 15
years ... England ... West Germany ... India .. .
Australia . .. almost any place one looks in the de-
veloped world, government leaders are experiencing the
sharp pain of political hot water.
Inflation and its spinoff of economic and political
problems are behind a huge share of the advanced
world's common difficulties. The universality of the
trouble and a look of widespread instability in the non-
communist world might leave a surface impression that
the communist nations are the only ones who now
enjoy political peace. Still, when it comes to trouble,
they manage to gather their share.
CHINA HAS its :-esurgent cultural revolution. The
Soviet Union has political and economic jitters as it
worries about a shakily based foreign policy.
Canada's Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau fell
this week because of economic difficulties, and the
nation must have a general election July 8.
West Germany is in a dither over Chancellor Willy
Brandt's resignation, because he unwittingly had a
Communist spy in his office, and the scandal has re-
percussions that echo in Washington and Moscow and
may place the fate of the East - West detente in the
balance.
UNCERTAINTY radiates from West G e r m a n y
through the European Common Market, already bur-
dened with more than enough of that commodity. Some
of the uncertainty comes from France, Europe's key-
stone, after President Georges Pompidou's death. Wait-
See GOVTS., Page 1