Watergate's Widening Waves of Scandal

FROM the start, the Nixon Administration's handling of the political-espionage scandal in Washington's Watergate complex last June has been amazingly inept. If Watergate had been a childish antic by a few misguided Nixon zealots, as presidential aides insisted, quick and candid disclosure of all the facts would have rendered it a brief summertime sensation. If it was more serious and involved officials close to Nixon, as now seems plain, those implicated should have been exposed and fired. At worst, Nixon's re-election margin might have been less grand. But high Republican and White House officials chose to evade and even to lie. Last week that dam of deceit seemed on the verge of collapse, spilling Watergate's contamination more widely than ever.

The latest assault on the Administration's pretense that the wiretapping operation was a relatively minor matter came from one of the wiretappers, James W. McCord Jr. At the time that he and four other men were caught red-handed with electronic eavesdropping equipment and burglary tools at Democratic national headquarters in the Watergate, McCord was the chief security coordinator for the Committee for the Re-Election of the President. Last week McCord, who had been convicted of wiretapping and burglary, appeared in a Washington federal district court with six similarly convicted conspirators to face sentencing. But Judge John J. Sirica dramatically delayed the procedure to read a remarkable letter that he had received from McCord.

In the letter, written without his lawyers' knowledge, McCord charged that "there was political pressure applied to the defendants to plead guilty and remain silent." Five of the defendants, not including McCord, had done so. McCord also claimed that "perjury occurred during the trial in matters highly material to the very structure, orientation and impact of the Government's case." Moreover, he wrote, "others involved in the Watergate operation were not identified during the trial, when they could have been by those testifying."

Fear. McCord's letter also said that "members of my family have expressed fear for my life if I disclose knowledge of the facts in this matter, either publicly or to any Government representative." McCord wrote that he did not feel all that endangered but thought "retaliatory measures will be taken against me, my family and my friends, should I disclose such facts."

Judge Sirica, who had been openly scornful of the Government's failure to find out precisely who had inspired the Watergate operation, its basic purpose and the source of the secret funds that financed it, agreed to meet with McCord later. McCord had asked to see the judge privately to detail the general charges made in his letter, explaining that he did not "feel confident in talking with an FBI agent, in testifying before a grand jury whose U.S. attorneys work for the Department of Justice, or with other Government representatives." Sirica ruled that any testimony by McCord must be recorded in the closed meeting. Sirica would then decide whether to release the information to a grand jury for possible further prosecution, to the press or to a Senate committee headed by North Carolina's Sam Ervin that is conducting a Watergate investigation of its own. One way or another, McCord's information is thus expected to emerge publicly.

Lost. The determined Sirica then agreed not to sentence McCord until after he has heard everything that McCord has to say this week--a clear hint that full cooperation could lead to a more lenient sentence. That was McCord's main motive in writing. Cannily, Sirica gave five of the other defendants ample reason to tell more about the Watergate affair by temporarily assigning them maximum sentences but promising to review those sentences after three months. He even held out the possibility of suspended sentences. The maximum sentences, up to 40 years in prison and $50,000 fines, were thus given provisionally to E. Howard Hunt Jr., a former White House aide, and four others: Bernard L. Barker, Eugenio R. Martinez, Frank A. Sturgis and Virgilio R. Gonzales.

Hunt pleaded passionately for leniency from the judge. "Due to my involvement in this case," he said, "I have lost everything in life that I value--my wife, my job, my reputation. Now it appears there will be four more innocent victims, my children." Hunt's wife was killed in an airplane crash while she was carrying some $10,000 in cash to Chicago, where Hunt said she had planned to invest it. He said that both he and his wife had lost their jobs because of the Watergate affair and had to find new sources of revenue.

Judge Sirica further underscored just how serious a crime he considered the Watergate espionage to be by sentencing the seventh conspirator, G. Gordon Liddy, who, like McCord, had pleaded innocent, to serve up to 20 years in prison and to pay a $40,000 fine. Liddy, who had worked with Hunt in the White House in trying to detect sources of news leaks, apparently got the stiff sentence--and no provision for its review--because he has not shown any sign that he could be persuaded to disclose more about the case. The Watergate crimes, said Sirica in sentencing, were "sordid, despicable and thoroughly reprehensible."

The key question was just how much McCord or any of the other convicted conspirators really know about the origins and implications of the affair. The Watergate operation has been linked by FBI and other investigators with up to $1,000,000 in cash kept in a safe in the office of Maurice Stans, Nixon's former Commerce Secretary and head of his re-election finance committee. Much of this money, gathered secretly from donors who did not wish to be identified publicly, was earmarked for vague "security" or "intelligence" purposes. Some of it was sent through Mexico to shield the identity of the sources. The re-election committee has already paid $8,000 in fines for failing to record and report contributions in violation of new campaign financing disclosure laws.

More at issue than the actual political spying activities or the secret diversion of funds to accomplish them is the lack of veracity of high officials in both the Administration and the Republican Party. The attempt to cover up such activity and impede impartial investigations seems far more damaging than the clandestine operations. It suggests a disdain for the law, for the truth and, ultimately, for the public, that is dismaying to find at lofty levels of the Government.

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