Nixon withholds aid details

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32701, 2 September 1971, Page 13

Nixon withholds aid details

(N.Z. PA.-Reuter—Copyright) WASHINGTON, September 1.

President Nixon’s multi-million dollar foreign aid bill today appeared headed for new difficulties after his refusal to give longrange Pentagon military aid projections to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The President yesterday invoked Executive privilege to block the Foreign Relations Committee from obtaining staff studies popularly known as the “five-year plan.” Foreign relations committee sources said it was the first time in memory that the White House had invoked Executive privilege to deny information to the committee. It was also the first time since 1960 that such a rare action had been taken against any Senate committee re-

quest. If the President had not invoked Executive privilege, the committee could have cut off funds already approved by Congress but not yet spent by the Administration. The cut-off would have gone into effect today, 35 days after the Senate committee voted 15-0 to cut off the military aid. Senator J. William Fulbright (Democrat, Arkansas), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, reacted to the President’s action with a warning. He acknowledged that the President had the right under existing law formally to invoke Executive privilege and prohibit the Pentagon from providing his panel with the information which it had been requesting since May, 1969. He said however, that his committee would have to decide later this month whether it could approve military aid for two more years without the information requested from the Pentagon. The President refused to

let the panel see the study on the grounds that it would be against the public interest and because they were only intermediate, staff level reports.

The pending bill, alreadypassed by the House of Representatives, includes $705 million in military grants for 31 nations for the 1972 fiscal year, which began on July 1, and fiscal 1973. The committee has not yet started hearings on the total economic and military aid bill of $3400 million.