University Daily Kansan
Thursday, August 23, 1973
5
Watergate: A Complex Plot
Bv BILL GIBSON
Kansas Staff Writer
Bewildered observers have compared the Watergate conspiracy to an unbelievable spy film or a Russian novel with too many names. Complex and often conflicting stories are an understanding of the events that culminated in this major American scandal.
The following is a listing of these events, designed to focus the issue.
President Nixon notified the CIA and FBI on July 30, 1970, that he had approved a new plan for investigating antiwar demonstrators and other radicals. The plan included breaking and entering and opening personal mail. Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hovier disapposed. Whether the later rescinded still is being disputed.
The "Plumbers Unit" was created in June 1791 to plug leaks of classified water. The plumbers included tapping telephones of newmen and government officials and burglarizing the office of a psychiatrist consulted by Pentagon Papers defendant
On Jan. 27,1972,G.Gordon Liddy,a
analysis
former FBI agent and the man who engineered the burglary of Ellaberg's psychiatric institution. He is first the intelligence plan. The cluded wristwapping opponent's phones and hiring prostitutes to lure Democratic candidates with photographic and recording equipment.
Radical leaders who might obstruct the Republican convention were to be kidnapped to Mexico. Former Atty. Gen. John Mitchell relied on the plan.
In March Liddy produced his third plan and Nixon's deputy campaign director, Jeb Stuart Magruder, presented it to Mitchell. Magruder says that Mitchell approved the plan; Mitchell denies it. In any event, Liddy was unleashed.
Lloyd offered a second plan involving only wiredtapping on Feb. 4. Again it was
During Memorial Day weekend, Liddy directed burglaries as they entered the
Democratic headquarters in the Watergate hotel to hunt evidence linking the Democrat to Cuban Communist money. The Democratic CCOA agent, was sent to bag the telephones.
The burglar returned to the Watergate June 17 and were caught.
Documents containing evidence of the conspiracy were shredded after the arrests. Liddy and Magruder, Gordon Strachan, Dennis Reeves, and Patrick Gray, former director of the FBI, Fred Larue and Herbert Kalmbach, Nikon's personal lawyers; and Maurice Stans, Nikon's finance committee chairman destroyed Watergate-related documents.
Magruder led to a grand jury about his advance knowledge of the burglar. He later said that Mitchell had advised the perturber.
Nixon attorney Kalimbach acquired $45,000 from campaign contributions which was distributed to the seven Watergate defendants.
The President stated on June 22 that "the White House has had no involvement whatever in this particular incident (Watergate break-in)."
FBI director Gray warned Nixon on July
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After Watergate, More Scandals
Rv BOB MARCOTTE
Kansan Staff Writer
While the Nixon ship-of-state plies onward through a relative calm during the Senate Watergate Committee's recess, the storm clouds clouded both the legal and moral overrides on J.B. Johnson.
A lot of questions concerning not only Watergate and executive privilege but alleged Agnew misconduct in Maryland, government involvement in the ITT affair and the funds for Nikon's Sanction and Key Kybcayne estate have yet to be answered.
And when the Watergate committee reconvenes sometime after Sept. 15 to finish hearing testimony for the break-in and cover-up phase of its investigations, it will still have before it investigations of alleged 'dirty trick' campaign practices by Republicans in 1972 and irregularities in the funding of that campaign.
One of the unanswered questions, concerning the possible use of Nixon's confidential tapes for evidence by the Senate committee and the federal grand jury injunctions, has shaped up as a major legal battle with potentially far reaching consequences.
In any event, a court decision in favor of either Nixon or the prosecutors will likely set an important precedent in determining whether the prosecution is executive privilege for future administrations.
In a written statement that accompanied his Aug. 15 address, Nixon said, "I were to make public these tapes, containing as they do blunt and candid remarks on many subjects." He also noted with Watergate, the confidentiality of the President would always be suspect."
Nixon said that these remarks would be
analysis
open to misinterpretation, and possibly taken out of context and used as evidence.
And a brief prepared by Nixon's legal advisers and filed in a U.S. District Court claims that a court order requiring use of the tapes as evidence would make the government pay more for upsetting the traditional balance of power between the three branches of government.
However, in requesting the use of tapes of a limited number of the conversations as evidence for a grand jury investigation of the Watergate break-in, Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox has challenged the administration's position.
In his own brief, filed Aug. 13 with the U.S. District Court, Cox said, "Ever the highest executive officials are subject to the rule of law," and added that it was the President's duty to avoid withholding material evidence from the grand jury.
"The interest in confidentiality is never sufficient to support an official privilege where there is reason to believe that the authorities should take criminal misconduct," he briefed continuum.
"The need of the grand jury for the critically important evidence provided by the recordings upon a question of wrongdoing by high officials and party leaders easily outweighs the slight risk to the freedom of executive discussions."
The battle over the tapes, which may ultimately be decided by the Supreme
Court, is not the only rough water that the admitant may likely have to cross in months ahead.
Recent disclosure that Vice President Agnew is among those being investigated in connection with alleged kickback schemes with Maryland contractors was one more threat to the credibility of the Nixon administration and the Republican party.
Among the charges that Agnew might be indicted on are extortion, bribery, tax evasion and conspiracy stemming from alleged incidents during Agnew's terms as Baltimore County executive, Maryland Governor and Vice President.
Agney's response to those charges was swift and blunt. At a news conference he described reports that he had once received $140 a week in illegal funds as "damned men."
If cleared of the charges, Agnew might receive a large measure of public sympathy. On the other hand, an indictment on his criminal record on his record and his political profile.
6, that "people on your staff are trying to woo you" used by the BFII and CIA to conduct their research.
One outcome of the first phase of the Senate's Watergate hearings was a resurrected suspicion that the government was actively involved in seeking a settlement favorable to International Telephone and Telegraph Corp. (ITT) during antitrust suits directed against that corporation in 1971.
On Aug. 29 Nixon told the nation that John Dean, special counsel to Nixon, had conducted an investigation which cleared all who were then with the administration.
In return, the corporation allegedly offered $400,000 to help cover the costs of the 1972 Republican National convention, then planned for San Diego.
The Watergate committee gained possession of a White House memo sent by Charles Colson, a former White House counsel to H. R. Haldenman, then Nikon's
Dean and Nixon held their first controversial conversation about Watergate on Sept. 15. Dean told the President that the case had been contained. Dean testified that the President seemed to know about the cover-up.
See SCANDALS Page 6
This and other conversations were recorded on tape in the Oval Office. Halerman later testified that he had heard the tape and that Nixon was innocent.
Democratic candidate George McGovern accused Nixon of at least indirect responsibility for the burglary in the closing days of his presidency, but campain still lost by a landslide defeat.
ANNOUNCING
Dean had a series of conversations with Nixon after the election. Dean later testified that Nixon was "still loyal to the Presidency." Dean testified that Nixon had approved executive clemency for one of the defendants and had said that acquiring "hush" money would be no problem.
EVOLUTION S&E 608 formerly 154
Dean promised executive clemency to McCord after one year in prison if McCord remained silent about the involvement of higher officials.
About the course: Evolution is the one unifying principle in all Life Sciences. This course will cover all aspects of Evolutionary Biology in an introductory manner. Emphasis will be placed on the study of the interaction between variation and environmental pressures. The philosophical implications of the Darwinian Method will be extensively discussed.
Harvard professor Archibald Cox was selected as special prosecutor to independently investigate wrong-doing in the White House.
Prerequisite: Biology 108 (old 2) is required. Genetics (Biology 304—old 51) is also required but may be taken concurrently or waived with consent of the instructors.
There will be three lectures a week with two midterm and one final examinations. A short paper will be required on any selected aspect of evolutionary biology from the molecular to the social level.
Time and Place: 9:30-10:20 a.m. in 222 Snow Hall Mon.-Wed.-Fri.
CONTACT: Richard Johnston 713B Dyche UN 4-3926 Richard Wassersug 410 Dyche UN 4-4417 For More Information.
Facing a probable jail sentence and fearing abuse of the CIA, McCord abandoned his silence and implicated Dean and Madruder.
Nixon told the nation, April 30, that he had fired Dean and accepted resignations from Attorney General Richard Kleindienst, John Ehrhrichman, domestic affairs adviser, and Michael D. Cohen, who charged which came to my attention*; and condemned any efforts to cover up the case.
The Senate Watergate Committee and Cox each authorized a court order for White House tapes of relevant conversations. In addition, the Justice Department may go as far as the Supreme Court.
Nixon said he would not allow Dean to testify before the Senate Watergate Committee, March 2, 1973, utilizing his power of executive privilege.
Nixon told the nation on August 15, that he had had no knowledge of the planning of the burglary or of any cover-up. He asserted a claim of innocence, and turn the matter over to the courts.
The Senate investigating committee is in recess awaiting the second part of its probe.
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