May 22, 1974

Tapes Don't Prove Or Disprove

President Nixon is not as guilty as his critics say, nor as innocent as his supporters contend.

I have read the tape transcripts in their entirety and find them a dud as evidence.  They neither prove nor disprove.  They, alone, will not impeach a president.

If key-hole peeping is your bag, then the tapes are middling interesting.  They show that a sorely aggravated president swears in private, that politics is a dog-eat-dog world, that powerful men are not in as full control of events as we would like to believe.

As grist for the judicial mill, however, the tapes are inconclusive.  Indeed, some members of Congress are now saying that the charge of "obstruction of justice" should be reduced to ''interference-with legal enforcement."

The tapes are so involved that it is impossible to report them adequately in a single column.  Yet I have some general impressions that may merit future discussion in detail.

It is clear that President Nixon did not know before hand of the break-ins at either the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist or the Democratic National Committee in Watergate.  In making his confession to the president on the critical March 21, 1973 tape, John Dean said, "In our conversations I have the impression that you don't know everything I know."

Nixon did know that the Watergate break-in was committed by some lower-echelon members of the Committee to Reelect the President.

"I am not dumb," he said in an early tape, "and I will never forget when I heard about this (adjective deleted) forced entry and bugging.  I thought they were nuts!  A prank!  But it wasn't.  It wasn't very funny."

Soon after Watergate the "dirty tricks" of Donald Segretti surfaced, and Nixon worried that the two revelations - which he termed "jackassery" - would be blown up into a campaign issue.  When it wasn't, the president congratulated Dean on his skill in "putting your fingers in the leaks that have sprung here and sprung there."

In the ensuing months, Nixon's staff encouraged him to continue believing the Watergate and Segretti matters were isolated incidents involving overzealous campaign workers.

Finally, on March 21, 1973, the president was told by Dean that Watergate was more serious in that White House aides had been inadvertently responsible for starting the chain of events and now had gotten into possible obstruction of justice difficulties by trying to "keep the lid on."

Dean had to go to the president because Watergate Burglar E.  Howard Hunt wanted $120,000 for lawyers' fees and personal expenses and, the aides couldn't scrape up enough cash.  Three partial payments on the amount had already been made.

It was at this point that President Nixon MAY have agreed to one last payment to meet Hunt's "immediate needs" and thereby "buy time" to determine "options."

At one point on March 21, President Nixon said, "That's why for your immediate things you have no choice but to come up with the $120,000, or whatever it is.  Right?  Would you agree that that's the prime thing that you damn well better get that done?"

On the same tape, however, Nixon discussed clemency for the Watergate burglars and said emphatically, "That would be wrong."  He also said, "That (a cover-up) we can't do," and, "I would just say to these fellows: I am sorry, it is all off, and let them talk," and, "I think I want another Grand Jury proceeding and we will have the White House appear before them," and, "That is the proper way to do this.  It should be done in the Grand Jury, not up there under the kleig lights of the Committee."

In any event, Herbert Kalmbach, Nixon's personal attorney, is alleged to have given Hunt's lawyer $75,000 that night as the fourth and final payment of the funds Dean characterized as "blackmail."

It is interesting to note that a few days later Hunt started to talk to the existing Grand Jury, so what ever money was given it had no effect in hushing him.

If the money was meant as a cover up, it is unusual that on the next tape following Hunt's disclosures the president did not express surprise or dismay over the failure of the ploy, or even mention it.

This one uncertainty over Nixon's intent on a single payment to Hunt - which did nothing to cover up - should be resolved.  If true, is it a "high crime" justifying impeachment, and can an otherwise innocent president be impeached for the crimes of his subordinates?

The tapes indicate that the president moved steadily toward full disclosure.  In the process he did try to minimize the political embarrassment and to protect the constitutional privileges of his office.

'Nixon was frustrated in his attempts to unravel the tangled skein of events which enmeshed nearly, all his aides.  Dean, for example, dragged his feet in preparing a written report on Watergate repeatedly asked for by Nixon.

As the president worried about the possibility of unfairly-accusing trusted aides and delayed the painful decisions that would ruin loyal friends, Nixon lost the initiative.

As he waffled, his critics in the Congress and the press grew hysterical in their accusations.

Every inaudible word on the tapes, every sensitive document withheld, every error in recollection was seized upon as proof of grievous crimes.

Yet, scores of others have cautioned that lynch mob psychology must be replaced with reason, evidence and fairness.  Among them are Senator Sam Ervin, chairman of the Watergate Committee; Archibald.  Cox, former special prosecutor fired by Nixon; Clare Booth Luce, former publisher of Time Magazine, and Roscoe Drummond, nationally syndicated columnist.

Strangely, self seeking Republicans and band-wagon newspapers have joined the chorus of some Democrats and liberal press media for Nixon blood.

Fortunately for our republic, the American constitutional and judicial processes are hard at work.

Hopefully, these will have a larger voice in Nixon's fate.

Author: Lindsey Williams