The Other Investigator

"I am caught up on the great bulk of it, but I ask myself: Will one man ever be caught up on all the details?" The speaker is Harvard Law Professor Archibald Cox, the Watergate special prosecutor summoned by the Nixon Administration to clean its own house. For nearly two months now, in a heavily guarded office at 1425 K Street, he has been sifting the paper mountains of testimony and reports. As Cox, 61, looks ahead, he recalls that the Teapot Dome investigation took six years, and adds, "I rather expect to spend the rest of my working life in this role."

Cox now has 18 lawyers and 17 other staff members to help him. For the present, he has divided his investigation into five segments, he told TIME Correspondent Hays Gorey in his first interview since taking office. He expects the total to expand and the categories to shift, but the current breakdown is: 1) Watergate itself, from the bugging and break-in to the coverup, 2) the "dirty tricks" that revolved around Political Saboteur Donald Segretti, 3) contributions to the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, including possible extortionary and other illegal methods of fund raising, 4) operations of "the plumbers," from the raid on the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist to the tapping of newsmen's phones, and 5) the question of the International Telephone & Telegraph Corp. campaign donations just when the Administration was settling its antitrust suit against the conglomerate. Reports that Cox is also looking into the financing of the Western White House at San Clemente have been denied, but he has not ruled out the subject for future inquiry. In fact, the special prosecutor has clearly taken on the task of investigating just about anything he chooses.

No Dismay. With the resignation two weeks ago of the three original Watergate prosecutors -Assistant U.S. Attorneys Earl J. Silbert, Seymour Glanzer and Donald E. Campbell -Cox is now totally on his own. He made that stingingly clear when word leaked out last week that the trio's final report recommended indictments of H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, John Mitchell and John Dean. The leak was a "gross breach of professional ethics," said Cox, adding that if he found a member of his staff responsible, that individual would be "immediately dismissed."

The lawyers on Cox's staff now are almost all graduates of the Kennedy Administration. That stands to reason, since Cox, a Democrat, was John Kennedy's and Lyndon Johnson's Solicitor General from 1961 to 1965 (before that he had served in both the Justice and Labor Departments under Franklin Roosevelt). But White House officials have voiced no loud dismay about the Kennedy hue of Cox's staff. "We needed a symbol of independence," says one. "We can hardly complain when he doesn't hire Nixon Republicans."

Cox's chief aide is James Vorenberg, 45, a fellow Harvard law professor and an expert in criminal justice who has frequently criticized the Nixon pronouncements on "law-and-order." Vorenberg's crisp, incisive manner has at times made it seem as if he, rather than the somewhat reserved Cox, were in charge. But Vorenberg and another Harvard law professor, Philip Heymann, 40, signed on only to help Cox get the investigation under way, and will return to their academic posts in the fall. Henry S. Ruth, 42, is Cox's permanent No. 2 man. Fresh from a successful three years as head of New York City's Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, which allocates federal anti-crime funds, Ruth will provide the prosecutorial expertise that Cox, a specialist in labor law, lacks.

The rest of the law staff has been picked for more specific duties. James Neal, 43, who will handle the Watergate bugging itself, once coordinated the federal prosecution of Jimmy Hoffa. An attorney from Nashville, Tenn., he came aboard for just two weeks, he said. But as Cox had hoped, he became so intrigued that he admits he will now stay "indefinitely." Thomas F. McBride, 44, who has specialized in prosecuting organized crime at the Justice Department and in New York City, is supervising the Segretti investigation and is also looking into the campaign contributions. The plumbers are being temporarily handled by Harvard's Heymann, and the ITT inquiry is the responsibility of Joseph J. Connolly, 32, a Philadelphia lawyer and onetime staffer in the office of the Solicitor General. Meanwhile, Philip Lacovara, a former Deputy Solicitor General and now counsel for the prosecution team, is already supervising research into complex legal questions, including whether the President can be indicted or subpoenaed. Lacovara and Connolly are the only top Cox aides who have served in the Nixon Administration. And can a President be subpoenaed? "I have five different memos with five different arguments," says Cox.

When he went to court to try to curtail the Senate probe, Cox argued that prejudicial publicity might compromise the chance of a fair trial. Won't his warnings be used against him by defense lawyers in later proceedings? "A professor," he says with a smile, "is used to being quoted against himself." He remains confident that convictions can still be obtained and that he can do the job he has been set to do.

There seems little likelihood of White House interference. An early request for some documents did go slowly at first, but then a top presidential adviser reportedly asked, "What if Cox should resign?" Cox had the requested papers within 24 hours. The Administration could not easily suffer an angry withdrawal by Cox, and he has made it clear that he would explain any departure. In fact, Cox's position seems so impregnable that he is confidently planning to triple his 35-man staff to a total of 90 or 100, including 50 lawyers, and anticipates no trouble in getting the extra funds. So far, he has spent $230,000, and he expects the first year total to run close to $2,000,000. He himself is making $36,000 per year.

Six Days. He certainly earns it. In the office by 7:30 a.m., after walking two miles from the Georgetown home of friends, Cox invariably lunches at his desk, works through the day's problems until 6 o'clock, when he takes two hours to read interviews and testimony. (He has not watched more than a few fragments of the TV hearings.) At 8 o'clock, he generally goes out for dinner with a few aides, after which the not-quite ex-professor spends an hour or two reading examination blue books from his Harvard law students. That is the six-day-a-week routine. On Sundays, he usually knocks off at 5 p.m. His wife is at their summer home in Maine, and he has taken an occasional weekend to be with her. She will move to Washington in September.

Does he mind the sudden upheaval in his life? "Obviously, this involved turning my back on many things I have wanted to do as a professor and scholar. I did want to use these years in writing, in establishing more of a permanent record of what I have been thinking and learning. But I do find the special prosecutor's role exciting, interesting, challenging." And the role does give him another kind of chance to leave a permanent record of all the things he has been learning.

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