MOUNTING MOMENTUM FOR IMPEACHMENT

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• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP77-00432R000100320001-1
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• Document Page Count: 43
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 28, 2001
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: April 8, 1974
• Content Type: NSPR

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any"-um for Imp
moun~inq M
It was a rough Watergate week for
President Nixon. A grand jury report
and a satchel of evidence on his role in
the cover-up conspiracy were turned
over to the House Judiciary Committee's
impeachment investigators. Then, after
a short delay, Nixon backed down and
submitted to a subpoena for more ev-
idence from Leon Jaworski, the persis-
tent special prosecutor, rather than face
a new, and probably losing, court bat-
tle. Almost as surely, he will soon be
forced to stop resisting similar requests
from the impeachment committee
for more tapes and documents.
Those setbacks for the Pres-
ident occurred under the pressure
of rising public protests from
members of Congress against
what appeared to them to be le-
galistic maneuvering by the White
House to withhold evidence.
Largely as a result of these tac-
tics, impeachment sentiment was
gathering momentum in the
House-and even leaders of the
Senate talked matter-of-factly
about the probability of a trial in
that chamber later this summer
to determine whether Nixon shall
remain in office (see box next
page).
The shift in sentiment was il-
lustrated last week by the point-
ed remarks of Mike Mansfield, the
ever-cautious Senate Democratic
majority leader. Mansfield ob-
served: "I talk to House members,
and they think the votes are there"
for impeachment. This, he sug-
gested, is partly because of "the
dilatory tactics" of Nixon and his men
in dealing with the Judiciary Commit-
tee, headed by New Jersey Democrat
Peter Rodino. Moreover, said Mansfield,
he did not want the President to resign,
as suggested by Republican Conserva-
tive Senator James.Buckley, and indi-
cated little enthusiasm for any legisla-
tion granting him immunity from
prosecution if he were to leave office.
"This matter should take its course,"
Mansfield said, meaning a full Senate
impeachment trial. "We should not have
another Agnew situation," he added-a
reference to the Vice President's being
allowed to plead nolo contendere to in-
come tax evasion, then to resign and be
granted immunity from further federal
prosecution.
Other Senators spoke in a similarly
ominous vein. West Virginia's Demo-
cratic Senator Robert Byrd-a conser-
vative whom Nixon once considered for
a Supreme Court vacancy and who is
highly regarded by the Southern Sen-
ators Nixon is most ardently courting
-charged that the President was
trying "to mislead the people and
to sabotage the legitimate and
constitutional impeachment in-
quiry." Republican Senator How-
ard Baker, a member of the Sen-
ate Watergate committee, de-
clared that the "legalisms and
narrow issues" adopted by Nixon
had hurt rather than helped his
survival chances and that he must
surrender all "relevant" evidence
to the Rodino committee. One of
Nixon's most vocal supporters,
Senate Republican Leader Hugh
Scott, has also privately warned
Nixon through the President's
chief Watergate counsel, James
St. Clair, that the President must
yield all relevant evidence.
Some other influential Sena-
tors were not ready to speak out
publicly-yet. But their attitude
was increasingly unsympathetic
to Nixon. Said one Senate Repub-
lican: "Over the past ten days, the
feeling has been pervading the
Senate that there is going to be a
trial. Individual Senators are studying
the impeachment process. You have
trouble getting the books out of the li-
brary; they're all checked out."
At a rally of Midwestern Republican
leaders in Chicago, even Vice President
Gerald Ford seemed to be criticizing the
President. Addressing the Watergate is-
sue, he declared: "Never again must
Americans allow an arrogant, elite
guard of political adolescents like CREEP
(The Committee for Re-election of the
President) to bypass the regular party or-
ganization and dictate the terms of a na-
tional election."
Outwardly undaunted, Nixon con-
tinued to court a conservative constit-
uency. He invited Mississippi Senators
James Eastland and John Sten-
nis to the .White House for
breakfast. He staged a ceremony
for Southern Senators and Con-
gressmen as he signed a $100
million appropriation for Missis-
sippi River flood-control pro-
jects. He addressed a Republi-
can congressional dinner and
hosted a farewell gathering for
his departed aide Melvin Laird.
But the rising congressional
impeachment pressure could not
be ignored, and Nixon gave up
some tactical territory. He and/
St. Clair had for so long resisted
a request by Jaworski for 27
tapes and various documents
that the special prosecutor final-
ly issued a subpoena to get some
of the documents. St. Clair first
asked last Monday for a delay
in the subpoena's return date,
and Jaworski agreed. As the new
deadline approached on Friday,
Presidential Press Secretary
Ronald Ziegler offhandedly an-
nounced without explanation
that the subpoenaed evidence
would be surrendered. The doc-
uments, dealing primarily with
the use and possible abuse of
Nixon campaign funds, were
delivered to Jaworski in a small
brown package (no U-Haul trailer was
required).
Historic Turnover. The turnover of
the grand jury's evidence, on the other
hand, was transacted with lavish secu-
rity and given all the attention of a his-
toric event. No fewer than 22 uniformed
police of the Federal Protective Services
formed a double line as three members
of the Rodino staff-Chief Counsel John
Doar, Minority Counsel Albert Jenner
and Assistant Counsel Robert Shelton
-arrived at Washington's Federal
Courthouse to pick up the evidence. The
crush of newsmen, however, diverted the
Committee lawyers away from this pro-
tective corridor as they moved from
their car up the courthouse steps. In a
second-floor jury room off the chambers
of Federal Judge John J. Sirica, two of Si-
rica's law clerks arrived with the bulg-
ing satchel (bought by the special pros-
ecutor's office for $37.95) containing the
grand jury material.
The lawyers then examined the con-
tents. These included a 1%-page letter
from the grand jury requesting transmit-
tal of all the evidence to the Rodino com-
mittee; a 13-page list of some 50 find-
ings of "fact" about the President's
Watergate activities; and references to
tapes and documents in the briefcase
that support the findings. As each ref-
erence was read by the attorneys, Todd
Christofferson, Sirica's law clerk, pulled
the appropriate file from the briefcase.
After the two-hour check-off, Doar and
Jenner signed a statement that they had
received all the material cited by the
grand jury.
Under elaborate rules established
partly at White House insistence, only
i
Doar, Jenner, Rodino and the JudiciaryCommittee's ranking Republican mem-
ber, ber, Edward Hutchinson, had immedi-!
ate access to the material. All four.spent
hours studying it, but would not talk
about its contents.
Whatever the import of the grand
jury evidence, the Rodino committee is
still expected to push hard for 42 other
tapes that Doar and Jenner had request-
ed from St. Clair on Feb. 25. So far, ac-
cording to Ziegler, no one at the White
House has even listened to these tapes
or, for that matter, determined how
many of them actually exist. Some are
certain to be nonexistent, he indicated,
because they involved meetings on Sun-
day, April 15. That is the date on which
one conversation between Nixon and
Dean was not recorded because, Nixon
contends, a recorder wired into his Ex-
ecutive Office Building hideaway ran out
of tape. Deputy Press Secretary Gerald
Warren claimed that it was "a matter
of court record" that tapes of ten con-
versations could not have been made be-
cause of this. The court records, on the
contrary, show that Nixon's telephone
was not hooked up to the same tapeless
recorder and therefore at most only five .
tapes of requested conversations could
logically be missing.
Both St. Clair and Ziegler have in-
sisted that the House committee must
first specify the scope of its investigation
before the White House will supply any
more tapes or documents. House Repub-
lican Leader John Rhodes last week en-'
dorsed one possible compromise under)
which St. Clair and the top Rodino staff
lawyers would jointly review the re-
quested evidence to seek agreement on
what parts are relevant. If they cannot
agree, the committee counsel's view
would prevail. "The White House cer-
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tainly should accept that," Rhodes said.
Perhaps. But relations between the
White House and the committee were
hardly helped by yet another Ziegler at-
tack, this time implying that the com-
mittee was dawdling in its investigation.
He suggested that the committee ought
to be "working nights" to speed the in-
quiry. In fact, the staff has been work-
ing nights to index and digest the ma-
terial that it now has. It includes some
700 documents and 19 tapes of conver-
sations that Nixon had given Jaworski.
It was only last week that the White
.House completed the transfer of the ma-
terial to the Rodino committee staff. The
committee evidence also includes testi-
mony from the Senate Watergate com-
mittee and other congressional investi-
gations, as well as the new grand jury
lode. Once all this material has been
studied, the staff will brief the full Ju-
diciary Committee on its findings.
_ Scandalous Conduct. Nixon sus-
tained another blow last week when it
was revealed by the Washington Post
that former Attorney General Richard
Kleindienst was bargaining with the
staff of Prosecutor Jaworski to avoid in-
dictment on a felony charge of perjury.
At his confirmation hearings in the
spring of 1972, Kleindienst had testified
that no one at the White House had
brought pressure on him in any way to
influence the Justice Department's set-
tlement of its antitrust suit against ITT.
He later revealed that Nixon himself
had phoned him and asked him not to
Impeachment Timetable
The uncertainties in the historic im-
peachment inquiry now under way in the
Congress are astronomical. But impeach-
ment sentiment is rising, and a trial of
the President in the Senate is increas-
ingly probable. Senators and Represen.
tatives are trying to determine how and
when these momentous events will unfold.
Assuming that there is no protracted
wrangling or unforeseen delays-a risky
presumption-and that the entire process
will run its full course, the following is a
rough but plausible timetable:
By May 30. The House Judiciary
Committee votes articles of impeach-
ment against the President.
First Week in June. Debate on im-
peachment begins before the full House.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Peter
Rodino leads the debate, explaining
each article.
Second Week in June. The debate
ends, and voting begins on each article,
together with any amendments.
Third Week in June. Voting is com-
pleted. Assuming that some articles are
approved by a majority vote, the Senate
is informed by two Representatives cho-
sen by the House that "In the name of
the House of Representatives, and of all
the people of the United States, we do
impeach Richard Nixon, President of
the United States, of high crimes and
misdemeanors in office."
carry the case against ITT to the Su-
preme Court. Apparently, Jaworski's
staff prosecutors are willing to let Klein-
dienst plead guilty to a misdemeanor
rather than a felony, giving him a bet-
ter chance to avoid disbarment.
Kleindienst thus could become the
second Attorney General-and third
Cabinet member-in the Nixon Admin-
istration to face criminal charges. John
Mitchell and former Commerce Secre-
tary Maurice Stans are already on trial
in New York on one campaign funding
case (see story following page). A guilty
plea by Kleindienst would be another
dismal record for an Administration
that is breaking all precedents for scan-
dalous official conduct.
Fourth Week in June. The Senate
officially informs the President of his im-
peachment and issues a "summons" for
him to appear in the Senate to respond
to the articles. Nixon's representative,
probably Attorney James St. Clair, ap-
pears before the Senate and asks for time
to reply to the charges in writing.
Second Week in July. The Pres-
ident's "answer" is introduced in the
Senate. The House of Representatives
responds to the President's brief with a
"replication"-probably a pro forma re-
ply supporting the charges. The Senate
informs Nixon's lawyers that they have
about another week to prepare for trial,
which will take precedence over all oth-
er Senate business.
Third Week in July. The trial be-
gins, with Chief Justice Warren Burger
presiding, and television cameras prob-
ably allowed. The House presents its ev-
idence through six or seven "managers"
selected from members of the Judiciary
Committee; they are, in effect, the pros-
ecutors. The President's lawyers have
the right to cross-examine any witness-
es and call rebuttal witnesses. Senators
can ask questions only in writing.
Late September. The trial ends,
and voting begins on each article of im-
peachment. The Chief Justice polls each
Senator, who must vote either "guilty"
or "not guilty" on each article. If two-
thirds of the Senators present cast a
guilty vote on any single article, the
President is removed from office.
2
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r717 NEW Y0:?K R ~,11I ' OF ROOKS
ii APRIL 1971
.I
It is five months now since I left the
Senate Caucus Room. Helms,- tihe
former CIA director, was testifying
before the Committee that Thursday-
thin, elegant, debonair, the only wit-
ness insouciant enough to smoke cigar-
ettes in the witness chair. He was
followed' by General Cushman, who
was followed, on Friday, by General
Walters, both CIA brass and beefy. The
next week came Pat Gray, former
Attorney General Kleindienst, and
Assistant Attorney General Henry
Petersen, each in his own way 'art
emotional witness, service-oriented and
wearing Watergate wound-stripes. After
that, the Committee went home for
what was left of the summer-high
time.
Something had happened, probably
during the Ehrlichman week, to
destroy the "spirit of wonderful una-
nimity" of which Senator Ervin had
spoken so feelingly. during the early
stages of the tapes confrontation.
When the 'Committee resumed hearings
in the fall, it was more disunited than
ever. There have been reports and
rumors of fighting within the staff
between majority and minority ap-
pointees, of dissatisfaction with Sam
Dash, but these internal troubles may
be mere localized symptoms of a
general collapse. At the height of its
success, seemingly in the prime of life,
the Committee behaved like a broken
man, and the public was quick to sense
this and demonstrate boredom. The lie
put about by the Nixon people during
the exciting, electrifying months of
June and July, that the public was fed
up with the hearings and all the
coverage, in due time became true.
those who watched on television
during late September (1 was no longer
in America) said the low point came
when Patrick Buchanan, the White
House speech writer, was able to make
fools of the senators. For me, the low
point had come before that, in the
failure to call Colson to testify. Colson
was a key figure. in my view the key
figure who could have unlocked the
mystery, if there really is one, of who
ordered the Watergate break-ins.
Though he was not Liddy's sponsor
(that was Egil Krogh), he had gone out
of channels to press for action on the
Liddy project, hack in February, when
the other principals-Mitchell, Dean,
Magruder-were dragging their feet.
That is, if Jeb Magruder can be
believed. The master of dirty tricks
had called Magruder one evening "and
asked me, in a sense, would we get off
Mary McCarthy
the stick and get the budget approved
for Mr. Liddy's plans,.that we needed
information, particularly on Mr.
O'Brien." Unfortunately for Magruder,
Fred LaRue, who he said was present
during this conversation, had no recol-
lection of it. Yet Dean accepted Ala-
gruder's word that there had been
pressure on him from Colson'and not
just on that one occasion. Dean had
the impression that Colson was on
Magruder's neck.
And even if onje wonders about
Magruder, there is the fact that it was
Colson who detailed Howard Hunt, his
employee and long-time protege, to
work on the Gemstone operation with
Liddy and McCord, giving him time off
from his own projects. Colson denied
McCord's assertion that he had had
prior knowledge of Gemstone and was
supported by Hunt in an affidavit
sworn to on April 5, 1973. Then,
appearing before the Committee. in
September, Hunt changed his story: he
did remember one or' more conversa-
tions with Colson about the Liddy
plans and in fact remembered telling
him back in January 1972 of his
intention to recruit the same team of
Cuban-Americans he and Liddy had
used in the burglary of Ellsberg's
psychiatrist.- With the addition of the
Cubans to the original nucleus, the
Watergate break-in became operational.
Of all Nixon's coinselors, Colson
thus appears to have b'een not only the
most zealous in pushing for Gemstone
but also-a further sign of zeal-the
most familiar with the mode and
staffing of the operation. McCord testi-
fied that a typewritten step-by-step
plan for the break-in, which Hunt
showed him in his office, was being
taken, he understood, to show Colson.
This was more than a conjecture.
... at one point, he held this plan
in his hands, and his words were, -
he interjected the name of Mr.
Colson into the conversation at
that point, words to the effect, "I
will see Colson." And he held the
paper in his hand in this sense.
From that statement, I drew the
conclusion that he was going to
see Mr. Colson and discuss our
giving him the operational plan. - - ,
If Mitchell ever got any such blueprints
or was aware of a Cuban component in
the personnel, no witness has been able
to say so. The same with Haldeman.
Nobody, not even Magruder, has
claimed that the Gemstone memos
Haldeman received through Strachan
contained any programmed "specifics."
Possibly this is just a difference of
temperament: Colson eager and pushy,
the others prudent and incurious.
The Senate panel's excuse for not
calling Colson when hearings resumed
late in September was that they had l
heard him in executive session, where
he had. taken the Fifth Amendment on
every question put to him. Even so,
the Committee. might have let the
public see him take it, in response to
counsel's questions: "I refuse to
answer on the ground of self-
incrimination," "I refuse to answer,"
"I refuse to answer," "I re-'
fuse...." He would have been the,
only witness before the Committee to:
take the Fifth in open session. Liddy.
had invoked it in executive session,
just as he had refused to take the
stand in his own defense in Judge
Sirica's court. In jail he has maintained
his silence, though he could bargain his
way out if he would talk. The Colson-
Liddy axis represents the irreducible
hard core of resistance to investigation
of Watergate, as on another plane does
Nixon himself. It would have been
educational for the public to watch the
spectacle (martyrdom, he would have
called it) of the recusant Colson in the
Caucus Room and draw the analogies.
.A. second (or third) low point was
reached in October when Senator
Ervin, summoned from New Orleans to
the Oval Office, agreed to the so-called
Stennis compromise, by which Nixon
would give the tapes to Senator Sten-
nis, an ancient, infirm, Southern re-
actionary, to listen to and check
against the summaries the White House
would furnish the-Committee. Senator
Baker, found in Chicago, agreed too,
but this was not surprising since Biker
for some time had been inching toward
the Administration, having concluded
(I would assume) that that was the
winning side. The shock was Sam
Ervin. Even though he soon retracted
his agreement, declaring that the com-
promise had been misrepresented to
him (lie had understood that the
Committee would get transcripts, not
summaries, and had been allowed to
think that Archie Cox had accepted
the compromise), he sounded unlike,
himself, befuddled snd vague. How
could the old man, `poking benign and
dreamy in that Oval Office rogues'
gallery, have welcomed a Trojan horse
into his so lone; and stoutly defended
territory? A country lawyer looks a
gift horse in the mouth.
The answer, I am afraid, is that most
men have a fatal weakness or-to stay
in Tray-an Achilles heel, and Nixon
had found Ervin's. Ervin is a hawk. We
had forgotten or all but forgotten it in
our affection for his love of liberty,
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Shakespeare, and the Bill of Rights.
But Nixon had not. When the Stennis
compromise was proposed, the Middle
'East crisis was at its height, a con-
frontation with the, Soviets was
looming, and the White House played
on the old warrior's patriotic senti-
ments, emphasizing the need for
national unity in the impending show-
down. Ervin succumbed. Well, every
good man pays for his sins, and Senator
Sam paid for a lifetime of being a
hawk; he was diminished in the public
eye and probably in his own. The sud-
den loss of his heroic stature made him
seem pathetic, a deflated windbag still
tiresomely huffing and puffing..
Yet one would have to have a very
short memory to join the ravens dining
on his flesh. The Ervin Committee
served the country well in an emer-
gency, and if it has now outlived its
function, that is hardly a reason for
minimizing what it did. Rather the
contrary: the proof that it served its
purpose is that it is now regarded as
obsolete. The accomplishments of the
'Committee can be measured by asking
ourselves where we would be today if
it had never held hearings. Nixon
would be nowhere near impeachment
or- resignation if the tapes had not
caught him in their toils, and we might
never have known of their existence
without the Ervin Committee-if a
junior staff member, routinely ques-
tioning Alexander Butterfield, had not'
chanced to ask the right question.
And it was a passage in John Dean's
testimony before the Committee that
had led Donald Sanders, the deputy
minority counsel, to put the question
to ? Butterfield: Dean had got the
feeling, he said, that his April 15,
1973, conversation with Nixon' was
being taped. Perhaps Archie Cox and
his staff would have uncovered, in
time, the same information, bat that is
not sure. Moreover, without the Ervin
Committee, Cox, Richardson, and
Ruckelshaus would no doubt still be in
place: the Saturday night massacre
grew out of the Butterfield disclosure.
Indeed, without the Ervin Committee,
there might never have been a Special
Prosecutor Cox to fire.
The tapes have always been the crux
of the case against Nixon, and the
public has always understood that,
despite the pleas of liberal editorialists
who begged for greater seriousness,
concentration on the main issues, com-
pared to which the tapes were a
childish distraction, trivial sensational
stuff out of a whodunit. The fear that
the tapes would be tampered with,
based on ordinary common sense, has
been with the public since the very
first day. The only wonder is that they
were not destroyed altogether and then
declared to be "missing," like the two
under subpoena that the White House
now says were never made. Why eight
erasures in the eighteen-and-a-half-
minute gap? Why not rub the whole
thing out?* Nixon believes that there
is material favorable to him in. what
remains of that June 20 "meeting"
with Haldeman, but how can scraps of
a conversation exonerate him when the
surrounding parts have been obliter-
ated? The public, unlike Senator Hugh
Scott, is not such a fool, which.is why,
as Nixon's spokesmen now state
frankly, the public must never be
allowed to see them.
That the pursuit of the tapes was
chasing after a will-o'-the-wisp is some-
thing else. It took no prophetic gift. to
foresee that even if captured they
would not tell us what was on them,
for the simple reason that they would
not he permitted to. But the handling
of the sought-after tapes by Nixon and
his aides has told us a great deal or,
rather, has confirmed our suspicions
that something here is not kosher, Mr.
Kalmbach, to quote Tony Ulasewicz.
.The handling has turned suspicion into
the nearest approximation to certainty
one can have outside of signed con-
fessions by Nixon and his associates.
Of course there are still those who
can believe that the tape erasures were
accidental, that by had luck the June
20 telephone conver l on with John
Mitchell was never recorded because
the call v:as made on an extension not
connected with the automatic re
cording system, that during the April
15 conversation with John Dean in the
-Oval Office the equipment, owing to
another accident, was "malfunc-
tioning" or had an "inadcgt;ecy." Such
people will not ask why Nixon and
Mitchell were talking on another exten-
sion. i.e. a "secure phone," three days
after the break-in: there could be a lot
of innocent explanations, e.g., that
unaccountable buzz,
*The hypothesis published in Science
magazine-that the panel of six experts
appointed by Judge Sirica failed to
take account of the possibility of
electrical failure of a component in
Rose Mary Woods's machine-may in
fact. clear tip this little mystery. As the
author of the Science article, Nicholas
Wade, writing in The Washington Post,
in answer to Joseph Alsop, points out,
the Dektor hypothesis, even if proved
right, would still leave the eighteen-and-
a-half-minute gap or continuous buzz
to be explained. How did that happen?
Someone must have held the machine
on "Record" for eighteen and a half
minutes, thereby effecting the erasure.
One big erasure, rather than eight little
ones. If you accept Rose Mary Woods's
explanation, that ' she accidently
pressed (he Record button and kept
her foot on the pedal during a five-
minute telephone call, you are left
with thirteen and a half minutes of
Nixon, when the Mitchell call came,
was answering a call of nature. Yes: It
makes me- think of the old joke about
the jealous Frenchman wanting solid
proofs of his wife's infidelity: at last
he catches her in bed with a lover, and
his friend, to whom he relates the
story, says "Eh Bien, enfin!" but' the
husband shakes his head sadly-"Tou
jours cc doule." Anybody ' who is
satisfied that the tape erasures and the'
missing tapes prove nothing would;
probably not be satisfied by Mr. j
Nixon's signature on a full confession
and ask for handwriting tests, medical
certificates stating that he had not
been drugged or hypnotized....
Naturally, it would be a help if i
Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, and i
Colson-or any one of them-were to
turn state's evidence, and if Nixon falls
we shall . certainly hear more from
some of them. There will be a scram-
ble to shift responsibility; like a foot-
ball, Trom one member of the former
team to another and back to the old
quarterback, who was calling the si.-
nals. But to hope that these men,
singly or in unison, will talk and bring
about Nixon's fall is. nearly as foolish
as the hope that the tapes would talk.
The tapes have talked, by now, to the
maximum (one guesses) of their abil-
ity; they have told us that someone
with access to them- and that cannot
be John Dean-is afraid of them. But
then Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell,
and the others have also talked; we
heard them before the 'Ervin Corn-
mittee proclaim their guilt by open
equivocation and manifest lying.
Though they left us to speculate on
the degree of guilt in each case, they
all plainly told us that they were afraid
that the knowledge they carried inside
them would inadvertently slip out.
The great service of the Ervin Com-
mittee was to show these men to the
nation as they underwent questioning
-something that would not have been
possible in a court of law, where TV is
not admitted. That the questioning was
not always of the best, that leads were
not always -followed up, is minor in
comparison. The self-righteous,
pedantic tone adopted by some mourn-
ful analysts writing in liberal maga-
zines, the triumphant pouncing on sins
of omission by the Bard-worked sena-
tors; are unpleasant reminders of the
persistent puritanism and Zeal-of-the-
Land Busyness in our national char-
acter. The Ervin Committee was not
out to convict the witnesses before it,
to nail down their testimony with
expert ringing blows, but to give us a
basis for judging them and the Admin-
istration they served. Who can deny
that it did that?
//
T trial emerged from the hearings and
emerges even more clearly from the
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transcripts as they are published, with
appendices (eleven volumes now), by
the Government Printing Office is an
overwhelming case for impeachment
and conviction. To my mind, there can
be no doubt that Nixon himself or-
dered Watergate and was kept in-
formed of the cover-up, which of
course he did not need to order-as the
testimony repeatedly brought out, the
necessity of a cover-up was taken for
granted as soon as news of the arrests
reached the Nixon organization. No-
body had to order it; it happened by
itself and was inherent in the break-in.
A covert operation is covered before it
gets off the ground, and the process
continues mechanically- to the bitter
end, which is where we seem to be
now. The mystery is not . in the
cover-up-who took part and how.
They all took part, each in-his own
capacity: the ? money-raisers raised
money; the petty bureaucrats shred-
ded; the big bureaucrats got on the
telephone to switch off the FBI inves-
tigation. Everybody . (with two ex-
ceptions) stood ready, if called upon,
to commit perjury; nobody talked. The
mystery lies in the original decision-
who made it and under what circum-
YAT
v v ithout prejudgment, let us tick
them off. Mitchell. He is the White
House candidate, but that does not
entitle us to rule him out of considera-
tion. In favor .d17 :the Mitchell hypothe-
sis is the fact that he was in charge at
CREEP, out of which the conspiracy
operated. Nobody in CREEP but he
had the authority to order it-certainly-
not his deputy, Magruder, acting on his
own. And, according to Magruder,
Mitchell did order it, at Key Biscayne,
on March 30. The date, if not the fact,
is confirmed by other testimony. Ac-
cording to McCord, early in March the
operation had not been funded;
roughly a month later it was. All
through March McCord was weighing
the decision of whether or not to
accede to Liddy and sign on; it took
him thirty days to make up his mind,
and during these same thirty days
(Liddy told him) " _ .. the whole mat-
ter was being considered and recon-
sidered by Mr. Mitchell."
Robert Reisner, Magruder's deputy,
remembers Magruder saying to him,
"Call Liddy and tell him it is ap-
proved." He is uncertain of the exact
'date but feels it must have been
around the end of the month since
Magruder gave Liddy the first two
weeks in April to get ready. Gordon
Strachan, Haldeman's deputy, says Ma-
gruder reported to him on March 31 or
April I that a $300,000 "sophisticated
intelligence-gathering plan" had been
approved at Key Biscayne. Just before
or just after April 7, according to
Hugh Sloan, Liddy came to him with a
sheet of raper representing a $250,000
budget on which he would soon be
wanting "substantial cash payment."
All this argues that if the decision was
not made at Key Biscayne on I-larch
30 (LaRue says it was not), it was
made within the next day or'two, and
who could have done that but Mitch-
ell?
yet it does not sound like Mitchell.
Magruder and Dean, who had been
present at the two earlier meetings,
both described Mitchell's very negative,
pipe-puffing responses. At Key Bis-
cayne, he was still "reluctant" (Magru-
der), "not enthusiastic" (LaRue).
Gemstone in any of its avatars was not
in Mitchell's style. Dean says the
Attorney General "was not interested
at all" in its predecessor, Operatiori
Sand-wedge, when it was presented.
Nor can that dour realist have cared
much for Liddy, an exotic product of
Ehrlichman's brain work. Liddy and
his plan were a bitter pill he had to
swallow and, in the hearing-room,
almost visibly spat out. McCord, who
,,vas not privy to the ins and outs of
Gemstone's reception, gave his estimate
of how it must have gone.
I knew from previous contact with
him that he was a very decisive
man, that he _did not agonize over
decisions, and yet apparently he
took this one under careful con-
sideration and considered it for
some thirty days in making the
decision, and frankly, I had it, my
conclusion was that he took it as
well to higher authority and got a
final approval from his superior
before embarking on this task.
Again the sense of duress. Despite
Mitchell's insistent denials, there is
plenty of evidence to show that he was
aware of Watergate before the morning
of June 17, whether or not he had
approved it, but everything points to a
disgruntled, unwilling awareness. And
the new awareness, coming to him late
last March, of his now being set up as
the "goat" for Watergate, must have
increased his bile. If of all Nixon's
counselors you were the one whq was
a hold-out on Watergate, what a mock-
ery, what an irony to sit in exile and
bitterly. savor. In the Caucus Room, he
was steeped in irony, like some horri-
ble ,dark and yet congenial decoction
brewed in his private still. If, against
his better judgment, he did authorize
Watergate, he evidently had not con-
ceived it.
Dean. Ile did not have the authority,
and all the arguments q,.ainsl `Ftchcil's
having been the "father" of Watergate
would apply to Mitchell and Dean
working together. If somehow he was
behind Gemstone, pushing the plan
forward despite Mitchell's tcsistance, it
must have been as somebody else's
representative and courier-in his char-
acteristic messenger role. But what
powerful figure could have deputized
him to flit behind the scenes? tuts chief
friiid, Krogh, had no more poweri
than he. Against Dean, however, is the
fact, heavily underlined by Senator
Gurney and Minority Counsel Thomp-
son, that lie had "recommended"
Liddy to Mitchell, "introduced" him
to the Committee to Re-elect. True, he
had accompanied Liddy on his maiden
appearance at the CREEP offices, and,
true, lie had recommended Liddy to
Mitchell for the post of General Coun-
sel. But he was only passing on his
friend Krogh's recommendation, and
the transfer of Liddy to CREEP had
been approved by Ehrlichman when
Dean brought him to the office and
introduced him to Magruder, his new
boss. Unlike Dean, Ehrlichman had
previous experience with Liddy, having
kept him on his staff and used him
(with Hunt) for the burglary of' Dr.
Fielding s office. Ehrlichman hated
Mitchell and vice versa.
Two 'other counts against Dean as
the author or main abettor of Water-
gate should be mentioned. First, the
fact vouched for by Magruder (and by
Magruder only) that in the, fall of
1971, before the advent of Liddy,
"some people in the White House" had
been keen on an intelligence-gathering
project: when asked to specify, the
only name he could remember was
John Dean. Finally, Dean had urged
Magruder to try to stay oh terms with
Liddy after a falling-out. Dean did not
deny' this, but it scarcely constitutes
proof of eagerness on his part to bring
Watergate to fruition. He was.a natural
smoother-over, and, in any case,
Strachan testified that Dean had been
acting on Haldeman's instruction.
At worst, these small "damning"
facts only show that Dean had more
prior information about Watergate than
he has admitted to. They might also
show, however, that Dean, from the
start, was being used as the uncon-
scious agent of other people anxious to
remain invisible: if the Liddy project
went. sour, only Dean could he seen as
instrumental in recommending it, per-
forming the right introductions,
smoothing its course....
Haldeman and Ehrlichman. Either or
both had the power-if not technically
the 'authority-to override Mitchell's
objections and direct Magruder to
proceed with Gemstone. Or Haldeman
alone, invoking the presidential
sanction, could have forced the recalci-
trant Mitchell to initial the budget;
from Ehrlichman, Mitchell would prob-
ably not have accepted that. There is a
faint possibility, which gets some tenu-
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bus support from Robert Reisner's'
testimony to communications between.
Magruder and Liddy, that the opera-
tion had already been approved by.
somebody not Mitchell when Magruder
flew down to Key Biscayne, in other
words that Mitchell's signature was a
formality that could be dispensed with
if need be. Yet Gemstone, at least to
my mind, does not sound like a
conception that could have originated
with Haldeman and Ehrlichman,
though it is closer to their spirit than
to Mitchell's.
Even if it could not be traced to
them in the event of failure, they
would surely have' had their doubts.
about the public-relations aspect of
such an adventure, were the press to
get hold of it. A simple CIA workhorse
like Jim McCord could be persuaded
that a break-in at Democratic National
Committee headquarters was in the
interests of national security, but Hal-
deman and Ehrlichman, whatever their
private convictions, would scarcely
have seen national security as a plausi-
ble public defense for a job against the
opposition party.
rn
There
Haldeman, at least, knew that a plan
for electronic surveillance was in the
works, but knowing and advocating are
not the same thing. Probably he and
Ehrlichnan, assuming they both knew,
kept their fingers crossed throughout
May and early June. If the operation
got results, so much the better; if it
failed, old John Mitchell would. be left
holding the - bag. Apprehension, or
their part, must have 'mingled with
amusement-the amusement antici-
pating Mitchell's grim predicament if
Liddy's men got cit ght. This would
account for Haldeman's "mellow
mood" on the morning of June 20
when he checked into the office, fresh
from Florida, where he had been
during the break n. Gordon Strachan
went in to see him, "scared to death,"
fully expecting to be fired for having
failed to reach his boss, over the
weekend and report to him on ?Magru-.
der and the Gemstone connection.
Instead, Haldeman greeted him 'half
jokingly" with "Well, what do we
know about the events of the week-
end?" and calmly perused the file
Strachan handed him.
Colson. ?.lore likely, in all but one
respect, th:n any of the preceding.
When he heard of the break-in on his
return from the Philippines, _ Dean's
fist thought, he testified, was "Col-
son." Asked to explain that reaction;
he mentioned the Brookings Institution
burglary by fire-bombing-a typical'
Colson project that he himself, by
flying to California, had managed to
avert. In addition, he had remembered
Colson's friendliness with Hunt. Dean
was not the only member of the White
House staff to have the name "Colson"
rise out of the cloudy incident like a
genie issuing from a bottle. Ehrlich-
man, on ? the telephone, 'as soon as
Dean got back to his desk in Nashin;-
ton Monday morning, the nineteenth,
told him "to find out what Colson's
involvement was in the matter." If that
instruction was given in good faith arid
not merely placed on the record, it
shows that Ehrlichman, far from being
on the inside track about Watergate,
was guessing like anybody else. In any
case, it was an easy guess. After being
debriefed by Liddy, Mardian thought
so too. On its face, Watergate looked
like pure Colson.
There was only one catch: did he
have the power to authorize it? The
call to Magruder urging him "to get off
the stick" seems to prove that he did
not. That was an entreaty, not an
order. The best Colson could do for
Gemstone was to keep after Magruder
in the hope that it would go through.
If he was the mastermind, he must
have had an ally more powerful than
himself who interposed to put an,end
to shilly-shallying.
Nixon. By elimination, we arrive 2t
the only suspect who had the power to
authorize Watergate, and character
traits to match. Unless we say
"Nixon," we are forced to conclude
that nobody authorized Watergate, that
the directive to fund Liddv and his
co-conspirators came to Magruder from
a supernatural agency, identified by.
some with' Mitchell, by' some with
Haldeman, by some- with Colson, and
by Mitchell probably with the Presi-
dent.
II
It remains to try to analyze how and
by what stages and through whom the
pre .idcntial will was implemented.
hrre we are in the dark, and Dean, our
only guide, is in the dark too. lie does
not know where the plan for electronic
suneillance of the opposition party (as
opposed to traditional spying) origi-
nated and he offers no conjecture.
Something happened, he thinks, he=
twecn December 10, 1971, when Liddy
went to work at CREEP, and January
27, when he showed his charts on an
easel in the Department of Justice,
with Mitchell, Magruder, and Dean
watching in utter astonishment. The
plan for intelligence-gathering on dem-
onstrators discussed at the time of
Liddy's hiring, to occupy only a small
pail of his time (2 to 5 percent, Hugh
Sloan understood), had. undergone a
wondrous change. In the January 27
plan, the demonstrators are still there
(to be kidnapped and held in Mexico
till the Republican convention, then
slated for San Diego, was over), but
the main activity, inflated and grandi-
ose, with a bugged yacht, call girls, and
blackmail, now centers on the Demo-
cratic convention it Miami.
In the scaled-down second presenta-
tion of February 4, the demonstrators
have disappeared, and instead, as a
sideshow to the big anti-Democratic
attraction, there is a. burglary of }lank
Greenspun's safe in Nevada with a
Cloward Hughes plane standing by to
fly the burglars to a Central American
haven once the job is completed. In
the final, Key Biscayne version, again
no demonstrators, and nothing more is
heard of them as the Watergate scheme
develops except as justification given
to McCord and the Cubans for entering
Democratic headquarters to plant bugs l
on telephones and photograph papers.
The Latin American theme (perhaps
.hunt's leitmotiv) persists, though pia-
nissimo: in the end it is just money that
is spirited to Mexico to be laundered.
Thus the rational basis for Liddy's
employment was quickly subordinated
to irrational elements and soon van-
ished fro:n. sight.. For the Republicans
to be concerned about having their i
convention broken up by demon-
strators (as had happened in Chicago
to the Democrats in 1968) was per-
fectly natural and even sensible; to
infiltr:;tc antiwar groups would be
Standing Operating Procedure and an
old. habit with the FBI. That Nixon
was unwilling to leave the handling of
left-wing protesters to the FBI and the
police was not quite so sensible but
understandable, in view of his fetid
with J. Edgar. hoover and his general'
dissatisfaction with the ordinary repres-
sive agencies of government. lie
wanted his own spies, paid by his own
campaign people and under their super-
What is
function was added to CREEP's admin-
istrative structure no more heed was
paid to it, and it was allowed to
atrophy, as though the expensive
charms of electronic surveillance were
too wonderful to be wasted on dime-
a-dozen left-wingers. With the dynamic
Liddy and his vision in the pay of
CREEP, somebody, singular or plural,
was tempted to divert this "capability"
from powerless antiwar groups-who
were . only a nuisance-to the still
powerful opposition party. In this
broader perspective, the demonstrators
were even 'seen to have a certain
utility, particularly if they, could be
linked to the Democrats. Dean, a
reasonable and pacific young man who
well understood the realities of - the
demonstrator problem (he had 'won
credit as the Justice Department nego-
tiator with the leaders of the big
protest march on Washington in 1969),
was baffled by the sudden delusion of
grandeur implicit in the Liddy charts.
Mitchell, for his part, on each presenta-
tion, kept growling, in effect: "What
about the demonstrators? What about
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our security? Why isn't this fellow
working on that?"
Several times in his testimony, Dean
returned to the incredible transforma-
tion that, in the space of a month and
a half, had overtaken a project with
which he thought he was familiar.
"That has always been one of the great
mysteries to me, between the time he
[Liddy) went over there ... what hap-
pened between December 10 and Janu-
ary 27, and my conception of what his
responsibilities were and possibly his
own and others' conception dramati-
cally changed." His mystification con-,
tinued and embraced the whole se-
querice of events right no to June 17.
He had thought the plan was dead
after January 27. When it resurfaced
on February 4, he was alarmed enough
to go to inform Haldeman. After this,
he was told no more of Gemstone till
he was called upon for his services in
the cover-tip: "I have never been clear
on what happened between February
and June 17." All he could say was
that "someone wanted the operation."
Obviously this puzzlement of his
may be specious. While admitting large
responsibility. in the cover-up, he may
want to dissociate himself in so far as
he can from the planning of the
break-in. That possibility must he kept
.in mind, and yet it seems undeniable'
that on January 27 both he and
Mitchell were taken completely by
surprise. Could they have been de-
ceived from the outset as to Liddy's
functions? Was "intelligence-gathering
on denionstr tors" a cover under
which the former Plumber was slipped
into Mitchell's territory; with Dean, all
unknowing, acting as his escort? The
idea of electronic surveillance may
have been in the White House air
throughout the fall of 1971-the off-
spring of group-think with no acknowl-
edged paternity-and Liddy may have
been chosen and sent over to CREEP
to try it out on Mitchell. When
Mitchell refused, then the pressure
slowly built up, While House desire for
the project mounting as frustration was
encountered.
The only evidence, though, for such
a supposition comes from Magruder.
According -to him, Liddy, early in
December, on his first days at work,
was already talking of a SI million
broad-gauged intelligence plan that had
White House approval. But of all the
witnesses before tht panel the self-
seeking Magruder is the most suspect,
and in any case Liddy may merely
have been boasting. The "something"
that happened between December 10
and January 27 (assuming Dean is right
that a new factor then entered) may
have been simply Liddy. He had
found, ready to hand, guarded by
Sloan and Porter, the pot of gold at
the end of his - dream rainbow.
CREEP's campaign money, seemingly
unlimited, may well have been the
stimulus that set his brain working
(who but he could have -named the
operation "Gemstone"?), and even be-
fore his charts had been submitted to
Mitchell he had discovered a receptive
audience back in the White House.
It is not hard to accept Dean's
puzzlement as genuine. Both he and
the unimaginative Mitchell lacked the
quality of "vision" and were incapable
of grasping that what had been added
to CREEP with the accession of Liddy
was a new potential for transforming
cash into power. In the unexplored
field of electronics as a campaign
accessory, Nixon and his corporate
backers would have a clear advantage,
almost a monopoly, since the Demo-
crats were in no position to finance
million-dollar bugging experiments, so
poor in fact that they were defenseless
against enemy hugging-Larry O'Brien
guessed that his headquarters were
being tapped but could not afford to
hire his own team of experts to find
and de-activate the bugs.
Dean and Mitchell, thinking along
traditional lines, were too short-sighted
to see that this unique advantage,
which could outweigh the Democratic
numbers (the country was still basi-
cally Democratic), should not be lightly
discarded because of the risk element.
Liddy ought to be given a trial, an
initial dry run, to 'show what he could
deliver. Unable to look at it this way,
with. an open mind, they were at a loss
when Liddy appeared; apparently as a
missionary from some quarter, undis-
couraged by orders to "burn that
stuff," obediently cutting down his
budget requirements (as though the
price tag was the problem), inde-
fatigably proselytizing, like a Jehovah's
Witness who has got one foot in the
door. Who had sent him, what could
be behind him, they hardly dared
speculate.
And yet "someone wanted the oper-
ation" or, in Mitchell's idiom, "some-
body obviously was very interested."
At Key Biscayne, the former Attorney
General must have drawn a terrible
conclusion: it could only be Nixon.
Hence his spleen and misery. He was
frightened by the project, frightened
by Liddy, and frightened by the advice
the President evidently was getting
from an undetermined familiar. His
suspicions must have veered angrily,
back and forth between Colson and
.Haldeman, touched on Ehrlichman and 1
reluctantly withdrawn. Since he has
the primal virtue of loyalty, he would
not have let himself blame the Presi-
dent: those damnable others had got at
hirn.
Ile may have been told, straight out,
and still half-refused to believe. One
can imagine ' the telphone call to
Florida, say on March 31. Haldeman:
"The President wants this, John. I
sympathize with your reservations, but
vli.t can we do? He irurrrs it." Or else
CL,'-on: "John, get your ass moving.
That's an order from You-Know-Who.;
If you don't like it, put Jeb on-it."!
Mi.chcll, setting down the receiver, was
maybe trying to persuade him;elf that
the caller was lying-preten::ng to
speak for the President but really
pushing his own merchandise. In that
case, why not ask to hear it from
Nixon directly? But that was some-
thing Mitchell was not going. to risk.
As tong as he did not csk the
President, he could retain a doubt.
It may even be true that to this day
lie, has refrained from askinz His
categorical statement that he never
discussed Watergate lvith the President,
which the senators found incon-
ceivable, was quite possibly a fact,
though the reasons he gave (the ",White
House horror. stories," "lowering the
boom," and so on) were obviously
fictitious., As so often happened in his
testimony, Mitchell's weary lies and
justifications did not seek to convince,
which was perhaps astute on his part:
if the senators did not believe his
explanations, they did not believe the
astonishing fact he was stating, which
from his point of view was just as well.
To go hack to Key Biscayne. When
Mitchell recognized, before, during, or
after the March 30 meeting, that he
could not stop Gemstone, he capitu-
lated. But not gladly. His "I am tired
of hearing it ... let's not discuss it any
further" (if that is what he said to
Magruder) defined his position. His
lack of stomach for the enterprise was
evident in his subsequent behavior,
which, stopping just short of total
non-cooperation, must have appeared
strange to others in the CREEP office.
He left Magruder in charge of whatever
Liddy was tip to and gave him sole
authority over the moneys dispensed-
to him.
When Hugh Sloan, worried, begged
Finance Chairman Maurice Stars to get
Mitchell's sanction for the first outsize
payment (S83,000) on_what Liddy said
was an approved -SS200,000 budget,
Stans drew a laconic answer: "Tell him
to ask Magruder. He has' the responsi-
bility." It was after this colloquy that';
Stars told Sloan, who wondered what
the money was for, "I don't want to
know, and porr don't want to know."
Mitchell swears he never saw the
Gemstone material placed in his file by
Magruder. If "never saw" mean, "never
looked at," that may well he true. It
would be Mitchell's way of demon-
strating that he knew in advance (and
lie was right,? apparently) that the
material would be 'worthless.
if the spongy surrounding tissue of
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lies can be cut away (which is now
possible for a reader of the Iranscript),
much of the testimony by Mitchell and
about him becomes believable. once
you accept the hypothesis that Mitch-
ell knew (or feared) that Nixon had
ordered Gemstone, nearly everythin;
falls into place. Even his dour jests
about wishing that he had shot certain
people, wishing that he had thrown
Liddy out of the Department of
Justice window. The trouble was, he
couldn't, but those are the wishes you
entertain, cheerful murder dreams,
when 'you sit by yourself, powerless.
watching the fools take over. His
exclamation (reported by LaRue) on,
getting the news of the break-in-"This
is incredible!"-suits up with explosive
sincerity his feelings on the subject or,
as he would say, on the subject matter.
Incredible from the beginning and
incredible in the finale. That they
should have let themselves get caught
was predictable, , but that McCord
should have ~:betr' -.,with them! The.
CREEP..secuiity officer! It blew your
.,n ii3d-
Mitchell testified that he had taken
no part in the cover-up. Few believed
him, but it was probably half true and
it a;;pressed a whole truth of feeling:
he scanted no part of the cover-up.
Probably he had as little faith in the
abilities of the cover-tip activists as he
had had in Liddy's' capacities. John
Dean had some sparks of judgment,
but he w_as busy being a messenger boy
for the others. Mitchell trusted only
his own people: Mardian and LaRue.
And to be forced to cover up for a
crazy action that you had opposed
from the outset was a bit much. In*
trying to cover up, you might be
digging yourself in deeper.
Yet there was his loyalty to the
President to remember, there was the
election, and there was the fact that
the faithful LaRue was being dragged
into the business of paying lnish
money to the defendants and Mardian
had ?been driift^d into the role of
Liddy's legal adviser, among other
uncongenial Watergate-related tasks.
Under the circumstances, Mitchell
could not refuse to lend a hand.
Though his opposition to Gemstone
had probably cost hint the President's
friendship,-he carried'on. -
He seems to have drawn the line,
though, at hush money. Somebody, no
doubt, had to pay it, but let them tise
White House funds and not come to
.him about it. The last time anyone
tried to enlist his help in pay-offs was
in February, 1973, when his old friend
Richard Moore was dispatched to New
York: by Haldeman and Ehrlichman, in
the unlikely hope that Mitchell could
be persuaded to raise money for
"lawyers' fees" from "his rich New
York friends." Mitchell's answer; "Tell
them to get lost." On March 21,
LaRue was worrying about a $75,000
payment he had been directed to make
to Hunt's lawyer. This was a large sum,
the largest he had paid out yet, and he
hesitated to use his own judgment on
whether or not to make the delivery.
At Dean's suggestion, he called
Mitchell, "and he told me that he
thought I ought to pay it." This can
be construed as authorization (Mitch-
ell, then, making an exception to the
sour rule he had set himself), but it
can also be. construed as private worldly
advice.given to an old friend who had
come to him for counsel. Anyway,
that White ? House money was not
Mitchell's. lookout; it came. out of a
cash fund Haldeman had been holding
to be used "for pol!ing purposes."
Yet for all his disgust and' rancor,
Mitchell, being human, must have
blamed himself as well as the -others
for the Watergate fiasco. Against any
nominee. but McGovern, it could have
cost Nixon the election, and Mitchell,'
in that eventuality, would have had
plenty of cause for self-reproach. If he
'had not stubbornly declined to know
anything 4hout Gemstone, if he had
not. heft it strictly to Magruder, in
short if he had not been so unyielding,
the burglars might still have been
caught, but there would have been no
Jim . McCord among them. Nor, if
Mitchell had had any say, would a
White House telephone number have
been found in two of the Cubans'
address books or sequenced CREEP
bills in their pockets. So, at any rate,
he may have argued "in hindsight,"
and here another bit of his testimony
suddenly fits. into the puzzle and
assumes a truthful look. On June 20,
he spoke with the President, for the
first and only time, about Watergate.
You could hardly call it a discussion,
since Mitchell was talking and Nixon
was listening. Mitchell says lie apolo-
gized to the President for not running
a tighter ship: "I think I made it quite
clear to him that I hadn't exercised
sufficient control over the activities of
all the people in the Committee."
That this was all Mitchell had to say
on the matter to the Chief Executive
struck most people as unbelievable,
positively grotesque. Yet it was about
all lie could say in the circumstances:
he was sorry. he had not- kept his eye'
on' Gemstone, sorry he had left Ma-
gruder to handle it, sorry he had let
his opposition to the project get the
better. of him.... The tape of that
conversation is "missing," but we can
assume that Nixon's response was icy.
No wonder.the call was short.
If we accept that the impetus for
Watergate came from Nixon, still it
must have been communicated through
a channel or. channels. Someone be-
sides Nixon was active in promoting
the plan. Mitchell, in hi's testimony
threw out a few morose hints as to
who ? that might have been, but he
would not be 'more definite. "You can
almost take your -pick of quite a
number of such influences." The obvi-
ous choice is Colson. Magruder is a
possibility, though mainly because of
his eagerness to divert suspicion else-
where-onto Colson, among others. lie
authorized the funds, without refer-
ence to Mitchell, and . he was very
much up-to-the-minute on the break-in
program. When Liddy called him, on
the morning of June 17 in the Beverly
Hills Hotel in Los Angeles, he came
back from the telephone to the break-
fast table and said in an aside to
LaRue, "You know; I think maybe
last night was the night they were
going into the Democratic National
Committee." But if he was getting
orders from the Oval Office and
feeding information back, it seems
inconceivable that somebody was not
acting as liaison-impossible to picture
Nixon stepping into a pay , phone
booth, depositing a dime, and asking
for "Jeb." But this sends us back to
wondering about Ilaldennan; Magruder
was an old Haldeman boy.
From some of Dean's notes written
at Camp David and from remarks he
made to the President. it sounds as if
for a time Dean had suspected Gordon
Strachan of being. the principal agent
or intermediary. But either this sus-
picion had been dropped in his car by
Magruder (status rivalry: he had been
Strachan's boss in Haldeman's office
and now at CREEP he was getting
orders from him), or "Strachan" was a
pseudonym for the big boss, Halde-
man, since of all the figures we have
been discussing the thin high-voiced
Strachan was the most powerless. But
by the time of the hearings Dean had
dropped Strachan or "Strachan" and
seemed to be inclining toward Colson.
One wonders whether, by now, the
thought of Nixon as the prime mover
is turning over in his mind.
Colson, Haldeman, Haldeman, Col-
son-the Moving Finger writes and,
having writ, erases; the needle wavers;
maybe the daisies can tell. It is a
count-out game. But one thing is sure:
Nixon cannot be counted out. Senator
Baker's "searching" question, "What
did the President know and when did'
he. know it?". could not be - more
incongruous. Ask when an arch-
.conspirator first heard of his con-;
spiracy or when out wicked Creator'
got news of this wicked world.
III
Nevertheless, it ' is worthwhile to
examine the circumstances' out of
which Watergate emerged. The crucial
date was probably June 1971. The
publication of the Pentagon Papers was
a turning-point for Nixon. At that
moment, maybe at that instant, he
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went around the bend, from normal
politics (however dirty and ruthless) to
the politics of irrationality. There had
been premonitory signs, Already, in
the spring of 1971, the installation of
the White House monitoring system
pointed in. the direction of Watergate,
and the Huston internal-security plan
of the summer of 1970 was -another
road-indicator. Both of these measures
were well-guarded secrets, and it was
Watergate, significantly; that finally
released them, along with a great deal
of other material that had been kept
from public scrutiny.
The monitoring system and the Hus=
ton plan were directed, in their dif-'
ferent ways,'at a much tighter control
of the environment and both were
designed to make use of modern,
up-to-date technology. An infatuation
with the latest technology apparently
went hand in hand with a passion for
secrecy: according to John Dean, Tom
Huston (whose hero was Cato the
Younger) had a scrambler telephone
locked in a safe beside him-he sounds
like a more highly educated Liddy, a
flamboyant conservative militant re-
sponsive to the appeal of space-age
gimcrackery.
But the Huston plan had to be
scrapped (or to go more deeply under-
ground) after only a few days of
service, owing to the resistance of J.
Edgar Hoover, and this thwarting of
the presidential will occurring within
the extccndcd "family" of government
must hav:: made Nixon sharply aware
of his nuclear isolation. Just as he was
moving to establish the .tighter control
he de.?nta:l necessary to'ihe process of
governing, he was forced to note, and
not for the first time, his inability to
control or discipline the agencies that
were supposedly under him.
lie was isolated, pent up, in the
White House with his tiny nucleus of
planners and visionaries, and against
him were allied the inert and-from his
point of view-reactionary forces of
the nation: J. Edgar Hoover, Helms at
the CIA, the Eastern Establishment
press, the judiciary, most of the Con-
gress, and the Internal Revenue Serv-
ice, manned by Democratic holdovers
who blocked all his efforts to enforce
Iegitir'rtate authority through tax audits
and tax harassment.
it is important, I think, 'to realize
that Nixon saw nothing wrong in the
conception of governing through tax
harassment of foundations and indi-
viduals. To him, control of the IRS
was one of the natural perquisites of
the office, like the patronage dispensed
by the Postmaster General, the par-
celing out of contracts and embassy
assign:;:tints as rewards to campaign
contributors. As for the wire-tapping
of dissenters and subversives, some
people, he knew, thought it was illegal,
but it was not wror;. And why
shouldn't the CIA lend a hand in
undercover operations against domestic
radicals? Its charter from Congress
specified foreign intelligence work
only, but it was common knowledge
that a lot of those radicals were
:working for foreign powers.
Yet t ese little natural . innocent
things (how could a tax audit hurt
anybody who had made an honest
return?) were being treated as if they
were crimes by the people over at IRS
and by Hoover and Helms, who got
legalistic when asked to do the slight-
est favor. It had not been that way
when the Democrats were - running
things. The difference was Richard M.
Nixon. Elected by the popular will to
the highest office of the land, the
President of the United States was
thrust into the position of a conspira-
tor if he was going to execute his
mandate.
A number of presidents--e.g., Roose-
velt, Lyndon Johnson-have not been
strangers to this feeling end have acted
accordingly. It is probably in the nature
of things that the Chief Executive will.
chafe against the laws and institutions
restraining him more than the average
citizen and turn, on occasion, into the
Chief La?.vbrca'.cr. But no Administra-
tion before Nixon's can have lent itself
so readily to a conspiratorial view of
government. His secretive and un-
sociable nature made friends with the
underground methods he felt were
L posed on him by an unsympathetic
Congress (even his own party had its
Javitses and Percys) and an un-
cooperative entrenched bureaucracy.
in 1970, conspiracy (the wrong
kind) was much in the Administra-
tion's thoughts. At Justice, Mitchell
and Mardian were bringing dissenters
to trial under the conspiracy statutes
and creating more dissent among the
judiciary, which complained' of loosely
drawn indictments, tainted evidence,
and the violation of the rights of
defendants. From the Administration's
point of view, those aborted trials
should have been seen, nevertheless, as
a qualified success; like tax audits,
they constituted a harassment, very
costly both of, time and money not
only to those indicted but also to their
supporters, busy raising funds, writing
letters to the press, hiring halls,
drafting appeals. But Nixon was dis-
satisfied.
-
(A) With the judiciary and
(B) probably, with Mitchell and Mar-
dian. As he drew closer to the notion
(unnamed by him, of course) of form-
ing a conspiratorial nucleus within his
own. government, he began to draw
away from his old counselor Mitchell,
who believed 'in "working within the
system" by rapping on the right doors.
The Senate's rejection of Haynsworth
and Carswell-Mitchell's nominees for
the Supreme Court and part of "the
Southern strategy"-must have pro-
duced the first signs of a chill on
Nixon's part. Trying to work within
the system, twisting a few arms (Sena-
tor Margaret Chase Smith's for-
instance) had caused him two public
humiliations and anyway it was too
slow. An analogy with the politics of
the left comes to mind: the younger
ideologues and actionists of the White
House inner circle were revolutionaries,
while Mitchell and his cronies (I ask
Willy Brandt's pardon) were Social.
Democrats. Both had the same goal-
the rule of Nixon-and the differences
were over methodology, but Mitchell's
addiction to the old semi-legal
methods, a habit be could not shake,
was starting to prove, at least to
Nixon. that he did not understand the
goal any better, than J. Edgar Hoover
or Randolph Thrower of the IRS.
he disclosure of the Pentagon.
Papers brought all this to a head. Their
publication inflicted a symbolic injury
on Nixon. Whatever disapproval he was
bound to express in public, privately
he might almost have enjoyed it. The
documents had nothing to do with him.
and cast discredit, to put it mildly, on
his Democratic predecessors. Nor did
the Pentagon come out well, which
could have given him some satisfaction;
relations, as we now know, were
strained to the point where the Penta-
gon was spying on him. It is under-
standable that he should have been led
to worry about leaks from his own
Administration. Perhaps almost any
president in his place would have
formed something like a Plumbers' unit
to' make doubly sure this did not
happen to him.
But Nixon's reaction of fury was far
in cxcess of the cause and unaccounted
for by his practical interests. He be-
came obsessed with Ellsberg-a spaced-
out academic who would never see the
inside of a government office again. By
all accounts, Nixon could not get his
mind off him and talked about hi-n
incessantly. Ellsberg was the goad that
spurred- his thinking along security
lines, - and the White House staff was
aware of it, so much so that a
sycophant like Colson, trying to keep
pace with that thinking, actually
directed a White House employee to
set off a fire-bomb in the Brookings
Institution in order to effect an entry
and steal some documents they were
using for a current study of Vietnam
affairs. It is interesting that this project
was a mirror image of the Pentagon,
Papers "theft;' with arson, property
damage, and possible loss of life added.
-Nixon *s determination to see Ells-
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berg punished, like a close personal
enemy, hardened throughout the sum-
mer. All his grudges and grievances
now had a point to center on: his
hatred of the press, his hatred of reds
and pinks, his hatred of Hoover, his
mistrust of the CIA and impatience
with the judiciary. The FBI was re-
fusing to conduct a serious investiga-
tion because of a friendship between
hoover and Ellsberg's father-in-law; the
CIA "psychological profile" of Ellsberg
was derisory; the judge hearing the
case naturally could not be counted
on, so he had to be "fixed" with an
offer to head the FBI.
I'ke furniture . being moved into
place to set a stage, Hunt and Liddy
that summer were brought onto the
White House staff. Caulfield and Ulase-
wicz, both with police backgrounds-of
investigating dissidents, were already
there. Caulfield, a former Bronx cop,
had been hired by Haldeman; his
specialty had been "monitoring" ter-
rorists,..the. Communist party, Cuban
militant ..or asiza ions; ~d a variety of
tin ,domestic.rcvolutionary groups
lsfro. ;Planned br were suspected of
;planning Serious kinds of unlawful
activities." The burglary of Ellsberg's
psychiatrist was coming.
The Ellsberg-poisoned atmosphere of
the White House during the summer
and fall of 1971 is reminiscent of the
Kremlin during the late days of Stalin
and the chimera of "the men in
white." Nixon could not tolerate the
sight of an opponent, even the most
harmless and peaceful demonstrator
with a sign. The specter of Philby
(called "Philbrick" by the preparer of
the transcript, who is obviously not
very spy-conscious) seems to have
haunted the President, as though he
were a nascent Ellsberg in British
disguise. Like Stalin, Nixon was medi-
tating a purge, but because the US was
a democracy it would have to wait till
after the election. In Washington, after
the election, heads did not roll, as they
did during the "doctors' plot," but
helms went, early in 1973, death had
taken care of Hoover the previous
spring, and late last summer a big
"reorganization" of the CIA was re-,
ported. Ehfichman, moreover (this has
just come to light), took a leaf from
Yagoda's book: in 1971, he presented
Admiral Welandcr with a prepared
confession to sign that would have
made "me admit to the wildest pos-
sible, totally false charges of political
espionage." Welander refused.
Nixon's grim focus on Ellsberg is as
easy (or as hard) to explain as Stalin's
final paranoia, which combined his fear
of aseassination with a phobic suspi-
cion of Jews to fix on (lie doctors
around him, and then struck out at
Soviet Jews in general. Anti-Scmiiism
was latent in the Soviet Union, just as
red scares are endemic in the United
States. Even Nixon, though, cannot
have imagined Ellsberg as his future
assassin except in a symbolic sense.
The theft of those documents, their
exposure to public view had dealt the
Presidency a wound, and Nixon, in his
own mind, had merged with the insti-
tution, to become a single body. The
publication of the Pentagon Papers
planted in him a doubt of the inviola-
bility of his person and the office and
of the principle of "confidentiality"
about which he evidently has deep-
rooted feelings. It was as if his moni-
toring system, which he had hoped
would ensure permanent control of the
presidential environment by putting
whatever happened there on record for
his own exclusive retention, had been
defied, almost laughed at, by another
set, of records compiled under
McNamara's directions and spirited
away by a private individual.
At the same time there was perhaps
something about Ellsberg, the man, the
pre-Papers, clean, crew-cut Ellsberg, a
defiant hawk in Vietnam, looking out,
still, with a tight eager smile, from the
cloud of hair, that reminded Nixon of
some of the younger "modern con-
servatives" in his own hard-driving
office family, and the feeling of half-
familiarity would have further dis-
turbed his balance, making him look
fearfully at the aide with a clipboard
coming in the door. Hence the angry
insistence on Ellsberg as a "traitor"
and the obsessive memory of Philby.
Late in the fall of 1971, after the
unproductive Fielding burglary, as the
courts prepared to try Ellsberg, the
co-ordinates for Watergate were fixed,
even if no brain as yet had made the
calculation. The White House retained
the Plumbers: "capability" in addition
to Caulfield and Ulascwicz, but had no
immediate interesting employment to
offer them. Electronic surveillance,
working out of Lhrlichilia n's office-,
had hardly been given a chance to
show what it could do: only a few
taps on journalists and on Kissinger's
aides. At CREEP there was money to
burn. In September, McCord, on Caul-
field's recommendation, was hired by
CREEP as a security officer, part time.
A former FBI and CIA operative, he
had knowledge of "the art of certain
technical devices ... listening-devices
and so on." Liddy, who arrived on
December 10, did not; his field was
clandestine photography. On January
1, McCord went on full time.
The idea of putting these elements
together and plugging them into the
campaign may have been Nixon's. If he
diopped it into Haldeman's "suggestion
box" during a chat at Camp David, it-
.probably drew a neutral response: "I'll
look into the parameters, Mr. Presi-
dent, and report back." Alternatively
Colson brought Nixon the idea, which
either he had thought up himself or
which had come to him via Hunt from
Liddy-Colson did not meet Liddy in
person until early February. Or maybe
several people, separately, put it for-
ward.- It is impossible to trace the
routes by which it beat its way to
Nixon's mind until finally it could not
be dislodged. But some time, as early
as December or as late as April 1, it
achieved "worthwhile for go status."
The conjugation of McCord and Liddy
in' the CREEP offices, followed by
McCord's going on full-time salary-
facts not subject to dispute-point to a
Christmas birth date.
p
At is impossible to foretell whether
Nix?n will be removed from office, by
one means or another, when Watergate
celebrates its second anniversary. As I
write, in late February, the prediction
is that he will stay. Yet Watergate has
a strange organic life of its own which,
in my opinion, is more persistent than
Nixon's desperate hold on power.
Watergate has showed itself to be like
an angleworm ?or a child's belief About
an angleworm: if you chop it in pieces,
each piece will,wriggle off and make a
brand-new angleworm. Last September,
everyone was sure that it had died.
Then came Agnew. After Agnew,
another "dead" period followed. Then
came the Saturday night massacre.'
Another brief suspension 'of breath,
then the missing tapes, then the tape
erasures. -
This persistence is not an accident or
just bad luck. Watergate returns, reas-
serts. itself because it is 'a whole,
consistent in all its parts' like the
angleworm. It is a creation of Nixon
and of Nixonian politics.. Agnew,
-strictly speaking, had nothing to do
with Watergate, but because he himself
was a creation of Nixonian politics, he
,was a parallel phenomenon that could
not- sustain scrutiny when brought out
into the light of day.
This organic wholeness of Nixon and
his works, faithfully reflected in
Watergate, has produced some ironies,
nasty tricks of fate. But the irony
results from the utter consistency of
the whole-there are no spare parts;
everything returns on itself. Because of
Watergate, for example, Dan Ellsberg
has gone free. And if Nixon gnashed
his teeth over that, lie must at least
have cursed when lie read McCord's
letter to Judge Sirica. What had per-,
suaded McCord to talk or had been at
any rate a prime factor in his decision
was his loyalty to the CIA. On this
point, lie testified with a good deal of
heat and at length. He was angry when
he first heard of the White' house
effort "to lay the Watergate operation
off on the CIA," and -he had refused'
to go along with the suggestion that he
use the CIA in his defense.
I could not use as my defense the
story that the operation was a CIA
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operation because it was not true
.. - . Even if it meant my freedom,
I would not turn on the organiza-
tion that had employed me for 19
years.... "I was completely con-
vinced that the White House was
behind the idea and ploy which
had been presented, and that the
White House was turning ruthless,
in my opinion, and would, do
whatever was politically expedient
at any one particular point in time
to accomplish its own ends.
I was also convinced that the
White House had fired Helms in
order to put its own man in
control at CIA.... It appeared to
me that the White House had for
some time been trying. to get
control over the CIA estimates and
assessments, in order to make
them conform to "White House
policy."
He went on to talk somewhat inco-
herently about how Iiitler's intelligence
chiefs had been obliged to lie to him
in giving their estimates of foreign
military capabilities-thereby losing
him the war. Jim McCord was a
fire-breathing patriot and seemed to
have decided, post-Watergate, that the
White house, through persecution of
the CIA, was weakening the country 's
defenses. It took all kinds of Ameri-
cans, including (lie seven rather con-
servative senators, to bring out the
Watcrgate story: the press, the judici-
ary- (Judge Sirica), even Pat Cray of
the FIJI. Nearly all of Nixon's. chickens
have come home to roost, but a few
mo:c--(he last of the brood-may fin-
ish the job.
Postscript, March 7
written. the grand jury indicted seven
of Nixon's associates :ind handed its
sealed envelope to Judge Sirica. Water-
gate has come to life again, and amain
Nixon's days appear to he numbered.
In Cincinnati, a Republican candidate
for Congress has been defeated-
another inroad on strongly held Re-
publican territory. Senator tirvin's
Committee has been voted some more
money. Nixon has said- on television
that when he told Dean, "It would be
wrong, that's for sure"-his newest
recollection of the words he used on
March 21, 1973-he was talking about
clemency for the men in prison. Not,
as Haldeman had sworn before the
Ervin panel, about raising a million
dollars' worth of hush money.
This would seem to "cover" Halde-
man on one perjury charge: he had not
been lying under oath to the Senate
Committee but had only had a poor
recollection of the context, under-
standable since hush money and clem-
ency were linked. in the discussion.
Nixon_ went on to say that some
people (was he thinking of the
twenty-three grand jurors?) who read
the whole transcript or heard the
whole tape might put a different
interpretation on the conversation, but
"I know what I meant."
We can now understand at least why
the tape was not deep-sixed. The
statement "it is wrong" or "that would
must occur somewhere on
be wrong"
it, and to preserve those, three or four
precious little words, Nixon evidently
decided to, let the grand jury, if that
was its mood, "misinterpret" the rest
of the conversation: proof that he has
a moral sense was scarce enough not to
be jettisoned.
he seven indictments for conspir-
acy, perjury, lying, and obstruction of
justice relate only to the cover-up. The
grand jury apparently drew no con-
clusions as to who planned and
directed the original crime, LJless'
those conclusions are contained in the
sealed envelope. One can hardly blame
the jurors for failing to pronounce on
the matter since no hard evidence, so
far as we know, pointing to the guilty
party or parties has been produced.
Those who had an interest in covering
up are legion-virtually the entire
Nixon apparatus-but the entire appar-
atus cannot be guilty of ordering the
break-ins at the Watergate. The plain
fact is that the cover-tip is still going
on: evidence in the form of criminal
knowledge is being effectively hidden,
justice is being obstructed.
The grand jury indictments only
confirm what. was already a certainty
in most people's minds: that those
seven men (though 1 must say that I
did not suspect Gordon Strachan) were
lying and/or conspiring to conceal
when they gave testimony to legally
constituted bodies. But what is not yet
guess at, remains a secret shared among!
a handful of men, not more than four
probably. Three of these are now
under indictment, and the prospect of
jail may serve to squeeze some truth
out. But it is more likely that the one
who is still at large will he judged and
condemned by another court-the Con-
gress or what is left of the Republican
party-before his accomplices can stand
up to hear the- verdicts reached by
their peers. p
On March 1, since these thoughts were
ST. LOUIS POST DISPATCH
EDITORIAL - 12 March 1974
bove 17 eproachrt:
. Now that the Senate \\'at.ergate committee is
holding its hearings in private; reports about
the committee's closed door questioning of
.,Richard Helms, former director of the Central
Intelligence Agency, do not suggest that the
Senators are digging very deeply into the CIA's".
highly questionable involvement in the burg-.
lary of the office of Daniel Ell erg's psychia
'
break-in and:
trist, the Watergate building
other crimes far afield from the agency's; law
erged from one closed-door session with Mh'
Helms to say he believes that Mr. Helms is
"above reproach." If Mr. Helms is above re-
proach, there is a lot of explaining to be done..
For while Mr. Helms was director of the in-
telligence agency (he left in late 1972), the
according to sworn affidavits in the .
CIA
,
Watergate case, provided equipment and false
'
s
documents for the burglary of the psychiatrist
office and of the Democratic Party offices at,
the Watergate.
The CIA, on Mr. Helms's orders, attempted
to divert the FBI's Watergate investigation,
The CIA was reportedly involved in the at-
tempted burglary of the offices of the Inter-
national Telephone & Telegraph Corp. in New'
York, where incriminating documents concern-,
ing the corporation's questionable dealings with
the Nixon Administration were presumably on
file. The CIA admittedly destroyed tapes which
recorded conversations between its officials
grid ' key figures in the Nixon Administration,
including possibly the President himself. Sen-
ators were said to be seeking some tapes as
evidence vital to the Watergate investigation.
None of these activities has been satisfactor=
ily squared with the law, which supposedly
bars the CIA from domestic operations. Unless
the Senate comn?:ittee brings in a report with
convincing evh once to justify its apparent in-
dulgent attitude toward Mr. Helms, the com-
wittee itself will be suspected of a cover-up,
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MO13E, lie, York City
April 1974
BY VICTOR L. NLt RC11ETTI AND JOHN D. Pr'LV1 KS
Editor's note: In June, Alfred A. Knopf Inc. will
publish The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence by
ViciorL. Marchetti. who worked for the agency for
14 yours, and John D. Afarks, aforiner assistant to
the Department of St *te's director of intelligence.
The hook i?.?ill appear with 162 deletions demanded
by the CIA. On the page opposite, Brit Hume,
[,e?ORI:]'s 13rashtr:gton editor, explores the legal
and censorship issues involved in a battle that dates
back to the spring of 1972 when U.S. marshals
arrived at Marchetti's home outside Washington
rrdtlt a temporary restraining order. In their Nook,
Marchetti and Marks deal at length with the CIA
and the press. Thefo!lowing article is adapted front
that material and other related research collected
by the authors.
On Sept. 23, 1970, syndicated columnist Charles
Barnett was handed, by a W ashington-based
o:uicial of ITT, an internal report sent in by the
company's two representatives in Chile, Hal
Hendrix and Robert Bcrrellez. This eight-page
'document--mar::ed? "Personal and Con-
-f=,~iential -said that the American ambassador to
Chile had received the "green light to move in the
name of President Nixon ...[witii] maximum
authority to do all possi%'.e-short of a Dominican
Republic-type action-to keep Allende from taking
pow. r." It stated that the Chilean army "has been
....,.red full material and financial assistance by
fl-:: US military est:.b::shn;tnt" and that ITT had
"I)ledged [its financial) support if needed" to the
anti-Allende forces.
Instead of launching an immediate in-
;~vestiga,tion into whit could have been one of the
bigi;cst stories of the year. Bartlett (lid exactly what
ITT hoped he would do: he wrote a column on
Sept. 2S about the dangers of a "classic Corn-
munist-siyle assumption of pow.vcr" in?Chilc. He did
see some hope that "Chile will find a way to avert
the inauguration of Salvador Allende," but
thcuht there was little the United States could.
"proitably do" and that "Chilean politics should
be left to the Chileans." Inc did not inform his
readers that he had a document in his possession
that indicated that Chilean politics were being left.'
to the Central Intelligence Agency and ITT.
"I was only interested in the political
an:'.?ysis." Br.rtlat explained in an interview.
"I C:ii n't take seriously the Washington stint-the
des.crii:tion of rn:rninations within the U.S.
governimlent. [The ITT men who wrote the report]
had not been in Washington; they had been in
Chile." Yet by Bartl_tt's own admission, his Sept.
2S colu::a n was based en the 171T report-in places
to the p~:int of paraphrase. He wrote about several
incid cr.ts securing in Chie that he could not
possibly have ve.ii;cd in Washington. Most
reporters will not use material of this sort unless
they can check it out with an independent source,
so Bartlett was sho.ving extraordinary faith in the
reliability of his informants.
An ITT official also gave the same report to
.Time's Pentagon correspondent, John Mulliken.
:Mulliken covered neither the CIA nor Chile as part
of his regular beat, and he sent the ITT document
to. 1 i ile's headquarters in Now York for possible
:action. As far as he knows Time never followed up
,on the story. fie attributes this to "bureaucratic
stupidity-the system, not the people." He explains
that Tittle had shortly bete:~c done a long article on
Chile and New York "didn't want to do any more."
Thus, the public did not learn what the U.S.
government and ITT were up to in Chile until the
spring of 1972, when columnist Jack Anderson
published scores of ITT internal documents
concerning Chile. Included in the Anderson
papers, as one of the most important exhibits, was
the very same document that had been given
eighteen months earlier to Bartlett and Time.
e?: J't:s::i ith a few notable exceptions, the
American press consistently tiptoes around the
CIA and its operations. And those fey; who do
penetrate the secret organization find the going
hard, indeed. Newsmen are physically. denied
access to the CIA's }. Zvi'; guarded buildings in
Langley, Va., except under tightly controlled
circumstances. No media outlet in the country has
ever assigned. a full-time correspondent to the
agency, and very few report on its activities, even on
a part-time basis. Except in those cases where the
CIA wants to leak some information, almost all
CIA personnel avoid any contact whatsoever with
journalists. In fact, agency policy decrees that
employees must inform their superiors immediately
of any conversations with reporters.
Back when Allen Dulles headed the CIA
and Cold War anti-communis.n was still.rampant,
two c:isa;ters hit the CIA that newspapers learned
of in advance but reused to share fully with their
readers. First came the shooting down of the U-2
spy plane over the Soviet Union in 1950. Chalmers
Roberts, long the Washington Post's diplomatic
correspondent, confirms in his book First Rough
Draft (Praeger) that he and "some other
newsmen" knew about the U-2 flights in the late
1950s and "remained silent." Roberts explains:
"Retrospectively, it seems a close question as to
whether this was the right decision, but I think it
prof: bly was. We look the position tiiaf the
national interest came before the story because we
knew the United States very much needed to
discover the secrets of Soviet missilery."
Most reporters at the time would have
agreed with former Clandestine Services chief
Richard Bissell that prom lure disclosure would
have tarced t`ie Soviets to take action." Yet li?:sell
admitted that "after live days" the Soviets were
fully aware that the spy planes were overflying their
country, and that the secrecy maintained by the
Soviet and American governments was an example
"of t o hostile governments collaborating to keep
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operations secret from the general public of both
sides."
When the U-2 =gas shot down, the U.S.-
government lied about the nature of the plane's
mission. After two days, the Soviets announced
they had captured the CIA pilot, Francis Gary
Powers, and the State Department issued a second
cover story-also partially a lie. Finally President
Eisenhower levelled with the American pc,- le and
tool: the personal responsibility for the flight.
The U-2 incident may well hatie been a
watershed in the .gay the press and the American
public looked at their government. For most, it was
the first indication that their government lied, z::d
it was the epening wedge in what would -grow
during the Vietnam years into the "credibility
gap.., But as the Eisenhower adimini'Stration Caine
to an end, there was still a naiionad consensus that
the tight against conniunism justi`ied virtually any
means. The press %v as very much a part of t':e
consensus, which did not start to crack until it
became known that the CIA was organizing an
arme.d?iinvasion of Cuba.
Dive months before the actual landing took-
place at the Bay of Pigs, The Nation published a
second-hand account of the agency's efforts, to
trap Cuban exiles for attacks against Cuba and
called upon "all US news media \vit'.z
col-respondents in Guatemala' (where tho invaders
were being trained) to check out the story. The Nei-.
York Times re ponded with an .!rfi_?le rn .'n.
1951, describing the trailing, with U.S. ,.:,ista
ofai, a.llti-Castro force in Guatemal:-a.. At cad of
the story, which mentioned neither the CIA no- a
possible invasion, was a ch?^.r c by''the"
Foreign Minister that the U.S. government :,.?s
preparing "rnercena i.a' in Gti:.,c glad ...., i f.
ici mi nary act!: u ?:,,ainst Cuba. '1`:i!'.._. .'. is
th.n the in:lila~i editor cf the Ti,:,cs, dcclnred
in his book, i\Ir Lrfr and The Times (l; _rp er a; :d
Ru.ti), "I don't think that anyone :?ho'lc;d il:c
story would have doubted that ..on!cthing was in
the wind, that tI_. L?ni? c i St:...: v:. s cn':;
vCl ?Cd, or_ 'lilt T:,c :c>1:? York ?irrtPS
slur}?.
As the date for the invasion apprnac:!cd,
7L?c New Rrpublic obtained a comprehensive
account of the pr:parations for. the op ::ration, but
the liberal r:1a aziac's editor-lIl-Cldef. Gilbert
il::r:son, bec::n:c wary of the security I;' plicati i S
and submitted it i-ior to public::{tior: to President
'r:c.::r,cti} asked that the article net be
ri J':iitLd, and Harrison, a friend of the prr~si-len+,
compiied. At about the same time, Ncl. York
Times reporter Tz:.d Szulc uncovered :ica riy the
complete story. and the Ti,ncs m:-ni p: to
carry it on April 7, I;'51, under
headline. But the Times pubii:;her, the late Orvil
Dryfoos, and then. F:'ashington bureau cbJi_-fJa;oes
Reston, both objected to the article on r.aticnal
security grounds. and it s:as edited to 0:i.,,, :ate all
..,
mention of CIA involvement or of
.ra:ni:;cnt'?
invasion. The truncated story, which mentioned
only that 5,000 to 6,Ga0 Cubans were being trained
in the U.S. and Central America "for the liberation
of Cuba," no longer merited a banner headline and
was reduced to a single column on the front page.
Clifton Daniel, then the paper's managing editor,
later explained that Dryfoos had ordered the story
toned down "above all, [out oil concern for the
safety of the men who were preparing to offer their;
lives or. the beaches of Cuba."
Times reporter Szulc says he v:as not,
consulted about the heavy editing of his article, and'
he maintains that President Kennedy made a
personal appeal to publisher
story. Yet, less than a month after the invasion, at a
meeting where he was urging newspaper editors not
to print security information, Kennedy told Times'
Catiedge. "if you had printed more about the
Operation you would have saved us from a colossal
mistake."
. I
he failure at the Bay Of Pigs cost CIA
Director Dulles his job,. and he was succeeded in
November, 1961, by John McCone.. McCone did
little to revamp the agency's policies in dealing with
the press. In McConc's first weeks at the agency,
the Times heard that the CIA was training;
Tibetans in paramilitary techniques at a base ink
Colorado, but, according to David Wise's account'
in The Politics of Lying (Random House), the
Office of the Secretary of Defense "pleaded" that;
the Tirnrs kill the story, which it did. Then in the;
Cuban Missile crisis'of 1962, President Kennedy
ag:+in prevailed upon the Times not to print a
stow-this time, the news that Soviet missiles had
been installed in Cuba-which the Times had'
learned of at least a day before the Pres-'
ident made his announcement to the country.
In 1964, McCone was faced with the.
prob'????. of how to deal with an' upcoming book
about the CIA: Tl Invisible Government
Mandoin house) by reporters David Wise of the
Nc?iv York: herald Tribune and Thomas Ross of the
Clric rr,~o.Snrr Times. Their work provided examples
ofihc kind oftongh reporting; that other journalists
consistently failed to do on the a rcrcy. As a result.
McConc and his del,uty, Lt. Gen. ~5arshall Carter,
both telephoned Random House to raise their i
strong objections to publication of the book. Then,
a CIA official offered to buy up the entire first
printing cf over 1,000 books. Calling this action I
"laugliaolc,?' Random House's president, Bennett
Ccrf. agreed to sell the agency as many books as it
wanted but stated that additional printings would
he made for the public. The agency also ap-
proached Look, which had planned to run excerpts
from the book and, according to a spokesman,
"asked that some changes be made-things they
considered to be inaccuracies. We made a
number of changes but do not consider that they
were significant."
When it became obvious that neit%, er
Ra:ndarn douse nor Look would stop publication.,
the CIA started a v.hispeying campaign against the
book among selected journalists. In one instance,
McCone, at a party in his home, took columnist
Marquis Childs aside. showed him the galleys
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(which the agency had obtained by covert means),
and made derogatory comments about the book.
iylcConc had misjudged his man, however, and
Childs wrote a strong defense of the book in his
nationally syndicated column.
The CIA charged that Wise and Ross were
exposing agency operations and endangering CIA
employees by their disclosures. The authors' view
was that no individual was mentioned in the book
whose name had not already appeared in print or
who was not already a public figure; that the
operations described were history; and that
the agency was trying to use the "national security"
label to suppress legitimate criticism of the CIA.
William Raborn took over the CIA in April,
1465, and was quickly subjected to a series of
savage leaks aimed at discrediting him, and then to
a series by the Times on the CIA. The leaks oc=curred because Raborn, a salty retired admiral,
was extremely unpopular among agency
professionals who spread unfavorable (and largely
true) stories about him all over Washington.
Perhaps the most well known was that Raborn,
after listening to a briefing on the elite group that
ruled Libya, asked to see the biographical file "on
this fellow Oli Garchy." Obviously damaged by the
publication of such tales, Raborn resigned after a
little more than a year and was succeeded by his
deputy, Richard Helms.
In setting up the Times series, Washington
bureau chief Tom Wicker talked to Helms, who
promised the agency would try to cooperate. Then,
according to Times reporter John Finney, the five
or so newsmen who were working most actively on
the story, went to CIA headquarters for a general
briefing about- the agency's functions. Finney
remembers there was a great deal of emphasis on
the intellectual and analytical character of. the
agency'and almost no mention of "dirty .tri`cks."
While the series was : the White House and the State
Dcpartmentwould not provide information on the
subject for fear of giving the Soviets the impression
that the U.S. government was behind a move to
play up the threat posed by the Soviet fleet.
Mullikin says that with Helms' authorization, CIA
experts proved Time with virtually all the data it
needed. Cor-ienting on the incident five years
later, Mullik recalls, "I had the impression that
the Cli't wassayirg 'the hell with the others' and.
was taking p sure in sticking it in." lie never did
find out exae'~Iy why Helms wanted that in"-
fornation toe le out at that particular time when
other govern--nt agencies did not; nor, of course,
did Time's rc:ders, who did not even know that the
CIA was the5aurce of much of the article which
appeared one. 23, 1968. Dating back to the days
of Henry Ln-mand Allen Dulles, Time had always
had close re..;ons with the agency. In more recent
years, the magazine's chief Washington
corresponded. Hugh Sidey, relates that "with
h"eCoae andOelms, we had a set-up that ivhen the
magazine ti- doing something on the CIA, we
went to tllcm and put it before them... We were
never misled
WhNeivsiceek decided in the fall of 1971
to do a covero story an Richard Helms and "The
Nev. Espion.:. ." the magazine went directly to the
agency for much of its information, according to a
Newsweek staff member. And the article, printed
on Nov. 22, gcnerally reflected the line that Helms
was trying so hard to sell: that since "the latter
1960s...the focus of attention and prestige within
the CIA" had switched from the Clandestine
Services to the analysis of intelligence and that "the
vast majority of recruits are bound for" the l
Intelligence " Directorate. This was, of course. 1
s,rittcn at a time when over two-thirds of the
agency's budget and personnel were devoted to
covert operations and their support (roughly the
same percentage as had existed for the preceding
ten years). News-i'eek did uncover several
previously unpublished anecdotes about past
covert operations (which made the CIA look good)
and published at least one completely untrue
stater bent concerning a multibillion dollar
technical espionage program. Assuming the facts
for this statement were provided by "reliable in-
tellit ence sources," it probably represented a CIA
disinformation attempt designed to make the
Russians believe something that simply was not
accurate about U.S. technical ? collection
capabilities.
V-,'
ie, ,,'nder Helms, the CIA has continued to
intervene with editors and publishers to try to stop
publication of certain books and articles which are
either descriptive or critical of the agency. Early in
1972, Helms telephoned William Attwood,
publisher of Newsday. According to Attwood,
Helms was "unhappy" about an article submitted
to his newspaper by one of the authors of this book. i
For his own reasons, Att ood had already decided
not to run the article, so Helm's intervention
was academic.
That spring proved to be a busy season for
the CIA's book banners. In June, the number two
man in the Clandestine Services, Cord Meyer, Jr.,
visited the New York of Ices of Harper and Row,
Inc., which was scheduled to publish a work by
Alfred McCoy called The Politics of Heroin in
Southeast Asia, charging the agency with a certain
degree of complicity in the Southeast Asian drug
traffic. Meyer, whose previous literary
achievements inc'. ".ided directing the funding of.
several CIA subsidized publications (as well as the
National Student Association), asked several old
acquaintances al. erg Harper and Row's top
management to provide him with a copy of the
book's galley proofs. While the CIA obviously,
hoped to handle the matter informally among'
friends,. Harper and Row asked the agency for.
official confirmation of its request. The CIA's+
general counsel, Lawrence Houston, responded!
with a letter on July 5, 1972, statin, that while the
agency's intervention "in no way affects the right of
a publisher to decide what to publish. . .1 find it
difficult to believe... that a responsible publisher
would wish to be associated with an attack on our,
Government involving the vicious international
drug traffic without at ]east trying to ascertain the
facts."
McCoy objected strenuously to the request.
He maintained that the CIA had "no legal right to
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review the book" and that "submitting the
manuscript to the CIA for prior review is to agree-
to take the first step toward abandoning the First
Amendment protection against prior censorship."
Harper and Row apparently disagreed and made it
clear to McCoy that the book would not be
published unless first submitted. Rather than find
a new publisher at that late date, 1/,cCoy went
along. He also gave the entire story to the press,
which was generally critical of the CIA.
The CIA listed its objections to Harper and
Row on July 28, and in the words of the publisher's
vice president and general counsel, B. Brook
Thomas, the agency's criticisms "were pretty
general and we found ourselves rather un-
dcrwhelrned by them." Harper and Row ac-
celerated its production schedule by a month and
brought the book out-unchanged-in the middle
of August. '
CIA officials obviously have the right to talk
or not to talk to any reporter they choose. But a
reporter, knowing full well that future scoops may
well depend on being thought of as a "friend" of
the agency, faces a powerful inducement to write
stories pleasing to the CIA, which is perfectly
ready to reward its friends. Besides such obvious
news breaks as defector stories, selected reporters
can receive "exclusives" on everything from U.S.
government foreign policy to Soviet intentions. Hal
Hendrix, described by three different Washington
reporters as a known "friend" of the agency, won a
Pulitzer prize for his 1962 reporting of the Cuban
missile crisis in The Miami Daily News. Much of
his "inside story" was based on CIA leaks. (This is
the same Hal Hendrix who later joined ITT and
sent the memo saying President Nixon had given
the "green light" for covert U.S. intervention in
Chile-the memo published by Jack Anderson in
1972 and not published by Charles Bartlett and
Time in 1970.)
Because of the CIA's adept handling of
reporters, and because the personal views held by
many of those reporters and their editors are
sympathetic to the agency, most of the American
press has at least tacitly gone along, until the last
few years, with the agency view that covert
operations were not a proper subject for jour-
nalistic scrutiny. The credibility gap arising out
of the Vietnam War however, may well have
changed the attitude of many reporters. The
Times' Tom Wicker credits the Vietnam ex-
pcrience with making the press "more concerned
with its fundamental duty." Now that most
reporters have seen repeated examples of govern-
ment lying, he believes, they are much less likely to
accept CIA denials of involvement in covert
operations at home and abroad. As Wicker points
out, "lots of people today would believe that the
CIA overthrows governments," and most jour-
nalists no longer "believe in the sanctity of
classified material." In the case of his own paper,
Wicker feels that "the Pentagon Papers made the
big difference."
Yet as late as the spring of 1973, the
Times-which with the Washington Post has
championed "the public's right to know"-balked
at printing an account of.... [three full lines in the
manuscript are censored here]. The Times'
Seymour Hersh uncovered the whole story shortly I
after Martin's latest appointment as ambassador to
Vietnam was *_:mounced in March, 1973, (and
shortly after the Times had run a generally
favorable profile of Martin). The paper's editors
apparently felt that Hersh's material, although
thoroughly verified, was unfair to Martin. Even
when Senate Foreign Relations Committee
chairman J. William Fulbright asked Martin in a
public hearing last May 9 whether he had l.
recommended the renewal of the covert p: y meats,
the Times still only printed a tiny back page article I
saying that Fulbright had raised the question.
Finally on May 13, at Hersh's insistence, the paper
ran the whole story.
he unfolding of the Watergate scandal
apparently has opened the agency to increased M
scrutiny. Reporters have dug deeply into the CIA's I
assistance to the White House "plumbers" and the
attempts to involve the agency in the Watergate
cover-tip, and have drawn parallels between CIA
operations overseas and the tactics used by the
Nixon administration at home. Perhaps most
important, the. press has largely rejected the
"national security" defense used by the ' hite
House to justify its actions. This, of course, is the
same justi cation that the CIA has used for so
many years to hide from public view, and, con-
sidering the abuses which have been committed in
its name, the press is now much less likely to be
diverted by its invocation. Certainly, many reporters
have passed the point where they consider
themselves part of the government's "team." With
any luck at all, maybe the American people can
look for:ard to learning from the media what their
government is doing-even its most secret part.
16
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Editor: Richard Pollak
Publisher: William Woodward III
Designer: Samuel N. Antupit
Advisory committee for this issue: Paul Cowan, Ernest Dunbar, Pamela Howard,
J. Anthony Lukas, A.Kent MacDougall, Calvin Trillin, Mike Wallace.
Traditionally, a new publication is launched with a Ringing Declaration of
Purpose. The trouble with such noble manifestoes, however, is that you then
have to live up to them. This often proven exceedingly difficult. Despite your
best intentions, little old ladies from Dubuque do pick up your magazine. Or
some newspaper editor (or even publisher) momentarily forgets the marble ad-
monition in the lobby and gives the news partially with both fear and favor.
Not surprisingly, this causes a certain embarrassment. But worse, it turns out to
be quite costly as well. For, having fallen short of your R.D.P., you are forced
to keep up appearances by noting your achievements in large, expensive adver.
tisements on the back page of the Times and The Wall Street Journal. With luck,
these advertisements will persuade your readers that at least you are doing
something worthwhile. But then there's your staff. They're a pretty savvy bunch
and they really know how far you are from the old R.D.P. 'So to bolster their
morale, you have to give them air travel cards and thousands of pencils reminding
them that they work for the world's most quoted newsweekly. Obviously, our
budget will never be able to support such extravagances, so we have reluctantly
put aside our own Ringing Declaration of Purpose (and a clarion call it was, too)
In favor of a sentence or two on what we hope to accomplish. Our goal is to
cover the New York area press-by which we mean newspapers, magazines, radio
and television-with the kind of tough-mindedness we think the press should but
seldom does apply to its coverage of the world. We hope to do this seriously but
not without wit, fairly but not "objectively." Many of our contributors (though
by no means all) will be working journalists in the city and we hope that their
employers will have the common sense: to recognize that a journalist ought to be
free to write about his profession without feeling his job is in jeopardy. For our
part, we recognize the conflict of interest in asking a journalist to write about
I his own organization and consequently have established an ironclad policy never'
to commission or publish such articles. Beyond that, we would like to apologize
for being so tardy. In that nether region west of the,., Hudson that the local press
is so fond of disdaining, journalism reviews already exist in Philadelphia, St. Louis,
Denver, Honolulu and Chicago. The Chicago Journalism Review in particular
has made that city a better place for journalists to work and by following their
example we hope to do the same in New York.
(MORE) Volume 1, Number I is published by Rosebud Associates, Inc. Subscrip-
lion rates: 1 year, $7.50; 2 years, $14.00; 3 years, $19.00. Subscription blanks
appear on the back page. All subscription and other mail should be addressed to:
P.O.Box2971.
Grand Central Station
New York, N. Y. 10017 .
Copyright ?1971 by Rosebud Associates, Inc. Nothing in this publication may
be reproduced in any manner, either in whole or in part, without specific written
permission from the publisher. AU rights reserved. . f
(CT) ML 0
I Playing the Nixon P.O.W. Game
by Stuart H. Loory
3 Life in These United States
by J. Anthony Lukas
S Moynihan's Scholarly Tantrum
by George E. Reedy
Slicking Over the Oil Industry
by Paul Cowart
Reflections. on a Professional
by David Halberstam
11 An Adventure in "the Big Cave"
by Charlotte Curtis
14 Battling the Myths In Chicago
by Ron Dorfman
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WASHINGTON POST
2 April 1974
U.S. Judge
Rebuffs CIA
Pn Secrecy
By Laurence Stern
Washington Pout Staff Writer
The Central Intelligence
Agency has received a major
setback in a court battle, to
keep its cloak over its covert
activities.
in a ruling made public yes-
terday, U.S. District Court
,Judge Albert V. Bryan Jr.
held that the CIA had ex-
ceeded its classification au-
thority in ordering 168 dele-
tions in a forthcoming book,
"The CIA and the Cult of In-
telligence."
After having gone through
the manuscript deletion-by.
deletion. ,Mudge Bryan reduced
the number of national secu-
rity excisions to 15. On origi-
nally reviewing the draft the
CIA said 339 omissions would
have to be made on national
security grounds prior to pub.
lication. I
In his ruling Friday, Judge
,Bryan said the CIA had
,"failed to meet. the burden of.
proving classification."
The American Civil Liber-
ties Union greeted Bryan's rul-
Ing as having a "profound im-
pact on secrecy in govern
'ment.
"It is the first time that any
court has ever held that the
,government's asserting certain
'material is classified is not
sufficient to prove it is class-
fied," said ACLU attorney
Melvin L. Wulf, who partici-
pated in the court arguments.
The book was written by]
two former government Intel- _
ligence officers, Victor L. Mar-
chetti of the CIA and John D.
Marks of the State Depart-
ment's Office of Intelligence
and Research. Both men have
been out of the government
since 1969.
It was a case in which the
government for the first time
sought to exercise prior re.1
strain't on security grounds:
over a manuscript written by
former government employ.
ees.
In 1972 Judge Bryan upheld
the. right of the CIA to prior
review of the Marchetti manu-
script, which at that time had
not yet been written.
When the book was finished,
with the assistance of Marks,
It was submitted to the agency
for clearance and came back
in September, 1973, with the
original 339 deletions. 1
'-Marchetti, Marks and the l
publisher, Alfred A. Knopf
Inc., challenged the ciassifica.
tion actions in a countersuit
during which Judge Bryan
heard testimony In a closed
courtroom from CIA Director
William E. Colby and his four
top deputies.'
received a bomb threat two week his own probe of the
days following the Water- McCord papers-burning in-
gate break-in. cident produced no evri-
"We had had a near dis- dente that the CIA was in-
astrous fire at night ,two volved or that anything sig-
years before while the farm- nificant was destroyed.
ly waw asleep ... When I McCord, who helped blow
heard of the June 19th, 1972, ' the lid off the Watergate,
bomb call, I advised my cover-up a year ago with a
wife to dispose of newspa- letter to U.S. District Judge
pers and other fire ha-iards John J. Sirica, has repeat-
in the house which a fire edly accused the White
bomb could easily ignite,"- House and its supporters of
McCord said. trying to dump the blame
for Watergate on the CIA.
McCORD SAID "no clas- In his letter yesterday,
sified papers" nor other McCbrd called Baker "a
"sensitive documents" Joe McCarthy of the 1970s,
were destroyed. Nor did he and said that "from the be-
ever attempt to conceal his ' ginning of the (Watergate),
CIA background, McCord hearings, Sen. Baker tried'
said, noting he had told po- to drage the CIA in for the
lice about it the day he was purpose of creating a di-
arrested at the Watergate. version.".
Rep. Lucien Nedzi, D- "CIA was the victim of '
Mich., chairman of the the President's efforts to
House Intelligence subcom- cover up, not the culprit,"
mittee, said earlier this McCord said.
WASHINGTON POST
4 April 1974
artel. Votes
o Release
CIA-Report,
The Senate select Water-
sate committee voted yester-
'day to declassify and release
`p report prepared by its vice
iI hairman, 'ben. Howard H.
aker Jr. (R-Tenn.), concern-
g the possible Involvement
the Central Intelligence
gency in the Watergate af.
ir.
The committee, meeting
closed session, voted to
of secrecy did not violate their'
First Amendment rights.
The CIA declined yesterday
to comment on the decision.`
But the decision, if left stand-.
ing, could strip away sanctions;
of secrecy covering many.
operations it ' is seeking to
keep out of'the'public domain.
CIA Director Colby has indi-.
,cated that'he has drafted leg
islation which would provide,
explicit congressional sanc-
tions and stiffer penalties to,
buttress the agency's system
of, classification should the
isk the CIA to declassify a
+umber of documents and
ther materials that Baker
as collected as part of his
$nquiry. Chief committee
'ounsel. Samuel Dash and
,nu Inority conmel tared
hompson wcrc asked- by
the committee to work out
actails with the CIA.
ki In addition, the committee
doted to invite former ape-'
Eeial presidential counsel
thacles W. Colson to testify
t, cforc it. Colson appeared
rpcforc the committee Sept..
A9 but invoked the Fifth
~Amcndment when ques-
cioned under oath on the
rounds that he was a target
f a federal grand jury M.
estigation.
The final result was the Fri- whether, their respective oaths lease be lost in court.
Approved For Release 2001/08/08: CIA-RDP77-00432R00010U 20001-1
WASHINGTON STAR-NEWS
Washington, D. C., Thursday, March 28, 1974
C/A MALIGNING CHARGED
MCCOrd HItS 0=--%ker Probe
Convicted Watergate con-
spirator James W. McCord
Jr. has accused Sen. How-
ard H. Baker Jr., R-Tcnn.,
of "seeking to create a di-
version for the President"
by "maligning" the Central
Intelligence Agency. ,
In a letter yesterday to all
seven members of the Sen-
ate Watergate Committee,
McCord bitterly attacked a
probe into the CIA role in
the Watergate case which
has been conducted by Bak-
er, the committee's vice
chairman.
In his three-paged, single-
spaced letter, McCord blam-
ed Baker for recent news
accounts reporting that Mc-.
Cord's wife and a retired'
CIA friend of his had burned'
various papers and other
materials at his house with-
in days of the June 17, 1972,
break-in.
THE FIRST news story,
published by the Knight '
chain earlier this week, said
a CIA agent had been "dis-
patched" to McCord's home
to "burn anything linking,
him With the CIA."
McCord, who served 20
years with the CIA before.
retiring in 1971, said the
"agent" was actually an 80-
year-old personal. friend
who once had CIA ties. The
man was "not sent" by
anyone, McCord said, but
merely happened to stop by
at a time when McCord's
wife was burning old news-
papers and some other "fire
hazards."
McCord said he had in-
structed his wife to burn the
materials after the family
'day ruling which held, In es-
sence, that a fact could not be
classified simply by a CIA of-
ficial declaring It'to be so.
Judge Bryan said that the
decisions on' what was classi-
fied in the 'manuscript by each
CIA deputy director seem "to
have been, made on an ad hoc
basis as he viewed the manu-
script, founded on his belief, at
that time, that a particular.
Item contained classifiable In-
formation which ? ought to be'
classified." /
The judge said that the gov-
ernment should have' been,
able to produce documents or
evidence of other affirmative
. actions to demonstrate that.
material in the CIA book was,
in fact, classified.' ? ;
Both the government and,
the authors hake a basis for'
appeal, The CIA will presuma-;
bly seek to again make the,
omissions It ordered in the'
manuscript. The authors may,
ask to reopen the question of-
 Approved For Release 2001/08/08 : CIA-RDP77-00432R000100320001-1*
r -~-- .-` rJ ?l-L'r?
Rowcland.Evans and Robert Novak
Sen. Baker and the CIA
? Sen. Howard Baker's fruitless inves ident contended he feared investiga-
tigntion of gossamer links between the tion would uncover super-secret CIA
Watergate scandal and the Central In- operations. If Baker developed even
telligence Agency (CIA) seems un- tangential CIA connections with
likely to help President Nixon but Watergate, Mr. Nixon would obviously
threatens serious damage to the no- look better.
tion's beleaguered foreign Intelligence Working toward that end, Baker late.
operation. - last October noted a Harper's. maga-
Despite accumulating newspaper tine article by Andrew St. George
leaks and Baker's hints of knowing, ?,,nthat Helms had burglary.
much more than he can tell, Watergate knowledge of the Watergate
is not about to be blamed on the CIA, Baker eagerly dispatched the article to
in part or in whole. Under close exami-
nation. the leaks turn out to be red
herrings. Objective investigators are
positive there was no CIA role 18
Watergate.
But conservative Republican Baker,
Ironically, sounds ever more like left-
leaning critics of the CIA who com-
plain that senators linked too closely ...
to the agency never do adequately
probe Its inner recesses. What's more,
the flood of innuendo seemingly origi-
nating from Baker's investigation fur-
ther erodes the CIA's tattered morale
and prestige.
Baker's motives are as shrouded as
his overall Watergate performance. As
senior Republican on the Senate
Watergate Committee during last sum-
mer's televised hearings, he achieved
Instant fame. But the image of objec-
tivity that made him a TV idol infuri-
ated the White House and party regu-
lars. Baker, a party man and a Nixon
man, began hedging his bets in mid-
summer.
That was apparent Aug. 2 when
Richard Helms, former CIA director,
returned from his post as ambassador
to Iran to testify bgfore the Watergate
committee, Many senators believed the ? nous.CIA role in Watergate (though,
highly respected Helms had been
bounced from i he CIA for refusing to
take the Water ate rap. But Baker was
surprisingly hostile, his questions pre-
saging his future investigation.
Baker has heatedly denied that this
course was dictated by senior White
House aides. Even so, his actions were
obviously designed to help Mr. Nixon.
In explaining his conduct immediately
after the Watergate burglary, the Pres-
"Underclose examination
the leaks turn out to be
red herrings. Objective
investigators are positive
there was no` CIA role
in Watergate."
Sen. Stuart Symington of Missouri,
acting chairman of the CIA oversite
subcommittee. St. George, a journalis-
tic swashbuckler, was summoned to
Washington for a closed-door session.
The verdic`.: he knew nothing.
But Baker relied on more than flam-
boyant journalism. The Watergate
committee's minority staff, concentrat-
ing on the CIA, has produced a class!-.
fied report. Insinuating more than ac-
cusing, It is the mother lode for pub-.
. publicly, Baker, affirms Helm's
innocence).
The Watergate committee majority
staff regards the report as next to use-
less. Rep. Lucien Nedzi, of Michigan,
ranking CIA expert in Congress, be-
lieves there is no reason to change the
Oct. 23 finding of his House subcom-
mittee giving the CIA a clean bill of
health. Federal porsecutors have found
no CIA role In the conspiracy. Pub-
The Wntihhlg tou I3 {eirry Go $?ull d
ter
JiT~f /0
a It e ~ ob"QftAe,,4&D-* Re
,lack An!!J6'rson?
The Watergate has claimed a
major victim in the Central In-
telligence Agency with the
'forced retirement of its dedi-
cated director of security, How-
ard Osborn.
A veteran of 26 years at the
cloak-and-dagger complex. the
56-year-old Osborn was caught
up in the suppression of a mys-
terious CIA memo that de-
scribed how documents were
burned at the home of Water-
bugger James McCord; an ex-
CIA agent.
The secret memo was based
on information supplied by a
former FRI inspector, Lee Pen-
paid "consultant." Pennington,
an old family friend of the'Mc-
Cords', had visited Mrs. McCord
after her husband was arrested
inside Democratic National'(
Committee headquarters in June; 1972. He found her burn-
ing papers and documents. Ear-
lier, she had burned typewriter
ribbons.
Pennington loyally reported
the episode to his CIA bosses,
and the CIA wrote it up in memo
form. For more than a year and
a half, it lay in the CIA files like
a paper bomb. -
Meanwhile, FBI sleuths were
lished charges of such a role have all
turned into red herrings.
. Thus, recent newspaper accounts of
? internal tapes destroyed by helms in
his last CIA days become hollow when
it is learned they were unrelated to
Watergate. Nor is - there factual
grounding for insinuations, fostered by
Baker, that prize-winning Washington
Post reporter Bob Woodward was
given Watergate information in return
for steering clear of the CIA. The most
recent red herring: a Chicago Tribune
story, reflecting the Baker report, that
a CIA agent was sent to Watergate
burglar James McCord's house shortly
after the burglary to destroy docu-
ments linking him with the CIA; in
truth, a CIA informant joined Mc-
Cord's wife in burning his papers.
Baker has been subjected to puzzled
scrutiny by Senate colleagues, not only
for his insinuations but for the way he
conducts his investigation. When
Helms was summoned from Teheran
yet again last month, he faced in-
tensely hostile closed-door questioning
by Baker. The use of ex-White House
aide Charles Colson, indicted In the
Watergate conspiracy, as a major
source of information in Baker's CIA
investigation, is subject to criticism.
Moreover, the investigation is begin-
ning to echo old complaints from Sen-
?ate super-doves such as Sen. J. W. Ful-
. bright of Arkansas: The CIA Is permit-
ted to run wild by Symington and
other Senate protectors. Adding con-
servative Baker to the Fulbright camp
further endangers the future of this vi-
tal agency:
When Baker on CBS's "Face the Na-
tion" last Sunday declared "there's a
great wealth of information" coming
from his investigation (though he
could not say what), his real message
to the House could be: don't push too
hard on impeachment because I am
raising lethal new questions about the
CIA. Actually, Mr. Nixon's problems
seem too acute for Baker's warning to
matter much. However he may hurt
the CIA, Howard Baker can scarcely
help the President.
0 1974, Field Enterprises, Inc.
THE. WASHINGTON POST Tueeday,April 2, 1974
oast.
from the CIA.
-finally, Senate Watergate
cutors, know ahout the memo.
Nedzi, after full hearings with
Pennington, McCord and CIA of-
ficials including Osborn, con-
cluded that the CIA had not dis-
patched Pennington to burn the
papers, as the memo seemed to
`suggest. Osborn claimed that he
had not even known of the
memo. Nevertheless, Nedzi and
Colby were both worried about
the cover-up.
"It led to the early retirement
of Osborn," Nedzi told us. When
we reached the ex-CIA security
boss at his home near the
agency he had served so long,
he clung to his oath of secrecy.
"Iliad punned for over a year
to retire in June," Osborn in-
,ommittee vice chairman How-
ard H. Baker Jr. (R-Tenn.) began
snooping into the CIA role in
the cover-up, and a middle-level
CIA employee who knew of the
hidden memo threatened to
blow the whistle.
After some debate, CIA Direc-
tor William Colby was told of
the suppressed memo and he
quickly contacted Rep. Lucien
Nedzi (D-Mich.), chairman of a
House intelligence subcommit-
tee. They agreed that the best
about whether the CIA knew of sional committees involved in
ddestrooyed documents fromtheWaterrgatteprobe, aswellas
f~ ~p ~(,~ J~gg~tepl~, Se lnington, then with Fi rOVed'ror"retease1AP/ r i0 nd CIH-KUF'/ /- 'd ~P'ft ~ IUO~ iL~, 459 , - realized there was no
,,. la benefit to staying and
11
19 decided to retire . .."
 Approved For Release 2001/08/08 : CIA-RDP77-00432R000100320001-1
11 -4 ILI 14:111.
DR. KISSINGER'S latest trip to Moscow established
that Russians, scarcely less than Americans, are
Preoccupied by the ways in which President Nixon's
domestic vulnerability may touch his foreign policy. Most
directly, they wish to know if Mr. Nixon is politically
competent to make and carry out agreements with them.
Too, they no doubt wonder whether his weakness may'
soften him for agreements he otherwise might reject, or
push 'him'to drop detente 'for the sake of a ranks-closing"
appeal to anti-communism. In brief, the prospects of
detente, already made uncertain enough by the course
of "normal" events, have been rendered even more un-
leertain by the question mark hanging over the authority,
mood and tenure of Richard Nixon.
This unhappy new fact in East-West affairs has impli-
cations for the conduct of policy. But before addressing
these, we would draw an anticipatory bead on a.trouble-
some contention that could well soon be raised in the
1'resident's impeachment defense. We mean the charge
}fiat, the impeachment process Is subverting the Presi-
dent's effort to build a "structure of peace." It would
follow either that the impeachment drive should be set
aside or that those who are pressing it, rather than Mr.
'Nixon, should be blamed for 'untoward consequences.
that, might ensue. Presumably this contention would be
Made only if the President felt himself in special duress,
for. a crucial part of his diplomacy, as of his political
defense, is to demonstrate that,his' capacity to govern
has not been impaired. But the possibility is there, per-
haps no further away than his next party rally. For a
President long given to appeals for sacrifices and short-
cuts in 'the name of "national security," it cannot be di's-
tiiissed.
go it needs to be said categorically that nothing and
no one is undermining Richard Nixon's foreign policy
but Richard Nixon. It is not his policy critics or political
rivals or "the media" but his own deeds, or lack of them-
his omissions as well as his commissions-which have .
brought his presidency to such low estate. The first
Watergate, disclosures were made almost two years ago.'
:Since then Mr. Nixon has employed virtually every
political device, legal strategem and delaying maneuver
Imaginable to keep the relevant information from flow-
ing to the appropriate bodies established to review it,
tq .investigate charges, and to prosecute possible wrong=
doing. If his diplomacy is now laboring under heavy;
handicap, it is because Mr. Nixon -himself made impos-
pibZe the prompt resolution of issues which could only.
be resolved promptly by his cooperation.' The single
'reason why an impeachment and a summit must now
be'mentioned in the same (breath is that the President
for his own, reasons has refused to confront the challenge
to his presidency decisively and forthrightly so that he
could get on with the essential business of foreign affairs.
,,Tip Moscow summit, still scheduled for June, focuses
the issue mercilessly. Impeachment proceedings may be
well along by then, ' imposing upon Mr. Nixon harsh
ressures either to play it too soft on the Russians, or too
hard. We do not say ' Mr. Nixon will fall into one or
another of these traps, but they are there. As long as
his authority is uncertain, so will be public confidence
in his performance in the summit crucible. For it is not
only the substance of the negotiating position that must
be well prepared before a summit. The 'integrity and
solidity of the negotiator are equally vital pre-conditions
th success. We understand why the President would not
want to cancel out, if only because that would demon-
20
WASHINGTON' POST Susdny,Mnrch81.1974
Imveachment and Swnrnitr
I a"
strate incapacity. but he--and we-cannot avoid paying
a price in the pressure his predicament puts him under,
If he goes through with it.
The more substantive problem is, of course, that de-
tente is wobbling. Moscow's Mideast policy and its missile
testing have led many Americans to question the depth
of the Soviet commitment to better relations-or at least
the conmitment to appreciably better relations any time
soon. The slim results and somber accounts of Dr. Kis-
singer's Moscow sojourn should probably be read in the
context of the developing pre-summit bargaining posi-
tions of both sides, but They hardly make one sanguine.
Moreover, the Presiaent's political condition puts before
the Russians the temptation to try to squeeze out short-
range advantage, though they must-or should-know
that nothing could more quickly unite Americans around
the President than the appearance of such a gambit by
Moscow. It should be noted, however; that the congres-
sional attitude on linking trade with emigration and Mr.
Nixon's own defense programs may well have induced
some Russians to question the American commitment
to detente, as the Russians see it. Overall, this is not the
time for large and final conclusions about detente. It is
enough to say that the issues on the agenda for Mr. Nix-
on's third summit with the Soviets-control of offensive
strategic arms, European security, and the Mideast, in
particular are excruciatingly difficult. They would tax'
the most conscientious and least distracted statesmen in
the best of times.
In pondering these difficulties, one cannot, blink the
fact that this is the worst of times for the President to
be heading to Moscow counting heavily on the nation's .
.trust. That is part of the cost of Watergate. It forces
upon Mr. -Nixon, we believe, three special requirements,
if -he is to make of his diplomacy the effective instrument
which all Americans would like it to be.
First, he must vigorously spread as much information
as possible, about the diplomatic steps he contemplates.
Some things cannot be told--everyone understands that.'
But in his administration there has never been a time
when -a steady flow of information was more important:
to offset the mistrust arising from Watergate; to give
people some greater measure of assurance about a man
in Mr. Nixon's' adverse position being at the negotiating
table with a hard and sharp adversary. It is not enough
for the public to see Dr. Kissinger give another of his
expert briefings. It is Mr. Nixon who inspires unease and
;it'is he personally who must minister to it.
Then, the President would be well advised 'to stop
playing politics with foreign policy. Ile must stop stand,-
ing up before hand-picked audiences and giving self-
serving plugs for his own statescraft. Such appearances
only feed an already pervasive public tendency to ques-
tion his motives-which is the last thing his diplomacy, or
his politics, needs.
He does not encourage people to believe he is acting
in the national interest by giving the impression that he
is acting in his personal interest. The President may feel
that foreign policy is his best defense against impeach-
ment-and it well may be at this stage. But his diplomacy
ivould be an even better defense if it were plainly being
conducted in a disinterested way.
Finally, the President cannot lay off upon 'those trying
to impeach him the blame for any disabilities which may
weaken his effectiveness to conduct foreign policy. For
those he has only himself to blame. And for their remedy
he must look to means other than diplomacy.
Approved For Release 2001/08/08 : CIA-RDP77-00432R000100320001-1
 Approved For Release 2001/08/08 : CIA-RDP77-00432R000100320001-1
NEW YORK TIMES
29 March 1974
Specter of Watergate at U.S.-Soviet Talks
spondents traveling with Mr.
By HEDRICK SMITH Kissinger about the likelihood
Special to The New York Times of impeachment proceedings
MOSCOW, March 28 - For against the President. In their
the first time in two years, the private comments, they showed
Watergate affair has had some new respect for the power and
discernible impact on important autonomy of Congress. ,
Soviet-American negotiations. The Watergate factor waO
During Secretaryof State Kis- undoubtedly one reason for
singer's talks talks the disappointing results of the
News here with Leonid Brezhnev-Kissinger talks.' For
1. Brezhnev, each ~ Mr. Kissinger came here with
Analysis side went out of a weak negotiating hand and.
its way to assure the Soviet leadershiR obviously
the other that despite Mr. felt no compulsion to rush to-
Nixon's Watergate troubles, it
was still committed to im
proving relations, regardless of
personalities.
The very need to make such
commitments in public, through
the ritualistic language of
toasts and communiques sug-
gested how much Watergate
and Mr. Nixon's personal future
are now on Moscow's mind as
well as Washington's.
Officially the final com-
1munique announced that both
sides would push ahead with
? preparations for the visit of!
well wonder whether Mr. Nix-I
on would be able to persuade Icrete results he had sought.
to which Moscow might ulti-I
mately agree. Again, reason tol
pause to see how the power'
struggle over the Presidency
is resolved.
With Marshal Andrei A.
Grechko, the? Soviet Defense
Minister, now in the Politburo,
Mr. Brezhnev must apparently
move more carefully on the
arms issue. Marshal Grechko's
rapid return home from a visit
to Iraq pointed up his impor-
tance in the exchanges with Mr.
ward compromise with aweak- Kissinger. .
Rather consistently in the
ened Administration. last three months, the 70-
The tables have, turned draw (year-old marshal has taken a
matically since the spring 'of more wary public stance on im-
1972 when Mr. Nixon's first proving relations than other top
One implication is that the
Kremlin hopes a more cordial
mood with Washington, after
obvious recent strains, may en=
courage Congress to liberalize
the terms of trade with the
Soviet Union.
As if recognizing Mr. Nix-
on's impotence to move Corp
gress on the trade issue, the
Soviet leadership reportedly of-
ferd some slight flexibiliy on
the Jewish emigration ?ques-
tion, presumably to see whe*-'
ther Congress could be swayed.
A Waiting Game
But the Kremlin seems in-
clined to wait to see what hap-
pens on the bread-and-butter,
issue of lower tariffs and big-'
gar credits before striking any,
Presidential visit was being eaders and has stressed thel major new deals with Presi-
prepared. Then, the Russians need to push ahead withdent Nixon, perhaps with the
strengthening of the Soviet thought that the pressures of
knew privately that they were
arsenal. He was invited to Mr. the next weeks may make 'his
headed for a disastrous tar- Kissinger's luncheon yesterday own terms softer.
vest and that they needed both but, along with a few other Once again, the Watergate
American wheat and an arms (Soviet officials, did not attend. affair and Mr. Nixon's low
agreement to signal formally Tonight, however American of- popularity ratings at home may
to the world that the United ficiais said they attached "no have an impact on a kind of
States accepted the Soviet Un- special significance" to.his ab-1Ideadline diplomacy by Mos-
? ' . Bence. cow. One theory here is that
.
as a nuclear equal
ion
.
,
?
This spring, Mr. Kissinger Despite the Kremlin's unveil- the Kremlin believes Mr.
arrived not only with his Presi- lingness to make concessions Nixon will be ready to pay a
hj h rice for a successful
President Nixon. to Moscow.. dent trying to hold Cngress
But ' at a Soviet reception for
American correspondents, one
Soviet official kiddingly asked
an American journalist, "Are
you looking forward to the
visit of President Ford? Such
jocular irreverence would have
been unthinkable for Moscow
a few months ago.
Other Soviet officials were
particularly keen to probe and
question the Washington corre-
lantic alliance. rent with fun-
damental divisions'. ? This situa-
tion undercut any chance. for
him to act as interlocutor with
Moscow for the divided West
on such major East-West is-
sues as reductions of military
forces 'in the 'center of Eu-
rope or terms for a European
security conference.
On arms limitations, Moscow
knows that the Nixon Adminis-
tration is divided and may
WASHINGTON POST
2 April 1974
Victor Zorza
Grechko-'
Brezhnev
Quarrel
A last-minute piece of evidence
which became available In Washington
after Dr. Ilenty Kissinger had left for
Moscow might have stopped him from
making a fool of himself=but it was
.not passed on to him in time.
The evidence, the most authoritative
statement of the Kremlin hardliners'
position to appear for some time, made
now insisting, in opposition to a line
taken in the Soviet press by writers
pushing lirezhnev's detente policy,
that Lenin's formula that war was l.he
continuation of politics was "to this
very day" the key to strategic policy.. - .,
The pro Brezhnev writers had ar-
gued, although circumspectly, that 'the
formula had become obsolete. They
maintained that military strength
alone would not ensure peace, and that
the Soviet Union should seek the best
political-rather than purely military
-means to restrain the U.S. arms
buildup. ? .
Grechko drew the opposite conclu-
*sion from Lenin's formula. The oiity
reason the "imperialists" had not
launched a war so far, he argued, Was
the Soviet Union's military power, -and
continued peace could therefore be as-
sured only by an even greater
"strengthening" of Soviet defense
might. Coming on the eve of Kissing-,
er's visit to negotiate an arms limita-
tion agreement, this was a dcmand'to
the Politburo by the military to resist
his blandishments.
,
visit. But while some government ana- dently keyed to Kissinger's visit, par- While this assessment of the
lysts In Washington now claim to have ticularly to the SALT negotiations, be. , Grechko message could be made usilig
recognized It as such, and to have gan to raise doubts even among some the tools of Kremlinology, the reason
urged that It be Ben Q[;,~A l t~j tteof, what he was
rc~ o /~ce! -~9 04 It li# ' `~`~1dtfl;h to UN. pol-
other officials thougl tCA~ fi r t~Re rev-W
was irrelevant. 21 icy-makers may be found only by rising
on the hard, practical issues, 'vigil, indicate a willingness to
the Soviet leadership quite de- compromisa, and send Mr.
liberately chose Mr. Kissinger's cimpr m back and Moscow for
visit to take the recent chill
off Soviet-American relations more negotiating.
and to warm up the atm:os- The deliberately downbeat
assessment of the talks in Mr.
Kissinger's party as he flew
phSoviet officials from Mr.
Brezhnev on down fairly home ould be intended t&
exuded good-fellowship and op- belie such a Soviet view, by
timism during Mr.... Kissinger's signaling that the Administra-
brier stay, though they let him tion was prepared to forgo
go home without the ' crucial success when Mr. Nixon came
negotiating breakthrough ' on to Moscow rather than make
farms control or the other con-' unacceptable compromises. i
Kissinger was thus allowed to go
ahead to make -a series of headiitle-
catching oi,timistic forecasts about his
Moscow visit. It is in the light of these
`forecasts that the visit seems to be an
even greater flop than it really was..
The clue to the situation in ,the
-Kremlin came in an article by Defense
Minister Andrei Grechko in the lead-?
.ing Soviet party journal, Kommunist.
In the Washington "intelligence com-
munity," there has always been isa-
greement about the relationship". be-
tween Grechko and party secretary
Brezhnev, and the effect of this rela-
tionship on Kremlin policy-making. , .
Intelligence analyses of the Soviet
leaders' statements made 'in advance of
Kissinger's trip noted a January,
speech in which Grechko seemed. to
take a somewhat harder line than
Brezhnev, but no undue importance
was attached to this at the time. The
Washington -Intelligence "consensus"
has been based for some years on the,.
unshakable belief that Brezhnev and
Grechko are as thick as thieves. -
But the latest Grechko article
-evi.
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the even more esoteric arts of Wash- In The Washington Post are read as
?'ingtonology. Hardliners in the Wash- assiduously by the Kremlin's Washfng-
ington establishment have long been tonologists as Pravda is by Kremlin-
concerned to play down any impr s-
ai n that Brezhnev and Grechko mi' ts. A Washington column by'; a
at odds. They feared that any, ac- ' writer generally regarded as being',oa
knpwledgement of the conflict , bq- the extreme right dismissed talk of'
twQen the two could be used to r e. Brezhnev"Grechko rift as "barrels' of
the' White House to offer Brezhnev the hogwash of
al persuasion columnist n d more lib.
con~essious he might need to keep eral per maintained that 'the
Grechko at bay. "overwhelming evidence" derived fro"
e6h a recent intelligence analysls-show-
T~e tool of Washington In. Ing that all Soviet leaders line up be-
fighting is tha leak, and in the weeks hind Brezhnev-suggested that they
preceding the Kissinger visit coluln- were eager to cut a deal with Kis-
nists, were offered rare peeks into .se. singer during his Moscow visit.
cret intelligence analyses whicl