Mitchell Takes the Stand

As the witness raised his right hand to take the oath in a Manhattan courtroom last week, his left hand flexed tensely three times, then relaxed. It was the only instance in the 27 days of testimony that tough John Mitchell, 60, former U.S. Attorney General, betrayed any signs of nervousness. Along with former Commerce Secretary Maurice Stans, 66, Mitchell is charged with perjury, conspiracy and obstructing justice as an outgrowth of a secret $200,000 cash donation to President Nixon's re-election campaign from Financier Robert Vesco on April 10,1971. That gift was allegedly made in exchange for easing Vesco's way through a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into a $224 million mutual fund fraud. Mitchell and Stans are the first Cabinet officers to defend themselves in court against criminal charges since Warren Harding's Administration.

Rocking gently in the witness chair, Mitchell turned in a convincing, 2 1/2-hour performance. His skillful attorney, Peter Fleming, put the questions. Had Mitchell met Vesco in March 1971, as had been testified to by Harry Sears, one of the Vesco aides who delivered the secret donation to Stans? No, said Mitchell, he could not recall meeting Vesco before the spring of 1972. Mitchell brushed aside a letter to Sears written in June 1971 and signed "John" thanking Sears for sending Mitchell a packet of letters spelling out Vesco's SEC troubles. He received thousands of letters as Attorney General, said Mitchell, and many were routinely answered by Justice Department secretaries without his ever seeing them. He also denied agreeing on Jan. 12, 1972, to set up a meeting for Sears with William J. Casey, then SEC chairman, to discuss the Vesco case.

Mitchell's most stringent denial came on Sears' charge that the former Attorney General had agreed to help quash SEC subpoenas issued to Vesco and four key Vesco aides. Sears testified he told Mitchell that Vesco was threatening to expose the gift, and that Mitchell said he would go to White House Counsel John Dean to try to get the subpoenas delayed until after the election. Dean testified that he did indeed respond to Mitchell's request by asking Casey to hold up the subpoenas, but that Casey refused. For his part, Mitchell maintained he has no recollection of discussing a Vesco subpoena with anyone. While he admitted having discussed with Sears the subpoenas of the four aides, he said that he took no action in the matter.

Dean's testimony was also directly rebutted by Mitchell. No, he had never asked Dean to telephone Casey concerning Vesco. No, he had not, as Dean testified, discussed the pending SEC complaint against Vesco when he huddled with Dean and Stans at New York's Metropolitan Club on Nov. 15, 1972. Finally, he denied warning Dean, after testifying in March 1973 before a federal grand jury looking into the Vesco donation, that the panel was a "runaway grand jury." Dean testified that Mitchell asked him to telephone Richard Kleindienst, then Attorney General, and alert Kleindienst to the grand jury's zeal in pursuing Vesco's ties to Administration figures.

Throughout his questioning of Mitchell, Fleming tried to portray his client as a man far too preoccupied by day-to-day matters to go out of his way to help Vesco. The ploy is part of a defense effort to strike at the heart of the Government case by denying that there was sufficient motivation for Mitchell and Stans to become unduly concerned about Vesco's fate for a mere $200,000, when Stans had already collected much larger sums from other men who expected no favors at all.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.