And Much More Yet to Come

While some of the key witnesses yet to appear before the Senate Watergate committee may well back John Mitchell's story that President Nixon was long unaware of his aides' involvement in the breakin, they are expected to implicate each other as well as Mitchell in the coverup. These witnesses include Herbert W. Kalmbach, H.R. Haldeman, John D. Ehrlichman and Gordon Strachan. Their testimony would leave the President with few wholly untarnished defenders in a position to know what the President might have known.

These witnesses have given advance testimony to the Senate committee's staff. Haldeman and Ehrlichman testified at a time when Nixon was claiming that Executive privilege prevented them from relating discussions with him; he has since waived that claim. Some of the points these men will make:

KALMBACH. Drawing on a surplus of $1.1 million from the 1968 Nixon campaign funds, Kalmbach (see box following page) began in mid-1969 to finance secret White House investigations. Directed by Haldeman and carried out by Special White House Investigators John Caulfield and Anthony Ulasewicz, these projects included probes into the backgrounds of such "enemies" as Senator Edward Kennedy, New York Mayor John Lindsay, and House Speaker Carl Albert.

As new Nixon contributions came in, some of the money was secretly channeled into the 1970 campaigns of favored Republican candidates, including, ironically, the highly critical Watergate-committee member Lowell Weicker Jr. The money was held in a dummy organization called "the Public Institute," which dispensed some $2.5 million. By 1971 Kalmbach was supplying funds to California Lawyer Donald Segretti, the White House-directed political sabotage agent. Kalmbach's authority to pay Segretti came from Haldeman and Dwight Chapin, former White House appointments secretary.

At the suggestion of John Dean and with the approval of Ehrlichman, Kalmbach on June 29 of last year began raising money for the defense of the seven arrested Watergate burglars. By late in the year, the defendants had been paid $460,000. Kalmbach used Ulasewicz for many of the hush-money deliveries; the two conversed from public telephone booths and used code names ("Mr. Rivers" for Ulasewicz, "the Writer" for Hunt, "the Brush" for Haldeman). Kalmbach decided to pull out of this illegal activity and did so in September 1972.

EHRLICHMAN. He will admit giving Kalmbach "perfunctory" approval to raise money for the defendants but say that he did so partly because "Mitchell had some interest in making sure that the defendants were well defended." Ehrlichman will express suspicions, similar to those of Mitchell and Dean, that Colson had a role in pushing the Watergate wiretapping plans. But Ehrlichman will claim that he personally took no part in cover-up activities and kept urging that anyone involved "make a clean breast of it." He was told that Mitchell "effectively threw blocks" at any such disclosure. Ehrlichman will also corroborate Dean's testimony that Mitchell had reported that "blackmail" demands of Hunt had "been taken care of."

Ehrlichman has been accused of ordering the burglary of Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, but he will deny having had any advance knowledge of it. He has said that he was told about it by Egil Krogh, who directed the plumbers, shortly after the bag job was carried out in 1971. "I registered dismay and disapproval."

HALDEMAN. The least informative of all the major witnesses, Haldeman in his staff interview indicated the vaguest of memories. He will concede that he approved the hiring of Donald Segretti, but with the understanding that Segretti "was not to engage in illegal or improper activities." Haldeman will admit that he "knew in the broad sense" that his assistant Gordon Strachan received "intelligence-gathering" material from the Nixon committee and that Strachan passed some of this along to him. But as for electronic-eavesdropping records: "I have no recollection of seeing that kind of thing, but it is possible that it was sent to me."

Haldeman will concede that he knew the Watergate defendants were getting payments, but will insist that "I don't recall that there was a rationale given regarding taking care of the legal fees or why it was necessary at that time, or the fact of paying for all of them." He said that the need for money was mentioned to him by Dean, but "I do not have actual knowledge that any money Kalmbach raised actually went to the defendants."

STRACHAN. Strachan, serving as a liaison between his boss, Bob Haldeman, and the Nixon committee, will testify that Jeb Magruder sent him written reports shortly after the Watergate wiretapping plans had been presented by Magruder to John Mitchell in Key Biscayne on March 30, 1972. A Magruder letter indicated that the plans had been approved and attachments detailed the electronics eavesdropping and burglary plans. Strachan is certain he passed the letter from Magruder along to Haldeman, but he is not certain that he included the detailed plans. Strachan will say that he assumed that he had, however, since Haldeman showed no surprise when the Watergate arrests were revealed. Haldeman, according to Strachan, at one time asked him to insure that Senator Kennedy be kept under 24-hour surveillance.

Meanwhile, another source of potentially serious problems for Nixon is only just developing. TIME has learned that the Senate investigators are seriously probing the possibility that Republican campaign funds might have been used to help purchase Nixon's San Clemente estate. The possible sources being eyed are $1.6 million left over from the 1968 presidential campaign and the secret Public Institute funds raised by Kalmbach. Kalmbach insisted to TIME last week: "Not a dime of campaign money went into San Clemente." Complicating matters is the fact that there actually were two Public Institutes with Republican money, one in New York City and one in Washington. Senate investigators say that the Washington funds were controlled by Haldeman and Colson. One of the signatories for the New York Public Institute, TIME has learned, was Thomas Evans, a partner in the Manhattan law firm in which Mitchell and Nixon had also been partners (the firm is now known as Mudge Rose Guthrie & Alexander).

What the Senate investigators would like to secure is a brown leather satchel containing records of that Washington Public Institute. TIME has learned that Colson received those records from former White House Aide Jack Gleason. Dean testified that he got the reports from Colson. The brown satchel is apparently now locked in Dean's White House safe--and the papers it holds are among those that Richard Nixon does not want the Senate committee to see on the grounds that this would violate "the separation of powers."

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