The Pressure Builds on the President

Multiple crises, both personal and national, were surely at hand, and the embattled President was determined to demonstrate that he was in control of them. In a rush of Washington meetings Richard Nixon, looking flushed and haggard but speaking with animation, explained his plans to deal with the oil crisis to his Cabinet, congressional leaders, business executives, Governors and mayors. He bantered with the Governors about football, asked Maryland's Governor Marvin Mandel what was wrong with the Baltimore Colts, and laughed at Mandel's reply: "They lack energy." Three times he told the Governors that the nation must "bite the bullet" to meet the crisis (see cover, ECONOMY & BUSINESS).

At the end of a forceful televised speech on the energy problems, the President shifted to his own crisis, noting the calls for his resignation over what he termed "the deplorable Watergate matter." But he vowed: "I have no intention whatever of walking away from the job I was elected to do." Later he made a surprise appearance at a dinner honoring his wife Pat, and hugged her in a rare public embrace. He also got off some weak jokes ("I'm sorry I'm late; I could only drive 50 miles an hour"), and told a story of having visited his dying mother in the mid-'60s. Trying to bolster her, Nixon had said: "Mother, don't you give up." Mrs. Nixon lifted herself on one elbow and replied: "Richard, don't you ever give up."

Big Plunge. There was no indication last week that Richard Nixon was giving up in any way, even as his troubles continued to grow. Depressed mainly by the energy shortage but influenced by the President's Watergate uncertainties, the stock market took its biggest plunge in more than a decade, dropping 24.24 points on a single day on the Dow Jones industrial average. Officials of the New York Stock Exchange quietly circulated a contingency plan on the floor to close the market instantly if Nixon should resign. Haifa world away, a similar small omen appeared in the pages of Pravda, which for the first time began readying Soviet readers for Nixon's possible exit. In private, Soviet officials were spreading the line: "Our relations with the U.S. are based on Washington policies, not on the President."

In Congress, Nixon suffered his worst defeat since the rejection of two of his Supreme Court nominees. The Congress overrode his veto and placed new limits on his war powers (see story page 30). Top officials of the AFL-CIO launched a campaign to get the union's 13.5 million members to demand the President's "immediate impeachment." The union's convention had called upon Nixon to resign, but since he apparently will not, the AFL-CIO statement said, there are 19 reasons why he should be impeached. Among them: "He has consistently lied to the American people;" "He has violated the Constitution and his sworn obligation to see that the laws 'be faithfully executed;' " "He has used the office of the Presidency to attempt to put himself above the law." The United Mine Workers union also urged that Nixon resign or be impeached.

Moreover, despite two weeks of hearings before Federal Judge John J. Sirica, White House lawyers and witnesses failed to allay doubts that two of the President's subpoenaed tapes never existed. Indeed, a TlME-Yankelovich poll shows that 55% of Americans do not believe the President's story on the missing tapes and, more vitally, less than half the public wants him to continue in office (see story page 25). TIME has also learned that there is deep concern within the White House that other documents sought by Watergate prosecutors will turn out to be missing. Most suspect are the loosely guarded papers of former aides, particularly H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman.

Other difficulties for the President are building. Federal Judge Gerhard A. Gesell is preparing an order that will declare the firing of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox to have been illegal. The judge presumably will rule that the dismissal violated regulations instituted by former Attorney General Elliot Richardson. The decision, in a suit initiated by Consumer Advocate Ralph Nader and pressed by three members of Congress, will not lead to the reinstatement of Cox, but will represent a judicial scolding of the President.

A White House aide conceded that there is great worry that some of Nixon's former associates may turn against him to save themselves from possible jail sentences. Most feared, he said, are Egil Krogh Jr., who last week filed suit for access to Ellsberg burglary papers still sequestered in the White House, and former Attorney General John Mitchell.

New Discourse. While such judicial hurdles still lay ahead, one unfinished bit of Watergate court business was cleared up. Judge Sirica gave the six original Watergate burglars and wiretappers sentences far lighter than the 35 to 40 years he had provisionally imposed on most of them; he apparently was satisfied that they had told what ever they knew about the crimes. Minimum sentences ranging from one to 2 1/2 years were given to E. Howard Hunt Jr., James McCord Jr., Bernard Barker, Frank Sturgis, Virgilio Gonzalez and Eugenio Martinez. (G. Gordon Liddy, who has been totally uncooperative with investigators, is serving a minimum six-year, eight-month sentence.)

As the legal machinery continued to deal with Watergate, the national debate turned with surprising swiftness to a new level of discourse. It centered less on whether Nixon should remain in office than on which would be the less harmful means of his removal: resignation or impeachment and trial (see box).

New calls for resignation came from such diverse sources as Massachusetts' Republican Senator Edward Brooke, the Detroit News, the New York Times and the Denver Post. "The Right Report," an ultraconservative Washington newsletter, claimed: "Conservatives are in almost unanimous agreement that President Richard Nixon should not be impeached, but a significant majority wishes he would resign--after Representative Gerald Ford has been confirmed as Vice President." Argued the Times: "He has been trying to 'tough it out' for too long at too great a cost to the nation. As long as he clings to office, he keeps the presidency swamped in a sea of scandal and the American public in a morass of concern and confusion."

Discarding Tradition. Yet resignation as a resolution of the crisis was also sharply challenged as going beyond the Constitution and allowing too many uncertainties to remain about the precise nature of the President's transgressions. Among those making the point was Republican Senator Howard Baker, vice chairman of the Senate Watergate committee, who said that to suggest resignation was "to discard the American tradition, indeed the English tradition, of the presumption of innocence."

One of the nation's most influential conservative columnists, James J. Kilpatrick, also rejected resignation, but urged the House to impeach. "The time has come, much as a longtime admirer regrets to say it, to proceed with the impeachment and trial of Richard Nixon," wrote Kilpatrick. "Nothing else will clear the poisonous air and restore a sense of domestic tranquility."

Although the debate is valid and valuable, the Constitution offers no barrier to resignation. Article II specifically envisages it in the clause: "In case of removal of the President from office, or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of said office . . . " Some of the preference for impeachment comes not only from conservatives but from Nixon's old enemies. And some of the latter seem motivated more by a desire to punish the President than to reach a resolution of an intolerable crisis in Government.

As the pressure grew, Nixon at week's end turned from the energy crisis to take specific steps to check the adverse flow of opinion. He was getting a wide range of friendly advice that the time had come to lay his cards on the table, but it was not clear what he could do--or what good it would do at this late hour. Still, he summoned top Republican members of Congress to the White House and talked to them spiritedly about his Watergate problems for nearly two hours. Representative John B. Anderson, chairman of the House Republican Conference, said that he was "very much encouraged" by the meeting. Nixon, he said, had indicated that he would make some public accounting of what is on his subpoenaed tapes after they have been screened by Judge Sirica and given to the Watergate grand jury. Nixon has also invited the 28 members of a national Republican "coordinating committee," convened by Republican National Chairman George Bush, to meet with him this week to discuss the impact of the scandal and how to try to shore up his shaky presidency.

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