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Monday, December 9, 1974
University Daily Kansan
SPECIAL FOCUS
Watergate ranked first in year of big stories
NIXON RESIGNS!
So screamed the headlines in hundreds of papers in August. The resignation of the 37th President of the United States brought out type size that some newsmen said had been
reserved for the end of the world.
The resignation was the most prominent of these stories collectively, known as "Watergate." And for the second year in a row Watergate was voted story of the year by the U.S. Congress, then editorial and interpretative writing class.
The vote was taken to determine the top 20 stories of the year, drawn from a list of about 50 major news events. The students rated the most important stories on a scale of 1 to 10. They counted 20 points, second place votes counted 19, etc.
Watergate, including Richard Nixon's resignation and subsequent pardon by President Johnson named first on 41 of 42 ballots.
ranked as the second most important story of the year. The deterioration of the domestic and international economic pictures, inflation and recession, the economic summit and the slumping automobile industry all stories that were grouped together. Energy, with its important effects upon economics, the environment, food production and politics, was rated third.
The energy story, very big at the beginning of the year when the oil embargo was still in effect, is an important importance during the year. Lumped together under energy were stories about the embargo, price increases, the coal strike, energy and the environment.
The world food crisis and widespread starvation was voted the fourth biggest story of the year. Fifth was the Middle East, which included pullbacks from the October 1973 war, the Israeli-occupied Gaza Organization, the recent partial mobilization of forces in the area and the heavy rearming of Mideast armies.
The Ford presidency was rated sixth by the class. This is because, while Ford's appointments, amnesty for draft resisters and deserters
and their troubles with Congress.
Never before, it seems, have so many big stories been so closely related in so many ways. Watergate, the consuming interest of the nation for most of the year, led to some neglect of the economy.
The energy situation,
presidency included many separate but related stories in each category. It was difficult to distinguish between Nixon's resignation from Watergate or the Palestine conflict, from the Middle East story.
The remaining top 20 stories
Never before, it seems, have so many big stories been so closely related in so many ways. Watergate . . . led to some neglect of the economy.
aggravated early in the year by the oil embargo and manifested all year by high prices, drastically damaged the economies of oil-importing countries of the world. The high cost of energy spurred worldwide inflation and contributed to the decline, which aggravated the shortage of world food supplies.
Perhaps the intertwining of big news in 1974 is an indication of a growing interdependency among nations and their affairs. The class had difficulty comprehending the stories called Watergate, economy, energy, food crisis, Middle East and the Ford
in their determined order are: Election '74, in which Democrats won many key races and gained a theoretical vetoproof Congress; the repeated acts of terrorism, including stories about attacks on Israel, the Irish Republican Army, the Irish Republican Army, various hijackings and other terrorist acts.
Kissinger and detente, including the resumption of relations with East Germany, Nixon's summit meetings in July and President Ford's recent diplomatic talks.
Nelson Rockefeller's nomination as vice-president and the pursuant hearings and
investigations of his wealth; the turnover of governments in France Great Britain, Portugal, Greece and Turkey
Cyprus, the island invaded by Turkey after the ouster of Archbishop Makarios; former President Nixon's health, his phlebitis and surgery; the rise of the third world nations in the nations, as evidenced by the recognition of Liberation Organization and attempts to permanently expel South Africa.
Patty Heartle's kidnapping by the Symbiontes Liberation Army, the shootout in Los Angeles and the continuing search for Miss Heartle; the CIA, its involvement in the overthrow of Chile's Allende government and Senate initiatives; the CIA, the outset and arrest of Ernst Haile Selassie in Ethiopia, the political chaos, executions and the country's mass starvations. Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's expulsion from the Soviet Union; the Boston busing dispute that flared into violence; and last, the military assault on Sen. Edward Kennedy's decision not to run for the Presidency in 1976.
Associate campus editor
Craig Stock
"OH, OH—THEY'VE STARTED USING STOCK CERTIFICATES"
MAUDIN
© 1974 Chicago Sun-Times
Nixon covers up coverup of Watergate coverup
The family and staff were gathered to help Richard Nixon celebrate his 61st birthday, his fifth since becoming President.
Everyone smiled, photographers clicked off dozens of pictures and the First
Family's Irish setter, King Timahoe, shrusted frosting that Nixon had accidentally smeared on his coat.
But the occasion seemed more like a wake than a celebration, for Watergate was closing in on Richard Nixon.
The date was Jan. 9, 1974, and Nixon should have been at the playing field when he took the oath before he, had taken the oath of office for the second time, after winning in one of the landslides in American history.
Within two weeks, Nixon would feel forced to discuss in his State of the Union address the possibility of leaving office and declaring, "One year of Watergate is enough."
He was being investigated by a Senate select committee, a special prosecutor and an often enraged press. The House committee was gathering evidence for its impeachment hearings.
The year 1974 had already gotten off to a bad start for Nixon. A week before his birthday, the Internal Revenue Service had announced that it was investigating hisdecessor Robert McDonald's audit that was to cost him more than $450,000. Two days after that, he had hired a new defense lawyer, James D. St. Clair.
Nixon was involved in a complex series of legal maneuvers to protect the tape
recordings he had secretly made in his offices, tapes whose existence had been discovered by Senate investigators.
The first big blow to Nixon during the year concerned one of those tapes. On Jan. 15, a panel of six experts appointed by U.S. District Judge John J. Sirica announced that an 18 and 19-year-old in one key tape had been caused by five separate erasures.
On March 1, a grand jury indicted seven of Nixon's aides, including his two top former advisers Michael Baldeman and John Ehrlichman. Later it was learned that the jury had named Nixon an unindicted coconspirator and that he might have if he hadn't been President.
Finally, the pressure on Nixon was so great that he had to act decisively. Continuing to ignore subpoenas, he made 1,000 pages of carefully edited transcripts of selected taped texts.
In a televised speech, he promised that the transcripts would "at last, once and for all, show that what I knew and what I did with regard to the break-in and coverup were just as I have described them to you from the beginning."
The millions of people who read the transcripts in paper- and digital newspapers installments bumblebler spiked his bumbler when he spiked his
The transcripts showed Nixon to be a weak, indescapable man and the "modified limited hang-out road" than with revealing
Within weeks, members of the House Judiciary Committee were leaking transcripts they made from the original tapes.
These versions portrayed Nikon in a far harsh light and showed that passages he had deleted as "unrelated to him" were essential to crucial to understanding his involvement in the coverup.
in mid-May. Nixon 'noid
conservatives' Jamie L.
constitute an expectation
to be impeached and that
he wouldn't resign "under any
language with obscenities and who often harshly criticized the aides who trusted him abjectly.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
About the same time, a Louis Harris poll indicated that only 13 per cent of Americans thought Nixon "personally inspires confidence in the White House."
Each appearance of the trip was marked by tumultuous public receptions, but Nixon couldn't completely escape his troubles. On his one-day stop in Israel, he spent his free time in the city of Jerusalem attending to Watergate tapes he had taken along on the trip.
Most people suspected that the tapes had been edited in Nixon's favor.
After a brief return to the United States, Nixon went to Moscow for a third annual summit with Communist leader Leonid Brezhnev. The Russia, apparently sensing infidelity from his failure to negotiate a new arms limitation agreement, and the summit produced few tangible results.
Late in the month, he took a vacation from Watergate on a tour of the Middle East, despite warnings from his doctors that it could break loops from his hip but could break loops and kill him.
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Shortly after he came home, Nixon suffered the worst week yet. On July 13, the Senate passed a law that created Presidential Campaign Activities—the Watergate Committee—released its final report, meticulously accounting for the financing of the break-in.
Eric Meyer
Associate Editor Campus Editor
Jeffrey Simmon Jill Willis
Editor
Five days later, the House Judiciary Committee released its first volumes of evidence. Its documents and tape transcripts gave added credence to the charges that Nixon had paraded the group and his specifically apprehended payment of hush money to the original seven Watergate defendants.
By the end of the month, two crushing blows had all but shattered Nixon's hopes for survival.
Within a week, the committee voted to recommend three articles of impeachment, two by highly bipartisan majorities. Nixon was accused of obstruction of justice, abuse of power and defiance of House subpoenas.
Nixon continued to listen to the tapes that would be disclosed during the House hearings.
When he got to the tapes of June 23, 1972, he found a surprise. The tapes of three conspirators were less than a week after the break-in, had approved a plan to block an FBI investigation because their exposure inhibited by officers of his re-election campaign.
Nixon made transcripts of the tapes public on Aug. 5, calling his previous actions "a serious act of omission for which I take full responsibility and which I deeply regret."
He admitted that the tapes were "at variance with certain of my previous statements" and that impeachment was now "virtually a foregone conclusion."
Still, he remained hopeful. "I am firmly convinced that
the record, in its entirety, does not justify the extreme step of impeachment and removal of a president," he said.
Congress disagreed, and within hours impeachment and
Late in the day, the gates of the White House were padlocked from the outside, trapping surprised staff members inside for 23 minutes while Nixon roamed the
The millions of people who read the transcripts in paperback or in daily newspaper installments saw Nixon as a bumber who spiked his language . . .
conviction were almost assured.
"YOUVE GOT TO ADMIRE HIS GALL."
grounds undisturbed for one last time.
Then he went on television to announce his resignation.
After a final night in the White House, Nixon, alternately smiling and tearful, bid farewell to his staff. He had a time with them, and at times he seemed to have little control over himself.
"I no longer have a strong enough political base in the Congress to justify continuing," he said. "With the disappearance of that base, I now believe we need to realize purpose has been served and there is no longer a need for the process to be prolonged."
Nixon mentioned Watergate only twice, and both references were to his triumphs of his presidency—the end of the Vietnam War, detente with Russia and the People's Republic of China, a tenuous alliance that he gave little hint that he was resigning to keep from becoming the first president for fervently removed from office.
He talked about his battles
"Our long national nightmare is over," he declared.
But the nightmare wasn't over yet for Nixon. It seemed for a time that he might finally achieve the privacy he so cherished, but soon he was back in the news.
Exactly a month after he announced his resignation, Nixon accepted a "full, free and absolute" pardon from Ford.
Nixon signed an agreement with the government giving him partial control over his tapes and documents, and he hoped to receive $800,000 to ease his transition to private life.
The year 1974 began with Richard Nixon as President, still enjoying wide popularity. It ends with him a disgraced and broken man, seriously ill, sought for testimony in criminal trials and civil suits, owing taxes on income, taxes and mortgages, lacking even health insurance to pay his medical bills.
Perhaps the best instant assessment of the Nixon presidency came from Nixon himself.
In the speech announcing his resignation, Nixon quoted Theodore Rosevelt, a man he deeply admired.
Roosevelt's description of the man in the arena is as close as
Within a few weeks, Congress cut the funds to $200,000 and pressured Ford to assume tight control of the plant. Nikon'siphone fixtures recurrent, forcing two length hospital stays. After an operation Oct. 29 to block a potentially fatal blood clot, it caused a massive vascular shock and nearly died.
He admitted that the tapes were "at variance with certain of my previous statements" and that impeachment was now "virtually a foregone conclusion."
"No man or no woman came into this administration and left it with more of this world's goods than when he came in," he said. "No man or woman ever profited at the public expense . . ."
with the press, the White House,
his parents, his education, even
his handwriting. At times, what
he said was absurd.
Then Nikon left for his home in Clemente, Italy at 13:15 a.m. EDT. His resignation was delivered to Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger One half hour later, the country's 38th president
anyone has yet come to understanding Nixon:
("A man) whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again because there is not a deed, but with an incoming, who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the truth, who finds the one and who at the worst, if he fails, at least falls while daring greatly."
—Roy Clevenger
Tw Symy by G orche Rich Pars pass "Chr featur