Awaiting the Next Round in Watergate

Once again Richard Nixon failed to break free of Watergate. With the release of two lengthy white papers on his dealings with milk producers and ITT, White House aides declared that the President's largely unsuccessful Operation Candor was over. Nixon, said a White House spokesman, will now turn to "dealing with the problems and issues that he feels are good for the country." Yet there is no way to simply turn the key on Watergate. Despite the fact that Congress was in recess and the President still in seclusion in California (see following stories), last week three fresh developments produced a variety of new problems and worries for the White House. The three:

> Nixon's former Domestic Affairs Adviser John Ehrlichman met for more than an hour in Washington with Special Watergate Prosecutor Leon Jaworski. As explained later by Jaworski, the meeting was called by him to seek information from Ehrlichman. No offer of any kind to settle Ehrlichman's case in return for his testimony was made, Jaworski said, although he conceded that the possibility of an Ehrlichman guilty plea had been raised earlier in a meeting sought by one of Ehrlichman's lawyers. There will be no deal for any defendant unless he makes "a clean breast" of all he knows, the prosecutor insisted. Jaworski also indicated that he has received "a large number of White House documents and tapes," but it has been a struggle to acquire them, and there was a near impasse in December, when Jaworski considered going into court for them. The evidence from the tapes, he said, is "very significant and quite meaningful."

> A panel of electronics experts, which has been examining the presidential tape recording with its now celebrated 18-minute hum, will submit a report to Federal Judge John Sirica this week. It is expected to be "conclusive" and will pinpoint the cause of the mysterious sound. The report may also identify the specific tape machine in the White House on which the noise was recorded, although the experts cannot know or speculate on who may have been operating the machine at the time. The panel has already expressed doubts in its interim report (TIME, Dec. 24) that the conversation was wiped out when Rose Mary Woods, Nixon's personal secretary, mistakenly activated two switches on a recorder while transcribing the tape. Thus the report is expected to rule out the possibility that the hum resulted from the activities described by her, and will presumably declare whether the Watergate-related conversation between Nixon and Haldeman on June 20, 1972, was accidentally or deliberately erased.

> Another bizarre activity of Nixon's secret investigative unit, "the plumbers," was obliquely confirmed by the White House, although it provided no details. In late 1971 the plumbers apparently found that one or more military officers were secretly copying documents of the National Security Council and giving them to high Pentagon officials. The officials, or so the plumbers suspected, were especially interested in the then-secret plans of Henry Kissinger, head of the NSC, to start contacts between President Nixon and the leaders of China. The unusual spying activity apparently was discovered by the plumbers as they searched for sources of NSC leaks to Columnist Jack Anderson. At one point the plumbers even feared that the Pentagon was tapping Kissinger's phone. The entire matter, said a White House statement, is "in appropriate for public disclosure."

Erratic Handling. Shadowed by those developments, the abrupt termination of Operation Candor marked the end of another of the many phases in Nixon's erratic handling of the whole Watergate affair. The operation was begun in November in reaction to the public outcry over the firing of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. It started with a series of private meetings with Congressmen and Senators at which Nixon repeatedly promised "full disclosure" of all Watergate-related evidence in his possession. Despite the pledges, no summaries of tapes or other evidence were made public.

The two white papers were not backed up by the release of any tape recordings or documents that had been made at the time that Nixon took action favorable to ITT and the milk producers in separate controversial steps. Basically, the papers selectively set out previously reported facts, confirming much of what has been published, but interpreting them in Nixon's favor. The papers, in effect, asked the public to accept Nixon's word that in neither case was he motivated by the fact that ITT and the milkmen had pledged generous contributions to his political causes. While sharply denying any quid pro quo deals, the papers did tend to confirm that opportunities for political bribery existed. Some points also contradicted earlier statements by the President and his men on the two topics.

THE MILK DEAL. On October 26 Nixon said he had a policy of not wanting "to have any information from anybody with regard to campaign contributions." The President admitted in the white paper, however, that he had been advised by an aide that the milk producers had pledged up to $2,000,000 to his 1972 campaign well before he raised milk price supports in 1971 and restricted some dairy imports in 1970. Briefing papers prepared for his meetings with milkmen on two occasions cited this fund-raising help. But the white paper emphasized that Nixon never mentioned the donations at the meetings. The contributions, the paper claimed, "did not influence the President's decision to raise the level of supports."

The paper contended that Nixon raised the milk supports, reversing a decision by then Secretary of Agriculture Clifford Hardin, because 1) Congress was exerting "intensive pressure" to accomplish the same end; 2) the economics of the industry justified the increase and 3) the approaching election called for "traditional political considerations relating to needs of the farm states."

The paper failed to note, however, that not a single price-support bill had even reached committee consideration in Congress at the time Nixon acted. Nor did it report that Nixon's fund raisers received $10,000 from the milkmen the day before he met with them on March 23, 1971, another $25,000 the day after -- and that the hike in price supports was announced the next day.

The claim that the milk donations were never mentioned at Nixon's meetings with milk officials does not seem conclusive. Sophisticated lobbyists rarely couple a donation openly with a requested favor; the money is expected to speak for itself. Yet even this contention by Nixon was challenged last week by attorneys for Ralph Nader, who is suing the Administration for basing the support hike on political grounds. The attorneys filed a brief in a Washington federal court quoting from a subpoenaed tape of Nixon's March 23 meeting, contending that it showed that the President may have been obliquely acknowledging the donation when he told the milkmen: "I must say a lot of business men and others I get around this table, they yammer and talk a lot but they don't do anything about it. But you do and I appreciate that. I don't need to spell it out."

THE ITT CASE. The President's paper on his intervention in antitrust suits against ITT was somewhat more persuasive. It claimed that his only direct involvement took place on April 19, 1971, while the corporation's pledge of $200,000 to support the 1972 Republican National Convention was not made until June of 1971. The paper confirmed that Nixon had called Richard Kleindienst, then Deputy Attorney General, and ordered him to forgo an appeal on one of the suits against ITT. Such a move was sought by the corporation. The paper did not, however, note Nixon's blunt language in directing Kleindienst. "You son of a bitch, can't you understand the English language?" That was Nixon's comment when Kleindienst had refused to comply with a telephoned demand by Ehrlichman that he drop the appeal.

The statement contended that Nixon was motivated by a feeling that ITT was being prosecuted just because it had grown so large, and this violated the President's antitrust philosophy of not opposing bigness per se. As early as 1968, the paper noted, Nixon had declared that his Administration intended to clarify the "unsettled case law" on conglomerates. Yet that does not explain why Nixon allowed the cases to be brought against ITT at all, why he waited so long to intervene--or why taking the case to the Supreme Court would not have been the best way to clarify the law.

Nixon later changed his mind about not appealing the case when then Solicitor General Erwin Griswold threatened to resign. Curiously, the paper did not note that Kleindienst also threatened to quit. Before the appeal was to be heard by the Supreme Court, Justice Department attorneys reached an out-of-court settlement with ITT. The paper accurately noted that the settlement required "the largest single divestiture in corporate history," but did not include the fact that ITT was allowed to keep cash-rich Hartford Fire Insurance Co., its priority aim in the controversy.

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