Nixon's Nightmare: Fighting to Be Believed
Nixon's Nightmare: Fighting to Be Believed
HE had made his move. He had cleaned out his staff. He had faced the nation on TV. But Watergate still kept growing like a malignancy. Within less than a week after Richard Nixon had solemnly denied any personal involvement and promised to see justice done, one of his ousted aides threatened to implicate the President himself in a conspiracy to conceal White House involvement. The charge, whatever its ultimate authenticity and force, was only the latest of an incredible series of revelations and accusations that clouded the President's ability to govern and produced an unprecedented moral crisis for his Administration.
But first there came a remarkable and revealing interlude. On the day after his TV speech, the President strode solemnly into a meeting of his Cabinet. The members of his official family rose as one and applauded him. "I know that the American people are with you," said Secretary of State William Rogers. Added Republican National Chairman George Bush: "I want you to know that Republicans everywhere are strongly supporting you." White House Counsellor Anne Armstrong, the highest-ranking woman in the Administration, spoke up: "The people understand and appreciate what the President is doing."
Shambles. Fatigue lines marring his California-Florida tan ("he has aged ten or 15 years," said one dismayed adviser), the President expressed a mixture of gratitude, anger, determination. He praised two of his missing, newly removed aides, White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman and Domestic Affairs Adviser John Ehrlichman, as "dedicated people." Looking at former Attorney General Richard Kleindienst, who also lost his job in the Watergate scandal shuffle, Nixon said, "We are going to miss you." Kleindienst replied, "It has been a privilege to serve with Richard Nixon"--and he left the room to more applause. Then the President's mood darkened and the old Nixon emerged. He assailed the "partisan" attacks from both the press and the Congress. "Their target was not Haldeman or Ehrlichman. I know well who their target is." Though Nixon did not identify himself as the target, everybody in the room fully understood.
He took a vindictive shot at Republican Senator Charles Percy for leading the passage of a Senate resolution urging the appointment of an independent prosecutor to dig into the deepening mess of Watergate. "Percy--his target is running for President," Nixon said. "He will never be as long as I'm around." Dry chuckling rose through the room, and one or two present clapped in approval. More calmly, the President concluded, "We have much to do. We must get on with it."
That meeting showed again the Nixon Administration's great capacity for self-deception, its strange isolation from reality. In the eyes of the country, the White House is a shambles. In a parliamentary democracy, the scandal would have toppled the government. The President's closest advisers were revealed as amoral men who considered themselves above the law in what they conceived to be their service to Richard Nixon. Arrogant for years with the Congress, with the bureaucracy, with the press, they were suddenly toppled from power in a sort of Goetterdammerung on the Potomac.
By last week, 17 of Nixon's associates and employees (see page 22) were under investigation by the Justice Department, the FBI, a federal grand jury or the U.S. Senate. The list will undoubtedly grow, and many could wind up behind bars for criminal activities committed while working for the President. These men had been selected by Nixon, helped lift him to power, took their ethical cues from him--and he had not yet publicly chastised any of them. Every day brought new details that beggared the suspicions or fantasies of Nixon's enemies. Nothing seemed unbelievable any longer.
> John W. Dean III, who had been fired by the President as his chief counsel--ostensibly because he seemed hopelessly enmeshed in the Watergate concealments--told federal investigators that Nixon had personally congratulated him for helping cover up broad Nixon Administration involvement in the wiretapping. Dean claimed this had happened when he was called to Nixon's office last September, shortly after indictments were returned by a federal grand jury against only the seven men arrested at the time of the Watergate breakin. Dean described the meeting--in one version also attended by Bob Haldeman--as one full of "smiles." He said that Nixon remarked to him: "Bob here tells me you've been doing fine work." If accurately reported by Dean, the meeting has grave implications. It means that Nixon knew some eight months ago that his high aides had worked to obstruct the various investigations in the case--and the President has been lying to the public about Watergate at least since that time. Dean's motives were certainly cloudy, and his story very much remains to be tested.
> Men on the White House payroll and directed by an assistant to Ehrlichman had broken into a psychiatrist's office with CIA equipment to obtain the psychiatric records of Daniel Ellsberg in order to find out about his "moral and emotional problems." The information, if not the method, had been specifically ordered up by the President. When Ehrlichman found out about the breakin, he claims he merely told the burglars: "Don't do it again." His legal duty was to report the crime.
> Even more unbelievable, Ehrlichman only five weeks ago offered the job of FBI director to the judge presiding over the Ellsberg case, with the President himself making a brief appearance during the meeting.
> As previously reported (TIME, March 5), the FBI had tapped telephones of reporters and White House aides at Attorney General John Mitchell's direction in seeking leaks of Government information to the press. Last week Nixon ordered his aides not to answer any questions about those taps. The grounds for the gag: national security.
The episode of the Ellsberg psychiatrist raised particularly frightening questions. What kind of ethical climate does the President of the U.S. create when he orders his highest aides to pry into the morals and the state of mind of a man accused of stealing Government documents? Should the Government emulate the tactics of the accused? If the White House condoned that kind of treatment of a defendant, why would any Nixon aides expect him to object if they stooped to similar tactics against the men who more directly challenged Nixon's power, such as his potential opponents for President, or perhaps his critics in the Senate? Who might be next? Where does it stop? Declared one of the highest Administration officials last week: "When the Watergate buging business came out, I felt moral indignation. But this stealing records from a man's psychiatrist--that is beyond indignation. It makes me physically sick."
The dominant question remained: How much did Nixon know about Watergate? The prevailing, serious answer: Much more than he has yet revealed (see Hugh Sidey's column on the subject page 19).
Even many Nixon critics are willing to believe that the President did not know in advance about the political-disruption campaign and the plans to bug the Democratic headquarters. But at the very least he created an atmosphere in the White House that led zealous aides to believe that they could go beyond the bounds of propriety and the law.
It is far harder to believe that after the Watergate arrests the President did not have at least a suspicion of the coverup. If he was not suspicious, he knew even less about some of his own aides than the press did. How could so many of his loyal men lie to him so long? Why did Nixon wait until March to start a tough investigation of his own? And if Dean is right, of course, Nixon knew all about the concealment.
Over the weekend preceding the TV speech, Nixon retreated to the solitude of Camp David in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains accompanied by his Irish setter, King Timahoe, and his equally faithful speechwriter, Ray Price.
The dismissal of Haldeman and Ehrlichman, those two dour Germanic guardians of the Oval Office, seemed mandatory. Neither wanted to quit. Haldeman, a former J. Walter Thompson ad agency vice president from Los Angeles, had participated in all of Nixon's campaigns since 1956, when he was an advanceman for Nixon's re-election as Vice President. He had become probably the second most powerful man in the Government because he determined just who could see the President or whose memos would reach Nixon's desk. Ehrlichman, a Seattle bond lawyer who had been a U.C.L.A. classmate of Haldeman's, had joined the Nixon team as an advanceman in the 1960 campaign against John Kennedy. He had become almost the equivalent in domestic affairs of Henry Kissinger in foreign policy.
The pair's involvement in the Watergate case and related skulduggery could no longer be ignored. Haldeman was said by some federal investigators to control a secret cash fund, which was used to pay off the seven men arrested in the Watergate headquarters of the Democratic National Committee last June to keep them from implicating higher officials. He also was reported to have authorized a covert "dirty-tricks" drive against Democratic presidential candidates. As for Ehrlichman, in addition to his actions in the Ellsberg case, he had condoned the destruction of some files taken from the office of one of the Watergate wiretappers.
On Friday night, April 27, as Nixon gazed gloomily at the distant lights of Washington from the rustic presidential cabin in Camp David, Md., he knew his two longtime servants had to be sacrificed. He summoned Presidential Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler on Saturday and asked him to help prepare their resignation statements. Probably his closest remaining confidant, William Rogers, arrived to help advise him.
On Sunday, both Haldeman and Ehrlichman asked to see Nixon, still resisting the idea of quitting. Nixon said he had no choice. The meeting was intensely emotional. Explained one White House aide: "That was a traumatic thing to do. The President had seen more of them than he had of his own family. And they had seen more of him than they had of their families."
Attorney General Richard Kleindienst was also summoned to Camp David. Though he had not been implicated in the Watergate scandal, many of his associates had been--so many that he had, properly, withdrawn from the investigation. Also, under his direction, the original Justice Department investigation and prosecution of the Watergate wiretappers had been lax and limited. No serious attempt had been made to find out who had ordered the wiretappers to break into and bug the Democratic National Headquarters last June, who had paid them, or who had approved the whole operation. Kleindienst offered his resignation voluntarily, but he was dismayed when Nixon insisted that his departure be announced at the same time as those of Ehrlichman, Haldeman and John Dean.
Dean, handsome and a smooth operator, had risen to his high-level post with virtually no experience as a practicing attorney, but with frequent demonstrations of loyalty to Nixon. But when his name became deeply involved with Watergate, he started scurrying for self-protection. He went to Justice Department prosecutors and told about the meetings he had attended at which the Watergate wiretapping plans were discussed. He revealed that former Attorney General John Mitchell had attended the meetings. Dean has asked for immunity against prosecution from the Justice Department in return for telling all he knows. So far, it has not been granted. He now could be making his sensational charges in an attempt to convince prosecutors that the knowledge he has would be worth their giving him the immunity.
The Speech. On Monday, Ziegler announced the stunning staff changes in Washington. Nixon remained at Camp David to craft his TV speech with Writer Price. He arrived at his Oval Office just 90 seconds before air time, looking and sounding nervous. A bust of Abraham Lincoln and a photo of Nixon's family had been placed within camera range. The occasion was reminiscent of Nixon's celebrated Checkers speech of 1952, in which he admitted that he had drawn on a secret $18,000 campaign fund (an almost touchingly modest figure by current measurement) that had been donated by California political supporters, but denied using it for any personal, nonpolitical purpose.
The Watergate speech was disconcertingly ambivalent. Nixon resorted to an odd and habitual rhetorical device, explaining--as he often has done in his past speeches on Viet Nam--that he was rejecting "the easiest course" and pursuing the more difficult one. In this case, "the easiest course would be for me to blame those to whom I delegated the responsibility to run the campaign." Placing the entire blame on subordinates, however, would not have been the easier course--because it would not have washed. To avoid accepting responsibility for the actions of so many men acting in his name would have been impossible.
Nevertheless, Nixon proceeded, in effect, to blame others by distancing himself from their activities. He had been preoccupied during the 1972 campaign, he said, with his "goal of bringing peace to America, peace to the world." He had "sought to remove the day-to-day campaign decisions from the President's office and from the White House."
Yet whatever his aides did, Nixon seemed to understand. They were men, he said, "whose zeal exceeded their judgment, and who may have done wrong in a cause they deeply believed to be right"--meaning his reelection. He implied that they may have acted in response to "the ugly mob violence" and "the excesses or expected excesses of the other side." He claimed that "it can be very easy under the intensive pressures of a campaign for even well-intentioned people to fall into shady tactics . . . and both of our great parties have been guilty of such tactics."
This was an offensive attempt to portray the Democratic campaigners--and indeed all U.S. politicians--as being guilty of the same kind of improper and criminal activity as that of his adherents. No "mob violence" was evident when the Watergate bugging was planned or carried out, nor was there much reason to expect any as a result of Democratic tactics; even if there had been such an expectation, it would hardly have justified the Watergate or related enterprises. While there obviously is plenty of political corruption on all sides, there is no evidence that Democrats--or other Republicans--burglarized offices, tapped telephones, kept huge caches of secret campaign funds to finance the disruption of opponents' campaigns, or tried to obstruct the judicial system's attempts to punish the offenders.
The President never did say flatly that he had not heard of plans in his Administration to bug the Democratic headquarters. He said that he first learned that such a break-in had occurred at the Watergate apartment and office complex when he read news reports. "I was appalled at this senseless, illegal action" and was "shocked" to learn that members of the re-election committee "were apparently among those guilty." That does not explain why he authorized Press Secretary Ziegler, just two days after the June 17 breakin, to dismiss it as "a third-rate burglary attempt."
Nixon said he received repeated assurances from his aides that no one in his Administration had been involved. He contended that it was not until March that he began to suspect "that there had been an effort to conceal the facts both from the public--from you--and from me." Now, he vowed, "I will do everything in my power to ensure that the guilty are brought to justice. We must maintain the integrity of the White House. There can be no whitewash at the White House." Nixon urged both parties to join in seeking "a new set of standards, new rules and procedures to ensure that future elections will be as nearly free of such abuses as they possibly can be made."
Deadline. In fact, there are a number of laws against all the practices that Nixon's men fell into. There is obvious need for the reform of campaign funding, but the Nixon officials flagrantly violated the fund-disclosure and reporting laws already on the books. Nixon's chief fund raiser, former Commerce Secretary Maurice Stans, in fact, had furiously tried to beat the deadline before a tighter disclosure law went into effect on April 7. He collected some $6,000,000, often in cash, in just the two days before the deadline, from men who did not want to reveal their identities. He did so even after Nixon had praised the new law as "giving the American public full access to the facts of political financing" and thus "building public confidence in the integrity of the electoral process."
Most of the people apparently have remained unconvinced by his TV speech. A quick Gallup poll disclosed that 50% of his audience believed that Nixon was personally a party to the attempts to conceal White House involvement in the Watergate wiretapping conspiracy. Forty percent also believed he knew about the bugging all along. On the other hand, in a rather disturbing display of cynicism about Government, 58% said the Nixon Administration had done no worse than previous postwar Administrations.
Professional Republican politicians expressed delight that Nixon had at last spoken up, but were agonizing over what Watergate had already done to their organization's morale, fund drives and prospects in near-future state and local elections. Many Republican student activists who campaigned for Nixon last year felt betrayed. The ultraloyalist Chicago Tribune editorialized: "If a President as politically astute as Mr. Nixon is deceived by his appointees, one may suspect that in some measure at least he wanted to be deceived by them."
The intensity of overseas interest in Nixon's Watergate speech was exemplified by the British Broadcasting Corporation's TV network: it stayed on the air more than two hours later than usual for his appearance, at 2 a.m. British time. The BBC estimates that more than 2,500,000 Britons stayed up, glued to the telly. Said a British Foreign Office spokesman: "Nixon says he would like to get on with the job. But can he do it? And contending with a hostile Congress, his power to fulfill his commitments will surely be limited."
Others considered this view to be overly negative. Moscow and Peking, for example, did not let their controlled press or radio report any of the latest, most sensational developments. Moscow's reasoning undoubtedly was that it had too heavy an investment in friendly relations with Nixon, in view of upcoming East-West state visits, to risk smirching his image.
Nixon moved quickly to fill some of the gaping holes created in his staff. He named General Alexander M. Haig Jr., Army Vice Chief of Staff, to take over Haldeman's duties temporarily; Leonard Garment, a White House aide, to replace Dean; and Defense Secretary Elliot Richardson to succeed Kleindienst as Attorney General (see page 30). Former Deputy Secretary of Defense David Packard was, said Ziegler, the most likely choice to fill Richardson's spot as Defense Secretary. By week's end no one had yet been assigned the full range of Ehrlichman's chores, but Kenneth R. Cole Jr., another J. Walter Thompson product and a top Ehrlichman assistant since 1969, will take on added duties.
The sensibilities in the Administration have become so bruised in the infighting that another interim replacement, William Ruckelshaus, is already in trouble as acting director of the FBI. He replaced L. Patrick Gray III, who had resigned after being hopelessly compromised by destroying evidence and cooperating with the White House to protect high officials in the Watergate scandal. Although no one assailed Ruckelshaus personally, the tough former head of the Environmental Protection Agency became the target of a revolt within the FBI against any more political appointments. All but one of the FBI'S 59 field-office heads joined in a telegram to the President demanding that "qualified executives within the FBI" be considered for the top spot. Ruckelshaus, who does not want the permanent directorship, tried to calm the top FBI officials in a 20-minute meeting. But after he left, they met for two hours and still insisted that someone whom the White House could not control be named to head the bureau.
On the sound theory that the Administration simply cannot be trusted to investigate itself, no matter how independent Attorney General Richardson may prove to be, a bipartisan clamor arose for him to name an outside prosecutor in the Watergate case. Nixon said Richardson was free to do so, and the Attorney General-designate indicated that he will.
The stage is thus finally set for a full and hard-hitting inquiry in which any protection of the men around Nixon--or of the President himself--will be most unlikely. The federal grand jury in Washington, which has been looking into the Watergate case since last summer, will continue to take testimony from all the suspects and from other witnesses. Senator Sam Ervin's Select Committee on Campaign Practices expects to begin televised hearings next week on Watergate and Republican campaign-disruption tactics.
The most potentially explosive witness, Counsel Dean, talked privately to one Senate committee member last week, Connecticut Republican Lowell Weicker. Some lawyers suspect that Dean hopes to air his testimony publicly before the committee, then plead that the widespread publicity would make it impossible to find an unbiased jury for any trial on criminal charges. Others too might try this tactic, or seek immunity from the grand jury, creating something of a marketplace for officials trying to avoid jail.
Dean, who remarked to associates that he feared for his life, took away from his office nine documents that he says are marked secret and shed light on the Watergate hearing. He said that he removed them to prevent "illegitimate destruction" and then stashed them in a bank deposit vault; he gave the keys to Federal Judge John Sirica, whose pressure on the convicted wiretappers helped release new disclosures.
How could such pervasive corruption of ethics start in an Administration of such seemingly square-shooting disciples of law and order? Some of Nixon's critics contend that he set the general pattern in the earliest stages of his political career, when he used some questionable tactics. More important, the closeness of Nixon's first two presidential campaigns, against John Kennedy in 1960 and Hubert Humphrey in 1968, bred an almost paranoid insecurity among Nixon's campaign workers. The slim win over Humphrey was a special shock.
Once he gained the presidency, Nixon became unusually obsessed with protecting Administration secrets. The Administration's appalling willingness to spy, snoop and wiretap can be traced as far back as 1969. TIME has learned that the spying operation started early in 1969, when Nixon became furious over leaks to the press and determined to find out how newsmen were learning of various military policy discussions within the Government.
The President at first asked that the FBI tap the telephones of several reporters, including two at the New York Times, and of at least four of his own White House aides. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover resisted, on the grounds that the practice would be indefensible if discovered. Hoover would order the tapping, he said, only if Attorney General John Mitchell gave him written authorization. Mitchell did. Recalls one Government official: "It was essentially a fishing expedition." Though little was learned from the taps, they resulted in one official's being shifted from a sensitive Pentagon post and the transfer of another out of the State Department. The FBI taps on reporters continued at Mitchell's direction through much of 1970 and 1971, as Nixon became angry about press disclosures of American U-2 spy flights over China.
As Hoover became more irascible and seemed a political liability to the Administration, the Justice Department moved tentatively to pressure him out of office. Kleindienst, who was Deputy Attorney General in 1971, publicly suggested that Congress investigate the operation of the FBI. Angered, Hoover telephoned Kleindienst and threatened to reveal those embarrassing taps. No further move against Hoover was made by either Nixon, Mitchell or Kleindienst. Explained a Justice Department official: "Hoover used those wiretap authorizations to blackmail the Nixon Administration. As long as he had the papers [documenting the taps], they couldn't get rid of him."
In the late spring of 1971, Hoover suddenly discovered that all of his records on the taps had disappeared. He ordered W. Mark Felt, now the bureau's No. 2 man, to investigate. Felt could not find out who had carried out what agents call "a bag job"--a burglary--on the FBI'S own files. Felt asked Robert C. Mardian, then an Assistant Attorney General, if he knew who had taken the documents. Replied Mardian: "Ask the President. Or ask Mitchell."
Nixon ordered a crash effort to find the source of more leaks in the summer of 1971. The U.S. position at the SALT talks with the Soviets had begun leaking into newspapers, and Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon papers to the New York Times and other newspapers. Nixon demanded that Mitchell plug those leaks within two weeks. The President apparently asked no questions about the tactics to be used.
Mitchell was reluctant to ask Hoover to do this type of snooping again. That led White House aides to set up their own spying operation. They recruited G. Gordon Liddy, a former FBI agent, and E. Howard Hunt Jr., who had worked for the CIA and had written dozens of mystery novels. The hiring of Liddy had been suggested by Egil Krogh, Deputy Assistant for Domestic Affairs, that of Hunt by Presidential Special Counsel Charles W. Colson. Liddy and Hunt became known in the White House as "the plumbers," because they were hired to plug leaks. They later became an integral part of the Watergate crew. This team promptly began tapping telephones, including those of New York Times reporters.
At first the plumbers worked out of the office of David Young, a staff assistant to the President. Young's boss was Krogh, who reported to Ehrlichman. At the same time, Liddy coordinated his spying activities with the Justice Department by keeping Robert Mardian informed. The whole arrangement bypassed the FBI.
The spying apparatus sprang readily into action in September 1971 when Nixon ordered his own White House investigation into Ellsberg's entire background. Ehrlichman admits that he assigned the Hunt-Liddy team to the task. In testimony before the Washington grand jury, released last week by U.S. District Judge William Matthew Byrne Jr. at the Ellsberg trial, Hunt told an intriguing story of being aided by the CIA in the burglarizing of the Beverly Hills office of Psychiatrist Lewis Fielding.
Hunt testified that he worked out of what he called "Room 16" in the Executive Office Building next to the White House. He first asked Liddy why the Secret Service could not handle the burglary to get Ellsberg's records. Liddy told him, as Hunt reconstructed it, that "the White House did not have sufficient confidence in the Secret Service in order to entrust them with a task of this sort." But the White House clearly did have faith in Liddy and Hunt. At Krogh's direction, the pair flew to Los Angeles on Aug. 25, 1971, registered in a hotel under false names (George Leonard and Ed Warren), to make what Hunt grandly called "a preliminary vulnerability and feasibility study"--meaning that they cased and photographed Fielding's office building and located his house. They used an experimental miniature camera supplied by a CIA operative and hidden in a tobacco pouch. (The agency last week denied any advance knowledge of this burglary, but federal prosecutors demanded a full explanation.)
Returning to Washington, the spooks wrote a memo suggesting that the burglary could be done, and submitted their photographs--all, Hunt said, going to Ehrlichman's deputy, Krogh. Hunt said that he reported regularly to Krogh and took orders from Krogh. The CIA, added Hunt, also supplied him with a "sterile" phone number, meaning that it was unlisted and there were no billing records. In addition, the CIA gave Hunt and Liddy disguises when they needed them, and a "safe house" in which to meet undetected in Washington.
Fizzle. After getting approval from Krogh, Hunt flew to Miami to enlist help in the Ellsberg bag job. He hired Bernard Barker, a former CIA agent (later part of the Watergate wiretapping operation), and two Cuban refugees. They all met in Los Angeles on Labor Day weekend.
Two of the Cubans, dressed in deliverymen's uniforms, entered Fielding's office building on the night of Sept. 4, while Hunt watched the doctor's home and Liddy maintained walkie-talkie contact with the Cubans from a cruising car. The Cubans carried a suitcase with air-express invoices addressed to Dr. Fielding, and thus persuaded a cleaning lady to admit them to Fielding's office. They left the suitcase, containing a CIA camera, then punched the "unlock" button on the office door before leaving. When they returned later, they found the door relocked and had to break in. The operation fizzled, however, when they could not find any file with Ellsberg's name on it.
Back in Washington, Hunt told Krogh that "it was a clean operation--there were no fingerprints left behind --but it had failed to produce." They later considered returning to California to search Fielding's house for Ellsberg's records, but decided that was too risky. Hunt said he tried to tell Colson about the unsuccessful search, but Colson refused to listen, saying: "I don't want to hear anything about it." Hunt also testified that his group later gathered FBI records on Ellsberg's personality, and--these were used to help the CIA compile "a secondhand psychiatric profile" of Ellsberg.
The unfolding of Hunt's testimony in Judge Byrne's courtroom was only one of a series of startling developments there. The judge opened the week's proceedings with astonishing testimony of his own from the bench: he had been summoned to an April 5 meeting with John Ehrlichman at the Western White House at San Clemente. Ehrlichman brought up the possibility of Byrne's becoming permanent director of the FBI. Byrne said he had replied that he would discuss no federal appointment while the Ellsberg case was being tried. He also had had a formal, handshake meeting, "lasting probably less than a minute," with President Nixon himself. Defense counsel erupted and filed a formal motion for a mistrial on the basis of what they called "possibly an attempt to offer a bribe to the court--an attempt made in the virtual presence of the President."
Byrne took that motion under advisement. Later, incredibly, he announced that he had had a second meeting with Ehrlichman on April 7 and had reaffirmed his refusal to consider a new appointment at that time. He failed to make clear why this second meeting was necessary.
Defense lawyers moved again for a mistrial, and further for dismissal of all charges against Ellsberg and Anthony J. Russo, "with prejudice"--meaning that the Government could never re-open the case against them. The White House interference was, so far as legal historians could recall, without precedent. Defense counsel, their score of legal assistants and the defendants decided to take no further part in the proceedings. When Byrne opened court next morning he saw the defense table was bare--no papers, no files, not even a pencil. In effect, the defense boycotted the trial by refusing to examine witnesses. Byrne insisted: "I am convinced beyond any doubt at all that nothing has compromised my ability to act as a fair and impartial judge in this case." With that, he chose to sit tight, at least over the weekend.
Byrne continued to order the prosecution to reveal all the sources of its evidence, so he could judge whether any had been obtained illegally. The Government's case would thereby be "tainted." It seemed that he was thus establishing a basis for dismissing the case on technical grounds. Alternatively, if the Government refused to disclose sources (because of possible embarrassment to the highest federal offices), the prosecution itself might move for dismissal. The judge complained, in fact, that some Government officials were refusing to talk to the FBI. Either way, the Government would be humiliated and Ellsberg vindicated.
Leaks. Acting Presidential Counsel Garment last week released guidelines for all Administration officials who might be called to testify about the Watergate-related cases--and these seemed to explain the spreading Government silence in the Ellsberg case about telephone taps and burglaries. One guideline said that officials should not answer any questions "relating to national security--e.g., some of the incidents which gave rise to concern over leaks." This could block more revelations about the White House "plumbers." But were the guidelines released because national security was really involved or because investigation of the activities could lead directly to the President? Nixon also reasserted, through Garment, earlier restrictions against officials' divulging any conversations with the President on grounds of Executive privilege.
Even before the burglary of the psychiatrist's office, the White House had begun to shift its clandestine activities toward the effort to re-elect Nixon. In 1971, Nixon's prospects for re-election were not promising. A Harris poll in May showed Muskie with an eight-point lead over the President, assuming Alabama Governor George Wallace would run. Nixon, who had declared that "when I'm the candidate, I run the campaign," did not trust the Republican Party professionals to handle his re-election drive. He wanted a separate organization. A group of admen and pollsters were consulted; they found Nixon's personal popularity was so low that they advised that he stress the office rather than his name. Thus his organization became the Committee for the Re-Election of the President. It was largely composed of Administration officials, who were relatively inexperienced in politics but who had demonstrated their total loyalty to Nixon.
The first Nixon aim was to knock down the chances of Muskie's or Senator Edward Kennedy's becoming his opponent and to build up McGovern, who was rightly considered the easier man to beat. This tactic of interfering in the Democratic campaign was approved by Haldeman. Hunt began probing the intimate backgrounds of the potential Democratic candidates. He investigated Kennedy's accident at Chappaquiddick Island. Hoping to further discredit him, Hunt fabricated a State Department cable falsely stating that President John Kennedy had ordered the assassination in 1963 of South Viet Nam's President Diem. Liddy also joined the sabotage operations.
At the same time in 1971, Dwight L. Chapin, the President's appointments secretary, arranged for Donald Segretti to set up a team of infiltration and sabotage agents. Segretti was paid by the President's personal lawyer, Herbert W. Kalmbach. The agents reported to Gordon Strachan, an assistant to Haldeman, while Haldeman apparently was the top supervisor. By March 1972, the loose network had at least 30 agents.
Muskie's campaign was plagued by mysterious problems, though there is no proof that the Nixon operators caused all of them. As early as August 1971, someone reprinted on his stationery a Harris poll dealing with Chappaquiddick. This mailing went to Democrats in Congress, raising complaints that Muskie was campaigning unethically. Schedules and poll data vanished from desks. As Muskie recalls: "We were convinced that there was a spy in our campaign headquarters."
Before the first primary in New Hampshire on March 7, many white residents of that state complained of telephone calls late at night from people claiming to represent the "Harlem for Muskie Committee." The callers urged them to vote for Muskie because "he's been so good for the black man."
In Florida, shortly before the March 14 primary, Muskie stationery was used for an unsigned letter, mailed to thousands of Floridians, falsely charging Democratic Candidates Hubert Humphrey and Henry Jackson with sexual misconduct. (Last week a federal grand jury in Orlando indicted Saboteur Segretti, charging him with conspiracy in the mailing.) Muskie finished a poor fourth in that primary, behind Wallace, Humphrey and Jackson.
Next, Muskie had surprising problems in California: trouble with floodlights that disturbed his delivery; his stationery was used again to tell potential large donors to keep their cash because he preferred to get a lot of collections from less affluent givers. Given the normal chance for foulups in any political campaign, it would be absurd to suggest that all of these incidents were the result of sabotage. But Segretti's activities provide ample reason for suspicion.
The Nixon men, meanwhile, were also looking ahead to the contest with whoever the Democratic candidate might be. As early as February, Plumber Liddy was again promoting wiretap ping plans. He had charts drawn up illustrating how to organize an eavesdropping campaign against the Watergate headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and the Miami Beach convention headquarters of the Democratic candidates.
Liddy and Hunt later helped carry out those bugging plans at the Watergate in at least one wiretapping break-in before they were arrested after the second foray in June. Investigators are trying to determine whether the two men were still working under the same officials as in their Ellsberg-psychiatrist burglary. If so, Young, Krogh and Ehrlichman also might have known about the Watergate plans. Krogh said last week that he intends to tell whatever he knows to the grand jury.
While it is not yet clear how many Nixon officials knew about the Watergate plans ahead of time, there is no doubt that after the burglars were arrested, a broad conspiracy was quickly created to conceal the extent of the involvement of the White House and the Nixon committee. The New York Times reported last week that federal investigators have discovered that the principal cover-up conspirators were Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Dean, Mitchell, Magruder and LaRue. Each one, the investigators contend, has lied to either the prosecutors, to federal investigators, or to other White House officials.
The lies were designed, first, to conceal just how much money was paid to Wiretapper Liddy in advance of the Watergate bugging, as well as to hide the real purpose of the payments, and second, to cover up the fact that the arrested men were receiving monthly payments of between $1,000 and $3,000 each to keep quiet about the involvement of anyone else. According to the newspaper account, the former Nixon committee treasurer, Hugh W. Sloan Jr., tried to warn the President, but was cut off by Ehrlichman.
A minor White House official, TIME has learned, has told Justice Department investigators that even he was part of the extensive coverup. Herbert L. Porter, an assistant in the White House communications office last year, said that he had initially lied to the grand jury about payments to Liddy. According to sources close to the investigation, Porter said that he and Magruder had agreed on a story about having given Liddy $100,000 to hire ten routine intelligence-gathering helpers at a salary of $1,000 each a month for ten months. He and Magruder thus substantiated each other's accounts before the jury. Porter reported meeting Magruder on April 14 and claimed that Magruder told him: "It's all over. I perjured myself twelve times."
Even by chance, some observers ran across traces of that Watergate bugging operation before it was revealed. John Lofton, editor of the Republican National Committee's publication, Monday, told FBI agents that he visited Magruder's office at the Nixon committee shortly before the June 17 arrests. He noticed a file on Magruder's desk labeled "Gemstone I." Without mentioning any spying activities, Magruder cited some gossip about National Democratic Chairman Larry O'Brien. Lofton asked if he could use it in Monday. "Absolutely not," Magruder cautioned. After he read about Watergate, Lofton phoned Magruder and joked innocently: "Well, there goes Gemstone I." There was dead silence from Magruder, then the cold warning: "Don't ever use that name again." Gemstone was the code word used on the typed summaries of the illegally acquired telephone conversations of the Democrats.
Whatever the degrees of guilt in the scandal, Watergate is, of course, a tragedy for the men involved and for their families. As a friend of Jo Haldeman explained: "There is no way to measure the toll. She is about as strong as he is. She'll be all right. But it's a problem for the kids. There's no way around it at school." The Haldemans have four children. Jeanne Ehrlichman, a very private woman, said firmly: "I just know my husband is going to be proved innocent." Clutching a childhood Bible, Martha Mitchell attracted a press throng as she appeared in a Manhattan law office to give a deposition in a Watergate civil suit. But she disappointed everyone by confessing that she had no personal knowledge of the affair. She said that Husband John had always assured her he had not been involved, and "I trust and pray to God" that he was not.
The personal suffering would readily give way to a far greater public trauma if the President were proved to be implicated. Everyone on Capitol Hill dreads the very thought of impeachment, but it is being openly mentioned for the first time in memory. Barry Goldwater conceded last week: "If it were shown that he was in this, there's no question at all that there would be impeachment proceedings."
Nightmare. The procedure, used against only one President in U.S. history, Andrew Johnson in 1868, would require any member of the House to offer a resolution to investigate grounds for impeachment. It would be referred to either the House Judiciary Committee or a special committee, which would take evidence in full-dress public hearings. If the committee decided on the basis of the hearings that there is sufficient evidence to support the charges, an impeachment resolution would be sent to the House. By majority vote, the House could approve it.
The Senate would then be notified, as would the President, and he would be given a chance to file written answers to the charges raised by the House. The Chief Justice of the U.S. would then preside over the Senate, which would convene as a court of impeachment. There would be a trial, with witnesses, cross-examination and court rules. The President could appear or be represented by attorneys. After all witnesses had been questioned, the Senate would vote on each charge. A two-thirds vote against the President on any charge would result in his removal and disqualification for any other federal office. The Vice President would become President.
Any such action would, as one Congressman describes it, "rock the world." Practically no one expects it to happen. There is in fact a nightmarish quality to all such speculation. How could a "third-rate burglary" grow to these monstrous proportions?
From the beginning, Watergate has been, of course, a far more serious matter than that. All of the political and official spying and deception that preceded it, as well as the lying and shredding of evidence that followed it, represent to a fearsome degree lawlessness at the highest levels of Government. Whatever may yet be revealed about Richard Nixon's complicity, in a sense, he already stands impeached, by a growing consensus, for an appalling failure of responsibility. He selected the men, set the standards, and more than anyone else allowed Watergate's muddy waters to engulf his Administration.
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