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APRIL 20

A SECOND SUBPOENA to produce materials was served on the President this week, this one requested by Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski and signed by Judge John Sirica. The subpoena was for tapes, memoranda, and Dictabelts covering sixty-four conversations between the President and his aides which occurred between June 20, 1972, three days after the break-in at the Watergate, and June 4, 1973, the day on which the President is said to have spent from ten to twelve hours listening to tapes. The materials have been requested in connection with the forthcoming trial, scheduled for September, of Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, Colson, and the rest of the seven defendants in the cover-up of the Watergate break-in. Twenty-four of the conversations are among those subpoenaed by the House Judiciary Committee last week.

The Republican loss of the election in Michigan’s Eighth Congressional District on Tuesday—a seat that Republicans had held for forty-two years—inevitably led to political and press speculation that the President was in worse trouble than ever. The politicians and the press have become accustomed to making the link between election outcomes and the President’s fate. If the President is to be impeached, it should be on solid grounds, which will be understood by contemporary Americans and by history. Some Republicans are saying he should be removed from office not because he did anything wrong but because his presence hurts the Party. But the Constitution was not designed to protect political parties.

In the Vesco trial in New York this week, the defense rested its case after both John Mitchell, the former Attorney General, and Maurice Stans, the former Secretary of Commerce, took the stand in their own defense. They are being tried for perjury and conspiracy to obstruct an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission into the activities of the financier Robert Vesco in exchange for a contribution of two hundred thousand dollars from Vesco for the President’s reëlection. Stans said that Vesco had made the contribution in secret because “privacy was his Constitutional right under the law.” Mitchell said that he had called the S.E.C. because he had received reports that the agency was harassing Vesco and he did not want it to take precipitate action. “I wouldn’t flatter myself that the call would be a help,” the former Attorney General said.

During the week, I talked with one of the President’s aides. Here are some of the things he said: The mood at the White House is sad, melancholy. “It’s kind of like a hospital.” There is no way things can come out well, and there is a feeling of inevitability about what still has to be gone through. The President is finished anyway, and will be unable to govern. The number of people leaving adds to the pall. (A week ago, Bryce Harlow, one of the President’s chief advisers, quietly took his leave of the White House. Other departures are rumored.) Whenever tapes or other materials are requested, the President’s attitude is “Don’t give them anything. No. Never.” Advice is received from the Republican leaders on the Hill, from Haig, from Ron Ziegler, from St. Clair, and all this is put together, and what comes out is homogenized decisions. Haig can and does tell the President that he should yield tapes and materials requested by investigators. None of the lawyers have been levelled with and know all. The Nixon Administration was the last outpost in defense of a discredited policy; Vietnam is part of the story. The Nixon Administration was up against the fact that so many people disagreed with its belief that what was “right” for America was necessarily moral. Up against that—up against a bureaucracy that it did not trust and that it perceived as opposing many of its policies—it inevitably formed its own groups to deal with problems, and became a garrison. The House has not been given up on. It is true that no one can talk very knowledgeably about this, knows the President’s mind. But a fight will be made in the House. The House is “the crucible.” The President’s resignation should not be ruled out. If the House comes up with a strong bill of impeachment, which will be tough to beat in the Senate—a bill with a heavy vote behind it—that might be the end.

The Nixon White House group, the aide said, had been a collection of little groups—sometimes of factions of one. In one place there were Haldeman and Ehrlichman; somewhere else there was Colson; somewhere else there was Dean; somewhere else, Mitchell; somewhere else, Leonard Garment, the President’s former law partner who had become an adviser on cultural affairs, minorities, and occasional legal matters; somewhere else, Patrick Buchanan and Raymond Price, the speechwriters; somewhere else, Robert Abplanalp and Bebe Rebozo, the friends. So when this thing came undone there were no half-dozen people who could get together and talk with the President and plan.

The White House man said that he thought all the subpoenas would be complied with but that it took time for Buzhardt to listen to the tapes. I asked him why, if the subpoenas were going to be complied with, Buzhardt had to listen to the tapes. He looked at me in astonishment.

The White House man also said that we are in a period of McCarthyism, of a “witch-hunt.” He said that many people who think of themselves as caring about balance and fairness and civil liberties are going to look back at this period with regret. It was time, I realized, to think very carefully about what he said. He said that the testimony of one person, for example, is now reported as fact. That is not quite the case, but it is true that the testimony of one person and allegations as well, even rumors, are now printed as news stories and given more prominence and authority than they would be in another time, another context. There is no question that great effort is expended to find misdeeds on the part of the Administration, but it is also apparent that there have been many misdeeds to find. The secrecy in which so much was done and the pains that have been taken to keep us from discovering the facts have heightened the zeal to get at them. And we are living in a supercharged atmosphere, in which the competition within the press is strong. It is easy to see how the White House might view this as a witch-hunt, but that does not make it one.

It was announced this week that in the first three months of this year the gross national product dropped by the greatest amount since 1958, and that the rate of inflation for the same period was fourteen and a half percent.

APRIL 27

Another week of maneuvers and suspense. The showdown, or whatever it will be, between the President and the House Judiciary Committee has been postponed. The White House requested, and was granted, five more days to respond to the committee’s subpoena. Rodino was anxious to appear “reasonable.” Ron Ziegler says the White House is not delaying: “Our objective is to move as quickly as possible.” There have been rumors, based on leaks from the White House, that the President will submit edited transcripts of what he considers “relevant” material, and also rumors that, in the face of prior notice by several committee members that this would not suffice, he is reconsidering. The President is reported to be “deeply involved” in forming the response to the committee, and to be listening to tapes. Rodino said this week that transcripts would be an “emphatically” unsatisfactory response. John Rhodes has proposed that Rodino, Hutchinson, Doar, and Jenner listen to the tapes and decide what is relevant, or that perhaps this could be done by Gerald Ford. I had thought that Rhodes was Ford’s friend.

Ford said this week that he “hopes and trusts” that the White House will hand over all “relevant” material. The Vice-President did not offer his own definition of the term, or say who is to determine what is “relevant.” (The New York Times had a story this week, based on “sources,” and on “close friends” in whom Ford confided—meaning that the story probably came from Ford himself, or had his sanction—to the effect that Ford is “perplexed by what he senses to be the feeling of some White House aides that he is attempting to undercut President Nixon.” The story continued, “The Vice-President has concluded, according to those sources, that certain members of Mr. Nixon’s staff don’t understand the close relationship, dating back more than a quarter of a century, that Mr. Ford has had and continues to have with the President.”)

Henry Petersen, the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, yesterday opposed proposals to broaden restrictions on wiretapping and electronic surveillance. (Hearings are planned in the Senate on proposals to ban any wiretaps without a court order and to require that notice of all approvals of taps be referred to the Congress.) Petersen told a House subcommittee, “I can be very brief. We oppose the bills. That’s it.”

APRIL 28

Sunday. Telephone calls today begin, “Did you hear about the acquittal?” Mitchell and Stans have been acquitted, and at once the talk and the reflections turn to the implications. The White House will be able to say that this shows that John Dean, who testified for the prosecution, is not a credible witness.

APRIL 29

An affidavit that Charles Colson has filed with Judge Gerhard Gesell, who will preside over the trial for the break-in at the office of Dr. Lewis J. Fielding, Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, says that the President said, “I don’t give a damn how it is done, do whatever has to be done to stop these leaks and prevent further unauthorized disclosures; I don’t want to be told why it can’t be done.”

The President, on television again, one American flag behind him and one in his lapel, says that he has been examining “the very difficult choices that were presented to me.” His actions will show, he says, that all the statements he has made about “the Watergate break-in and cover-up” were correct, “just as I have described them to you from the very beginning.” He talks about some transcripts he is releasing—more than twelve hundred pages—and the camera pans to two high stacks of notebooks imprinted with the Presidential seal. “Portions not relevant” are not included, he says. The President looks grave—somewhat haggard but very much in command. He tells us how hard he has worked on this, and how much of “my own time” was spent listening to the tapes. He says that Rodino and Hutchinson may come to the White House to listen to the tapes on which the transcripts are based. Will they go? Dare they? Dare they not? Baker and Ervin went last fall. The President refers to the Judiciary Committee counsel, who are not invited to listen to the tapes, as “staff employees.” Now, he says, he will make “a major exception” to the doctrine of executive privilege. He refers to “the current impeachment climate,” and how he wants to spare the nation “a wrenching ordeal.” Is he resigning? It seems not. He smiles as he refers to “the morning newspapers” and “the evening newscasts” and how they aired charges that became part of the atmosphere, and then he says, “The distinction between fact and speculation grew blurred. … The basic question at issue today is whether the President personally acted improperly in the Watergate matter. Month after month of rumor, insinuation, and charges by just one Watergate witness—John Dean—suggested that the President did act improperly.” The transcripts, he says, will lead to some “sensational” stories; there are parts that “will be in conflict with some of the testimony given in the Senate Watergate committee hearings.” He continues, “I have been reluctant to release these tapes not just because they will embarrass me and those with whom I have talked—which they will—and not just because they will become the subject of speculation and even ridicule—which they will—and not just because certain parts of them will be seized upon by political and journalistic opponents—which they will.” Of what the transcripts will reveal, he says, “I wanted to do what was right, but I wanted to do it in a way that would cause the least unnecessary damage in a highly charged political atmosphere to the Administration. … I was striving to sort out a complex tangle.” He is telling us how to read the transcripts, and characterizing other interpretations as the work of his “opponents.” A very effective performance.

Almost as an aside, the President says the transcripts “should place in somewhat better perspective the controversy over the eighteen-and-a-half-minute gap in the tape of a conversation I had with Mr. Haldeman back in June of 1972.” He says, “Now, how it was caused is still a mystery to me, and I think to many of the experts, as well.” Disputing Dean’s testimony, he says that the Hunt “blackmail” concerned “a potential national-security problem.” He says that he even considered letting a payment to Hunt go forward, “at least temporarily.” This is new; is it to deal with the fact that the grand jury says that a payment did go forward? There are holes in what he is saying, many of them, but even if one has studied the issue, it is hard to keep up with him. He is smart; he is releasing a transcript of the March 21st tape, which the Judiciary Committee already has, and giving it his own interpretation. It’s a daring gamble. Why are there all those notebooks? “I intend to go forward,” he says, and he again attaches himself to Abraham Lincoln, quoting Lincoln at a time when “he was being subjected to unmerciful attack.” He smiles, and it is over.

APRIL 30

In a CBS interview this morning, Buzhardt says that nine of the conversations subpoenaed by the House committee were “non-recorded.”

The telephone-book-size document in pale-blue covers—my copy of the transcripts, which arrives this evening—is a surprise. The image of all those notebooks had stayed in my mind. The document, titled “Submission of Recorded Presidential Conversations to the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives by Richard Nixon,” has been published by the United States Government Printing Office. There is a little Presidential seal on the cover. The pages are in typescript, double-spaced. But still this is a formidable document, covering forty-six conversations (including eight already in the possession of the committee, and omitting some that the committee already has)—one thousand three hundred and eight pages, beginning like a script for a play. Dean enters the Oval Office:

P Hi, how are you? You had quite a day today didn’t you. You got Watergate on the way didn’t you?

D We tried.

The script ends, incredibly, with the President’s speech of last April 30th, exactly a year ago—the speech in which he announced the resignations of Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Dean and Kleindienst, and called Haldeman and Ehrlichman “two of the finest public servants it has been my privilege to know.” He told us then that he had not become aware until March of a possible involvement of White House staff members in a cover-up of the Watergate break-in, and that he had “personally assumed the responsibility for coördinating intensive new inquiries into the matter”; that he had directed his aides to appear before the Ervin committee, and to coöperate with the prosecutors and the grand jury; that he had been so busy pursuing peace in 1972 that he delegated the management of his campaign and sought to remove campaign decision-making from the White House, but that “in any organization, the man at the top must bear the responsibility.” He said that when the Watergate break-in occurred, “I was in Florida trying to get a few days’ rest after my visit to Moscow,” that “I immediately ordered an investigation by appropriate government authorities,” that he had “discounted the stories in the press that appeared to implicate members of my Administration or other officials of the campaign committee.” He said he would then turn to “the larger duties of this office,” including another visit to Moscow. “We must maintain the integrity of the White House. … There can be no white-wash at the White House,” he said.

And then we go back and read in these transcripts how the President, on the day that the original Watergate defendants were indicted, congratulates John Dean for being “very skillful putting your fingers in the leaks that have sprung here and sprung there.” (The White House summary in the front of the book says that this comment was made “in the context of the politics of the matter such as civil suits, counter-suits, Democratic efforts to exploit Watergate as a political issue and the like.”) We read, in the March 21st conversation, of Dean telling the President that Haldeman was reading information gathered from the bugging of the Democratic headquarters, and that Haldeman did not “necessarily” know where it was coming from but that Haldeman’s aide, Gordon Strachan, did. It is never quite clear whether the President is saying things for the benefit of Dean or the tape or as a simple statement or a question. He says, “I don’t know about anything else,” when Dean explains that Hunt is threatening to expose some of the “seamy” things he did. At one point, when the President starts to make a suggestion, Haldeman, who knows the room is taped, says (because of Dean? the tape?), “Be careful.”

Even things said casually are astonishing: Dean telling the President that he had told John Caulfield, the White House investigator, to “come up with a plan that, you know—a normal infiltration, buying information from secretaries and all that sort of thing.” But Ehrlichman and Mitchell felt that Caulfield was not the man to do this and asked Dean to look around for someone who could run the campaign intelligence-gathering program. Dean then selected Liddy, he says, because “they needed a lawyer.” Of Liddy, Dean says, “I was aware that he had done some extremely sensitive things for the White House while he had been at the White House and he had apparently done them well. Going out into Ellsberg’s doctor’s office—” To which the President says, “Oh, yeah.” (The President has said that he learned about the Ellsberg break-in on March 17th.) The incident was not reported to the Judge in the Ellsberg trial until late April—the report apparently made at the insistence of Petersen and Kleindienst. In the March 17th conversation, when Dean tells the President that Hunt and Liddy—“geared up with all this C.I.A. equipment, cameras and the like”—had directed the break-in of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office and that Ehrlichman had some connection with the operation, the President says, “What in the world—what in the name of God was Ehrlichman having something (unintelligible) in the Ellsberg (unintelligible)? … This is the first I ever heard of this. I, I (unintelligible) care about Ellsberg was not our problem.” The problem, says Dean, is that a camera was returned to the C.I.A. with film still in it, that the C.I.A. developed the pictures, “and they’ve got Gordon Liddy standing proud as punch outside this doctor’s office with his name on it.”

In the March 21st conversation, discussing the question of the payment to Hunt: Dean telling the President, “This is the sort of thing Mafia people can do: washing money, getting clean money, and things like that.” And then, when Dean tells the President that it would cost a million dollars to continue to buy the silence of the defendants, the President’s response: “We could get that. On the money, if you need the money you could get that. You could get a million dollars. You could get it in cash. I know where it could be gotten. It is not easy, but it could be done. But the question is who the hell would handle it? Any ideas on that?” When Dean tells the President that Fred LaRue, former assistant to John Mitchell at the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, has gone out “trying to solicit money from all kinds of people,” the President’s response is “No!” When Dean says that LaRue “has apparently talked to Tom Pappas”—a Boston businessman—the President’s response is “I know.” The President asks Dean whether he would put the money “through the Cuban committee,” and “Is the Cuban committee an obstruction of justice, if they want to help?” Dean informs the President, “Well, they have priests in it.” And the President responds, “Would that give a little bit of a cover?” Dean says, “You have to wash the money. You can get $100,000 out of a bank, and it all comes in serialized bills.” And the President says, “I understand.” The counsel to the President tells the President, “And that means you have to go to Vegas with it or a bookmaker in New York City.”

One comes to that line “No—it is wrong that’s for sure.” One reads backward and forward from it. The President says it just after he has said that “politically” he cannot give clemency to Hunt until after the 1974 elections and asks Dean if “Your point is that even then you couldn’t do it,” and Dean replies, “That’s right. It may further involve you in a way you should not be involved in this.” Before that, the President has asked Dean whether “the million bucks” could “hold that side,” and when Dean says “Uh-huh,” the President replies, “It would seem to me that would be worthwhile.” Dean tells the President that Hunt has a commitment from Colson to receive clemency by Christmas of 1973. Remarks Haldeman: “That is your fatal flaw in Chuck. He is an operator in expediency, and he will pay at the time and where he is to accomplish whatever he is there to do. … I would believe that he has made that commitment if Hunt says he has.”

Observes the President of Hunt: “The only thing we could do with him would be to parole him like the (unintelligible) situation. But you couldn’t buy clemency.” The President also says, referring to Hunt’s wife, who was killed in an airplane crash in late 1972 (ten thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills were found in her purse): “Great sad ness. As a matter of fact, there was a discussion with somebody about Hunt’s problem on account of his wife and I said, of course commutation could be considered on the basis of his wife’s death, and that is the only conversation I ever had in that light.” Later the President agrees with Dean that it is worth while “buying time” with Hunt. Says Nixon: “I think Hunt knows a hell of a lot more.” Later, he says, “Time is of the essence.” And, several pages later:

P That’s why for your immediate things you have no choice but to come up with the $120,000, or whatever it is. Right?

D That’s right.

P Would you agree that that’s the prime thing that you damn well better get that done?

D Obviously he ought to be given some signal anyway.

P (Expletive deleted), get it. In a way that—who is going to talk to him? Colson? He is the one who is supposed to know him?

There are other lines by the President, such as “Complete disclosure isn’t that the best way to do it? … That would be my view,” to which his defenders will be able to point.

Going to the grand jury is viewed as a means—a more manageable one—of avoiding testimony before the Ervin committee. Dean says to the President, “You are chancing a very high risk for perjury situation.” The President replies, “But you can say I don’t remember. You can say I can’t recall. I can’t give any answer to that that I can recall.”

The President is told by Dean in this March 21st meeting that Magruder has perjured himself before the grand jury. (Magruder, formerly deputy director of the reëlection committee, was at that point an official at the Commerce Department. He resigned in late April, after he began to coöperate with the prosecutors.) The national-security rationale for the Ellsberg break-in is suggested by Dean.

P National Security. We had to get information for national security grounds.

D Then the question is, why didn’t the C.I.A. do it or why didn’t the F.B.I. do it?

P Because we had to do it on a confidential basis.

H Because we were checking them.

P Neither could be trusted.

Says the President, on March 13th, referring to William Sullivan, a former F.B.I. official with whom Dean was in contact, and from whom they were hoping to obtain information, on the theory that he might coöperate—because, Dean says, Sullivan “wants to get back in the bureau very badly”— “If he would get Kennedy into it, too, I would be a little bit more pleased.” (It was Sullivan who removed the wiretap records from the F.B.I.’s files.)

And then Dean tells the President that an investigation of Kalmbach’s bank records would show that Anthony Ulasewicz, the private detective hired by the White House, had been paid to investigate Chappaquiddick. (Caulfield, one of the private investigators, was on the White House payroll; Ulasewicz was paid out of funds said to be left over from the 1968 Nixon campaign—funds we now know to have been replenished by the milk interests in 1969.) Says Dean, “Right after Chappaquiddick somebody was put up there to start observing and within six hours he was there for every second of Chappaquiddick for a year.” Later, the President asks, “Does he have any records? Are they any good?”

We are shown the President’s view of the public: referring to an item in Patrick Buchanan’s news summary about a crisis in confidence in the Presidency, the President says, “How much of a crisis? It will be—I am thinking in terms of—the point is, everything is a crisis. (expletive deleted) it is a terrible lousy thing—it will remain a crisis among the upper intellectual types, the soft heads, our own, too—Republicans—and the Democrats and the rest. Average people won’t think it is much of a crisis unless it affects them.”

The document is far more dramatic than had been anticipated. Unbelievably dramatic. This is not just the usual difference between anticipation and reality. We are actually reading their conversations—living through these conversations, sensing their overtones and undertones. It is intimate theatre indeed.

First impressions, as one leafs through the heavy volume: the meandering conversations, with all those surprising “(expletive deleted)”s and “(unintelligible)”s and “(inaudible)”s, several of them in crucial places; the “(Further conversation following unrelated to Watergate)”; the siege mentality; the seeming lack of concern for anything but limiting the damage; the mutual suspicions among the White House people, and the double-dealing; the President’s uncertainty, need for guidance, even for being brought back to the subject, by his aides; the cold, cynical view of the men in the White House; the contempt for everyone—the public, the Congress, their colleagues, each other.

We had heard about the language, but that is not the heart of the matter. We had known that the White House was a place of suspicions, a place where the President taped his aides and the aides taped each other. We had long since had a picture of it as the court of the Borgias. We had known that it sacrificed whomever it was necessary to sacrifice. And we had had every sign that the President was not exactly straining to “get the story out”—not the true story, anyway. So the pain comes, as it has come before, in facing things we had known but, at least at times, chosen not to face.

Today, pursuant to a resolution passed by the Senate last December, was a National Day of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer.

MAY 1

The papers, as was to be expected, are crowded with stories about the transcripts. These are going to be long days. It is no time for slow readers, of whom I have the misfortune to be one. We learn that Dean assured the President that Gordon Strachan, Haldeman’s aide, “is as tough as nails,” and continued, “He can go in and stonewall, and say, ‘I don’t know anything about what you are talking about.’ He has already done it twice, you know, in interviews.” To which the President replied, “I guess he should, shouldn’t he? I suppose we can’t call that justice, can we?” That the President coached Dean on what should be in his report on the affair. “Make it very incomplete,” said the President. And that the President used Henry Petersen to find out what was going on in the grand jury and then relayed the information to Haldeman and Ehrlichman, who were under investigation. Said the President to Petersen, “You have got to maintain the Presidency out of this.”

Today is Law Day. The President has issued a proclamation saying, “Our freedoms survive because no man or woman is beneath the protections of the law. And the law retains its value and force because every person knows that no man or woman is above the requirements of the law.”

Three years ago, there were Law Day anti-war demonstrations in Washington. There were mass arrests, most of them made without the required arrest forms. The Attorney General said that this was necessary because of the danger to the government (which some of the demonstrators had vowed to shut down). The courts dismissed the charges against almost all of the demonstrators.

Almost lost in the cascade of stories about the transcripts is one about an affidavit filed yesterday by Ehrlichman, for his trial in the Ellsberg break-in case, saying that the President had justified the break-in afterward to Henry Petersen as “in furtherance of national security and fully justified by the circumstances.” Ehrlichman’s affidavit says that the President had told him to tell Egil Krogh, one of the directors of the plumbers, “to do whatever he considered necessary to get to the bottom of the matter.”

It seems noisier inside the Capitol today. There is the sense that something big has happened—a heightened atmosphere. The nervous system that is this city is once more jangled. Tonight, the Judiciary Committee will meet on the question of how to respond to the President’s submission of the transcripts instead of the subpoenaed tapes.

There is the question now of what the committe will do. In the House members’ dining room, a Republican member of the Judiciary Committee says that at yesterday’s Republican caucus Minority Leader John Rhodes urged everybody to line up behind the President. At the caucus, the House Republican leaders said that the public would see the President’s action as constituting compliance. Republicans are in a bad bind on this one.

The Chicago Tribune, of all papers, has printed the entire text of the transcripts. A copy of the Tribune’s reprint is being passed around the House members’ dining room, and the publishing feat is a subject of wonderment.

Railsback arrives for lunch weary and late. Judiciary Committee members are generally late for appointments today; they are being buttonholed for statements, television interviews. They are looking tired and distracted. Slicing a cheeseburger in half, Railsback says, “I think that the President helped himself with the television appearance and the release of the transcripts. He appears to be confronting the March 21st situation head-on. I think he’s very wise, from a tactical standpoint, to do that. Also, there are parts of the transcripts that appear to exonerate him.” Railsback has not yet read the transcripts; he had to go out last evening with representatives of the Chamber of Commerce from his district. “But I hear they’re kind of bad,” he says.

I ask him if he thinks that the President is in compliance with the committee’s subpoena.

“No,” he replies. “He is not really in compliance. But I think his offer could serve as a basis on which we might reach a future compromise. I think we’re very close now. All that the committee wants are two things: they want Doar and Jenner to be able to listen to the tapes, and they want tapes instead of transcripts.” He then says, “I wonder how many people will bother to read the transcripts.”

I ask him if he thinks that the President’s strategy of saying that the media would distort the transcripts will work.

“I don’t think it will work with members of the Judiciary Committee, but I think it might work with members of the public,” he says. “A lot of people do think that this is a Democratic plot and that the news media are trying to bring him down.”

I ask him if these struggles over evidence are making his own position more difficult.

“Yes,” he replies. “Any delays, regardless of what they are attributed to, hurt Republicans. They hurt the country, too, but they hurt Republicans. The closer this gets to elections, the more this hurts the Republican Party.”

I ask him if it is hurting him in particular.

“Yes,” he says. “It hurts me when I say that the President hasn’t turned over enough. I said it yesterday, and I got six calls from people who are normally supporters of mine. Angry calls, saying why wasn’t I supporting the President.”

I ask Railsback if the President’s withholding of the tapes themselves has made him suspicious.

“Yes,” he says. “You can’t help wondering. That’s what it does—it makes you wonder. There are some who suggest that the President would be well advised to let a U-Haul come and take all the material.”

An early edition of the Washington Star-News says St. Clair has said that he would move in court to have Jaworski’s subpoena quashed. The headline is “Nixon Resisting New Tape Bids.”

I go back to see James Mann, the South Carolina Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, to find out how he is reacting to the President’s response. I ask Mann if he thinks that the President is in compliance with the committee.

He puts his foot on his desk. “Oh, he certainly is not,” he replies. “I would have to ask you if there is anyone in the United States, or in the whole world, who could conclude that he has complied with what we asked for. If we accept it, we would be knuckling under to political pressure by not carrying out our full duty. The best thing now is to inform the White House that we consider it noncompliance—which would be futile—and then wait and see his reaction to our other request and have a whole record of noncompliance. His saying ‘Now they can reach a decision’ is a gross misrepresentation.”

I ask him if he is concerned that there may be a party split this evening. The committee has been nearly unanimous in its actions thus far.

“Oh, yes,” he replies. “What would worry me would be the Republicans’ willingness to compromise their position on the subpoena because of politics. That would distress me. As for a party split, if it has to be, it has to be. There can be only one honest vote on the question of compliance and noncompliance.”

Mann says that the substance of the transcripts is already having a negative effect on his colleagues. “They were not aware there was that much smoke,” he says. The President’s strategy “is really an assault on the system—a failure to respect the authority of the committee and the Senate to do their Constitutional duty,” he continues. “To go to the people and release what material he wants them to have and then to represent that it’s the entire case is the rawest kind of abuse of the system. And he took advantage of the public’s thinking it is more of a political exercise than it is. As if the truth in the hands of James R. Mann weren’t all that he needs.” Mann is usually measured in what he says. I am surprised by the intensity of his reaction.

We go back to the subject of a possible party-line vote tonight.

“You know,” Mann says, “it’s so easy to play minority politics—for the Republicans to take an unreasonable position when the majority takes a reasonable position, and then say that the majority is ‘partisan’ and ‘oppressive.’ Taking advantage of the minority position and the President fixation—they’re showing up so clearly, I’m sorry to say.”

Mann refers, as people have been doing all day, to the “(expletive deleted)”s. They all seem curious to know what those parentheses are hiding. “The more that people know about him, it seems, the more trouble he’s in,” he says. “It’s not that they think he’s guilty of an impeachable offense, necessarily, but that he’s not the man they thought he was.”

The Judiciary Committee Republicans are meeting in Room H 219—the office of the House Minority Whip, Leslie Arends, of Illinois, just off the House floor—to decide on their strategy for tonight. The meeting was called for three o’clock. I was supposed to have an appointment with one of the committee Republicans, so I decide to watch the scene outside this room for a while. About a dozen reporters are here, some of whom are reading the large blue transcript books. One starts reading aloud from the conversation of the President, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman on April 17th. Dean has gone to the prosecutors, and the President and his aides are trying to figure out what to do.

P.… What you want to do is get him out of the WH and yet Colson’s recommendation is to get him out by firing him—

E Colson would like to discredit him.

P Well I know. But the question is what he could do to discredit us.

E Well.

P That’s a problem.

H Yeah. But I think at some point, like you do on anything else, you gotta face up to the fact that the guy is either a friend or a foe—or a neutral. If he’s a neutral you don’t have to worry about him; if he’s a friend you rely on him, if he’s a foe you fight him, and this guy—it seem[s] at this point—is a foe.

Haldeman and the President reconstruct the conversation of March 21st on whether to pay money to Hunt. They are worried about what was said in Dean’s presence.

P I didn’t tell him to go get the money did I?

H No.

Later, the President says,

P But in that conversation I was—we were—I was—I said, “Well for (expletive removed), let’s—”

And Haldeman reminds him:

H You said, “Once you start down the path with blackmail it’s constant escalation.”

P Yep. That’s my only conversation with regard to that.

A woman in the red jacket and navy skirt of a Capitol tour guide comes along, followed by a group of tourists. Standing outside the House chamber, she says, in a singsong voice, “This is the lawmaking branch of the government.” The reporters try to suppress smiles. A reporter says that the consensus among members of Congress he has spoken with is that the March 21st conversation, which, according to the grand jury, was followed that evening by a payment of seventy-five thousand dollars to Hunt, is “it.”

At three-forty, the meeting of the Judiciary Committee Republicans is still going on, but some Republicans come out, and the reporters surround them. The Republicans look tight-lipped. “See Hutch,” they say, referring to Hutchinson. Cohen rolls his eyes toward the ceiling in a look of helplessness. Caldwell Butler, Republican of Virginia, is going into the meeting. “Would you characterize this as a strategy session?” asks a reporter. “It’s a meeting with my counsel, and that’s confidential,” says Butler, and he smiles. McClory arrives, followed by more reporters. “It’s an informational meeting,” he says. “We’re sharing information.” Charles Sandman, Republican of New Jersey, struggling through the growing group of reporters, says, “I’m just trying to find the door.”

Rhodes is spotted walking down the hall, and is immediately cornered by reporters. He says that a citation of the President for contempt would be “overwhelmingly defeated.” He says yes, he would object to the sending of a letter to the President stating that he is in noncompliance. The committee got the information that is on the tapes, he says. What does he think of the transcripts, he is asked. “What I read is rather spicy,” Rhodes replies. Does he think they confirm what the President said he had been doing? “Mainly,” says Rhodes, although some parts “might have been a little surprising.” Of March 21st, he says, “There were a lot of thoughts considered, but the action taken was not in accordance with the thoughts,” and you don’t, he says, “impeach for bad thoughts.” Is he concerned that a payment was made to Hunt that night? “It’s not clear that it was.” What if it was? “Well,” says the House Minority Leader, “we’ll cross that bridge.”

William Hungate, the wisecracking Judiciary Committee Democrat from Missouri, walks by the group of reporters still waiting outside the room where the committee Republicans are meeting. He says, “Are you (expletive deleted)s still hanging around?” A new term has entered our language.

One of the reporters who is standing outside the Republican meeting room has seen the separate volumes—like the ones shown on television Monday evening—that were delivered to Rodino. One volume contained only one page.

At five o’clock, the Republicans are still meeting. They are obviously having trouble deciding on their strategy for this evening.

A House Democrat is encountered in one of the subterranean passages connecting the three House office buildings and the Capitol. “Have you read the damn thing?” he asks.

I ask him what impact he thinks it will have.

“It really hurts him,” he says. “The first reaction in the country was ‘God, he’s come clean.’ But the stuff won’t go away. It sounds like the Mafia talking—a point that doesn’t escape the public. It’s loathsome.”

There is a sense of excitement tonight in Room 2141, the House Judiciary Committee room. A long line of spectators is outside. There seem to be more photographers than ever inside, more people milling about, more noise. This is a meeting about what to do when one branch of the government has defied what another branch believes to be its authority. The fact that it is an evening session adds to the drama. Rodino, in a gray suit, looks, as usual, relaxed. Rodino is the star now. Or almost. Robert Redford is here. The word that Robert Redford is here spreads through the room. Some reporters want to know how to describe an amulet that Robert Redford is wearing. Washington, blase about its politicians, is struck by movie stars. Even the politicians are. Redford is spending time in Washington now as he prepares to play the role of Bob Woodward in a movie based on the book that Woodward and Bernstein have written about how they exposed the Watergate case.

Word is going around the room that there are now four versions of the March 21st tape: the White House transcript, the Special Prosecutor’s transcript, the committee’s transcript, and the tape itself. It is said that the committee’s electronic equipment is more sensitive—able to pick up more words—than that of the White House. Which seems strange. “We care more,” says a committee aide. Robert Redford is signing autographs.

Doar presents a chart showing the items that have been requested and those that have been turned over by the White House. The Republicans, led by Wiggins and David Dennis, of Indiana, attack the chart, pressing Doar to explain how he can say that something has not been turned over if he does not know whether it exists. The cloud of unreality which keeps fogging our view of the significant questions in these events has crept into this committee room tonight. They are arguing over whether it is proper to have a blank space represent the non-surrender of things whose non-existence has not been established. Mann asks Wiggins how the committee can be “clairvoyant in its knowledge of what is available at the White House,” and continues, “I’m not concerned with partisanship; I’m not concerned with anything but the whole truth, and unless I get it I’m handicapped in my service to the American people in determining this issue.” The committee is silent as Mann says this; what he thinks is important. He gets attention because he is quiet, he is courtly, and he is from South Carolina. But there is a certain giddiness to the atmosphere; people are keyed up, it seems—somewhat nervous in this most unusual situation. Jack Brooks, Democrat of Texas, is smoking a cigar, smiling, and making jokes about tapes. George Danielson, Democrat of California, confuses the words “tap” and “tape,” and there is a ripple of laughter. Lawrence Hogan, the conservative Republican from Maryland, says of the tapes, “I have come to the inescapable conclusion that he must have forgotten they were being made.” Laughter.

The room falls silent when Rodino reads his prepared statement: “We demonstrated time and again that we were not seeking any confrontation with the President of the United States. … Under the Constitution, is it not within the power of the President to conduct an inquiry into his own impeachment, to determine which evidence, and what version or portion of that evidence, is relevant and necessary to such an inquiry. These are matters which, under the Constitution, only the House has the sole power to determine.” Rodino had wanted to put language along these lines in a letter that the Democrats are proposing that the committee send to the President, but Brooks, who has a number of objections to the deliberate style of Rodino and Doar, wanted a more abrupt communication, and on this point Rodino yielded to him.

Wiggins is emerging as the strongest man on the Republican side. A large man with a leathery California tan and wavy silver hair, he has the reputation of being an able lawyer. Whether that reputation is well-founded or not, the other committee members accept it and respect Wiggins and even seem to fear him. There are constant readings by members and the press as to which of the seventeen Republicans might vote for impeachment. As of now, according to some, William Cohen is considered likely to vote for it, and Hamilton Fish, Jr. (New York), and Tom Railsback might; Robert McClory, Lawrence Hogan, Henry P. Smith III (New York), Caldwell Butler and Charles W. Sandman are considered unpredictable.

At 11 P.M., Dennis reads a press release he issued yesterday. A compromise letter proposed by Cohen is rejected. And then the vote is taken, at last, on whether to send the Democrats’ letter. It is suddenly clear that the vote is closer than was expected. John Conyers, Democrat of Michigan, and Jerome Waldie, Democrat of California, who support a contempt citation, are opposed. But Rodino does not want a House vote on contempt to precede the question of impeachment. And there is the practical problem of what to do about a President who is in contempt. Don Edwards, Democrat of California, said at lunch earlier this spring, “How can we enforce a subpoena? He has a bigger army than we do.” So the committee is writing Nixon a letter. Then, as the Republicans’ names are called, Cohen votes for the letter. He is the only Republican who does. The final vote is 20-18. Had Cohen voted the other way, there would have been a tie vote, and the committee would, in effect, have voted not to respond to the President.

The letter that will now go to the President says simply:

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:

The Committee on the Judiciary has directed me to advise you that it finds that as of 10:00 A.M. April 30, you have failed to comply with the Committee’s subpoena of April 11, 1974.

Sincerely,
PETER W. RODINO, JR., CHAIRMAN

MAY 2

The President spent last night at Camp David. Yesterday, Gerald Warren, the President’s deputy press secretary, described the President as pleased by the public’s response to the release of the transcripts. There are more exegeses of the transcripts in today’s papers. We read the conversations, go back to what we knew about the events when they happened, to explanations given later. It brings on a slight dizziness—and also annoyance, because we have been lured into the contextual world of the tapes. All that is on the tapes is what is on the tapes. Will we become, as the President probably hopes, tired of them in time? One of the factors in this great struggle has been our brief attention span. Another question: When our national perturbation seems to subside, where does it go? Our perturbation over the war didn’t really disappear. It eventually became impossible for our leaders not to end the war. They drew on the reservoir of silent tolerance until there was no more. The outcry over the firing of Archibald Cox came from some hidden wellspring of concern. Our outrage is an elusive thing, taking different forms; now you see it, now you don’t.

Yesterday, the President invoked executive privilege once more in refusing to supply the tapes and documents subpoenaed by the Special Prosecutor for the trial of the President’s seven former aides for the Watergate cover-up. The President said he had decided that disclosure of any more of his conversations “would be contrary to the public interest.” The statement issued by the White House yesterday argued that “a President is not subject to compulsory process from a court,” and it hinted that the White House was prepared to fight this issue all the way to the Supreme Court.

One friend of mine here has been saying for some time that it is not at all surprising that our current troubles were brought about by a group of largely clean-cut, wholesome-appearing types. Their appearance has become a cliché, but there is a serious point to it. “All the great usurpers,” he once said, “spoke to something in their time.” It was inevitable, he said, that those who played fastest and loosest with the American system would be terribly American in their style and use American symbols. “If there is a takeover in America,” he said, “it will be done by people wearing conventional suits and using advertising techniques.” I preferred not to think about what he said. But he is a sensible man, not given to overstatement. One of the great problems of living through this period and trying to understand it is that it is very difficult to judge just how dangerous it is, or might have been. But other people living through dangerous times probably had the same problem and preferred not to think about it, so from time to time one must. The path to tyranny, my friend said, can be undramatic. The actions can appear bland, incremental: a lie here, a call to a network executive there. A White House Office of Telecommunications issuing ukases. Businessmen being given to understand that it would be far more profitable to coöperate with those in power. All done by people with marvellously American styles—toughness with a smile—and bearing all the American symbols: flag, religion, family. It is important to remember now, amid all this debris, how frightened we used to be.

On tonight’s news we see Gerald Ford saying that he is “convinced beyond any doubt” that the President is “innocent.” The White House announced that the President rejects the committee’s letter.

MAY 3

At lunch, someone stops by the table and suggests that certain pages in the transcripts be looked up. “Don’t miss page 503,” he says. “The President tells Ehrlichman to tell Magruder that he has his ‘personal affection.’ Right after that, the President says, ‘That’s the way the so-called clemency’s got to be handled.’ ” Senators walked around this week trailed by aides carrying copies of the transcripts with paper clips on the pages on which the senators’ names appeared. People are taking the same kind of pride in appearing in these transcripts that they did in appearing on the enemies list. But the amusement seems to have the same kind of nervous undertone.

Maryland’s highest court, in a unanimous decision, has disbarred Spiro Agnew. Said the court, “It is difficult to feel compassion for an attorney who is so morally obtuse that he consciously cheats for his own pecuniary gain that government he has sworn to serve.”

MAY 5

Sunday. Last night, in Spokane, at the opening of Expo ’74, the President referred to Governor Daniel Evans, of Washington, as “Governor Evidence.”

In an interview with reporters on Friday, Gerald Ford said that he was “a little disappointed” by the transcripts. He said that this was not the Nixon he had known for twenty-five years.

William Randolph Hearst, Jr., a long-time supporter of the President, has come out against the President. Hearst said that the transcripts “add up to as damning a document as it is possible to imagine short of an actual indictment.” Someone rushed over to tell me about it at the tennis courts yesterday.

The White House has released a twenty-nine-page document that contains what it calls “important contradictions” between sworn statements made by Dean and the transcripts.

Ron Ziegler told the press accompanying the President on his Western trip that too much attention was being paid to the meeting of March 21st. “It’s essential that the transcripts are read in their entirety for the American people to draw their conclusions,” Ziegler said.

A Gallup poll published yesterday says that by more than two to one the people queried believe that the Judiciary Committee was right to reject the President’s offer of edited transcripts instead of tapes. That’s higher than the proportion of the Judiciary Committee who thought so.

It’s a cold and rainy Sunday. Unfair. Snatch of conversation at a cocktail party:

“How are you?”

“Reading.”