Watergate scandal begins to unfold and battles rage in the Middle East
Tin 1972 saw major developments with the infamous Watergate scandal as President Nixon and White House chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, were recorded talking about using the C.I.A to obstruct the FBI’s investigation into the Watergate break-ins.
Over in the Middle East and Israel and the Israeli ground and air forces struck at Arab guerilla bases in Southern Lebanon killing 44 people and capturing a Syrian brigadiergeneral and four colonels. It was the most senior Syrian officers taken by Israel since the Six-Day War in June 1967.
In other political news and this week British Chancellor, Anthony Barber, announced his decision to temporarily float the pound. The news came after the bank lending rate was increased by one per cent.
Over in Moscow now and the Soviet security police arrested prominent civil rights campaigner, Pyotr I. Yakir. In what was suspected to be a renewed drive against political dissent in the Soviet Union, Yakir, a 49 year old historian, was the son of a popular Red Army general purged by Stalin in 1937.
He had devoted himself in his latter years to fighting what he viewed as evidence of Stalinism in Soviet society.
The premature retraction of a device to increase lift caused the stall which saw BEA Trident Papa India dropping from the sky near Heathrow with the death of all 118 people aboard: who or what was responsible for the mishap was the key question facing the public inquiry announced by the Government.
And finally, in Peru, a farmer found a sack in a field containing around £200,000 paid to a young hijacker who baled out of a plane days before.
An FBI official said the money was found in the sack after an intensive search of the area. The hijacker was believed to have been killed or injured when he jumped from the American Airlines Boeing 727 jet, after scraps of clothing and money were later found on the plane’s fuselage.