And Where Is the Palace Guard?

When President Nixon went overboard with Watergate, he took a lot of his former aides over the side with him. Although they plunged into heavy seas, most of them are now treading water with surprising buoyancy. Some notable examples:

JOHN MITCHELL. Convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury (along with H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman), the former Attorney General and his co-conspirators are continuing to run up staggering legal fees in appealing the verdicts. (Oral arguments in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals are to be held late this month.) Mitchell has been disbarred, and his income of some $200,000 a year from his New York law firm will soon end. Yet he is committed by court order to pay $52,000 a year to his estranged wife Martha and he finances the education of his daughter Marty, 14, who is also estranged from Martha.

Despite his problems, Mitchell seems fairly ebullient. He makes amiable appearances at fancy Washington restaurants, especially the Jockey Club, the Sea Catch and the Palm. He is often accompanied by Mrs. Mary Gore Dean, a wealthy widow whose family operates restaurants and a hotel in the capital. He is drinking much less than the fifth a day he consumed at the height of the Watergate crisis. Associates suggest two reasons for Mitchell's relatively good spirits: 1) Despite Nixon's earlier efforts to get Mitchell to take full blame for Watergate, he has never turned against his former boss and remains on good terms with Nixon and Nixon's wealthy friends; 2) he is confident that the Supreme Court will not rule on his appeal of his conviction until early 1977 and that by then a re-elected President Ford will pardon him and other major Watergate figures. Like so many of his fallen colleagues, Mitchell is at work on a book, but its approach is being kept secret by his publisher (Simon & Schuster).

JOHN DEAN. The man with the memory has served four months in prison, been disbarred and is living in Los Angeles off a $350,000 advance from Simon & Schuster for a Watergate book. His wife Mo has already completed her chronicle of the drama for the same publisher (it will appear in October). Determined to pursue a new career in literature, Dean has outlined a novel (about a black woman nominated to the Supreme Court) and wants to write screenplays.

When not occupied with writing, Dean does a lot of reading (mostly nonfiction), helps paint and redecorate the house and landscape the grounds. Finding the heckling unpleasant and the routine wearying, he gave up a lecture tour after six weeks. He and Mo encounter little neighborhood hostility, and entertain with small dinner parties for a tightly knit circle of friends (the best-known: Congressman Barry Goldwater Jr. and his wife Susan).

JOHN EHRLICHMAN. The most visibly altered of the Watergate conspirators, Ehrlichman has grown a grizzly beard, left his wife Jeanne, and moved from Seattle to a rented adobe house in an older section of Santa Fe. Disbarred, he claims to be working on various public-spirited projects in which his knowledge of Government is helpful. He will not say what they are, since he feels that premature publicity killed his earlier attempt to work with nearby Indians as an alternative to serving his prison sentence. "We certainly could use some plumbers in our struggle to establish our water rights," jokes Lucario Padilla, chairman of the eight northern Indian Pueblos Council, but he suggests that Ehrlichman's help would be "more useful in the form of ditch work."

Ehrlichman trout-fishes with dry flies in streams near Taos, attends some dinner parties among Santa Fe's notables, but generally attracts little notice while shopping or strolling the local streets. When not commuting to Washington to consult his lawyers, he too is working on a book. It will reportedly deal with his White House years and the knowledge he picked up there about the CIA. Whether he will actually aim any fire at Nixon, as his lawyers sometimes did during Ehrlichman's trial, is not known. Jeanne Ehrlichman remains in Seattle, where she is the $10,000-a-year director of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra's education program.

H.R. HALDEMAN. After digging deeply into accumulated wealth from inheritance and savings, Haldeman is now living off the controversial fee, estimated at up to $150,000, that he received from CBS Television News for a Mike Wallace interview last fall. He still owes at least two-thirds of his legal fees, which, he says, have reached "about $400,000 and the meter is still running." He tried to sell a book outline to New York publishers last spring, but it was rejected because he concentrated on Nixon's foreign policy, with only one chapter on Watergate. Now he is working more realistically on a book (still unsold) detailing the Nixon White House as seen from his unique vantage point. "Where there were serious mistakes, and there were, I'm admitting those absolutely," he says. Haldeman has visited San Clemente several times, yet his relations with Nixon are severely strained. As for his other ex-colleagues, he says that "my legal advice is not to be in contact."

The Haldemans still maintain a $185,000 house in the exclusive Hancock Park area of Los Angeles, and have been spending the summer on an even more exclusive island in Newport Beach, Calif., where his wife's family has a New England-style residence. Although he has dropped out of the Big Canyon Country Club, he and his wife occasionally attend private parties. Friends say that Haldeman's ordeal has tapped new strengths and vitality and he is bearing up with Christian Scientist calm. He takes tennis lessons and plucks away at the guitar.

For lesser-known members of Nixon's Watergate crew, prison and penury have been the most painful problems. After seven months in prison, former Mitchell Deputy Jeb Stuart Magruder is employed as vice president of a religious foundation in Colorado Springs at half his former $36,000 Government salary. Egil ("Bud") Krogh has been hired as an assistant to Republican Congressman Peter McCloskey of California at $16,000; he drew $40,000 in Nixon's Transportation Department.

After leaving his job at United Air Lines, where he was director of market planning, former White House Appointments Secretary Dwight Chapin has landed a job as vice president of W. Clement Stone Enterprises, the family firm that directs the financial affairs of one of Nixon's chief campaign contributors. Chapin has lost one appeal of his perjury convictions and may soon enter prison. White House Aide Charles Colson served six months in prison, has been disbarred, and is now writing about his spiritual conversion for a publisher of religious books. Nixon Attorney Herbert Kalmbach, who spent six months in prison, is fighting against disbarment in California. He has already been suspended, but he has ample income from real estate holdings in California's Orange County and in Hawaii. His aim, he insists, is "to drop out of sight."

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