In the Nation

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has tapped a former senior defense official to lead a broad Pentagon review of the circumstances surrounding the Fort Hood shootings, the Associated Press has learned.

Gates will announce today that it will be a single, coordinated review, and will call for a quick, short-term report, followed by a longer, more extensive study, according to an administration official.

Components of the wide-ranging probe could include self-examinations by the Army and the military's medical community, and likely look at personnel policies and the availability of mental-health services for troubled troops.

Yesterday, Gates gathered with mourners in the tiny northeast Tennessee community of Mountain City to bury Army Spec. Fred Greene, 29, one of 13 people killed in the Nov. 5 shooting rampage. Gates sat behind Greene's wife, two young daughters, and parents as a chaplain and a company commander led a graveside service.

- AP

WASHINGTON - The Senate health committee yesterday unanimously approved a plan to overhaul U.S. food-safety laws amid complaints from lawmakers that a string of outbreaks of foodborne illnesses showed that current safeguards were inadequate.

The measure would give the Food and Drug Administration new power to pull tainted foods from stores, require more frequent inspections of processing facilities, impose tougher standards on imported foods, and require companies to develop plans to prevent outbreaks.

Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D., Iowa) said he doubted the full Senate could find room in its schedule to vote on the measure this year. The House approved its version in July. - Bloomberg News

WASHINGTON - The National Archives is bringing together investigators to search for scribbled secrets from the first days of the Watergate scandal that destroyed Richard Nixon's presidency.

The elusive goal is to find out what Nixon and an aide discussed during the infamous 181/2-minute gap in a White House tape recording of a meeting held three days after burglars linked to Nixon's reelection committee broke into Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate complex.

Experts have long failed to unlock mysteries from the erased tape. Now, scientists are turning their attention to two pages of notes taken during that June 20, 1972, meeting between Nixon and chief of staff H.R. Haldeman. They will seek clues that incriminating pages are missing and try to reconstruct what Haldeman might have written on them.

The questions of what Nixon knew and when were central in the investigation of the Watergate cover-up. - AP

A South Carolina ethics panel said Gov. Mark Sanford should face charges that he violated state laws tied to a three-month probe of his travel and campaign finances.

The crew of the submarine Hartford made dozens of errors before colliding March 20 with a Navy warship in the Persian Gulf, a Navy review found.