Of Memory and National Security

Ever since the Watergate scandal broke wide open, it had seemed probable that Nixon's former closest aides, John D.

Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman, knew as many of the secrets of the sordid affair as anyone else. Last week both men stepped forward for the first time to define their own roles in a small but crucial aspect of the case. Testifying before a Senate appropriations subcommittee on their dealings with the CIA, Haldeman and Ehrlichman proved short on memory but very long on devotion to national security as a justification for their actions--clearly taking their cue from the President's own curious and unsettling manifesto of the week before.

Ehrlichman had been accused in previous Senate testimony of ordering CIA assistance for E. Howard Hunt Jr., a White House "plumber" who, after receiving such aid, helped engineer the burglary of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office. Both Ehrlichman and Haldeman had also been accused by former CIA officials of obstructing the FBI's investigation of Watergate. Specifically, they were said to have asked the CIA officials to get in touch with FBI Acting Director L. Patrick Gray III and tell him to go easy in his investigation on the ground that his agency's probe might expose CIA operations.

In a courtly, low-keyed soliloquy, Ehrlichman tried his best to brush away both accusations. He claimed he had no idea who had requested CIA assistance for Hunt, but said he was sure it had not been himself. Or rather, he was almost sure. "The best I can say to help the committee," said Ehrlichman, "is that I do not recall doing so, and the particular circumstances of the matter do not argue that I did." Even in making that defense, he seemed to be preparing a fall-back position in case his memory was later refreshed. Hypothetically entertaining the notion that he might have called the CIA on Hunt's behalf but forgotten about it. Ehrlichman said, "It must have been the first and only time I did so without presidential direction, and apparently at the request of someone else who phoned me or came to see me in California [San Clemente] to ask me to do so."

The following day, Marine Corps Commandant General Robert E. Cushman Jr., the former deputy director of the CIA and the man who had implicated Ehrlichman originally, reaffirmed his recollection that Ehrlichman had instructed him to help Hunt. Daily CIA staff notes proving his contention, Cushman said, had been turned over to the "necessary congressional committees."

Both Ehrlichman and Haldeman responded to the second allegation being investigated by the subcommittee -- the attempt to use the CIA in the Watergate cover-up -- by insisting that that had not been their intention. They readily admitted that they did instruct CIA Deputy Director Vernon Walters to warn Gray that his agency's Watergate investigation might blow the cover of CIA operatives. But they claimed they did so at the specific request of President Nixon, and for legitimate reasons. Picking up the President's national-security theme, Ehrlichman said that "such questions had to be asked and answered, in the national interest."

Such was Nixon's concern, said Ehrlichman, that even after the two top CIA officials had assured the White House that no CIA operations were endangered, "the President told me then that he still personally believed and feared that the FBI investigation might harm the agency. He said he believed the CIA would be making a mistake if it pretended an investigation would not disclose some of its current operations."

Nixon also told him, he said, that he hoped the CIA officers were "not covering up for their subordinates."

Small Sample. The most visible investigators of Watergate--the members of the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities--were recessed all last week, but Chairman Sam Ervin Jr. had apparently taken his work home with him. After thumbing through the papers that former Presidential Counsel John W. Dean III had removed from his White House office, and specifically examining documents spelling out the Administration's 1970 blueprint for increased surveillance of domestic dissidents and agitators, Ervin accused the architects of the Administration's program of "a Gestapo mentality." The usually soft-spoken Senator from North Carolina declared that "it would be a great shock to the American people" if the documents were released and the public were to learn the details of the domestic spy operations that Nixon had requested. According to Dean, who is hoping for total immunity in exchange for his testimony (see THE LAW), the documents are but a small sample of the kind of information he possesses.

Ervin is preparing to present the full 1970 Administration spy proposal to his committee, urging his colleagues to publish it in its entirety. It seems more and more likely that the White House plumbers took their charter from the 1970 report and had concentrated far more on political opponents of the Administration than on enemies of the country. Among those targeted for burglary. TIME learned last week, was Washington, D.C.'s Brookings Institution, a prestigious, liberal-oriented research center that often produces position papers differing with Administration policies; but apparently the burglary was never carried out. However, the FBI was investigating the possibility that Hunt and Liddy had burglarized the New York offices of the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund just days after breaking into the Los Angeles office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist.

As the Watergate investigations have accelerated. Justice Department prosecutors have increasingly felt the need to quiz the President directly. The possibility of issuing a subpoena to the President was entertained as early as May 16 by Assistant U.S. Attorney Henry E. Petersen, then in charge of the case. That same question now has to be reconsidered by Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. Indeed.Cox will have to grapple with Nixon's entire national-security defense, which, if accepted, would go far to undermine the prosecutors' case against Ehrlichman and Haldeman for obstructing justice.

When the grand jury prosecutors' desire to question the President became known last week, White House Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler replied that the President would not testify either in person or in writing, claiming that for him to do so would be "constitutionally inappropriate." The phrase was well-chosen, for the Constitution does not specifically address the question, though it does provide a limited measure of immunity for Congressmen. What it does do is lay out precisely, in the articles of impeachment, a process for interrogating a President, and many Constitutional authorities feel that this is meant to exclude any other legal access to presidential testimony.

Republican Senator Edward Gurney, who has considerable sympathy for the President's position, wrote Ervin last week, suggesting that the committee immediately leapfrog to the central question--how involved, if at all, is Nixon? "To continue the present leisurely pace opens us up to severe criticism," he argued. "Both the President and the nation deserve better than this." Special Prosecutor Cox is also unhappy with the Senate hearings, but for other reasons. Last week he told the committee's chief counsel, Samuel Dash, that the televised proceedings might easily prejudice the outcome of prosecutions arising from the grand jury's own investigations. He promptly denied, however, a report that he had considered court action to have the hearings stopped.

Block by Block. But Ervin is not likely to be swayed. On the contrary, Ehrlichman's and Haldeman's testimony last week would argue for the careful, block-by-block Ervin approach. Ervin and a majority of his committee members feel that this week's scheduled witnesses may provide additional highly important information.

In particular, they entertain hopes, however slim, that G. Gordon Liddy, one of the convicted Watergate conspirators who up to now has maintained stoic silence, may talk. Also scheduled to testify this week are former re-election committee officials Robert Reisner, Hugh Sloan Jr., Maurice Stans and Liddy's secretary, Sally Harmony.

Staffers in the beleaguered White House found signs of hope where they could. Said one aide: "Conceivably the worst is over for the Commander in Chief." It was not a perception generally shared in Washington. By a vote of 63 to 19, the Senate voted to cut off all funds for the continued bombing of Cambodia (see THE WORLD). The House, which had already passed a weaker prohibition against the bombing, passed three health bills opposed by the Administration.

Some Republican strategists, including an editorial writer at the conservative National Review, have begun to wonder whether ousting Nixon might not be the only way to save the party's chances in 1976. Such a move would give Spiro Agnew a stint as President before he would have to run on his own. By the same token, some Democrats reason it might be better to keep the Administration dangling on the Watergate hook until 1976, even if Nixon should turn out to be impeachable. Democratic Congressman Henry S. Reuss raised anew the possibility of a bipartisan, caretaker Government under Speaker of the House Carl Albert until the next election--a prospect possible only in the unlikely event that Agnew should voluntarily resign along with Nixon.

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