News conference set
Nixon may tell ABM plans
WASHINGTON (UPI) President Nixon's decision on the toughest problem he has yet faced—whether to build an antiballistic missile (ABM) system—is nearly complete and he is expected to announce it tomorrow at a nationally broadcast news conference.
His announcement will follow a meeting tomorrow morning with congressional leaders at the White House. This word from the White House press office led to speculation that Nixon already had made up his mind and that the only thing left was to go through the formality of informing important members of Congress.
But presidential Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler said the congressional conference
was only another in a long series of discussions about the controversial ABM. "When the President announces a decision, that is the time a decision is made," he said.
"He is expected to announce his decision tomorrow," Ziegler said. The news conference will begin at 11 a.m.
The news conference would give Nixon a chance to say whether he planned to resume deployment of the Sentinel ABM system or to abandon it because—as its critics complain—it is not worth the estimated cost of $6 billion and it might accelerate the arms race with the Russians.
Nixon postponed until Saturday morning a meeting with the National Security
Council, which had been scheduled yesterday morning. He conferred instead at the White House with a number of his advisers and staff aides.
The main reason for the postponement was to give Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird, who returned last night from an inspection trip to South Vietnam, a chance to brief other members of the council, and the leading military, diplomatic and intelligence authorities in the administration.
At his news conference last week, Nixon promised a decision on the ABM early this week. The delay in the announcement coincided with rising opposition—particularly in the Senate—to deployment of the Sentinel.
Meanwhile a prominent nuclear scientist contended yesterday that "super-hardening" America's missile sites would do more to safeguard the nation's intercontinental missiles than an ABM system and cost one fifth as much.
The term "superhardening" refers to methods of increasing the blast resistance of the sites where an estimated 1,000 ICBM's are stored. It can be accomplished by deepening the underground holes in which the missiles are kept or by improving cushioning devices at the launching silos.
"The present state of the art in base construction permits superhardening concrete launching silos to withstand
1,000 pounds per square inch of blast overpressure or even higher levels," said Dr. Ralph E. Lapp, a Washington consultant who worked on the celebrated Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb during World War II.
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Pastore berates three networks
WASHINGTON (UPI) — Sen. John O. Pastore, D-R.I., berated the presidents of the three television networks yesterday as men who were helping to "break down the morals of our nation" by emphasizing violence and sex on television.
"You men who know the difference between right and wrong should say, 'Let's get together, fellows, and do something about it,'" Pastore said at a crowded hearing of his Senate communications subcommittee on television violence. The senator said Congress could do little except pressure the networks.
The presidents of Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), National Broadcasting Co. (NBS), and the American Broadcasting Co. (ABC) insisted they already were regulating themselves. All three said their schedules for next fall, when the new television season starts, had far fewer "action-adventure" shows and fewer scenes of violence in every kind of program.
"I think we're doing a pretty good job," CBS President Frank Stanton told Pastore. Even news cameramen had been warned not to "shoot bloody" when covering the Vietnam War and other violent events.
Mar. 13 1969 KANSAN 13
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