Washington Week In Review

The Congratulations over a possible resignation by Vice President Agnew.

One of the stories tonight on Washington Week in Review. For his moderator, Lincoln Furber. Good evening. The future, in particular, the immediate future of Vice President Agnew was a major story in Washington this week. He was revealed to have met again with the president following earlier stories of his possible imminent resignation. On Capitol Hill, the Agnew case sparked at least a few congressmen into studying the subject of impeachment anew. The Watergate tapes were again in the news, as the White House and Special Prosecutor Cox tossed this hot potato back to the Federal Appeals Court. And a potential heating oil shortage this winter was the latest bad news in the continuing

American energy crisis. Here tonight to talk about these and other stories, we have Bert Shore, Washington correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, Nicholas Horock, Chief Investigative correspondent for Newsweek magazine, Neil McNeil, Chief Congressional correspondent for Time Magazine, and Peter Lissa Gore, Washington Bureau Chief for the Chicago Daily News. Peter, there was increasing conjecture this week about what Vice President Agnew would or wouldn't do. Can you tell us what the essence of that was? Lengthy essence was shrouded in confusion, uncertainty, and a good deal of mystery. And the open administration at Mel Erd Proclaim last week came clanging shut with a loud bang. The President met with Vice President, both agreed to go mom to remain utterly silent about everything, resignations or anything else. But the White House did reveal that the Vice President has not resigned, at least not yet, despite all of these reports and rumors, which began with the Washington Post story, saying

that a Republican Party leader had argued with the Vice President for a couple of hours and failed to persuade him to stay on, that he was determined to resign, whereupon all of the Vice President's supporters and sympathizers came to the fore and blamed the White House for leaking this information about his resignation, claiming he was not the kind of man who would quit, especially under fire. But the White House, if they had contrived to confirm every suspicion, they couldn't have done a better job than they did with their press policy. They started out with a no comment about these stories, and the next day they tried to wriggle out of that, and one of three things seemed to be happening. They were deliberately preparing the public for an Agnew resignation, or they're just simply being malicious or incompetent, and I suspect a little of all three is happening. So what happens now is that the big game is being played in Washington as to whom the President will nominate to succeed Agnew when he resigns, and not if he resigns.

Pete, why should Agnew resign? Even if, in effect, in the public mind, wouldn't it be a confession of guilt? That's what the Agnew associates say, but I don't know why he would resign, except to prevent further embarrassment to the administration, and perhaps to the President's story. There's a whole other town that he might be trying to work out some kind of a deal, some kind of a compromise. I know that. Does that make sense? I know that, Neil, and I can't figure that one out either. If he were indicted by a Baltimore grand jury, if he were to resign, he would then be an ordinary citizen, subject to whatever the penalties were. As a vice president, at least he could argue the constitutional ground that you can't indict a vice president, you have to impeach him. At least he had a line of defense, but if he resigns, he does not. So the resignation business doesn't seem to make very much sense, but it's in the air. You can feel it, you can smell it, you can almost touch it.

If we can't be specific about the vice president's motives, we can speculate about the president's problems in this situation. What do you think about those? Well, I think there are a man's problems are great because he chose Mr. Agnew, and when he chose Mr. Agnew in 1968, people were surprised. As you remember, the Spirrow, who stories it went around? He called him a man of good heart and said that under pressure, he is something like unbeatable, very good. It would be another tremendous blow to the Nixon administration. It would be a blow to the president's judgments about people on top of John Mitchell, Pat Gray, John Erlichman, HR Halleman, you now have his vice president in difficulty. And then he would have the problem, the added problem, if the vice president is not choosing a successor, Neil will talk a little bit more about that from the congressional side.

But who does he then choose, a non-presidential type, or a man he wants to appoint in 1976, a Democrat to try to get some unity, where does he go? So it seems to me, Bert, that he, there are all kinds of problems associated with the Agnew matter. I want to ask you about one of those potential candidates for the vacancy, if one occurs. Nelson Rockefeller, he was in town this week, ostensibly, to try to persuade senators to vote for Mr. Kissinger, his friend. Kissinger needed help like a hole in that, you know, when we approved, do you sense? No, we went on making a move, we went over that ground, Neil, but the president did not see Nelson Rockefeller according to the White House. You look at other people. Yeah, other people. Anyone making moves? Well, Rockefeller may have been up making soundings, there was a strong report that there was a sounding being made of Texas Congressman by the White House, of whether they would support

a connolly nomination, when that was inquired into it. We found out that a Houston newspaper was making a canvas of the Texas delegation. What do you think the president would do? Would he try to choose a man who would fill the office of president in 76, or would he go for a caretaker, vice president, how would he just sit in the chair? Well, the Democrats are talking about wanting a caretaker, not to help some guy into the office if they want. A John Sherman Cooper type, Senator Barry Goldwater is alleged to have said that he would accept it, and declared that he was not a candidate in 1976, and any man would accept it. Right. Anybody who accepted ought to rule themselves out for 1976, but you're asking me, Neil, in all seriousness, to predict what a man will do, who chose the man we already know, he has chosen, who chose the Haynesworth and the Carsworth, well to be Supreme Court justice, who's cracked record, really, in the choice of his people for whatever reason

has not been a good one. Do you have any explanation of the reason that the people who chose this? Well, I have quite a lot of explanation at all, I do not have no explanation for that at all. Pete, if I could return a second to the question of mixing problems, one intriguing aspect to this is the legal problem that the president faces in dealing with the vice president, the precedence that he may set for his own case with regard to Watergate. That's right. It's a full of legal problems, such as the indictment impeachment, which comes first, the chicken eggs in Rome. There are lots of other problems involved here, and some people say that that's why they may be trying to force Agnew to resign, so these precedents would not be clearly established. It's not a chicken egg problem, Peter, if I may say so, it's a chicken or the frying pan, which I'm curious to see. On the frying pan, I presume it is this impeachment. It was more talk of impeachment up in the hill this week.

Was this significant or was it just talked? Well, the pickup where Peter left off is a lot of talk that Agnew's lawyers next week are going into court to argue that the vice president cannot be indicted holding the office that he holds, unless he is previously impeached and removed from office. On the hill, among the leaders of Congress, this is a probably absurd argument. There have been impeaching people for years. There's no such indicted people for years, and there's no such immunity to under-American law. Anybody, however, on the question of impeaching vice president Agnew, an entirely new realization has come upon the leaders in Congress, the House leaders, and the House has responsibility for initiating any impeachment. What's happened is they've learned that they've gone back in the records of doing an awful lot of work

these days on the Presidents in this area, and they've discovered the case of the Skylar Colfax, and we talked about some weeks ago on this program. Colfax was Speaker of the House at the time when he accepted stock from an organization known as the Credit Mobileye, and along with many other congressmen, and the presentation at stock was regarded later when it was revealed as a bribe. By the time it was revealed, he was vice president of the United States, and the question arose whether he could be impeached by the House, a House committee examined the case, I read the case this afternoon, and they ran to two questions, basically. What is the nature of impeachment? Essentially, the committee decided, and it's a precedent of the House, it is remedial, not punishment. It merely removes from an office a man who has abused that office.

And the second question was, can a man be impeached for an act he committed prior to holding the office to which he now holds? Colfax had done whatever he had done as Speaker, not as vice president, and the ruling committee was that he could not be impeached. Now, the charges coming against vice president, as we understand them, essentially go to his political service in Maryland, and there's a very serious question among the House leaders, whether he can be impeached as vice president on any question involving his previous political life. What does that do to the indiability of him then? Does nothing turn into Richardson since he must be impeached before he can be impeached? Well, I think any question like that would eventually end up in the Supreme Court. Neil, there are good many people, and I'm not sure I'm not among them, who believes that the Congress of the United States is not about to impeach anyone.

The House just simply hasn't the will, but congratulations. Not even to impeach you. I'm not impeachable. You should have stayed with the question, not the conclusion. Where the House leadership is, where it was last spring, for example, when the first question came up on a serious basis, was absolutely appalled at the idea of shocking the country, shocking the world by moving to impeach the president. That shock is gone. I speak from having talked to the leader. They have gone through the whole processes of how they would proceed. They're prepared for it. They're ready to act at any time. They don't want to do it, but they're ready to face it. Now, are you saying that a vice president, Agno, or the president? Even the president, you're saying. And where they're looking at the president, in terms of the tapes and the urban hearing, which Nick will be talking about in the moment.

Nick asks you, would the Congress really accept the president's nominee, if Agno were to resign? Or would they really accept him because he's the president's choice and they take anybody? Or would they really investigate this? The Congress of the United States, and the Democratic leadership again is very conscious of it, is not a Republican national convention to take automatically the nominee, put up by the president for vice president. They see all kinds of complications flowing off this. One is that if he puts up a strong candidate. The man with political ambitions to be president. What the president does is get for that nominee an endorsement from the Democratic Congress that this man is fit for the office. Something no vice president would have ever gotten any other way. In other words, he'd be endorsed by both parties. A lot of problems flowing off this. But the general view, I think, is that the president would be allowed to choose a man of his own party, his own political biases and persuasions and so on.

They would accept that. But they're very anxious about making this a self perpetuating system whereby a president could appoint a successor. They're not prepared to accept that. They have worked out how they would handle it. Which is interesting because they've gone that far with you. How they would handle it, they would expect a message from the president to both houses. Both houses would assign the hearings to committees. The man in question would be thoroughly questioned. And in answer to your question, the answer could be no. In other words, you're saying that the Congress would not approve John Conley, for example. I'm not saying they wouldn't, but they wouldn't do it without deliberation. What effect do you think the presence of so many potential democratic nominees in the Senate will have on this? Well, they're not only democratic potential nominees in the Senate.

There's quite a few Republican. And it may have a decided burden in the whole process. One of the points being raised, on the border of things, cloakroom kind of talk, is that to get approval of anybody, Nixon is going to have to pay a price. One of the prices I've heard, he's going to have to give up the tapes. It's a good way to get over to Lincoln. The entry he thought. Let me ask my question now. On the tapes, there was no compromise on the tapes between the special prosecutor and the White House. So where does that leave the whole tape situation? What's the status of it? Well, I think it's in the middle of what was really a routine civil case in a sense. And what we, that is people in the press, drew a lot of import from. Last week, as you know, the appeals court, rather surprisingly, sent out this suggestion that there should be negotiation. The suggestion was surprising because nobody anticipated it in this constitutional case.

But it is not an unusual act in a normal civil suit. You go out, the courts required to go out and be sure both parties have gone through every possibility of negotiation. Both parties did. They were responsible too. Again, we all drew a great deal of import from the fact that Fred Buzzard met with Cox and this seemed that it would might have rode what had been an apparent position by the White House. They were going to tough it. I don't think it eroded it. I think he was responsible, the White House, as a White House counsel, to give some appearance of following a court's suggestion. But the fact of matter was, I don't think, and most of the sources that I've talked to on the Hill and around this case, never believed that they were going to give up the tapes or negotiate it. Nothing in what the president has said has ever led anybody to. Even he's even hinted, of course, that he might defy a Supreme Court order. Nick, how long will the appeals court take now to resolve it and to push it on up to the Supreme Court where it's going, isn't it? Yes, I think it's going there clearly and there's almost nothing that could change that.

I would suspect they'd finish up by the end of next week or the first week of October. The court could have it when it sits on October 1st. I don't think, as you remember, the Cox people are a little worried because they have a grand jury which will lose its authority on December 5th, and actually they hope that they will have a decision and move their cases in. And I don't think that they feel that, in any way, they won't have a decision, which would mean that it'll go right through. Nick, I don't think... I asked you on these so-called negotiations between the White House lawyers and Cox. Was there any give and take at all? It could Cox give anything, could the White House give anything? I believe... The answer was no to start with. I believe it was no to start with. But I am told and believe that Cox did go in willing to negotiate in some form. Remembering that he has a very long list of requests, some of the things that he's asking for are a little doubtful. It's not a tight subpoena as the Senate sent out. So I believe that he may have gone in willing to negotiate in some form.

But I don't believe that the White House had in a tent of seriousness. Now, are there any implications of what you're saying in that the White House from the start would say no? I mean, is it... What I'm really asking is the implications that the tapes are that damaging? Yes, there is considerable opinion. As you know on the Hill that the tapes are absolutely devastating and that the president is locking his heels in on that basis. On the other hand, if you've made a decision on the basis of executive privilege, the way that the suggestion came in the appeals court still opened him up to some problems. Cox is an employee and certainly you'd think he'd be able to designate and share this. But he's also breaking his silence or his privilege, not at his own wish, but at an appeals court suggestion. So he could still recover a position of locking his heels in just to guard that privilege. Nick, why do you say that on the Hill they believe that these tapes are devastating? That surprises me a bit.

How does anyone know what these tapes will or will not prove? The president himself has said he believes that they're inconclusive. I have heard people around the prosecutors say that they believe the tapes may even be irrelevant or necessary in the prosecutors. In his letter to Senator Irvin refusing the tapes, he said that these tapes could be interpreted differently than he had before. That's right, but he's led to a lot of the feeling on the Hill that they were doing. Was there anything besides the letter that was... Yes, I think so. I think pure political acumen. The president by, if those tapes cleared the press and he withheld them and put his administration into the most devastating assault. It's devastating assault on the presidency in the history of this country domestically. It would be questionable logic. Doesn't make sense. Well, a man could step forward and clear the air and get on with his administration by a mere revealing a four or five electronic tapes. Do it.

Some say if the court rules and favor the president, he may then, in fact, do it voluntarily having established a separation of power principle. I don't know whether that holds or not, but can I ask you another question about the five defendants, the Watergate convicted conspirators. They're asking now to change their plea. How does Cox get into this act? He wants to know who told them that if they pleaded guilty, they would, you know, things would go easy for them. How does Cox get involved into a situation like this? Like again, we're getting a little window on sort of routine case handling of a criminal case, but we don't often see it. I think they tried to get them to say who had told them to remain silent. Apparently, Barker and the other Miami men had refused to and hunt had. So next thing, okay, we're going to go tough and they say, well, we're going to indict you in the Ellsburg break-in on a federal level. That is conspiracy charges on four. That's what a prosecutor does when he's trying to shake you by the lapels.

So in turn, of course, the defense lawyer said, okay, fine, we're going to fight everything down the line and move in and change their pleas. And incidentally, somehow I have a strong suspicion, that's purely that, that they might indeed get a new trial. Because Judge Sirica is very interested in restoring the faith in the American judicial system and that trial obviously was a questionable validity. So they may come out to me. Okay, let's change the subject entirely here and go to another area. The president met this week with some governors on mandatory oil allocations, hopefully to avert a fuel shortage this winter. Can you tell us what happened at the meeting? Well, I think that very little happened at the meeting linked that judging by the reports of those who were present was mostly in exchange of views and some information provided by the administration. It's a complicated problem.

What the government, what the administration wants to do and the government is to get the governors to go along with the idea of relaxing the clean air standards. Now, the purpose of this is to permit mostly utilities but users of heavy industrial fuel to make advanced contracts for the same type of fuel from which the sulfur hasn't been removed and to burn that high sulfur fuel this winter. The theory is that by being allowed to burn the dirtier fuel it will release sizable quantities of relatively clean home heating fuel which now is being blended to bring the utility fuel down to local ceilings. I'd like to add one point. When I was here in the spring, I believe it was, or about the time in the Memorial Day weekend, I reported then that some administration people were rather sanguine about the gasoline prospects for the summer. As it turned out, the optimists were pretty much proven correct. There were some local shortages in Denver and a few other places but basically the country scraped through the summer quite well.

I think it largely reflects two things. First of all, that the refiners made a great effort to turn out produce more gasoline and then I think they deserve credit for that. I think the American public, the figures show, consume less gasoline. However people did. Having been such a good profit this spring or whatever. Self-proclaimed profit. Would you beat your breasts a little bit now and tell us whether this winter shortage is going to be as bad as some people predict. I'm glad you asked me that because that's exactly the point I wanted to make. Again, I'm no expert but based on why people tell me the winter outlook is nowhere near as good. In fact, it's quite bad compared with the gasoline prospects. We seem to be facing a bonafide danger of real heating oil shortages and also shortages of petroleum products which are related to heating oil.

I understand that heating oil can be used as a diesel fuel or types of heating oil and they compete with each other. Does this apply everywhere or will there be regional implications? For example, New England is hollering but fuel oil for the winter but the middle west and far west, the southwest was complaining about the gasoline shortage during the summer. Is there a regional differentiation? Of course there is. All you have to do is read the weather report and you know that New Englanders and people up north have to burn a lot more heating oil to stay warm in the winter. In addition, New England suffers from not having a refinery and has to in effect import its supplies from other parts of the country and New England has been complaining about heating oil shortages and high prices. Well, I'm asking, will it be especially bad there this year as against other parts of the country, the northwest for example?

Well, I presume that the administration will attempt to deal with this problem but I guess the threat there and in the northern part of the middle west is greater than in other parts of the country. Well, I was only wondering if allocations become necessary if there's a real shortage. Who decides if a mayor say a hospital gets fuel and a supermarket doesn't, how is that going to be handled? Nick, that's being handled here in Washington by the White House. They have an Office of Energy and former Colorado Governor John Love is in charge and he has support from several key federal agencies, the Interior Department responsible for oil production and distribution and the Environmental Protection Agency and so forth. And they've already, they have a propane program, propane is relatively minor fuel but it's very important to the people who use it. A propane program is imminent, it's been proposed and discussed here greatly.

I mean on a mandatory basis. A mandatory basis, a priority of users has been established that their discussions indicate that it's extremely difficult for a government to mandate who gets it and who doesn't. But mandatory controls on other forms. Are they likely this way? Yes, they are. They, in fact, Governor Love has all but said that they're coming for home eating oil and possibly for the heavier fuels and utilities. Okay, I think we're out of gas. Also, Nick and Bert, thank you very much for joining us. We'll be back again next week with another Washington Week in review. I'm Lincoln Furber, good evening. Thank you very much. This has been a production of N-PACT, a division of the Greater Washington Educational Telecommunications Association.

Thank you very much.