Paying for Serving Richard Nixon

A stony-faced Federal Judge John J. Sirica brushed aside all pleas for leniency last week and sentenced the three principal figures in the Watergate conspiracy to at least 2% years in prison. Former Attorney General John Mitchell's face went from pale to a pinkish flush, then pale again, as the grim news hit him. Former Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman scowled in anger. Former Domestic Affairs Adviser John Ehrlichman, his cheeks sunken, looked devastated.

In the tense 54-minute proceedings in Sirica's Washington courtroom, a lighter sentence of ten months to three years went to Robert Mardian, once a top aide to Mitchell at both the Justice Department and the Nixon 1972 re-election committee. Tight-lipped but known to be seething about the fact that he had been linked in trial with the top three, Mardian bolted through a rear door when the session ended. He will return to his family's construction business in Phoenix while he and the others await the result of their appeals. This process could take up to two years.

The four had written letters to Sirica in hopes of avoiding a prison sentence. Only Ehrlichman's new lawyer, bearded, long-haired Ira M. Lowe, revealed in court what his client had pleaded. Ehrlichman, said Lowe, had expressed his "profound regret" for his role in the Watergate conspiracy. Wrote Ehrlichman: "I have been found to be a perjurer. No reversal on appeal can remove the stigma." Lowe said that Ehrlichman had asked to be allowed to spend his sentence working with 6,000 Pueblo Indians in New Mexico, using his legal talents to help them with land-use problems. If he were permitted to do that, he said that he would make no effort to appeal his conviction. Sirica made no comment on this plea as he sentenced Ehrlichman to prison.

Marginal Break. The only other argument on behalf of a conspirator was made by Haldeman's lawyer, John J. Wilson. He directly blamed the former President for Haldeman's fate, adding: "Whatever Bob Haldeman did, so did Richard Nixon; Nixon has been freed of judicial punishment, yet Bob Haldeman has had to endure agony and punishment by trial and conviction." Since Nixon had been pardoned, Wilson implied, Haldeman should go free. Sirica was unmoved by that argument too.

While sentences of up to 25 years could have been given by Sirica, the terms of 2% to eight years were the stiffest yet accorded anyone who participated in the scandal, except for the actual Watergate burglars. The sentences preclude any parole before the 2 1/2 years are served, although all four will have the right to seek a reduction in sentence. Such motions by some of the confessed conspirators who testified against the four, including John Dean, Jeb Stuart Magruder and Herbert Kalmbach, led to their early release by Sirica. But he is not expected to feel similar sympathy for the higher, stonewalling officials.

Haldeman, who is wealthy, will await the appeals results in California, where he boats, plays tennis and is working on a book about the happier aspects of the years of the Nixon presidency. As he left the courtroom, he autographed a huge photo of Nixon for a group of youths. Ehrlichman, who claims to be $400,000 in debt already to his lawyers, came away with only one marginal break from Judge Sirica: if all appeals fail, he will be allowed to serve his new prison term concurrently with a 20-month minimum sentence for conspiracy in the Daniel Ellsberg case.

Mitchell, who still gets more than $200,000 a year in a general leave-of-absence arrangement with his Manhattan law firm, had other matters on his mind as he left the court. He referred ungallantly to his estranged wife Martha, who is suing him for separation, maintenance and custody of their 14-year-old daughter Marty. The sentence could have been worse. "It could have been a hell of a lot worse," Mitchell told reporters when he was outside the courtroom. "They could have sentenced me to spend the rest of my life with Martha Mitchell."

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