Their Own Best Witnesses

Both of the celebrated defendants had gambled that they could pull it off. Instead of remaining silent, as was their right, they would testify in their own behalf--and risk being shaken by the tough cross-examinations that were bound to follow. Last week, when their long hours of testimony were over, John Mitchell, 60, the former U.S. Attorney General, and Maurice Stans, 66, the former Secretary of Commerce, had in a measure won their gamble-though not necessarily their cases. They had indeed been their own best witnesses against the Government's charges that they had plotted to gain special favors in Washington for Financier Robert Vesco, 38, in exchange for the moneyman's secret $200,000 cash contribution to Richard Nixon's 1972 presidential campaign.

On the second day of his crossexamination, the usually dour Mitchell was so jauntily confident that he winked at newsmen as he entered the courtroom, then leaned back in the swivel chair on the stand with all the casual but tough authority he used to exude when he was the President's chief political strategist as well as his top law-enforcement officer. It simply never occurred to him, insisted Mitchell, that Vesco had given the $200,000 in order to get help in his struggle with the Securities and Exchange Commission (which eventually charged Vesco and 41 associates with perpetrating a $224 million stock fraud). If he had thought that Vesco was trying to make a deal, said Mitchell, "the whole matter would have ended right there." As far as he could see, Vesco had given the money "just like every other American citizen who wants to support a candidate."

Mitchell freely admitted, as the prosecution charged, that after Vesco's donation was received he set up a meeting between the financier's lawyer and William Casey, then head of the SEC. The way Mitchell told it, he was not obstructing justice, as the Government claimed, but helping it along--putting Vesco's people in touch with Casey so that they could discuss the case. Indeed, Mitchell defiantly jutted out his beefy jaw on the point. When the prosecution asked if he "willingly" called Casey, Mitchell said that he did it "gladly," emphasizing the word as though to indicate that he would do it all over again if he had the chance.*

During the long crossexamination, Mitchell doggedly defended his earlier claim that he was "absolutely not guilty" of any of the nine charges-including six of perjury--brought against him. He took special pains to rebut the testimony given against him by John Dean, who was his protege at the Department.of Justice. In particular, Mitchell denied Dean's claim that Mitchell asked him to intervene with the SEC to delay subpoenas that had been issued against some of Vesco's employees.

Small Potatoes. Then it was the turn of Maurice Stans. Wearing a tiny American flag in his lapel, Stans told of his boyhood in Shakopee, Minn., where his father had been a struggling house painter and the family did not have indoor plumbing. Stans recalled that he had slept under the rafters on the unfinished second floor of the house and "when it was below zero outside, it was below zero inside." Stans went on to become a millionaire accountant and Nixon's chief fund raiser; in 1972 alone, he added $55 million to the President's campaign.

For Stans, Vesco's $200,000 was small potatoes. He vigorously denied that there was anything shady about the contribution. He did not ask for the $200,000 in cash, as the Government charged. He kept the donation secret because Vesco asked him to. True, the money was actually delivered after April 7, 1972, the deadline for such secret contributions, but the sum had been pledged earlier-and that was what counted, he said. And when he did receive the money from Vesco's men, Stans testified, he made it clear that there were no strings attached. "On my oath," he declared in court, "I never did anything to help Robert Vesco."

But Stans did not try to refute two perjury counts accusing him of lying to a federal grand jury about his role in the Vesco affair. Instead, Stans' lawyers tried to show that he was under such severe mental stress because of his wife's serious illness at the time that he could not be held accountable for his answers. The prosecutors challenged the admissibility of this evidence, and the jury was excused as the lawyers argued the point. Suddenly Stans lost his buoyant composure, burying his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking with emotion. When Judge Lee P. Gagliardi decided to allow the testimony next day, Stans' voice was strained with anguish and he was near tears as he described his wife's condition. She had been suffering from a rare blood disease that caused her to bleed from her eyes and mouth and to have 13 transfusions within a few days.

Her condition has since stabilized, but at one point, said Stans, "I didn't expect her to live until my children saw her." Stans said that he was exhausted and overwrought when he went before the grand jury. Said he: "I did my best to pull the pieces together, but I got people in the wrong places, I got events on the wrong dates, I got situations confused."

True or False? Stans' ordeal of eight hours and 29 minutes of cross-examination was drawing to an end when Prosecutor John R. Wing demanded:

"Haven't you testified falsely under oath for the last two days?"

His voice rising with anger for the first time, Stans replied: "Absolutely not!

That's a lie, Mr. Wing, and you know it!"

With that, the defense rested. The case had come down to the basic question of who was telling the truth on the stand--the Government's witnesses or John Mitchell and Maurice Stans. This week the jury will try to decide.

*Stans last week took the opposite view about the propriety of such an action. Said he: "I had been well taught that one doesn't call the head of an agency about a case and ask what's going to happen or what it's about."

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