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Tuesday, July 2, 1974
University Dally Kansan
KANSAN commer Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
During President Nixon's recent trip to the Mideast, he was seen limping. Recently, I asked the President's physician, Dr. Ribbentrop, what was the President's problem.
Nixon Has 23rd Crisis
"What exactly is the Watergate Syndrome, Doctor?"
"Yes, the President has been limping lately. It's really nothing I can cure, though. it's the Water-Syndrome that he suffers from."
"It's a mental disorder primarily. The President doesn't think he can trust anyone anymore. So every time he leaves the country, he insists on taking the Office of the Presidency with him. He's afraid someone might try to steal it while he's gone."
"I don't quite understand, Doctor. What exactly is the Office of the Presidency? How can the President take it with him?"
"That's a good question you ask there, boychik. Alex and I weren't sure ourselves when the President first gave the order before the Mid-east trip. To the President, the Office of the Presidency is a very intimate thing. The most Alex and I could do was to pack up all the furniture from the Oval Office and load it on Air Force One."
"Was the President satisfied?"
"I should say he was!" He sat at his Presidential desk, rocking in his Presidential chair and gazing out a wall all the way to Egypt."
"Did the President come back to his senses after he arrived in Egypt?"
"Not at all. We almost had an international incident. The President refused to get up from the Presidential rocking chair. He insisted that he be carried out to meet Sadat while in the chair."
"I don't recall reading in the newspapers that that was done.
"This is really exciting. Then what happened?"
"Well, when Dr. Kissinger heard about the President's desire to be carried to meet Sadat, he grew very upset. Henry, you know, has a lot of honor. Henry told the President that he would resign if the President insisted on being carried in the Presidential chair to meet President Obama. All the President, Henry had done all the work and if anyone should be carried out like a king, it should be Henry."
"So the President gave up his chair?"
"Not quite so easily, I'm afraid. The President was faced with his 23rd crisis. I know how many because the President asked me to keep count for his next book. It hasn't been easy lately, you know. Anyway, the President thought that if he didn't give up the Office furniture as Henry suggested, Henry would resign and the President would have appointed On the other hand, if the President left his Office furniture temporarily and was seen on television back home without it, Americans might forget that the Office and the President are the same."
"There was nothing we could do but hypnotize the President. We sent out for a Gypsie—that's slang for Egyptian—and had her charm the President into believing the Office furniture would be a burden on his shoulders throughout his Mid-east stay."
"So that's why the President has been limping?"
"Exactly. By limping, the President is reminding Americans back home that no matter where he is, the Office of the Presidency is still with him."
—Steven Lewis
Obey Laws, Bicyclists
Now I don't mind slowing down to avoid hitting a bicyclist, when I'm driving, that is. Nor do I really mind being careful not to step in the path of the bicycling hot rodter who speeds around a corner at me.
What I do mind is taking my life in order to drive me, or drive anywhere near campus.
They must stop at stop signs, yield right of way to pedestrians at crosswalks, and, something that may not be indicated in the letter of law, certainly is included in the spirit of the law, they must be courteous.
According to our local police department, bicyclists are bound by the same rules and regulations that automobile drivers must obey.
Unfortunately, bicyclists around
campus are lacking in all
departments.
movement," or some such reason, bicyclists seem to think that these laws do not apply to them. Rarely is a stop sign or a pedestrian light on enforced. There seem to be less than a few courteous bicyclists.
It is unlikely that any bicyclist would be prosecuted for disobeying any of these laws unless he caused the damage until after the damage is done?
Apparently, because they are,
apparently, healthed or are
tributing to the ecology
Many elementary schools used to have bicycle safety tests for students before the students could obtain bicycle licenses. Adult car testing is needed years and retesting every seven years has become law in most states.
Bicycles, which are sharing the roads with cars, require no testing and apparently little or no knowledge of law.
So next time you veren in front of me give me some warnings! I can keep it out. I'd call Caldwell
Colson's Testimony Threatening
Religious Convert Must See Ellsberg-Dean Parallels
Bv CLARK R. MOLLEMHOFF
MARK K. MOLLEMHOFF
WASHINGTON — If former White House special counsel John Bolton could become the most devastating witness against the ongoing White House drive to discredit John W. Dean III.
After U.S. District Judge Gherard A.
cosall applied a sentence of 1 to 3 years
before being acquitted.
The 42-year-old Colson could be the key to explaining efforts by many more White House lawyers and public relations spokesmen to discredit and destroy the team, who is a chief witness concerning the merge burglary and subsequent cover-up.
In pleading guilty to a charge of conspiracy to obstruct justice, Colson told the court recently that he was moved by a desire to "help fulfill a larger purpose."
"I pray it will serve the ultimate ends of justice—both personal justice in that I am accepting responsibility for my own crime and social justice in that this plea may have been accepted, helping others from interfering with any individual's right to a fair trial," Colson said.
"AS TO THE SPECIFIC OFFENSE CHARGE, the President on numerous occasions urged me to disseminate damaging information about Daniel Ellsberg, including information about Ellsberg's attorney and others with whom Ellsberg was in close contact," Colson told the court.
desire to "tell the truth" and to make amends for his earlier disregard for the rights of Ellsberg and others by doing "the Lord's will and the court's will."
Although Colson left the White House in March 1973, he retained a close relationship with the President and the White House. Senate Watergate Committee staff members and friends of Dean think Colson was the head of the verbal attacks on Dean.
"I can work for the Lord in prison or out of prison and that's how I want to spend my time."
If the former White House aides follow through on this pledge, he will be obliged to tell the full story of his contacts with President Nixon, H. R. (Bob Haldenman, John D. Ehrlichman and others in the chair of crushed attack on John Dean that started.)
That was a week after President Nixon and his top aides learned Dean had talked to the Watergate prosecutors about receiving immunity from prosecution in return for testimony against him, a involvement in the burglary and bugging Watergate, as well as the subsequent cover-up.
COLSON'S STORY to various reporters was that Dean had been put in charge of the investigation by President Nixon. The young lawyer had used that investigating post to try to hide his own deep involvement from the President's White House Chief of Staff Halderman, White House Special Assistant Ehrlichman, Clover and others.
Colson indicated he was suspicious that Dean and former atti. Gen, John Mitchell might be pulling President Nixon and others into a criminal obstruction of justice, and that he warned Mr. Nixon of this possibility in both December 1972 and February 1977
The thesis that Dean was "the mastermind" of the cover-up for himself and Mitchell was told by White House press secretary Ronald Ziegler, White House Counsel Fred Buzhardt, Haldman, Ehrlichman, Sen. Edward Dureurn, R-Fla., Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., and other Republican s.
After all, Dr. Elsberg did admit leaking the classified Pentagon Papers and there was some justification within the White House for wanting to stop "national security" leaks that might severely damage U.S. foreign policy.
If Colson is now sincerely contrite, there is no reason for him to take a less compassionate attitude on discrediting John Browder with regard to the attacks on Dr. Elisberger.
If the "national security" classification meant anything, Dr. Ellsberg's action justified federal prosecution to demonstrate that it was a grave matter and wouldn't be taken lightly. But Colson now agrees that he should have been placed right and counsel shouldn't have been disregarded in the White House directed effort to destroy and discredit him.
IF HE CONSCIENTIUously APPLIES the same standard, Colson must ask himself what distinctions there are between the two men. Dean and attempts to smear Dr. Ellsberg.
If there are many differences, it would seem that John Dean should have a preferred position. Dean didn't leak "unauthorized security" documents to a newspaper.
He went to the U.S. attorney's office, as he properly should have, to tell the grand jury on alleged federal crimes involved in the bombing of the house and the Nixon re-election committee.
Only as it became apparent that Dean's testimony might implicate President Nikon and his top aides did he become subject to the series of attacks by Colson, Mr. Nixon, Bushard, and more recently by Nikon's Special Counsel, James St. Clair.
AS WHITE HOUSE SPOKESMEN charged Dean with "perjury," he was defended by Sen. Sam Ervin, D-N-C, Senate Select Watergate Committee Counsel Sam Cale and special Watergate Prosecutor Leon Jaworski as "truthful," and "well corroborated."
Finally, orders from U.S. District Judge John B. Sirica and Judge Gessel stopped these out-of-court attacks on Dean in the pre-trial period.
It is a crime to spread false information about a witness in a criminal proceedings in a manner that would interfere with a fair trial.
If Colson, the former White House tough guy, now opens up fully on what he knows about the continuing conspiracy to obstruct justice it could mean real trouble for many White House officials who have been untainted up to this point.
The Register and Tribune Syndicate, 1974
GUESS WHAT HAS LOST ITS VALUE BUT IS STILL HARD TO GET
Nixon Men Get Prison; Businessmen Go Free
By NICHOLAS VON HOFFMAN King Features Syndicate
Given that Dick Cavett's preparation for interviewing political figures was an apprenticeship as a gag writer for TV shows, he should have been right to expect while devoting his program to Jeb Starr Magruder. Occasionally, Mr. Cavett would take his thumb out of his mouth to ask Mr. Nixon's handsome fallen angel, now doing time in the slammer, to look at him with the Cavern resenting Magruder for having such a stinker during the 1972 campaign.
In response, Magruder would lay off play in middle-class-boy-goes-to-lower-class-penentiary and switch over to repeating the same pattern. In public, for I have sinned grievously against thy electoral process, in the business of public confessions Magruder, a fifth-echelon pion-speak with little to purge himself from his position as a friend, Chuck "Child of the Lord" Colson.
You can hardly turn on a television set without seeing this erstwhile runner-over of grandmothers discussing the state of his soul in terms so tasteless that Jesus Himself must get goose pimps. The geniusness of these professions that he's accepted an angelic role as his master Savior are attested to by Harold Hughes who is acting less and less like a United States Senator and more and more like a theatrical Anabaptist.
COLSON AND MAGRUDER are no more tolerant on their knees than they were on their feet, but in either position the sincerity of their confessions should be a matter between them and their God, assuming He cares. This twaddle about the honesty of their confessions provides us with so much entertainment that we are distracted from
the main business, part of which is that the big guys are getting away.
Former Atty. Gen, Richard Kleidemind has been allowed to lie to the Senate under oath and plead guilty, not to perjury, but to a lesser charge. Three lawyers on Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski's staff are supposed to have quit over this sweetheart he supposed to have quit, because here in Illinois an invariable custom is to resign over a question of principle and then not tell anybody about it.
Jaworski himself has offered no explanation for giving Kleindienst a pass, but he said the answer is not why. Why is a Murderer given 10 months to four years while Harry Helzter and Russell De Young, chairmen of 3M and Goodyear, get off with $200 and $1,000 fines?
WHEN A SCALAWAG like Harding L. Lawrence, chairman of the Board of Braniff Airways, is allowed to plead guilty to but one violation of the Federal Code, it's not only that his lawyers have plea bargained him into a nearly $1,000 fine and kept him out of jail, it is also that we don't get a trial. Without a trial we don't know what really happened with Braniff Airways and CREEP representatives he has held. He pleaded guilty to $40,000 in illegal campaign contributions, but the real amount may be 20 times higher.
By negotiating with Lawrence, Jaworski protected this man. He had help from the judge, the same George L. Hart, Jr., who let Kleindienst without a fine or a day in jail and then presented this self-confessed liar with a good citizenship award.
HART'S CONDUCT is explicable. A former dispenser of Republic patronage, he had a record long before Watergate of being a biased, pre-Nixon judge.
Bicentennial to Celebrate System Working in Crisis
WASHINGTON (AP) - John W. Warner, administrator of the new American Revolution Bicentennial Commission, said recently the official recommendation would "not be used to divert attention from Watergate."
On the contrary, Warner said, the political scandals in Washington and the way the American system of government is responding to them is a reflection of the American people's honor by the Bicentennial works in a crisis.
In an interview, Warner said his major goal in the Bicentennial would be to get individual Americans to look at the country's heritage and institutions and make sense of what value rather than staging world fairs or pageants.
**WARNER WAS** assistant secretary of the Navy when he was appointed by President Nixon to head the Bicentennial Commission, which had been formed in 1966. He was confirmed by the Senate last March.
Q. You hear a brand-new Bicentennial effort. One of the leading criticisms of past Bicentennial planning was that it was too political, that it was being used as a public relations campaign to divert attention from painful issues such as Watergate. What will your tack be?
Here are highlights of the interview:
A. This organization will never, so long as I am here, be used in any manner to deflect attention away from the Watergate. To the contrary, we're going to focus attention on it because it demonstrabs our power over this country was laid down in the first place we were waiting, and I predict that Watergate will prove that.
It's my judgment that those of us in public office today are responsible for addressing all major issues of our time, Watergate will be this. New Bicentennial administration will never be used in any way to deflect public attention away from any of the major issues of our time. . .
"It has withstood the test of time, and in my judgment each time this country has been faced with a serious issue, such as Watergate, this blueprint has resolved the problem, and this investigation has emerged from that resolution stronger than it was before. I'm confident that will occur after Watergate."
"I'm of the firm belief," Warner said, "that out of
Q. WHERE DOES the official commemoration of Bicentennial fit into this?
all of the Bicentennial participation will grow a national consensus of opinion to the effect that the blueprint for our country, as laid down by the founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, would be developed and one can carry the nation forward into its third century.
The major goal in the Bicentennial would be to get individual Americans to look at the country's heritage and appreciate the value.
A. Today we're going through one of the most
turbulent periods we've ever had. We're seeing in action today the great pillars of our government resolving in a manner which I consider orderly the problems of Watergate. I don't know how—and I'm completely non-political—how the question of Watergate will work out. But in any event, in my judgment, the constitutional system is working to resolve it.
A. I think you can anticipate an election period that will be quite divisive in nature. Following that there will be a period that I would just characterize as a sort of vacuum.
And then I believe is the moment of greatness for the Bicentennial. This administration, with literally thousands of events and programs and organizations and the 50 state committees across the country, collectively will move into that vacuum and present to the people something very tangible, something very positive and something they will want.
Q. How do you translate these abstract objectives into things that people can actually do and experience during a period called the Bicentennial.
A. The concept of Bicentennial, I'm not sure, let me just use a verb phrase to continue in interviews, "Tell me what the Bicentennial is!" That may well be one of the intrinsic beauty and greatness of what the Bicentennial is; it just wouldn't fit a pattern to anything that has preceded us in this country. I have an aura of mystery, an aura of definiteness, and that, I hope will be one of the reasons people will be given the impulse to join and participate in the Bicentennial. Just to find out what it is.
Q. What kind of a Biecentennial do you expect to offer them and how would it suit this vacuum you want?
A. In the form of a lecture.
A. I would like the Bicentennial to serve as a vehicle to have the people examine their heritage of 200 years, to answer each person for himself how this country has been able to survive and remain as the oldest form of a republic in the world today, what is it that has enabled it to do...
I mean, Mother says to Father, "Let's go see the Bicentennial." And Father gets up out of his chair and away from the television set, "Okay, let's drive the kids to it." Well, it's not going to be big central locations. It's going to be permeated throughout the United States.
Q. But how are you going to accomplish this, how
are you going to permeate the United States with it.
The measure of the Blozentemian, in my
judgment, is the number of participants rather than the spectators.
And I'll wager that if a man participates in his own way in whatever activities he selects . . . that will be sufficient inducement for him to have an awareness of what the other people are doing.
BUT THAT WILL GIVE him an awareness of the overall, just an awakening to its occurrence, so that he will then independently do some studying on his own about the heritage of this country and how he together with others might perform some acts during the Bicentennial period which will enable
"The first . . . pressing need is the fact there's a cloud of negativism that seems to hang over the United States respecting the Bicentennial."
successive generations to enjoy even a better country.
Q. What kind of programs will the Bicentennial Commission promote toward these ends?
Or to put it simply, Bicentennial means to me doing something so that you leave your country in a place where you can't.
A. There's going to be an abundance of re-entacts, tricorner hats type of events, fireworks and so forth. Our efforts will be placed on those programs that are distinct. And this is where my main thrust will be. Programs with a little more intellectual content, a little more substance. I don't mean to denigrate the others, but this is what I think we've got to put in more leadership. Things like our American Issues Forum, which will bring dinners and social events, or Q. What are your most immediate and pressing needs, problems and plans as you begin this assignment?
A. The first immediate pressing need is the fact that there's a cloud of negativism that seems to hang over the United States respecting the Bicentennial. And our first job is to see what we can do in a positive manner to dispel some of that cloud of negativism.
If you were to ask me why it got there, I have to say the Bicentennial was oversold in some respects to the people. Too much was promised in the beginning, too many gradiose ideas. Almost an inexhaustible amount of money, I think, was implicit in some of the representations that have been made to the people. There was an overslight of thecept of what the Bicentennial might be able to do.
AND THROUGH A PROCESS of gravitation over almost eight years, the Congress has looked at the situation. And this act creating the Bicentennial Commission which sets forth the guidelines under which this administration will function is quite clear as to what our mission is. No longer are we to create any of these grandiose ideas, central locations in the city, or public spaces in the terminal will occur. We are to go out and stimulate, coordinate, facilitate the programs that the people themselves generate.
In my judgment this country has been through some unusual periods in the last three or four years. We have witnessed racial fluctuation of the dollar and inflation. Unemployment is always a leading problem, and then of course the energy thing is now with us. Supposing there had been created enormous exposes and things of this nature, and then we were beset with problems of energy, unemployment and the business that could be Bi-centennial period, these things would have blown up into white elephants.
I believe we are right where we should be today, namely established as an organization created within the federal government to provide some leadership and assistance to those people across the 50 states and territories who are working on the Bicentennial and doing it in their own way.