University Daily Kansan
Tuesday, June 12, 1973
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Public's 'Trial' of Nixon Awaits Resignation or Verdict
day. on of
By HAYNES JOHNSON The Washington Post
WASHINGTON - Richard Nixon's personal calendar now shows 1,310 days remaining in his presidency. He intends, he has said, to make those "the best days in history."
Undoubtedly, every president has aspired to such lofty ambitions, and it is conceivable that Nixon still will achieve his goal. He was able to accomplish that with Watergate storm and proceed with the unfinished business of his presidency. But it is also now conceivable that he could become the first American president to be impeached, either by impeachment or resignation.
In a very real sense, the President already is on trial. Although theres not an official proceeding against him personally, his reputation and capacity to govern are being examined just as surely as if he were on the witness stand.
HE ALREADY has been forced by the pressure of events to give what were, in effect, three depressions on his own role in the case. Each time, he has had to make new admissions and raise new concerns before he can move more deeply into position; each time, he has failed to still the questions that keep hammering at him.
The verdict is far from in, but already his public standing has plummeted from 68 per cent to 45 per cent in the polls, the lowest point of his presidency. Richard Nixon's fall in public esteem has come more swiftly and dramatically than even Lyndon Johnson's. And, try though he has to maintain an air of confidence in his leadership during crises, events have moved so relentlessly that each day brings suspicions of more serious charges to come.
FOR THE PRESIDENT, whether defendant in fact or not, there has been no escaping this trial. The cumulative weight of the evidence, the multitudinous nature of the various investigations, the omni-present public印章 and over the airwaves, the gloomy economic news at home ("Watergate uncertainty"), the stock-raising capital suit, or with further decline of the dollar abroad, the sense of general governmental drift—all these have imprisoned him in the Watergate snare.
Nothing he has done so far—his statements, his refusal to subject himself to further public scrutiny, his trip to Iceland to meet French President Georges Pompidou—has succeeded in freeing him of the case.
THIS MONTH'S White House statement that Nixon would neither talk to federal prosecutors nor answer their questions about the war, he said, the conflict. It raised the prospect of a historic confrontation between the President and the prosecutors. Nixon thus has drawn the line tighter just as the Senate has decided to get to the most critical testimony yet.
No one can foresee with any certainty what that testimony will reveal, or how damaging it might be to the President. There are, however, several major alterations in the law that make the waters are contiguous into the form the Watergate case takes in the days and months to come.
HIS FIRST alternative starts with several assumptions, all of which may turn out to be false: that there will not be devastating pressure against him; that pressure against him inevitably will ease as time passes; that the American people will become satiated—and quite possibly turned off—by the incessant talk of the scandal; that the mood of the country cries out for the need of further crisis, and that impeachment is a price virtually no one is willing to pay.
If these assumptions prove correct, then Nixon's personal trial will be over. He will
The Writer
Haynes Johnson, a national staff writer for the Washington Post, won a 1966 Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Selma, Ala., civil rights story. He is the author of three books, "Dusk at the Mountain," "The Bay of Pigs," and "Fulbright: the Dissenter."
be exonerated, and the course he evidently has chosen to follow—to do nothing more about Watergate—will have been justified. can return to his normal, presidential role.
THE PRESIDENT already has taken the first steps along that path. His meeting with Pompidou will be followed by Leonid Brezhnev's visit to Washington later this month. He'll join him at the international traveling with his scheduled journey to European capitals. All this is a clear public signal that he remains the world's most powerful leader, and that it is time for him to return.
The problem with this course is that the Watergate case has not followed a logical, predictable pattern. It is not an orderly legal proceeding but a series of stunning cases, including the Watergate trial, but many. Some are legal, some are quasi-legal. Perhaps the most volatile of all is being conducted in the strictly unofficial forum of public opinion. Recent events have demonstrated again the importance of being unable so far to stem the Watergate tide.
IN THE LAST few weeks, the inexerable pressure of what Joseph Alsop likes to call "the Watergate horror" has demonstrated just how much the President has been a captive of the case. His three public statements about his role have come reluctantly, and in response to this pressure.
It is no longer unthinkable to suggest that Richard Nixon could be compelled to address the most difficult question: how to save his presidency and avoid the humiliation of an impeachment proceedings.
It is hard to realize that only seven weeks have passed since the President told the American people there have been "major developments" in the Watergate affair. Speaking then, on April 17, he said it wasn't until March 21 that he began privately to realize the dimensions of Watergate. "On March 21," he said, "as a result of serious changes which came to my attention . . . I knew what it was about the whole matter." He added, "I condemn any attempts to cover up in this case, no matter who is involved."
Within two weeks, after an almost daily spate of disclosures about the involvement of his highest aides in the attempted murder of his wife, the police again was forced to explain his position;
WHEN HE FIRST learned of the
WATERGATE Junk-in-kale in free-
fare from a friend in New York,
he took it to Monaco.
he was "appalled at this senseless, illegal action" and was "shocked to learn that employees of the Re-election Committee were apparently among those guilty." It is true, but that he the "immediately ordered an investigation by appropriate government authorities."
As the investigations went forward, he explained, "I repeatedly asked those conducting the investigation whether there was any reason to believe that members of my administration were in any way involved. I received repeated assurances that there were not." Therefore, satisfied, he believed that the charges had been true and that the charges of involvement by members of the White House staff were false."
Three more weeks of further explosive testimony, much of it centering on the President, passed before Nixon offered his most complete public testimony to date. His statement on May 22 was one of the most memorable statements ever issued by an American president.
Until March, that is.
-Within a few days after the Watergate break-in, he was aware that the case was more than an isolated burglary, unrelated to his administration. He was "advised" that "there was a possibility of CIA involvement in some way," a possibility he found credible.
—L. Patrick Gray III, then acting director of the FBI, had "suggested" to him that he might lead higher." Thereafter, it wasn't press reports that he was discounting, nor the advisories of the unnamed people who were involved, but the FBI itself.
He took steps to limit the scope of the Watergate investigation and personally instructed his two key aides, H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrbluhman, "to see that this was personally coordinated" between the CIA and the FBI.
—Long before the 1972 campaign, "I did set in motion certain internal security measures," including wiretaps and some of the people who participated in these acce- tivities. The police, with help or approval, undertook legal activities in the political campaign of 1972.
—He sought "to prevent the exposure of these covert national security activities, while encouraging those conducting the investigation to pursue their inquiry into the Watergate itself. I so instructed my staff, and the general and the acting director of the FBI."
—He conceded that, “with bindsight, it is apparent that I should have given more heir to the warning signals I received along the way. I would state cover-up and less to the reassurance.”
His rationale for his actions was ambiguous. "I wanted justice done with regard to our own lives," he said.
priorities with which I had to deal—and not at that time having any idea of the extent of political abuse which Watergate reflected—I also had to be deeply concerned with insuring that neither the covert operations of the CIA nor the activities of the special investigations unit should be compromised."
In this statement, Nixon drew his defense—that he was acting in the best interests of the American people in order to restructure "national security"—and resisted his case.
HE HAS NOW launched his own strong, indeed defiant, counterattack against those who are suggesting he must bear the blame—not just the "responsibility"—and pay the price for Watergate. "It is time to stop making heroes out of those who steal information from the United States in the newspaper," he told liberated prisoners of war at the White House. "... In order to continue these great initiatives for peace, we must have secret communications. It isn't that we are trying to keep anything from the American people that the American people should know. It is that we are trying to keep something from the press that we press should print. But it is that what we are doing is to accomplish our goal ..."
He assured them that "I am going to meet my responsibility to protect the national security of the United States of America insofar as our secrets are concerned"—and, in addition to his willingness to question him further about Watergate to challenge his authority and motives.
IT IS POSSIBLE this will be his last word
the matter, and that the stern will nubbish
But it is equally possible that circumstances will dictate another course. It is important to keep in mind that Richard Nixon could be compelled to address the most difficult question: how to save his presidency and avoid the risk of an impeachment proceedment?
Given that last extremity, and fully mindful we are entering the purest realm of speculation, here is one alternative presidential scenario that would be both bold and daring, and that quite well could succeed.
The President could address a special joint session of congress, in prime television time, and deliver a Winston Churchill-type of summons to the country: the crisis we are facing is not only the political history. It is not a crisis of war, not a crisis of depression, not a crisis of civil rebellion, but a crisis of the American political system. It is a crisis shared by all Americans, Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. He already has made it clear that he would be able for that crisis, that be unwittingly contributed to the climate in which it flourished.
BUT LET THE legacy of Watergate be such that it is a testament to the resiliency and genius of the American political system. He is therefore asking the wisest, most experienced American political leaders, men of both great parties-Hubert Humphrey and Edmund Muskus, Barry Goldwater and Howard Baker- to help him create an environment would be a new open and vibrant coalition form of government.
Together, he and they would work to insure that as we approach the nation's 20th anniversary, in the time he has remaining in office, it truly will be recorded that these were the best days in America's history.
Far-fetched? Improbable? Impossible?
Of course. Just as is the thought of an American president being impeded and found guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors against the republic—or resisting, under pressure, from office.
No president has ever faced those alternatives before. Neither has any付
president ever faced those alternatives before. Neither has any付
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