No Respite in the Western White House

By the House.

By his aides' account, Richard Nixon spent the week in San Clemente deeply immersed in foreign and domestic affairs. He signed a bevy of bills passed by Congress, among them one appropriating $73.7 billion for the Defense Department and another boosting Social Security benefits by 11%. He labored with Chief Speechwriter Ray Price on the State of the Union message to be delivered to Congress later this month. He summoned Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to discuss the Middle East and Viet Nam. Afterward, Kissinger held a press conference to deny published reports that he, not the President, is in control of U.S. foreign policy. Further, Kissinger disclosed that Nixon will launch a "personal initiative" this week to get major oil-producing and -consuming nations to agree to moderate rapidly rising oil prices (see ENERGY).

New Audit. For all the activity, however, Richard Nixon was in fact on vacation. Most of the week he stayed secluded behind the walls of the windswept presidential compound. Some days he did not even walk the 100 yds. from his Spanish-style house to his office; often he would telephone members of the skeleton staff that accompanied him to California rather than meet with them in person. He spent a quiet New Year's Eve with Wife Pat and Daughter Tricia, then devoted the next day to watching televised bowl games with his close friend Charles G. ("Bebe") Rebozo. Clearly, Nixon was seeking a respite, however brief, from the rigors and pressures of his multiple problems.

But there was no escape for the President. In Washington, the Internal Revenue Service announced a new audit of his recent federal tax returns. Presumably, IRS officials were probing the validity of the $570,000 write-off that Nixon claimed for the gift of his vice-presidential papers as well as whether he should have paid capital gains taxes on the sale of part of his San Clemente property. In addition, both the IRS and Congress's Joint Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation, which Nixon designated as the final arbiter of his tax problems, were investigating possible fraud in the gift of the papers. There is some question as to whether the deed for the documents, which was not received by the Government until almost nine months after the law permitting tax deductions for such gifts had been abolished by Congress, might have been predated to satisfy the missed deadline.

As expected, Nixon refused to comply with the Senate Watergate committee's subpoenas of 486 tapes and hundreds of documents that possibly bear on a variety of White House scandals.

In a letter to Committee Chairman Sam Ervin, the President declared that producing the material "would unquestionably destroy any vestige of confidentiality of presidential communications, thereby irreparably impairing the constitutional function of the office of the presidency."

William B. Saxbe, who was sworn in as U.S. Attorney General last week, scorned the subpoenas as a catchall amounting to a "fishing expedition." But the committee's deputy chief counsel, Rufus Edmisten, maintained that every item demanded was relevant to the investigation. This week the committee intends to ask Federal Judge John J. Sirica to order Nixon to surrender seven tapes--the same recordings previously given to a Watergate grand jury and also subpoenaed by the committee last summer. Later the committee will decide whether to request that Sirica force the President to turn over additional tapes and documents.

To handle the latest stage of his Watergate defense, Nixon hired yet another attorney: Republican James D. St. Clair, 53, a meticulous and highly respected trial lawyer from Boston. He will take over from J. Fred Buzhardt and Leonard Garment. Buzhardt was named to John W. Dean's old job of White House counsel, in which he will handle the President's routine legal work. Garment was appointed a presidential assistant in the areas of civil rights and the arts. For months, Nixon had been unhappy with his defense team's work; White House aides went so far as to criticize Buzhardt publicly. The prospect of that happening to him does not bother St. Clair, who declares: "I assume that's the risk any lawyer runs in representing any client."

Difficult Task. A native of Akron, St. Clair graduated from the University of Illinois in 1941 and from Harvard Law School in 1947. During his legal career, he has held an improbable collection of jobs. In 1954 he served on the staff of Joseph N. Welch, whose televised condemnations of Senator Joseph R.

McCarthy helped end the career of the Wisconsin Senator. Fourteen years later, St. Clair represented Yale Chaplain William Sloane Coffin during his trial in Boston for conspiracy to encourage draft evasion. More recently, he represented the Boston school committee in its lengthy attempt to avoid desegregation of the city's public schools. Explains St. Clair: "My politics have nothing to do with my professional representation."

Now he has the difficult task of defending the President--first against the Senate committee's demand for tapes and documents, and later against possible impeachment charges by the House.

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