Instant Replay on Nixon

"These guys are damned able reporters," says a former aide to Richard Nixon. "I have a high respect for them. But the tapestry they've woven is a bad one."

That criticism of the new Bob Woodward-Carl Bernstein Watergate book, The Final Days (Simon & Schuster; $10.95), is typical of the reaction of most Nixon associates. By and large: 1) they make no claims that the book contains any substantial factual errors; 2) they protest that the total portrayal is a distortion; 3) they offer criticism with the stipulation that the source of the complaint not be publicly named.

That is not true of Nixon Son-in-Law David Eisenhower, 28, who says that he had two sessions with the reporters as they researched the book. "I've been used as authority for their overall theme that Mr. Nixon was a basket case at the end of Watergate," he says. "I don't think it was a bad-faith distortion, but I think they were a little single-minded." Eisenhower contends that he "kept waiting for Mr. Nixon to crack" and he did not, but that the book portrays Nixon "as a kind of broken man--emotionally and mentally and every other way. He wasn't." Eisenhower denies that he ever feared Nixon might commit suicide, as the book reported. "I never felt that," he insists. "He was fundamentally a religious man, and he simply would not have done that."

Nixon's other son-in-law, Edward Cox, 29, denies the book's claim that he had expressed fear of a Nixon suicide and insists that he never said the President was walking the White House halls at night, "talking to the pictures on the wall." Eisenhower supports Cox's denial.

One former Nixon associate willing to be quoted makes a probably valid general complaint. J. Fred Buzhardt, Nixon's embattled former counsel and clearly a key source for the book, protests against "psychojournalism." He says: "They write about my thought processes. I don't know how anybody can derive that, for honestly I can't myself." Eisenhower agrees: "Distortion creeps in when they are attributing chains of thought to participants. Didn't Mr. Nixon look horrible that night of Aug. 2? That was not what was running through my mind. He didn't look good, but he didn't look all that bad, either."

Merely High. Three men who attended a pre-Christmas 1973 dinner at which Nixon is depicted as too drunk to talk coherently insist that he was merely high, understandably relaxing at the end of a rough day, but he was by no means a lush. Similarly, Helen Smith, Pat Nixon's former press secretary, denies that Pat drank heavily. "I never heard of any afternoon drinking by her," she says. Another aide protested that the celebrated scene in which Nixon prays with Henry Kissinger makes the President "look like a nut," while, by contrast, "when Jimmy Carter prays, it's moral leadership."

Since the book only began appearing in a few stores last week, its critics are, of necessity, relying on excerpts in Newsweek and news stories relating its highlights. Inevitably, such telescoping draws a starker picture of the turmoil and disintegration than does the book itself. Those who complain, as does one Nixon defender, that "the totality comes across as more lurid than it actually was," thus have a point. The book, read as a whole, is more balanced; it contains passages that present a somewhat softer, fuller picture of the leading players in the drama. "We don't make any generalizations about Nixon being mad or being a lush," explains Bernstein, accurately. "We don't say that because he's drunk one time, he's drunk all the time." Nixon is, in fact, depicted in the book as fully lucid only moments after seeming in near collapse. Kissinger reportedly spoke of Nixon as a "meathead" (Kissinger has denied using that phrase) and described him as acting "like a madman." But he is also shown praising the President as a hardheaded negotiator.

Yet these were, after all, the last days of a President being forced from office, and the authors cannot be severely faulted for dwelling on the rougher moments, the vignettes of defeat and disarray. "The book is about what hasn't been written--the darker side," says Woodward. "We checked it out, and that's why we included it."

Woodward and Bernstein say they went to work on The Final Days within a week of Nixon's resignation. They started by interviewing secretaries and other low-level White House staff members. "We didn't want to give people a chance at hindsight," says Bernstein. Within two weeks they learned that Kissinger was taping or transcribing his own telephone conversations. Eventually "13 people told us about it." As they gathered information, they used it to open up higher sources. Woodward talked to Kissinger in one 30-min. session and had two 30-min. meetings with Larry Eagleburger, Kissinger's top aide. Woodward pursued former Chief of Staff Alexander Haig all the way to Brussels, where he is now NATO commander. The reporters had several lunches with Haig's son, Alex Jr., a student at Georgetown University Law Center.

Haig denies talking to the reporters about Nixon's last days and refuses to comment on the book s contents. Kissinger also declines to get into any point-by-point rebuttal, but insists that Nixon was fully aware that he recorded or transcribed his telephone calls with the President. President Ford said: "I never saw any instance where [Nixon] was in danger of his own life, nor did I see any incident or any attitude where I thought he might do something that would endanger the country." Nixon so far has refused to discuss the book publicly. Leading a still reclusive life in San Clemente, the former President and his wife did venture out two weeks ago for cocktails and dinner at the Corona del Mar, Calif., home of the James Roosevelts.

Dark Emphasis. If the book is substantially accurate, with perhaps only some overemphasis on the darker side, the question remains: Should the more personal descriptions of Nixon's behavior have been published? Kissinger authorized a statement deploring the authors' "indecent lack of compassion." Betty Ford argued that parts of the book "could have been omitted." One of Watergate's heroes, former Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, went further, saying of those who talked to Woodward and Bernstein: "They should be ashamed of themselves."

All this represents a troubling question for journalists: where to draw the line of discretion or taste. The fact is that Presidents and other major political figures to some extent forfeit their right to privacy by the career they have chosen. Their state of mind and their morals are subjects of legitimate concern to citizens and hence to journalists, even when the leaders are out of power or dead but especially in the case of a deep national crisis involving a President's character and personality.

Do the authors of The Final Days lack compassion? It is difficult to read the book without feeling some sympathy for the disgraced Nixon, no matter how thoroughly his wounds were self-inflicted. When he pleads, "Henry, please don't ever tell anyone that I cried and that I was not strong," it is a hardhearted reader who is not moved. Bernstein is on solid ground in declaring: "I'd be surprised if readers do not find the book not at all unsympathetic to the former President of the United States."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.