Washington Week In Review; 449

Yes. You A grand jury has named President Nixon an unandighted

on Washington Week in Review. Here is moderator Paul Duke. Good evening President Nixon's Watergate troubles have taken another significant turn with word that a grand jury decided he had taken part in the cover-up of the scandal. One of Mr. Nixon's top cabinet officers has been fine for lying to a congressional hearing and former White House aide Charles Colson has pleaded guilty to obstruct injustice in the Ellsburg case. But on Capitol Hill, the president has won a major foreign policy victory in the fight over reducing American troops overseas. To look more closely at these developments, we have with us tonight Charles Cordray, military affairs writer for the Baltimore Sun,

Neil McNeill, Chief Congressional correspondent for Time Magazine, Peter Lissa Gore, White House correspondent for the Chicago Daily News, and John Lindsay, who's been covering Watergate for Newsweek. John, it's been a busy and dramatic week on the court front. What do you make of it all? Well, it's, I made the mistake, Paul, going last weekend out to the governor's conference in Seattle where I found a fairly sane, reserved, old-fashioned kind of politics being played, and then returned to Washington and by the mid-afternoon today I just came to the conclusion that the whole script for the week had been written by Woody Allen, and that all the roles in the Watergate fair are being played by Peter Salas and Lauren Hardy. It's one of the most confusing weeks and probably one of the most damaging weeks to the whole fabric of the tripartite system of government in the history of the Watergate affair. And it's starting out with what seems to be the least important and most innocuous was the decision and the sentencing today by Judge George Hart,

the federal judge, George Hart, of former Attorney General Richard Klein Deenst. Klein Deenst, as you recall, bringing everybody up to date on this silver opera, had been charged with not telling the truth to a congressional committee in the matter whether the president had interfered with him in the ITT case and its settlement. He had said no. Then this could have been a felony and it would have been for everybody around this table, most of our listeners, but they allowed the Attorney General of the United States to walk into a federal court with a reduced charge from a felony to a misdemeanor, which far as I know had never been used before. That was bad enough. To make matters worse, he was fined $100 for this and sentenced to a month in jail. Both sentences suspended. The ultimate outrage in the legal circle tonight was that the judge delivered from the bench a little sermon in which he pointed out that this light sentence was given because the man had an

exemplary home wipe, which may be true, that he had really been guilty of no more than a little bit of excessive loyalty to a friend, the president of the United States. This is really being read tonight as a really devastating blow against the whole fabric of the judicial system. The basic understanding is that when our court system works only because people will, having taken a note, tell the truth. This is expected of you and me and certainly should be expected of the Attorney General or a former Attorney General of the United States and was not done in this case. The second case was the surprise plea by Charles Wendell Colton, one of the top former presidential aides, to a felony to which he had not been charged. He had been charged with the attempt to violate the civil rights of Dr. Lewis Fielding, who had been Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, and he found that he could not in good conscience plea to that because he said it wasn't true. He said that even if they had offered him a misdemeanor, which they didn't, he could not do that because

he was not guilty of those charges. So instead he pled guilty to another felony obstruction of justice, which carries a five-year sentence and $5,000 fine, which says pretty much the same thing that he tried to influence the outcome of Daniel Ellsberg's trial. I don't want to try to get into Chuck Colton's head on this. He had his own reasons for doing it. Now the political outcome of this was that there was an immediate pressure placed on John Ehrlichman, who was the honorary meeting figure of importance in the Ellsberg break-in case. That pressure might have, and maybe still is, working to bring him to a point where he might want to make a deal. Another strange thing happened almost immediately after that, and it's related, I believe, for the political level. President Nixon and his lawyer, James St. Clair, who had made an agreement in the court last week with federal judge Gerhard Tassel, another federal court in the room, that John Ehrlichman, the remaining defendant of significance, would be allowed to see and have his lawyers examine certain evidence that he felt was helpful to him, would be helpful to him in his trial.

This was almost mysteriously and suddenly reneged on by the president. And this was the president decision, and James St. Clair made that abundantly clear. Now the result of this is that once again we're back where we were several weeks ago, when Judge Gassel said that it was possible to not forthcoming of this evidence, that they will drop the case against Ehrlichman. Now politically, if the case against Ehrlichman is dropped, and the pressure that Colton put on Ehrlichman to possibly come forward has been diminished, and therefore he may get completely free on this. But then he also suggests that the president could be held in contempt of court. He suggested this may very well happen, but I think the president has followed on this and they go to a contempt citation, either against St. Clair or against the president. The likelihood is that he will also have to dismiss the case. Now he doesn't really have to do that, but that's the likelihood. John, you call it a soap opera. Some people might call it a Greek tragedy, but in any case I'd like to ask you about a colleague of mine said if Mr. Clindings had stolen hubcaps, he would have wound up in jail for several months. Don't you think that the Clindings sentence or lack of sentence

would encourage all witnesses who go before a Senator House Committee now, just not to use the prevailing phrase to testify not accurately or in short to lie to those committees? Well, I would think it would encourage it. You know, you read the transcripts to the presidential transcripts. They discussed this a great length. We can go before the grand jury and we can take a chance. We can lie on this. Now we're seeing it actually taking place. There's no great penalty attached to it. It's the former Attorney General. Much is expected of you and me as citizens, ordinary citizens. I don't know about you, but it's true of me. Well, all right. It is true. That's right of you, Peter. I think it's true of me. The system collapses when it becomes the majority view that one can take this risk and go in and fudge and lie and not be forthcoming. Whether you can never possibly defective as that system is now. It's not possible to get it the truth all the time. This makes it almost inevitable. Tell us something more about Chuck Colson, if you will.

He was very close to the president and the word now is that he will not testify against the president, but in favor of him. Well, I think my feeling about it is and it's just a feeling I have no evidence to support this. My feeling is that Chuck Colson is in a position where this religious conversion, this newly come to Christ's business, is serious with him. I'm not going to quiver with it. That's his soul and his psyche talking. I believe the evidence of that is that he willingly pled guilty, even though he had not been charged with this. He pled guilty to an obstruction of justice charge, which carries a very severe penalty. He could have taken a chance that all the charges would have been dismissed by Judge Giselle. This indicates to me that he's clear on it. There's no evidence that he's going to do this. I have a feeling very strongly that he will tell the truth if the prosecutors ask him the right questions. Much of it will be harmful to the president and much of it will be innocuous to the president. Well, John has ticked off most of the court developments.

But of course, Peter, there was one thing that kind of topped everything this week. And that is the naming of the president as an unindicted co-conspirator in all of this. What is the White House reaction to this? Well, there are some suspicion, Paul, and it's totally unconfirmed, as far as I'm concerned, is that the White House wanted this out, really. And did they leak it? Well, in their own ways, they got it out. The leak has a pejorative sound to it these days. But the reason that I had heard was that they didn't want this coming out while the president was on his Middle Eastern trip. It has a ring of doom about it, an unindicted co-conspirator. But Mr. St. Clair said it was just simply regrettable and inappropriate. Grand Juries are not always right. Vice President Ford says it's a not very serious charge. No White House treated it somewhat cavalierly, because they are making every conveying every impression that the president is solely concerned with his Middle Eastern trip coming up next week. And he's going on a kind of triumphal tour of the Arab capitals in Jerusalem, Israel.

And they just couldn't care very much about this. But I'd like to say a word about Colson, because speculation really is quite rampant about what Mr. Colson will do. They're not sure about this rediscovered Christianity on his part, whether that will produce truth-telling or maybe result in the ultimate trick, because he was the head of the Department of Dirty Tricks at the White House. And it is a conviction of most people that Chuck Colson perhaps knows more about the president's involvement if there was one in a great many of these allegations and charges. And anybody else in the White House that he was that man outside channels that presidents tend to have around that they do their dirty work. And I think that despite the professions of not being worried that the White House officials are just a little concerned about what Colson may do, how much truth-telling is involved in his, as I say, his embrace of religion now, or whether he's up still to some of his tricks, the speculation is very high on that. Well, the president went to camp David this morning to prepare for his hijira or hijira to the Middle East.

And I was interested in that word because it was when Muhammad fled from Mecca to Medina to escape persecution. And it was the beginning of the Muslim age, but I didn't want to use that definition. I looked in the dictionary in the word hijira or hijira, and this is for Neil's benefit. Any flight or journey to a more desirable or congenial place than where one is. So by almost any definition that trip to the Middle East is a hijira. Pete, let me ask you a question on the unindicted co-conspirator, calling a spade a spade. Doesn't it really mean that the jury wanted to indict the president and was talked out of that? Yeah, I think that's very clear that Mr. Jaworski said that under the Constitution you cannot indict under our law that the House must impeach. I think that's fairly clear. Any president ever been in this kind of? No, I think this is a historic first. What was, to be clear about this in my own mind, Jaworski was not holding that the grand jury's findings were faulty or anything of substance, but simply that it was probably a form that would not work.

They're province, they just could not do it legally. Is that your understanding of it, John? That's my understanding of it. We're going to hold it to do it because they thought that the evidence they had at that time was substantial not to justify that kind of an end. And I just want to add one word to what John said about this kind of Alice in Wonderland where one's eyebrows are elevated almost hourly in this town. And really we are beyond shock and I think really beyond disbelief now suspended totally. What about the president's speech at Annapolis even up there for the graduation? Is this the only kind of audience you know approach? Well, it is the trip he's planning. Part of the counteroffensive on the pitch. Yes, it's all a part of this, but the speech was rather good speech and he was on top of this form speaking about detente with the Russians. And it was a kind of an answer to Senator Scoop Jackson and the Jackson Amendment. And he says we can't interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. We got to do what we must do in terms of detente.

And so it was a fairly good speech, but it's all part of the not a counteroffensive so much as part of his campaign really to portray himself as being on top of his job. And you know, and this is a little deceptive because in the foreign field this is true, but domestically as I think we all know there are a lot of things being left undone, the president can't get the president's attention on it and so on. Another significant kind of aspect of this is that the Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger had his first news conference. He had a hand in the Annapolis speech by the way. He had his first news conference and he came as you know, as I think he expected to be asked questions that would tend to add to his plaudits for the disengagement agreement. And he ran into a buzz saw. He gestingly said it was like a general being captured in public and stripped of all of his medals. He was a third question and he was asked about the wiretapping had he authorized and directed the FBI to wiretapped his subordinates. Well, he just felt that that was not the kind of question to ask a man who's come back from saving the world from war in the Middle East.

And then he was asked by a more irreverent and impertinent young reporter whether it had plans to hire a criminal lawyer to defend himself against possible charges of perjury. And it went downhill from that point and it was a kind of a sad and yet a wholesome performance all around because we make people larger than life and then we have to go about the business of sort of reducing them to human dimension. He will have more explaining to do more to you on this plumber. He went before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today as a matter of fact and said to Senator Musky that he had answered all these questions and he will continue to be asked about them because the testimony seems on the face of it to be contradictory. Neo will the grand jury's finding in these court developments hurt the president in the impeachment process at the Capitol? Not sure. Paul, I think it's a little early on that, but off what these two fellows are saying, I think any of our listeners get a pretty good view that cynicism is rampant in this town at the moment.

The old adages are coming back that we have the best politicians that money can buy and that an honest politician is a politician that when he's bought stays bought. But before we go back to impeachment and the war again, I'd like to suggest that within Congress there are some extraordinary things going on other than this cynical business of watergate and impeachment and so on. And this is a process that's been underway in institutional terms within the Congress for the last two years. We don't mention it much anymore. We don't seem to get much time for it. But the seniority system, for example, has been largely altered and improved in this Congress. Budget reform bill giving Congress a proper handle to set policy is now almost passed. There's a restructuring of the committee system, which momentarily at least is stalemated.

And just right now, pending before the House is really a radically new idea of handling the tax bill much to the chagrin of Chairman Wilbur Mills, they're going to do it in an open way permitting floor amendments. This is an opening of the system. The committees this Congress have been open for the first time, mostly, rather than the closed hearings. What you're suggesting is that Congress is making important reform. Despite this week, the House, for example, voted down the sugar subsidy and almost unthinkable idea. The House Democratic Caucus is suddenly a free caucus and it's making policy decisions. What I mean to suggest by this is that there's more going on in town than just this total cynical soap opera that Duke two guys have been talking about. And I've been talking about all these weeks, too. Isn't it still lacking one thing, though, Neil? And I don't say this as a contribution to your charge that we're cynical. But don't they still lack the will to give voice to moral outrage?

Well, Pete, you have always had a grim view of members of Congress. To you, as I've felt the Congressmen as a fellow who sits on the fence and keeps both ears on the ground and gets them filled with grasshopper. Roughly that, yes. I think there is a will. I know there's a policy line being put out among the Republican leadership now on the hill that the president will not be impeached and so on. Everything I'm told is overwhelmingly to the contrary of that. The minimum Republican vote for impeachment in the House is something over 40 votes. That's enough with the Democrats to assure impeachment. I think that's, but there is also, which is important, something that I believe we mentioned last week, a stiffening within the Republican ranks on impeachment. And there is a, there now identifying much more closely a very hard core block of Republicans who will not under any circumstances vote to impeach a Republican president. That they don't want this stain on the Republican Party.

Wow. That's a hard core. I don't want to choose sides between you and Pete on this, but I do want to observe for the record that Congress did outrageously stand four square on the busting issue this week. It was capable of expressing itself. I mean the House. What is the reaction in Congress to the president's hijara or hijara? You were out of town words. No, it's fascinating. The original idea when the Moscow trip was scheduled for early July was that the House would have to suspend on the impeachment process. Now that view is being denigrated. And the Democratic leadership, the impeachers, if you will, take the view that this is a ploy to delay part of the tactics of delay put out by the president. That they will not suffer that to delay them and they will proceed through the process. And when they're talking, they're talking tough in this area.

They'll quite say who's going to bell a cat. That they will inform the president that on a day certain the vote will come and he should be in the United States. The fact is, however, that they know that if they vote, if they call a vote on a day when the president is out of the United States, they will lose Republican votes. And men who otherwise might vote for impeachment. And they don't want to do that. So briefly in defense of John and myself, Sinek is a man without hope or optimism. And we both have hope or optimism, although it's diminishing very quickly. My question is, has the Republicans developed now? The Republican leaders have been saying around now. There's two thin a case against the president for impeachment. Has that become their rally in crime now? I think there are several levels here of Republicans. There are more than one Republican leader, of course. Some of them are saying that on the record, below the surface, they're quite concerned and a lot. Others are saying, and I've talked to them, that impeachment is certain. This is the charge, not necessarily conviction.

That's the way they feel about it. Yeah, but what's happening is the committee is moving ahead. The committee, within the committee, there is an assumption that the case is overwhelming for impeachment. And right now, the staff of the committee is drafting the articles of impeachment to draft formalities, to be presented within the month, I suppose, to the committee for approval. Well, the administration did achieve a significant victory in the Senate with a vote in which it beat back attempts to reduce our troops overseas. Just how significant was that, Charlie? I suppose I should first say I meant to say that the House voiced its outrage rather than behaved outrageously. Straighten that up. I thought that was a rye comment in any case. I think this, Paul, that the Senate, in institutional terms, as Neil puts these matters, is trying to act quite responsibly at this point on matters of diplomacy and defense. And if this leads to over-restraint or over- hesitancy in some matters, it will so be it.

They refused not only to cut 125,000 troops from our overseas deployments this week, which almost everyone knew they would, and nine Democratic senators voted against that, who might normally have been expected to vote for it. But they also refused on a narrower vote to cut even 76,000. And so everyone is saying, why did it come about when the Senate has previously been much more willing to do these things? And Senator Cranston in California, who was four cuts, said he thought that the President's forthcoming trip to the Middle East and to Russia had its effect on some. Secretary Kissinger seems to be able to get results in Congress when he tries. He wrote a letter, a timely letter, as he had done previously in the House, saying that to cut any troops anywhere at this point would disrupt relations with allies who have new governments and their own problems, would jeopardize negotiations with the Russians to bring about mutual cuts, would get in the way of our peace-belling efforts in the Far East.

There wasn't interesting by play at this point, Senator Javits voted against any cuts. Even though he said he could support a 76,000-man reduction overseas, but it would carry headlines abroad saying, man's field amendment passes, and since man's field is associated with always wanting big cuts, it would be bad, and he voted against it. The crux of the matter is really what it would do to Europe, because while they maintained in the debate that the numbers were such it could pull them out of somewhere else, actually they would have to take large numbers out of Europe under either of these figures. I suppose I should say that in working on this defense debate this week, the Senate, besides being negative in this matter, depending on how you look at, voted against the use of beagles for testing, poison gas, and voted to throw the Navy out of a Calabra island, and the Navy is certainly going to try to not to do it. This is a tiny little island with a few people, and the Navy keeps bombarding the island,

and it voted not to make the CIA budget public, and it voted to let retired military people have higher pay, although this will die when it gets to the House. Aren't we seeing a characteristic case, Charlie, of the Congress, and I don't know, Neil will think that I haven't invented this one too, but the Congress almost invariably since World War II has come to the support of the President on the eve of a trip abroad, on the eve of some diplomatic mission, has it not, and isn't there, that factor weighing heavily on its votes on the defense procurement, because the summit with Moscow is coming up soon? Oh, I think you have to assume so, and those who lost are crediting at that fact. Of course, this was a 46-44 vote, and two or three senators who weren't present had been there, it might have gone in a different direction. It was a near thing, and it was a warning for the future.

I would think that they've got to get a lot of things in order by this time next year, including some troop reductions. Tell us a little bit about the President's security in the Middle East. We've mentioned this before, and a pretty spooky thing for the men charged with protecting him. Well, as so I read, those who are over there in advance are not all happy about some of the things they want to do. It's going to be, I suppose, a difficult thing, getting him there. And is it trying to override the train from what Cairo, Alexandria, with the Egyptians' way of anxious to doubt, and Nixon? Oh, that means it protects him adequately. Oh, who knows? You can't say yes. I couldn't say yes, and have any certainty. If you'd asked me if there remains to protect President Kennedy, or Bobby Kennedy had it, I wouldn't have had to say I thought so. Is he not going to Austria on this trip that they're bringing 11,000 police in to, in a place where that's not the problem? That's where there is the problem, but that's how they see the possibilities.

Charlie, the Secretary of State is shortening a trip I think he's making to Europe this weekend. Is that because you can't have the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense in the President out of the country at the same time, or why is that? I think that's what we're told. He's going to a NATO nuclear planning committee meeting in Norway, and then that latest heard he was then going to short-circuited a meeting in Brussels, and come home so that he'd be here while the President's away. I guess Mr. Kissinger is going to be in Ottawa next week at the NATO meeting. I don't know this. He's not going to the NATO meeting. I'm not sure what's happening with that NATO meeting. On his own? Well, he can be delegated authority. This all has to do with the nuclear business. He can be delegated authority if the President can't be reached. Thank you all. Thank you all. See you all next week. I'm Paul Duke, good night for Washington Week in Review.

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