Richard Nixon: The Chances of Survival

All of Washington and a great many people elsewhere in the nation were openly debating the question of whether President Nixon should or would quit the White House. Just weeks ago, when Nixon was organizing his "new American revolution" after one of the greatest election victories in U.S. history, the question would have sounded preposterous. Even now, the prospect evoked such a sense of national trauma that most Americans of both parties devoutly wanted to avoid it. But so widespread was the doubt about Nixon's involvement in Watergate, so widespread the skepticism about the repeated White House denials, that a majority of Americans polled by TIME believed the President of the U.S. to be guilty of deceiving the public and trying to hide his own responsibility (see page 14).

Some of the talk about Nixon's being driven from office came from prominent Democrats. Said Senator Edmund Muskie: "I doubt if a majority of Congress would want to set impeachment in motion, but duty might lead Congress to do it." The majority of Democratic politicians, however, held their tongues and allowed the Republicans to fret and criticize in public. Conservative Columnist James Kilpatrick had already called Watergate "squalid, disgraceful and inexcusable." Crosby S. Noyes, a moderately conservative columnist for the Washington Star-News, surprised the capital last week by predicting that "when Nixon realizes the extent to which his authority has been shattered by these events, he will resign."

When the Watergate hearings finally opened under the glare of TV lights in the palatial Senate Caucus Room, the question-and-answer ritual seemed half-remembered from past confrontations. Then, with unexpected suddenness, James McCord Jr., one of the convicted Watergate burglars, tried to tie the scandal to former Attorney General John Mitchell and to Richard Nixon: "I felt the President of the United States had set into motion this operation." It was, admittedly, only hearsay testimony, and Nixon, through his press secretary, once again vigorously denied his involvement. Even before the hearings started, however, the week had brought news that cast further doubt on the President's own role and on that of his aides. For months the President had cited Counsel John Dean's investigation as having reassured him that no one in the White House was involved in Watergate. Now, Dean denied that he had submitted a report to the President, and the White House admitted that Dean had never reported to the President directly, but only to Presidential Adviser John Ehrlichman.

Widening Whirlpool. Next, it became clear through testimony from Lieut. General Vernon Walters, deputy director of the CIA, that White House advisers had tried to persuade the CIA to take the rap for Watergate or at least provide an excuse that would keep the FBI from thoroughly investigating one of its aspects. The circles of involvement spread from agency to agency, official to official. The Securities and Exchange Commission was afflicted last week when G. Bradford Cook, 36, its chair man for just 2 1/2 months, resigned be cause of the "web of circumstance" that involved him in the Vesco case (see BUSINESS). A federal grand jury in New York, which had indicted Robert Vesco, John Mitchell and Maurice Stans, said Cook deleted from an SEC complaint against Financier Vesco all references to the $250,000 that Vesco donated to the campaign fund headed by Stans.

Even National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, who had been completely removed from the Watergate whirlpool, seemed drawn into it. The White House confirmed that President Nixon had authorized, and Kissinger had accepted, the wiretapping of 13 Administration officials (several of them on Kissinger's staff) and four newsmen in an effort to determine who was leaking information about the SALT talks and the 1969 bombing of Cambodia.

Distinctions tend to get lost in a town of scandal and uproar. The White House wiretaps of Kissinger's staff, no matter how unpleasant, were different from Watergate. They represented an Administration effort to protect its own security against leaks that it rightly or wrongly considered dangerous to its foreign policies. Government wiretapping without a court warrant is perfectly legal in cases involving suspected foreign agents, and it was considered legal by the Attorney General in domestic-security cases until last summer, when the Supreme Court banned the practice.

Kissinger, never popular with White House Administrators John EhrJichman and H.R. Haldeman, went along with the wiretaps, especially because he was told that similar taps existed during the Johnson and Kennedy Administrations. He stopped seeing reports of the taps after May 1970.

But it is the morass of Watergate that keeps threatening Nixon. Under, what circumstances would impeachment become a real possibility? If it were proved that the President had been aware of a White House cover-up of Watergate--and thus had lied to the nation--impeachment would probably be brought against him. (see THE LAW), even, though Presidents have lied to the nation before. In that event, Nixon might resign rather than subject himself and the country to the long agony of an impeachment trial.

How could his culpability be proved? In the absence of documentary evidence, direct testimony of accusation by John Mitchell, John Ehrlichman or H.R. Haldeman would probably do it, given their stature and known closeness to the President. The indictment and conviction of these men, even if they did not implicate the President, might make his survival in office difficult. On the other hand, even highly damaging testimony from lesser witnesses, including John Dean, would almost certainly be insufficient to dislodge him.

The majority of professional politicians in both parties interviewed by TIME correspondents last week believed impeachment or resignation to be highly unlikely, though many of them reserved judgment until later in the hearings or until further indictments appear.

Some believe that boredom with Watergate may set in, or that the affair may result in a sympathy backlash for the President among people who may come to feel he is being hounded. But many observers see the damage of Watergate not only to Nixon but to the nation in another way. They fear that even without impeachment, the President's authority could be badly diminished and that he would have a difficult time governing--or leading.

In part, that is the case now. Many decisions throughout the Administration are being delayed while the White House staff is being rebuilt. Symptomatically, Wall Street had its worst slump in months, and the dollar took a bad beating on international money markets. Congress was continuing to assert its new-found truculence. In the Senate last week, the once hawkish Appropriations Committee voted unanimously to forbid any U.S. spending for any combat activity in either Cambodia or Laos.

Business as Usual. These votes imposed a handicap on Kissinger's current Paris negotiations with the North Vietnamese. They implied, furthermore, that Congress might not give Nixon legislation he needs to negotiate lower tariffs with the Common Market or the most-favored-nation trading status that he has virtually promised to Soviet Russia. On the other hand, many of Nixon's policies not only, have broad support in the U.S. but are backed by both Chinese and Soviet self-interest.

At any rate, Richard Nixon went on with every sign of serenity in being President, doing business as usual and assuming an above-it-all posture. Indeed he appeared as isolated as ever, twice going out with only a few aides for Potomac cruises oh the presidential yacht, the Sequoia. For the moment, he seemed in no mood to explain himself more fully to the public, as some of his supporters had suggested.

Almost casually Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler said the President was "aware" of talk about his resigning but was determined to concentrate on what he had "to accomplish in the second term." Instead of watching the Watergate testimony on television, he relied on a daily summary prepared at the direction of the new White House chief of staff General Alexander Haig. Most afternoons and evenings he secluded himself in the Executive Office Building, where he was said to be preparing for next month's meeting with Soviet Communist Leader Leonid Brezhnev.

Privately, Nixon expressed sorrow for the "personal tragedies" of the people involved in Watergate--who, as one high Administration official put it, were "decent, highly principled men motivated by a misguided sense of loyalty" --but there was no sign that he considered the affair especially troublesome. At a black-tie dinner for Emperor Haile Selassie, a laughing, joking Nixon confided to his dinner companion, Mrs. Rogers Morton, wife of the Secretary of the Interior, that he believed history would regard Watergate as inconsequential in comparison with his accomplishments in foreign policy. Late in the week he flew to Norfolk to recite those accomplishments and defend his bombing policy before an Armed Forces Day audience.

Nixon may also rationalize Watergate in a broad context of American political skulduggery--of lobbyists' pressures and demagogues' tricks, of funds secretly raised and secretly disbursed.

Specifically, he can hardly forget the election irregularities of 1960, when he was narrowly edged out of the presidency by John F. Kennedy. To some people, tire issue was still in doubt days after the election. Kennedy held a lead of only 118,574 votes, and Republicans angrily charged massive vote stealing by Democratic officials in Mayor Richard Daley's Chicago and Lyndon Johnson's Texas--two places that could have changed the whole election. Nixon was urged by some associates to challenge the results, but he finally decided--in the interest of national unity, he said --not to do so.

It may well be, on the other hand, that Nixon is fully aware of the importance of Watergate but is following some strategy all his own. According to the theory that he outlined in his 1962 book Six Crises: "The easiest period in a crisis situation is actually the battle itself. The most difficult is the period of indecision--whether to fight or run away. And the most dangerous period is the aftermath. It is then, with all his resources spent and his guard down, that an individual must watch out for dulled reactions and faulty judgment."

Which phase the crisis is now in, which phase Nixon himself is in, perhaps not even Nixon knows.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.