7

NOVEMBER 4

SUNDAY. Betty Beale, the Washington Star-News social columnist, writes, “During this shattering period in the Presidency, the White House seems to be a veritable tomb, socially.”

The New York Times reports Representative Robert Michel, Republican of Illinois, as saying that there was “a lot of discussion” of the President’s resignation in the cloakrooms of the Congress. Newsmen reported seeing Barry Goldwater and William Buckley at the airport in Wichita, Kansas, in “deep discussion.” Later, Buckley, in a speech at Kansas State University, said that he thought the President would resign. Goldwater told the reporters that he was in Wichita “on vacation.”

Julie Nixon Eisenhower, in an interview with the Associated Press, said that she wrote “Fight. Fight. Fight” on her calendar on October 25th. That was the day on which the President ordered the military alert.

The New York Times says, in an editorial, that the President should resign.

On Issues and Answers, Senator Edward Brooke, of Massachusetts, becomes the first Republican senator to call on the President to resign. Two Democratic senators, Daniel Inouye, of Hawaii, and John Tunney, of California, have already done so. Brooke says that he does not think the country “can stand the trauma that it has been going through for the past months.”

In the afternoon, word comes that tomorrow Time will call for the President’s resignation. It is as if a fever were sweeping the nation.

President Nixon, at Key Biscayne, issues a statement, through his press spokesman, that he has “absolutely no intention of resigning.”

On a CBS Special Report on “The Embattled President” this evening, Joseph Alsop is interviewed. He says that he thinks the President should resign, not for moral reasons but “because he can’t work.” Ron Ziegler talks about the tapes. He says, “We have a good story to tell there.” Ziegler concedes that it is difficult to “project” that story. He says that the talk of impeachment comes from “the President’s traditional adversaries … his strong political adversaries from the past twenty-seven years.” He then asks, “Where is the impeachable offense?”

The Constitution does not say that a President should leave office if his standing in the polls is low, or if he “can’t work.” The framers of the Constitution were trying to protect us from both kingly authority and popular passions of the moment. They knew what they were doing.

NOVEMBER 5

I made some calls to Capitol Hill to ask about the mood and events of the weekend. A Democratic senator says that he thinks the talk of resignation is “politically premature.” He says that Congress should proceed to establish the Special Prosecutor by legislation. “The system is being tested now, and we ought to see it through,” he says. “If the President were to resign tomorrow, there would be a sigh of relief from one end of the country to the other, but we would not have seen it through. We should get more of the facts. The country is way ahead of the Congress on wanting him out of office. If we are going to impeach him, we need more facts. That is why we must proceed with the Special Prosecutor.” Another Democratic senator says, “I’m confused. I don’t know what to think. I think he’s going to leave.” The Senate Democratic aide who is in the traffic patterns of Capitol Hill tells me, “Congress is on dead center. There is no movement. These guys have no capacity for movement. Nothing that has happened is the result of action by the Congress—only of ineptitude in the cover-up by the executive branch. Everyone who is looking at the Congress for leadership is misdirecting his attention. Being statesmanlike is synonymous with being inactive.”

Senator Peter Dominick, a conservative Republican from Colorado, said in a speech today in Denver that there is “a crisis of confidence in our leadership.” Dominick, who will be up for reëlection in 1974, urged Republicans “to follow a more independent course” from here on. He headed the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee in 1972 and is said to be bitter, as are other Republicans, over the President’s lack of support of Republicans seeking reëlection then. Gordon Allott, who had been Dominick’s Republican colleague from Colorado, was defeated for reëlection last year.

I phoned a Texas businessman, a supporter of the President. He said, “No corporate executive would survive this—surrounding himself with that many bad people. It’s hard to believe that no one went to him and said, ‘We’ve got a problem.’ Things that would have been little things are now big things. Why does this guy go off every weekend during crises? A businessman would stay there if he discovered he had a massive problem. This guy goes off alone. These things are what have the businessmen disturbed. Bebe Rebozo and Robert Abplanalp aren’t their people. He’s got to get rid of the trappings of royalty. He’s got to get around the country and listen.”

Woodward and Bernstein report in the Washington Post that the prosecuting attorneys are planning to subpoena the tape of June 4th, the day on which the President listened to some tapes, but that the White House says there could not be a tape of the tapes, because the President listened to them through earphones.

The Washington Star-News reports that John Dean shredded Howard Hunt’s notebooks last January. It says that Dean found them while he was going through a file folder containing material on the President’s estate plan.

Last night, on the CBS Special, William Saxbe said, “If somebody upstairs wants me to be the Attorney General at this time in our history, it’ll work out.”

“When you say someone ‘upstairs,’ ” Daniel Schorr asked him, “you don’t mean upstairs in the White House?”

“No,” replied Saxbe. “I mean God.”

NOVEMBER 6

Tuesday. Courtroom 2, on the second floor of the United States Court House, on Constitution Avenue, a short distance from Capitol Hill. Judge John J. Sirica’s courtroom. About forty reporters and two courtroom artists are here. The press fills the jury box, a table on the other side of the room, and the first several rows of seats in the section reserved for the public. The courtroom is full, but there are no lines of people waiting to get in. The room is plain, with a panel of marble in the center of the front wall. The seal of the United States is on the wall above where the Judge sits.

At one table is Douglas Parker, a lawyer for the White House, pale and slightly stout; he wears horn-rimmed glasses. Parker is on loan to the White House from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. There is a heavy demand for lawyers at the White House these days. At the Special Prosecutor’s table is a group of lawyers, their average age clearly under thirty-five. There are three pairs of steel-rimmed glasses, one beard, one mustache, and one woman, blond and in a miniskirt. She is Jill Wine Volner, an Assistant Special Prosecutor. One can understand the resentment that must be felt at the White House against the prosecution lawyers, whose questions its witnesses must answer and whose salaries the government pays. In one corner of the courtroom, John J. Wilson, lawyer for H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, sits unobtrusively, flag in lapel, taking notes.

Because neither of the chief White House lawyers, J. Fred Buzhardt and Leonard Garment, is here, the reporters who regularly cover the proceedings think something may be afoot. The White House has been putting it about—and it has been reported in the press—that the President would like to make the tapes public, if Judge Sirica would permit. On Friday, Stephen Bull testified in this courtroom that the President had told him five weeks ago that the two nonexistent tapes did not exist. This raised the question of why the court was informed of the “missing conversations” just last week. Over the weekend, White House aides explained to reporters in Key Biscayne, in “guidance”—a term meaning that the White House aides were not to be quoted—that the “ascertainment” that the tapes did not exist had been made just the previous weekend. They explained Bull’s revelation by saying that there had been an “awareness” on the part of the President earlier that the conversations had not been taped but that there had been no urgency about “ascertaining” this, because at that point the President had no intention of giving up the tapes. After the President changed his mind, his aides explained to the reporters at Key Biscayne, the search for the nonexistent tapes began to “intensify.” As a result of this “intensive” and “extensive” search, they explained, it was “ascertained” that the conversations were not recorded. Stephen Bull was at Key Biscayne over the weekend. Today, he is back in the courtroom for more questioning.

Bull is tanned from his weekend in Key Biscayne, and young, his clean-cut looks not unlike those of Ron Ziegler and Jeb Stuart Magruder. He is wearing a gray suit, with a flag in its lapel. A reporter says that Bull had intended to clear matters up quickly on Friday and then go to Key Biscayne for some sun and tennis. Now he is being questioned again, by Richard Ben-Veniste, another Assistant Special Prosecutor. Ben-Veniste, short, with curly hair and steel-rimmed glasses, lobs questions slowly and quietly, and they land in the witness box like grenades. Ben-Veniste’s aim is so accurate that it is hard to believe he does not already know the answers to the questions. But he does not, and as new information comes forth from the witness, Ben-Veniste does not quite suppress a satisfied smile. As Ben-Veniste, considering the next question, walks back and forth behind his lectern, the slight smile remains. “Sir,” says Bull at one point in the questioning, “if I could distinguish between a missing tape and a conversation that apparently was not recorded …” At another point, he refers to “conversations that may have not been recorded.” He slows up when he comes to this, as if to be careful to get it exactly right. I notice that he does not say “were not recorded.” Sirica, with the familiar wavy hair and bushy eyebrows, watches, expressionless. He says little. Sirica is now one of the lions of Washington. He is a major attraction at parties.

Bull explains that Buzhardt understood two weeks ago “that I was unable to find those two conversations.” But, he says, no one was sure at the time “that these conversations were unequivocally unavailable.” At one point, Ben-Veniste elicits testimony that in late September Bull took a number of tapes to Camp David. Bull also says that he did not return all the tapes.

Now Judge Sirica starts to question Bull. He asks him how many tapes he received. Bull tells him that he received “approximately one dozen tapes.”

“How many did you return?”

“Approximately four or five, sir.”

“To whom did those four or five go?”

“Returned them to John Bennett, Your Honor.” (General Bennett, who is an assistant to General Alexander Haig, now the President’s top adviser, is the latest custodian of the tapes.)

“What happened to the rest of them?”

“The remainder were retained by the President’s personal secretary, who is working with the President.”

“What is her name?”

“Rose Mary Woods, sir.”

“How long did she keep them?”

“At least a week, but I do not know beyond that period, sir.”

“Is that the last time you saw those seven or eight, or whatever the number was, when you turned them over to the personal secretary?”

“Perhaps a period of two weeks afterwards—I can’t recall the precise date I saw it, sir.”

“They were in her possession away from you for about two weeks?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where, in the White House or Camp David?”

“The White House.”

“What part?”

“Miss Woods’ office.”

“She kept them in her office for a period of two weeks?”

“Presumably.”

“She returned them to you?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you know what happened to the seven or eight tapes?”

“No, sir.”

“You don’t know to this date what happened?”

“No, sir.”

“All right.”

Judge Sirica suggests that “someone get word to Miss Woods that she will be called as a witness in this case.”

Ben-Veniste then draws some tales from Stephen Bull about the adventures of the White House tapes. On the last weekend in September, Rose Mary Woods was working with them in a cabin at Camp David. The President of the United States went to the cabin where his secretary was at work. Then someone from the “camp-support element” came to the cabin, and, says Bull, “I think we took precautions to obscure from his view the tapes and tape-playing device.” In his appearance in court on Friday, Bull testified that on two occasions in April and May he had given Haldeman twenty-two tapes. Today, Bull testifies that in July, with the President’s approval, he had sent “about a half-dozen” tapes to Haldeman. The President, says Bull, told him to tell Haldeman that when he testified before the Senate committee he should base his testimony on his personal recollections rather than on information from tape recordings.

Just after he has finished his questioning of Bull, Ben-Veniste has a new thought, and returns to his lectern. He asks if any tapes were carried anywhere else.

“Yes.”

“And where was that?”

“They were carried to Key Biscayne.”

“And when was that?”

“That was, approximately, October 4th. I think that is—Let me look at a calendar here. That is the week after the September 29th Camp David—Make that October 4th or 5th, please.”

The President and Miss Woods, says Bull, were continuing to review the tapes. Bull says that in the meantime the tapes were locked in Miss Woods’ safe.

Bull says, “Miss Woods was reviewing the tapes at Key Biscayne.”

“Do you mean she was typing transcripts from the tapes?” Ben-Veniste asks.

“No, sir, I did not say that she was typing a transcript.”

“Did you make some conscious effort to avoid looking at what she was typing?”

“I certainly did.”

Judge Sirica establishes that the tapes at Key Biscayne were those covered by the grand-jury subpoena.

“Do you know when those tapes were returned?” Judge Sirica asks.

“No, sir,” replies Bull.

“Were you aware of any statement by the White House press personnel that the tapes were being secured in the White House itself under the President’s personal control?” asks Judge Sirica.

Bull replies, “I read that recently in the newspaper.”

As Bull leaves the courthouse, the cameras and television reporters close in on him. This scene will be on tonight’s news. Cameramen have been waiting outside in the cold. The reporters ask, for the cameras, “Exactly when did the President know the tapes were not there?” Bull says that he wants to emphasize “very strongly” the distinction between missing tapes and nonrecorded conversations.

The tapes were not “missing.” They were “unequivocally unavailable.”

At noon, there are rumors that the President will go on television soon, for the purpose of everything from “clearing things up” to resigning.

This morning, in the New York Times, John Herbers writes, “The narrowness of Mr. Nixon’s day-to-day contacts has become a matter of growing concern to a number of Republican leaders in Congress and to some White House aides.” There have been several stories in the papers about how the President’s circle has contracted to General Haig and Ron Ziegler, neither of whom is likely to question the President’s judgment or bring him perspective from “the outside world.” But the President’s circle was never very wide, nor did it ever contain many people likely to question his judgment or bring him perspective from “the outside world.”

The familiar cycle has started up again. The President suffers some misadventure, and his standing goes down. Some of the politicians call for drastic action. The President recovers, but not quite to the point where he was before. The politicians, fingers ever to the wind, temporarily back off. On Capitol Hill, it has been noticed that no Republican senators joined Brooke in his call for the President’s resignation. He was left alone out on that limb. Many Democrats say that they cannot call for the President’s resignation, because that would appear partisan. “We are in a holding pattern,” said someone on Capitol Hill today. But the events are not in the control of either the President or those on Capitol Hill.

The Washington Star-News reports, “The trucking industry poured more than $600,000 into the Nixon campaign last year while it was fighting a government proposal that would have caused more competition in highway shipping.” This was, says the Star-News, more than was contributed by the milk industry.

NOVEMBER 7

A year ago today, Richard Nixon was elected to his second term as President of the United States, with the support of just over sixty percent of those voting. The conclusion had been foregone. The only question was the size of the victory. John Chancellor, on NBC, announced the President’s reëlection a very few minutes after 7 P.M., when the election-night coverage began. It was generally accepted that the President had won in a “landslide.” His opponent, George McGovern, carried only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. Mr. Nixon’s loss in 1960 had been narrow, and his victory in 1968 had been narrow. In 1972, he had scored a triumph.

But something odd happened. Just before the election, the President gave an interview to Garnett Horner, of the Washington Evening Star and Daily News (now the Star-News), and the bitterness poured out. The interview, released just after the election, caused a sensation at the time, and is even more interesting in retrospect. The President attacked federal programs and the “bloated” bureaucracy. He said that in order to set an example the White House staff would be reduced—in which he may have been unconsciously, or perhaps even consciously, prophetic. The President said that he expected all his appointees to submit their resignations so that he could, if he chose, dismiss them. He said that the country had passed through a “spiritual crisis” in the nineteen-sixties, which should be attributed not simply to the war but also to the “breakdown” in the “leadership class” and to “permissiveness.” The President said, “The average American is just like the child in the family. You give him some responsibility and he is going to amount to something. He is going to do something. If, on the other hand, you make him completely dependent and pamper him and cater to him too much, you are going to make him soft, spoiled and eventually a very weak individual. … Now I realize what I have just said, in many quarters of Washington in which we live, in the Georgetown cocktail set, that will be tut-tutted by those who are living in another era.” The President said he was going to “encourage [people] to do more for themselves, not only to encourage them, but to give them incentive to do more for themselves on their own without government assistance.”

There followed a rather grim period in which word came from the White House about impending “shakeups.” It is routine for Presidential appointees to submit their resignations after an election, in order to give the President the option to select his new “team.” But the post-election tone set by the Nixon Administration was different. The President had been vindicated in the election, and now there would be vengeance against those who had been giving him trouble, thwarting him in his efforts to achieve his goals: the Congress, the press, liberals, even people within his Administration who disagreed with him on some issues. At the time, an Administration official told me that because of the narrow victory in 1968, and because the Nixon Administration was new to Washington, it had been somewhat intimidated in the first term by the power of the Congress and the press and the bureaucracy to determine the mood in Washington and to define issues. But this time, said the Administration man, “We beat the bastards.” There followed the carpet bombing of North Vietnam, the impoundments, the President’s display of contempt for the Congress by not delivering the State of the Union address in person, and the unprecedented claims of executive privilege. There followed the shakeups, and the dispatch to the departments and agencies of men whose credentials were their loyalty to Haldeman and Ehrlichman, in an attempt to take total control of the government. Through Haldeman and Ehrlichman, Nixon tried to create a government within a government. John Ehrlichman once said, “The President is the government.”

Tonight, the President will go on television to give an address on the energy crisis. All day, he has been holding meetings on energy with labor leaders, industry leaders, governors, mayors, and congressional leaders. If he comes across as the leader dealing with a difficult problem that affects us all, this can help him. We need someone to handle this problem. The Congress can’t do it. The energy crisis is the President’s opportunity.

There is, of course, a large element of theatre in the Presidency, and even though we know it, like any theatre, it often draws us in. Whoever is President can pull back the curtain at will and use all manner of props. As Commander-in-Chief, the President can review troops, view awesome weapons, decorate heroes. If the President goes to church, it is noted in the papers. The President can command television coverage. Tonight, the President will be on television as our leader in the energy crisis.

It is not exactly clear when the energy problem became a “crisis.” There had been predictions for years that an energy shortage was coming. A Senate subcommittee headed by Senator Philip Hart, Democrat of Michigan, predicted it four and a half years ago. Consumption of energy grew at exponential rates. The timetable for the crisis was speeded up by the still unexplained sudden shortage of fuel last summer and by the cutoff of supplies by the Arab countries this fall. But all that does not entirely account for the crisis. Government has difficulty in dealing with a crisis before it is perceived as a crisis. Government is not anticipatory. Our prophets are without honor. Then, when a problem is ordained a crisis, it becomes all the rage. Congressmen hold hearings, and Presidents announce programs. There are conferences and commissions and television specials. We write books about it, spend money on it, and set it to music. And then we become bored with it. The transportation crisis. The urban crisis. The race crisis. The environmental crisis. Now the energy crisis. How long will the crisis of the Constitution hold our attention?

In tonight’s speech, the President announces a number of energy-saving measures. He asks for authority to relax environmental standards, so that more coal and high-sulphur oil can be used; to limit the number of hours that stores and other commercial establishments may stay open, and to curtail outdoor lighting; to control highway speed limits. He asks us to drive at fifty miles an hour or less, and to lower our thermostats to sixty-eight degrees. The President of the United States setting our speedometers and our thermostats. Even though the compliance is to be voluntary, this is an unprecedented reach of federal authority. But it’s probably necessary, and probably just the beginning. The President calls on Americans to “unite in the service of their country”; he calls for “a time of renewed commitment.”

In a postscript, he says he will not resign. “I have no intention of walking away from the job I was elected to do,” says the President. “As long as I am physically able, I am going to continue to work sixteen to eighteen hours a day for the cause of a real peace abroad and for the cause of prosperity without inflation and without war at home.” At one point, he says “enemy” when he means “energy.”

Today, Congress overrode the President’s veto of the war-powers bill. Several people had misgivings about the bill—were concerned that in fact it gave the President more powers. But by now it had become symbolic—a contest, no matter what the bill actually said, between the President and the Congress. It is believed that one reason several Republicans voted for the first time to override a veto by President Nixon is that Republicans suffered some defeats in elections yesterday. The national significance of such off-year elections is never clear, but politicians think that they are significant, and therefore they are. Earlier this week, one Republican member of Congress said that it was important to override the veto in order to give the Congress more confidence. Therapy.

George Aiken, of Vermont, the senior Republican in the Senate, said today that Congress should impeach the President or “get off his back.” People are trying to figure out what he meant. He may have meant exactly what he said.

At dinner, a Democratic senator says something startling. He says, “I hate Richard Nixon with a deep, personal hatred.” Politicians don’t usually say things like that. He says, “I hate Richard Nixon with a deep, personal hatred not just because of what he has done to the country but because of what he has done to politics.”

NOVEMBER 8

In a White House briefing yesterday, Ron Ziegler said that the President will give detailed answers to Watergate issues and questions. It is not yet clear how this will be done. Said Ziegler, “We are compiling information on all of these problems that have come in such a rush, and we are going to communicate to the Congress, the press, and the American people the President’s position more effectively than we have done in the past.” Ziegler was asked some unprecedented questions. Has the President been seeing a psychiatrist? “Absolutely not” was the answer. “After the briefing,” reports the Washington Post, “Ziegler told another reporter that Mr. Nixon also was not taking tranquillizing medicines or any other drugs.”

In Egil Krogh’s trial in California for the break-in of Dr. Fielding’s office, the attorney for the defense has demanded that the President turn over information dealing with the creation of the plumbers. Krogh’s attorney said that the documents would show that “any action which may have been taken by Krogh was pursuant to a directive of President Nixon.” Krogh has asked the court to subpoena Mr. Nixon to testify. Krogh seemed somewhat different from the others. While he was in the White House, he used to engage in earnest and troubled, though not disloyal, conversations with friends. He had practiced law with Ehrlichman in Seattle. He talked about his respect for the President and Ehrlichman, but he also talked about his concern over what he said he saw to be the President’s divisive stands on crime and the war. After Krogh, in trouble, resigned from the Administration in May, he said that he wanted to be part of “the healing process.” The others did not say that. Krogh is said to be weighing the possibility of coöperating with the Special Prosecutor.

The A.F.L.-C.I.O. today announced a drive for the President’s impeachment. The White House calls this “unseemly.”

Today, in court, Rose Mary Woods said that the quality of some of the tapes was “very bad.”

Elliot Richardson says that two days before Cox was fired the White House complained about his investigation of Rebozo.

William Ruckelshaus, the former Deputy Attorney General, says that the White House complained about an investigation by the Cox staff of allegations of violations of the civil rights of some peace demonstrators who sought to attend a rally held by the Reverend Dr. Billy Graham.

Representative Wilbur Mills, Democrat of Arkansas, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and a powerful man, says that pressure from the news media, the Congress, and the public will force the President to resign “within a short period of time.”

NOVEMBER 9

The Washington Post has a story saying that the President’s energy proposals are too late to help in this coming winter. I am keeping my thermostat at sixty-eight degrees, and I feel very patriotic, and I’m cold.

The Dow Jones stock-market average dropped twenty-four points today—its biggest drop in eleven years.

It is considered a major event that today the President met with Republican leaders at the White House and was reported to have listened to them.

Today, Judge Sirica reduced the sentences for all those—except G. Gordon Liddy, who has refused to coöperate with any investigators—convicted in connection with the break-in at the Watergate.

NOVEMBER 12

On Meet the Press, Senator Charles Percy, Republican of Illinois, announces that in the coming week the President will meet with all members of Congress, in six sessions, to be “interrogated” by them. Percy says that he thinks “this is the beginning of full and total disclosure.” A crescendo of Republican calls for “full and total disclosure” has been building. It is not clear what the Republicans mean by the term. The White House has been at pains to make as little “disclosure” as possible. Outsiders have no way of judging what there is to disclose. Therefore, we would have to take the President’s, or the politicians’, word that there has been “full and total disclosure.” Are the politicians, in their eagerness to get this thing behind them, going to coöperate in the President’s new maneuver? Institutional confusion is growing.

Today, there is a news story headed “GOP HILL SUPPORT AT 38-YEAR LOW.” A Gallup poll shows that if national congressional elections were being held now, the Republican loss of seats in the House of Representatives would be far greater than that normally suffered by an Administration in off-year elections.

NOVEMBER 12

An important House Democrat reached into his wallet and pulled out a bill of particulars for the impeachment of the President. “I keep it there because one time I dropped it in the hallway,” he explained.

I asked him why he wanted Mr. Nixon out of office.

“Because I haven’t wanted that guy to have power ever since he was a member of the House and was a sore loser over a twenty-five-dollar pot in a poker game,” he replied, and he continued, “The best thing for the Democrats, as many people have said, would be to keep Nixon in. If he were still in next fall, we’d sweep the congressional elections. If he were still in in 1976, we’d be sure to win. If Jerry Ford should become President before that, he could run and win. Truman did. Coolidge won, after the Harding scandals, on the argument that he had restored integrity in government. Jerry Ford could run on the ground of having improved the situation, which it would be very hard not to do.”

I asked the Democrat again why, then, he wanted to get Mr. Nixon out of office.

“You have to think of the nation,” said the House Democrat. He appeared to mean it. I had heard this kind of answer before when I asked why the Democrats would want to get Mr. Nixon out of office. I had been told that I had to consider the possibility that they were putting patriotism ahead of Party interests.

The Democrat said that the pressure on the President to resign would become very strong after Ford was confirmed as Vice-President. He said that the Republicans were very much concerned, and were in touch with each other now, and with members of the financial and diplomatic communities. “They are very much concerned, especially, about the military alert last month,” he said. “The alert did it. For us, too.”

A number of people say that there has to be “one more thing,” one more big revelation, one more earthquake, before the President can be removed from office. Some people have almost become addicted to these earthquakes, and take some satisfaction in their horror. I asked the Democrat if he subscribed to the “one more thing” theory. He said that the movement for impeachment would proceed in any event. “The House Judiciary Committee will build the case before the vote,” he said. “It won’t turn back.”

The tapes have struck again. Today, the White House announced that the President could not find the dictation belt that recorded his recollections of his April 15th meeting with Dean, of which it is also said that there is no tape. Twelve days ago, Buzhardt had promised that the dictation belt would be produced, and in June, in a letter to Cox, he referred to such a dictation belt. This latest loss came to light in the course of a White House effort—which included a statement issued by the President—“to help dispel those doubts” about the two nonexistent conversations. The President offered to make available to the court a dictation-belt recording of his recollections of his March 21st conversations with John Dean, as well as a dictation-belt recording of his recollection of the telephone conversation on June 20th, 1972—three days after the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters—with Mitchell, of which the White House says there is no tape. In his statement, the President expressed concern over “misconceptions about this matter” which have arisen “simply because certain basic facts are not being presented to the American people.”

Ziegler gave a briefing to the press and also made himself available to network correspondents for interviews. In the briefing, Ziegler said, “Now I know that the dramatic news lead would be—and I say that respectfully—that something else is missing.” Ziegler said that the “objective” of the briefing was to convince the American people that the President was being forthcoming with the information. The President ended his statement as follows: “It is my hope that these steps will clear up this aspect of the Watergate matter once and for all.”

The stock market dropped eleven more points today.

NOVEMBER 13

In today’s Washington Post, there is a photograph of Donald Segretti (“dirty tricks”), thirty-two, going to jail.

Leon Jaworski, the new Special Prosecutor, filed a brief in court yesterday arguing that “not even the highest office in the land” has the authority to break the law in the name of national security. Jaworski said, “In the recent past, national security has become a kind of talisman, invoked by officials at widely disparate levels of government service to justify a wide range of apparently illegal activities.”

Cox said in a speech yesterday—he is still at it—that he had been told that the President had said that Cox should “keep the hell out of” the matter of the raid on Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office. Cox also said today that the White House had refused to give him access to the files on the milk industry’s campaign contributions.

A Gallup poll says that the public is against removing the President from office by a percentage of fifty-four to thirty-seven.

NOVEMBER 14

The rift between the President and the Republicans is even wider than I had thought. Today, I went to see a Republican senator who had been very loyal to the President. I asked him if it was, as some said, just a matter of time before the Republicans broke with the President. He replied, “Yes. I considered myself a Nixon supporter. I faulted those around Nixon—felt that they used us and then cast us aside. When we got into Watergate, my gut reaction was to stand up and flail at the critics. But, as you may have noticed, not many of us did that. We didn’t know. There was a suspicion on the part of the senators. We figured, why should we stick our necks out? We don’t know what to think. There is one disclosure after another. Some of us would be willing to lose our Senate seats if we felt that the President was not involved. But I won’t stand on this desk and take an oath that the President has convinced me that the President is totally innocent. It’s going to take more than a statement by the President. I’ll need an independent source now—maybe Judge Sirica, maybe the House of Representatives. I’ll go out and charge into the critics if I feel that I’m armed with the facts, but I can’t feel that now. I call it a no-win situation for the Republicans now. If you go to speak to a Republican group, they are probably for the President, and they’ll say afterward, ‘Senator X didn’t stand up for the President,’ but there’s probably a reporter there, who will write about it if you do. It’s bad. I think many Republicans are waiting now. They’ve been used. I don’t see what the President can do himself to restore the lost confidence. Hedging is legal, and a lot of it is done in politics, but it’s difficult for us now. So we have to ask ourselves, ‘If there’s no way out for the President, how many others should suffer?’ Senators and House members will lose seats. And there are all the people outside the political arena who are losing faith. If he’s clean and he can find a springboard, and it doesn’t break with him jumping up and down on it, we might survive next year.”

The senator said there were three groups of Republican senators: those who had not supported the President at any point, and who, the other Republicans noticed, were now the strongest politically; those who remained loyal to the President; and those he described as “back and forth.” “There aren’t many gung-ho Nixon types in the cloakroom these days,” he said. “We wonder how he can stay. We wonder how much he can be enjoying this. The main thing is that there is now a disbelief. How can we believe? What can we tell the people? I have decided that I don’t know of any recourse but an impeachment inquiry. That or Judge Sirica. It’s too late for him to get up and say, ‘I didn’t tell the American people about this or that, and I regret that.’ It’s too late. But he won’t give up. He just doesn’t give up. There’s nothing you can really point to about which you can say that that is what is causing time to run out, but a lot of us feel that it is running out. People here seem to feel Jerry Ford has gone over well with the American people. They find him acceptable—more acceptable than Nixon.” The senator said that if, as many thought, Ford had been chosen to provide insurance against the President’s impeachment, because of his apparently lacklustre credentials for becoming President, it was turning out to be “just the reverse.” The senator continued, “At first, when they said to us, ‘Come to the White House,’ we thought that was quite something. But that doesn’t work anymore. We’re not awestruck anymore. They kept telling us that this story would go away. It’s still here.”

Said another Republican senator, “We keep weighing having him out of office versus limping along for three years. We are losing confidence in his ability to turn it around.” The senator said he was getting letters from third-grade children who were troubled about the President. He said, “This is deeper on the college campuses than Cambodia was.” Finally, he said, “When it’s a question of me and thee in politics, it’s usually thee who has to go.”

A federal judge ruled today that the firing of Archibald Cox was illegal. He said that the action by Acting Attorney General Robert Bork violated a federal regulation that had the force of law. The ruling did not have the effect of reinstating Cox.

I shared a taxi from Capitol Hill this afternoon with two men who were getting off at the Justice Department. “You work at the Justice Department?” the taxi-driver said to one of them. “I guess you stand a pretty good chance of being Attorney General.”

NOVEMBER 15

The Washington Post reports that Representative John Anderson, Republican of Illinois, who is an important member of the House, has said that he has decided not to run for the Senate next year. Anderson cited “the spectre of Watergate” as the reason for his decision. He said a private poll taken for him in Illinois showed that forty-six percent of the voters there thought Watergate was the most important issue.

The Administration is reported to be divided over whether to impose gasoline rationing.

A Washington Post feature on Peter Rodino, the sixty-five-year-old Democrat of New Jersey, and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, brings to the surface a question that there has been in conversation about Rodino, whose committee is to conduct the impeachment inquiry. Rodino was close to, and at one time shared a Washington apartment with, former Representative Hugh Addonizio, who, like Rodino, represented Newark. Addonizio later became mayor of Newark and recently went to jail on charges of corruption. The Post points out that Rodino represents “a region where organized crime has been entrenched and political corruption common.” It quotes the United States Attorney who prosecuted Addonizio as saying, “There’s never been an inquiry about Rodino, never the slightest anything. In my opinion, Pete Rodino is an honest man and a fine public servant.” The Post quotes Rodino as saying that he would not know a mobster “if I fell over him.” Rodino told the Post that there was nothing in his background that the Administration could use to induce him to go easy on impeachment.

It has come to that. We wonder, because we have to, who has what on whom. We assume that the question of potential blackmail extends to many levels—staff members, lawyers, anyone in Washington peripherally involved in the question of the President’s fate. It is an unpleasant way to have to think about the Constitution, but there is no escaping it.

In Senate hearings yesterday, Ford’s record on civil rights was attacked by leaders of the civil-rights movement. But now even less attention is being paid to the hearings on Ford.

Yesterday, Judge Sirica issued a statement saying, “If the President thinks it advisable to waive any privilege and make tapes or other material public, he of course is free to do so at any time.”

Leon Jaworski has told the court that he has been assured of access to White House tapes and documents regarding the work of the plumbers. Earlier this month, in the court in Washington, Krogh’s attorney indicated that the defense will seek to show that Krogh lied about the work of the plumbers because he had been under orders from the President to maintain secrecy about the plumbers’ activities. Two days ago, the judge in the case, Gerhard Gesell, termed Krogh’s argument that he lied under orders “a Nuremberg defense.” (In the Nuremberg war-crimes trials, some former Nazi high officials defended themselves on the ground that they had been following orders. This line of defense was not accepted by the tribunal.) Judge Gesell said, “I don’t think that’s an argument I can entertain. We would have no society.” Today, Judge Gesell dismissed the motion by Krogh’s lawyers to dismiss the indictment on the ground that Krogh had been ordered to lie.

Tonight, on the television news, the President is standing in front of a giant replica, with colored lights, of the American flag. It may be the largest replica of the flag that I have ever seen. The President is beaming and waving his arms over his head. The scene is from his appearance this morning before the National Association of Realtors, meeting at the Sheraton-Park Hotel here. He says, “As far as the President of the United States is concerned, he has not violated his trust and he isn’t going to violate his trust now.”

As a powerful man starts to fall, or as his power begins to decline, one can almost sense people pulling in their lines of credit. It is a cruel but sure judgment that people who know about power make. Unseen, an enormous alteration in his situation takes place. The alteration affects the kinds of people he is able to hire, the willingness of people to go to great lengths, take risks, for him. One senses that this has happened to Richard Nixon. But there is also a deep fear of moving against him. The fear is felt even by some of those who believe that he should be removed from power. He is still the President, and the levers of power are still within his reach. In part, the paralysis stems from fear of making a move that will not succeed. This is not the sort of struggle one can afford to lose. Many businessmen want the President to go, but they are afraid to speak out—which is characteristic. Businessmen who were disturbed about the continuing war in Southeast Asia were reluctant to speak out on that. I have asked a number of businessmen, and their Washington lawyers, about this reluctance. Most of them offer the same explanation: that business has too much business with the government to speak out against it. There are the merger applications, the contract bids, the airline-route requests, the license renewals. The President’s power to reward or punish continues, even if the President is in trouble. Businessmen believe that the enemies list was real. When others were laughing at the enemies list, one businessman, whose politics are very liberal, was admonished by his board of directors not to take any action or any position that might land him on an enemies list.

Many politicians are also frightened. They do not want to be on the losing side of this issue. Many politicians are less frightened of Richard Nixon than they used to be, but the fright is still there. Some citizens are frightened. Perhaps the sense that this was a tough and punitive Administration, one that would give trouble to those who gave it trouble, was deeper—and has had more lasting effect—than we may have thought. Perhaps, in fact, it was a very effective posture for an Administration to take. Perhaps, in fact, it has set another precedent. Memoranda written by Nixon Administration members on how to frighten the media—through license challenges, anti-trust suits—have recently been made public. We also know that many of their recommendations were carried out. There was a time, not long ago, when many people stopped to consider whether to speak out on an issue, sign a petition, file a lawsuit—for fear of retribution. Some still do.

John Connally is interviewed by Daniel Schorr on the CBS news tonight, and appears to be very upset. He has been subpoenaed by the Ervin committee. There are allegations that Connally helped collect funds from the milk producers, and helped persuade the President to override other officials and raise the price supports for milk. On television tonight, Connally complains about “the atmosphere and the times in which we live, the inferences, the innuendos, the rumors.” Connally says, “And I must say, Dan, that if this environment prevails that exists today in the United States and in Washington, I tell you very frankly, I’ll have no plans for ’76.”

NOVEMBER 16

The President is going South, where the climate and his political reception promise to be warmer than in Washington or other parts of the country. He will make some public appearances. It is becoming more complicated for the President to travel. Now he is under criticism for the amount of fuel that such trips consume. Yesterday, Gerald Warren told reporters that the cruising speed of the President’s jet, the “Spirit of ’76,” will be reduced from five hundred and twenty-five miles an hour to four hundred and seventy-five, and that the spare plane usually sent on such trips will be grounded for this one. The Presidential helicopters will, however, fly to Key Biscayne for the President’s use, and his special limousine will be flown South in a separate plane.

This week, the Ervin committee—for three days—was instructive on the subject of money. Executives of various kinds of corporations, including shipbuilding, oil, and airlines, told how they raised and turned over illegal campaign contributions. Some of the executives and the corporations themselves have been charged by the Special Prosecutor with making illegal corporate contributions. The testimony illustrates how the illegal funds were gathered—through entering fake bonuses and false expense reports, through disguising the funds as investments in land, or through transferring the funds from foreign subsidiaries. Last spring, when the revelations of large cash contributions had begun, a Washington lawyer was asked at a party how it was that corporations could come up with such large sums in cash. We had read that oil-company executives had stuffed seven hundred thousand dollars in cash and checks into a suitcase, which was then flown to Washington, in a jet owned by Pennzoil. A successful businessman, puzzled, said to the lawyer that he did not understand how a business could secure substantial amounts of cash. The lawyer, who knows a lot, said, “Oil companies can.”

The businessmen who testified before the Ervin committee spoke of the “pressure” on them to contribute to the President’s reëlection. One said that both John Mitchell and Maurice Stans had asked him for funds on various occasions. He said, “That is just a little bit different than somebody collecting for the Boy Scouts.” An oil-company executive said he feared that if his company did not contribute, it would be on an Administration “blacklist” or at the “bottom of the totem pole.” He said he was aware that other oil companies were contributing.

There is in this subject of money a problem of definition. The law makes a distinction between “extortion” and “bribery.” The distinction may be much clearer in the words of the law than in reality. The way the act of making a contribution is interpreted may depend upon what a prosecutor is looking for. The more the businessmen portray themselves as having been, in effect, victims of “extortion,” the less they are subject to prosecution for “bribery.” This is what made Agnew so angry. Moreover, many contributors can say, in all honesty, that they gave because they believed in the politician. And many politicians can say, in all honesty, that they took an action that happened to be in the contributor’s interest because they believed the action was right. It is usually fruitless to search for the specific quid pro quo between a campaign gift and a political decision by the recipient. The parties to these acts usually do not talk to each other about them. It is rare that the quid and the quo are discussed. Dita Beard’s memorandum (which she later described as a “forgery” and a “hoax”) received so much notoriety precisely because it broke this well-established rule of procedure. It contained the suggestion, at least, of a quid pro quo concerning “our noble commitment”—for I.T.T. to contribute four hundred thousand dollars to the Republican convention that was not held in San Diego in exchange for a favorable anti-trust decision. Many politicians make a point of not knowing what their fund-raisers do. In his October 26th press conference, President Nixon said that he has made it a practice to refuse “to have any discussion of contributions.”

The Ervin committee’s attention to the subject of money was limited. We still do not know to what extent the government was sold in the last election. Many businessmen give to the Republican Party because they believe that its policies are better for America. Some believe that this is the only way to balance the influence of unions on the Democrats. Nixon officials often point to the “checkoffs” of union dues which go for political activities, and ask how these are different from the corporate contributions to the Nixon elections. They point out that corporate executives have often contributed to Democrats, too.

As with other areas in which Nixon officials cite precedents, they have a point, and at the same time they miss the larger point. For years, it has been widely known that labor, through its contributions of money and manpower, has had a strong influence on the Democratic Party. It has been widely known that there have been underground rivers of money flowing into campaigns, and that some government decisions have been guided by the access of money to power. In recent years, two things made this a problem of a different order, and of a different nature. The first was the sudden, rapid growth in the costs of campaigns in the nineteen-sixties, largely because of television advertising. The second was that in raising money, as in other things, the Nixon Administration overreached. Like others around Nixon, Nixon’s fund-raisers did not recognize limits. Maurice Stans and Herbert Kalmbach carried to unprecedented lengths the practice of raising money from those who did business with the government. In the process, they broke the game wide open. The Common Cause suit helped us to see what they had done. And Watergate changed the atmosphere. Some candidates for Congress are now said to be having difficulty finding treasurers for their campaigns. It is said that businessmen do not want to get trapped again, and will be reluctant to be so generous in the future. The politicians are beginning to wonder what they will do for money.

Inevitably, stories are leaking out about this week’s meetings between the President and members of Congress. Members of Congress are notorious sieves. Senator Percy was not exactly correct in saying that the President would meet with every member of Congress. The President met with Republicans and selected Southern Democrats. The President has done his arithmetic: this is the group that could save him in a vote on impeachment in the House or conviction in the Senate. At some of the meetings, the President spoke at length on the energy crisis and foreign policy as well as Watergate, leaving little time for questions. Someone has told me that at one meeting Senator Eastland, in a burst of enthusiasm, said, “We believe in you, Mr. President,” and that Senator Stennis then said to Senator Eastland, “Quiet! Let the boy speak.” At another meeting, Senator Roman Hruska, Republican of Nebraska, said, “The State of Nebraska is behind you, Mr. President.” Some senators are reported in the papers to have told the President that he must be more “frank and open.” The President is said to have suggested that Elliot Richardson had not told the truth when he said he would not be a party to prohibiting Cox from trying to secure more documents. The President is said to have suggested that Richardson took the position he did at the end because he wants to be governor of Massachusetts. Addressing Senator Charles Mathias, Republican of Maryland, during a discussion of the Administration’s problems, the President mentioned that contributors to former Vice-President Agnew had also contributed to Senator Mathias. (There has been no suggestion that Mathias has been connected in any way with illegal contributions.) The senators interpreted the President’s remark to Mathias as an indication of the kind of research that the White House had done on those who might oppose him. Mathias later said to the President that it was no longer adequate for the President to assert executive privilege or national security as a reason for doing certain things. He asked for a detailed explanation of his approval of the plumbers and of the Huston plan for admittedly illegal intelligence-gathering on American citizens. The President said that he would send a report to the Congress on the plumbers and the Huston plan.

This week, Senator Howard Cannon, Democrat of Nevada and chairman of the committee examining the nomination of Ford, said, “There’s always the chance that we may be confirming a President, not just a Vice-President.”

The President said some optimistic things about the energy crisis today as he signed a bill permitting the construction of an oil pipeline in Alaska, and the stock market went up. The energy crisis has caused the environmentalists several reverses. Like civil rights and poverty activists, the environmentalists were indulged until their objectives were seen as inconveniencing the majority.

On the news tonight, Julie Nixon Eisenhower and Anne Armstrong, a Presidential counsellor, pose with a suitcase containing messages of support for the President. The suitcase was not the happiest choice of container.

NOVEMBER 17

At 7 P.M., there is no choice but to watch the President being questioned by newspaper editors meeting at Walt Disney World, in Orlando, Florida. The buildup to this appearance has been akin to that which precedes the Super Bowl. One television announcer says that this is part of the President’s “new campaign to increase his credibility.” The President will submit to questions about Watergate. He has, of course, submitted to questions about Watergate before, but this, the week of what has come to be called Operation Candor, is the week to “turn it around.” The President is forceful, strong-voiced, landing on certain words for emphasis. He says he spoke on the telephone with John Mitchell “at the end of the day in the family quarters.” He talks of things he will “disclose to this audience.” Politicians and officials usually prepare some “disclosures” for press conferences and interviews. The point is to try to set the agenda and assure the headline—on the right subject.

Tonight, the President discloses that he telephoned John Mitchell on June 20, 1972, in order to cheer him up after the men were caught in the Watergate. He goes into detail about why a tape ran out, and we are farther and farther from the point. He explains that his taping system was “a Sony, a little Sony that they had,” and that “what they had are these little lapel mikes in my desk.” As he says that, he rubs the flag in his lapel. He says, with a smile, that the equipment President Johnson had “was, incidentally, much better equipment.” (There have been reports that Presidents Kennedy and Johnson had some telephone conversations and meetings recorded, but even these reports do not indicate that either had a taping system on anything like the scale of Nixon’s.) He adds that he is not criticizing Sonys. An editor asks him his reaction to the discovery that tapes of the conversations with Dean and Mitchell did not exist, and the President replies that it was one of “great disappointment, because I wanted the evidence out.” He says that the plumbers were established to stop leaks of information that were endangering the national security, including one “so serious that even Senator Ervin and Senator Baker agreed it should not be disclosed.” Asked how Watergate could happen, the President replies, “Seventy-two was a very busy year for me.” Arguing that measures have been taken to hold down the consumption of fuel during his trip to the South, Nixon points out that the back-up plane had not been brought on this trip. He adds that if his own plane goes down, “it goes down, and then they don’t have to impeach.” He talks about his Vice-Presidential papers and gives some details of his finances, and then he says, “Let me just say this: I want to say this to the television audience—I made my mistakes, but in all of my years of public life, I have never profited, never profited from public service. I have earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice.” He says that he welcomes “this kind of examination, because people have got to know whether or not their President is a crook,” and then he says, “Well, I am not a crook.”

Societies need unifying symbols, and the Presidency has been ours. We cling to the idea that the Presidency is worthy of our respect, because we want it to be. In linking his fate with the fate of the Presidency itself, Nixon is making his ordeal ours. In trying, through his office, to protect himself against the damage from all that has happened, he has attached the damage to the office. That is part of what makes this such a painful time. It is humiliating to see a President subjected to humiliation, whatever its origin. It’s hard to watch him struggle to answer questions that should never have to be asked. It is difficult to watch a President running and maneuvering like a hunted man. There are stories in the papers these days about the Afo-A-Kom, the sacred statue of the kingdom of Kom, in Cameroon. The statue, a symbol of the political and religious heritage of the people of Kom, had long been missing, and was recently found in the United States. It is being returned to Kom. The well-being of the tribe depends upon its presence. When the totem is gone, the tribe is in trouble. We seem to have an almost totemistic view of the Presidency. Our well-being is involved with it. In Nixon’s frequent reminders that he is the President, he speaks to something in us.