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Tuesday, May 1, 1973
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
No Whitewash
1, No-Whitewash Nixon sitting down with 1,361 no more no less Christmas Eve days seeing Brandt tomorrow and going back to Russia with peace with honor in Indochina and maintaining it—peace in the Mideast too—hoping for your prayers without good old Ehrlichman or Haldeman or that Dean either after Kleindienst quit too, none of which implying any guilt, but knowing the credibility of this sacred, second-term office must be maintained, called to my attention while protecting you from the threat of atomic warfare, hoping for your prayers and ending inflation while bringing a good job to everyone who wants one but not giving away any welfare to anybody except those deserving in March, thinking that there might be something to the American free press accusations about the affair at the Watergate
and knowing about the importance that all of you out there wherever you are believe in the credibility of this second-term, sacred office with liberty and justice for all, empowering some of the men I trusted running all other campaigns myself but bringing peace with honor this time and fighting inflation and making jobs and not making near as many appearances as that other candidate whom I never mention, allowing that some of the men I trusted overzealous in the ends even though the goals were justified did wrong doing and possibly even covered it up knowing that like someone said the back stops and taking full responsibility ask for your prayers for Richardson or a special prosecutor to fully investigate and punish everyone even though I didn't do it. God bless America.
—Eric Kramer
- Guest Editorial
Dear IRS: I Request...
The Big Day has now come and gone, and no doubt more than a few of us are wondering just how the government plans to spend the green stuff it soaked out of our April 15. What will the government do with all these billions in bigger and better war? Buy Martha Mitchell a two-ton Princess phone?
For years several large charitable organizations such as the United Fund Campaign have allowed contributors to specify how their contribution would be applied. No one really knows if these groups pay any attention to the requests, but it's a nice thought anyway. And wouldn't it be even more fun if the government let you request how your income tax contribution would be used?
Practically no one would suggest that his money go anywhere except back to himself. Personally, I would be generous. Ten per cent to the Marv Throneberry Baseball Hall of Fame; 15 per cent for the preservation of quality soap operas; 50 per cent to me; and 25 per cent to a certain research group investigating molecular turbulence in Dr. Pepper.
Not everyone would be as foresisted as me, though. Foolish requests would flow into the IRS requesting things like a $5 million project to find out what the hell is wrong with the program; $1 million project to find a candidate who can oust Vern Miller come next election. Trivia.
On the local level, state tax requests would probably run from farcical to obscene. Surely someone would want his 87 spent to landscape the area around Wescoe Hole—er, Hall—or spent to build a Jean Shak at 15th and Iowa streets. Lawrence is a community interested in its appearance. At the very least, somebody would dedicate his dough
to building a nice new string of fast- food outlets on 19th Street.
How would you request that the government use your money? Or do you consider it really "their" money or "our" money or "America's" money? Do you think anyone employed by the IRS cares what you think? Besides, no matter whether you want answers to the President and surely you know by now what to think of him.
Most likely the quality of each request would depend upon the gender of the contributor. More men than women would ask that their money subsidize a search for someone who can pass better than Len Dawson. And more women than men would donate money to women's liberation, or the I'll-Open-My-Own-Damn-Door group.
Out of all this idiocy some sanity might emerge. The requests would go to the IRS, and after the usual 10-month delay to accommodate governmental red tape, things would get done. The chuckhole at the end of the block would get fixed. (The old lady at the end of the street would ask that her $5.37 be spent repairing it.) More trees and less asphalt would appear. Teachers would suddenly be paid more. To make the teachers happy, $6-an-hour, professional students would be hired by state universities to sit in classes and dutifully take notes. Radicals and freaks would get $4 an hour just to stay away. I would get paid for writing editorials like this. Nixon would disappear.
Alas, the government will never allow the common slob to have a hand in deciding where the money is going. The currentocrat to know how to waste properly.
Que sera.
-Chuck Potter Kansan Staff Writer
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--than by an FBI one."
Bureaucracy at Wounded Knee
Jack Anderson
WASHINGTON - The bureaucratic build-up near Wounded Knee is a testament to the government's way of doing things. No less than 400 federal officials have descended upon the small South Dakota village to negotiate, meditate, consult and occuperate during the Indian occupants. Cost to tax payers is around $2.7 million.
Yet at this writing, the Indians remain armed and angry.
The Easter march fizzled and Pottinger finally ordered the roadblocks removed. But he had to handle the trouble with the government's own roadblocks. He obtained an order from Washington to put all federal roadblocks and bunkers in front of command of U.S. marshals.
"Puttinger has indicated to CRS and at staff briefings, 'The board has decided to clamp against the leaders of the roadblock, but most other agencies advise against it for purposes in public relations or convenience."
Take the problem of roadblocks, for example. The daily crisis reports from Wounded Knee interment Justice Justice eyes only, armored local residents throw their own vigilante roadblock Asst. Atty, Gen. J. Stanley Pottinger "met with them at the roadblock shortly after it was opened down" declares a crisis report
Business Manager
Next day, the vigilante group refused to allow the Community Relations Service's (CRS) peacekeeping team into Wounded Knee National Park. The Wounded Knee team restrained the militants, a "most serious incident" took place. According to the report, the incident "involved the alleged looting of a rancher's home and cattle by WK (Wounded Knee) occupants." Three days later, three broke out and one militant Indian was critically injured.
Still, Pottinger took no action against the unauthorized roadblack.
Explain what is meant by "convenience," the report tells of a "planned march on WK by clergymen and others (Easter) weekend. The government was told that it will be followed by a cityspeed roadblock
“Previously,” notes a report, “the marshals, the FBI and the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs), who monitored units, and it was difficult to verify and control the repeated incidents of federal vehicles and troops (mostly FBI and BIA vehicles) in the WK perimeter.”
The CRS peace-keeping team now has returned to Wounded Knee. But Indians and federal officers still are manshion their weapons. One federal official said, “We’re now back to zero again.”
He circulated a memo, for example, urging that five teachers be fired and eight others be enlisted as informers. He wanted them to keep an eye on suspicious teachers and students.
He already has alarmed CIA he hands by writing in Army Magazine that vital security information military analysts, although he acknowledges that DIA estimates have been slanted in the past to please the Pentagon bosses and the agencies have been more accurate.
Military Martinez—Maj. Gen. Daniel Graham, a short, ramrod-straight authoritarian, is moving from the Defense Intelligence Agency to the central Intelligence Agency to be the charge of strategic estimates.
The alarm had been allayed any by reports reaching CIA officials on Friday, the head of the Wakefield (Va.) High School PTA. As leader of an arch-conservative faction, he tried to dissuade the group from methods to Wakefield Hut.
The Graham faction also brought pressure to oust the school's able principal, who finally left voluntarily.
In one stormy PTA meeting after another, Graham has fought student privileges including the right to participate in debates and in government暇heme is at PTA meetings that some neighborhood government officials are afraid to argue with him for fear he'll retaliate against them in their jobs. In response to our inquiries, Graham sent word through his email that he wouldn't speak with us.
Inside North Korea—Visitors just back from North Korea remind us that Kim II Sung's Communist regime is still one of the most oppressive on earth. The people in towns as drab, the social life is sterile, the people as regimented and the atmosphere as harsh. Individually, the North Koreans were friendly and curious. But in town life they became stiff and strict. Their private opinions suddenly conformed to the rigid official line. North and South Korean delegations, meanwhile, are preparing for another round of negotiations. The northerners have been maneuvering for years to be able to confront southerners for family and cultural ties that would break down the barriers within their divided country.
Sikkkim Strife—Hush-hush reports smuggled out of the Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim charge that India is financing riots against the regime of King Gustave and that a part of a plot to take full control of his land. The dashing king became a special favorite of Americans when he married a pretty New Yorker, Hope Cooke. Lately, demonstrations have shaken his monarchy and Indian face have crossed the border “in the interest of law and order.”
to hand over all power to India. The king's sister, Princess Pema Tseedum, Yapsh-Phehkung, has told friends that Indian investment have been financing the opposition parties leading the riots.
Insiders close to the royal family have gotten word to us that a woman, named Indian political officer K.S. Bajaiqal began to pressure the king
Copyright, 1973,
by United Feature Syndicate. Inc.
Re: Watergate
April 25, 1973
Statement by Jack Ande
After a meeting that I initiated with federal prosecutors this afternoon, I have agreed not to print further verbatim excerpts from the Watergate grand jury because I have become convinced that further verbatim disclosures would not be in the best interests of the investigation. However, as a result of the investigation and a right to continue to report any and all pertinent information on this sordid scandal that so many people in high places have worked so hard to keep from the authorities, federal prosecutors pertains only to the verbatim transcripts.
Statement by Jack Anderson:
The President Became Emperor
WASHINGTON — Watergate may be the best thing to happen to the American Presidency in this century. That's a very minority opinion as it will be obvious enough in the coming
Nicholas von Hoffman
months of weeping, beard-pulling and lamination about how exposure of these crimes has increased. We only in the man, but also in office.
To protect the office, many who care nothing for Richard Nixon will want to spare him direct responsibility for what he's been asked to do. "If there will be much talk about disoyal advisers, and "the people around him," as if they got into the place without his consent. In fact, Nixon is more likely to have such a tight ship. As H. R. Halderman, his major-domo, said at a time when such a statement didn't constitute incriminating evidence, "All the power in the office should be taken. I don't think there are seconds or thirds or even fourths."
If pinning the guilt on Nixon lessen the general reverence for the Presidency we ought to give that band of burglaries a medal. A memorial should be the office is permissible, even desirable, but our treatment of the Presidency is nothing short of political Mariolatry—the practice of regarding the Virgin is the equal of the Holy Trinity.
an elected monarch was moved long ago, but in the last 40 years or so, he has graduated from being our suffragan king to the status of emperor. We have had two victories in thinking vote against an incumbent president is an unpatriotic act. If there weren't a third-term amendment the electorate would have converted to the republic over years ago. Harry Truman would have just left the White House.
The tendency of Americans to look upon the chief magistrate as
President-worship is accepted so perversely that the pictures of the reigning monarch's face on 10 million walls no more registers on us than Mao's probably does on the Chinese. It doesn't occur to us that it's a bit of an imposition of our power, and we are emptied on all three networks when the Sun King opens his royal van to admire his subjects.
As much as some of us malicious spirits might like to blame Nixon for the evolution to his vulgarity, history forbids it. He isn't the first president to endow the job with its sacerdotal functions. You can look backward and find Abraham Lincoln acting as both a judge and an American secular religion. If the sermon we call the second inaugural is a work of art, it is still Lincoln acting as a vulgar pout just as much as Nixon's vulgar prayer breakfasts.
Our owe of presidents doesn't limit itself to live incubations. We even protect the dead ones. Men who couldn't stand Franklin Roosevelt's guts when he was alive are made uncomfortable by the disclosures of his adulteries. Americans demand that neither
their parents nor their presidents have sex lives.
We approach our presidents with our heads bowed, which makes it impossible to look at him from the position of blind, servile piety, we had been looking at Nixon we would long ago have known a lot more about how he and his presidents of the yardarms of the ship of state.
We, with our the-president-cando-no-wrong conviction, had decided to ignore the string of scandals, any one of which should have resulted in the indictments of very high Nixon appointees. Even now Nixon is being perplexed by the fact that thus limit what is allowed to come out. Only a few men in Congress like Henry Reuss of Wisconsin are screaming about the impropriety of Atty. Atty.
Gen. Henry Petersen, carrying on this inquiry in which some of the ugliest questions have hardly been raised.
It appears that at least a million dollars in unaudited cash was stashed in various safes for the crooks, and we commit unethical or criminal acts. We now know that after some of the crooks were apprehended, indicted and convicted, remained on Nixon's payroll.
A special prosecutor, say a Republican lawyer of unquestioned integrity like Chicago's Albert Jenner, might find out who put up these huge sums of money from the IRS paying for crime or was this money extorted from businessman? For months now here in Washington the rumor has been circulating that a
The pressure to open up all the cans of worms on the Nixon grocery store shelves can't come until the governor is forced White House is a cathedral. It must come from people with a touch of cynicism, for they are afraid of being humiliated.
number of business contributors were blackjacked into kicking in under the threat that the new environmental laws or the Phase II price control regulations would be used against them.
Remember, after what John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson got away with, even a president less rapacious than Nixon would have for him to move on to job knocks that if we're on our knees in the voting booth with our hands clasped and our eyes closed, we ain't watching.
Griff and the Unicorn
Washington Post-King Features Syndicate
By Sokoloff
Watergate Whispers Its Way Into Small New Jersey Town
Much of what was mumbled over coffee and Danish by the bleary-eyed clientele was lost to history. But the significance was not what was said about it, but what that it was discussed at all.
By PETER ARNETT AP Special Correspondent
NORTH ARLINGTON, N.J. — The breakfast regulars at Danny's Diner on Ridge Street put aside the sports pages one day last week and for the first time in the memory of Mary, the waitress, they discussed the Watergate affair.
North Arlington is a borough of neat brick houses across the Passaic River from Newark. It has a large, middle class and prosperous.
They relate to events personally.
The residents have a lot on their minds, "like real estate taxes, education costs, safety on the streets," according to Harry Handrack, a certified public accountant.
A reporter who spent election day last November in the borough found it solid Nixon territory. That day the voters
Many North Arlington residents interviewed still have faith in President Nixon.
A men's clothing store owner, Philip De Angelis, said his friends are concerned.
John O'Connell, a freight manager who voted Republican for the first time last November, said, "Watergate is a big issue when I'm with my friends, and at work. We're concerned about it."
Freight manager O'Connell said he still didn't regret cross party lines to vote for Nixon.
Brother Clement, the principal of the Queen of Peace Boys High School, said Watergate had come up in his social studies classes.
Today the people of North Arlington have stopped shrugging off Watergate and are starting to face up to its implications. Everyone contacted Watergate last week said Watergate was becoming a major topic of conversation.
"It's all these headlines," he said. "How can we possibly ignore them."
shrugged off questions about the Watergate affair as they went to polling places. It was too remote an issue, too impersonal.
"I must spend about a third of my time with my friends discussing Watergate," said Lois Pailaski, a young housewife who "rests the rest of the time we talk about high food prices."
"The President is just too big to
got involved in something like this," he said. "It's one of the biggest scandals to hit the city, but he has to be above it."
But some of the President's supporters are concerned he may become more deeply involved. He might ask me this thing, then I would say, 'Goddam, it is bad,'" said accountant Handruck.
Clothing store proprietor De Angelas said, "I would still have voted for Nixon. But if this thing worked, I would hurt the government seriously."
Advertising man Tony Cornell could scarcely contain his anger over Watergate.
"I am a registered Republican,
"I and I voted for Nixon last November,
but I say now they
hang them," Cordell said.
Cornell was the only voter encountered in North Arlington who said he would now vote for Hillary. "If he could do it all over again,"
"I would vote for McGovern, if only for his honesty" he said.
only for his honesty," he said. But although Watergate is becoming topic No. 1 in conversation, the people of North Arlington haven't figured out what they are going to do about it.
"Many people around here think it is just an extra thing that has gone wrong," said managing director of local issues, it is still remote. And faith has been shaken before. We can bounce back."