A Short, Partly Sunny Wait Between Planes

Richard Nixon's helicopter had barely touched down on the White House lawn when the tanned and smiling President bounced out and waggled a circled thumb and forefinger at his welcoming crowd. The small gesture signaled his satisfaction with the success of his trip to the Middle East. It seemed to symbolize too the widespread feeling among his aides that he had, as one put it, "turned the corner" on Watergate and was rebounding from that disaster.

Later in the week the short upward zig in Nixon's survival prospects flattened out somewhat when Charles W. Colson, the President's former counsel and chief White House political operative, was sentenced to prison for obstruction of justice--and said in court that he had committed the crime on direct orders from Nixon. A recent convert to evangelical Christianity, Colson seemed bent on telling the truth to the House Judiciary Committee and its impeachment investigators. Perhaps only Nixon and Colson know how damaging that may prove to the President.

Creeping Back. Momentarily, nevertheless, there was little doubt that the fanfare over Nixon's tour, his takeoff again this week to Brussels and Moscow (see THE WORLD), and a concerted White House attack on news leaks from the Judiciary Committee had helped his cause. "A balance is creeping back into this thing," claimed one of his closest aides. Nixon was bolstered too by the Judiciary Committee's own dawdling over impeachment evidence and procedures.

He was also benefiting from the fact that at the moment, lacking any recent bombshell revelations, Nixon partisans are sending Congressmen numerous messages; meanwhile, the majority of the public that some time ago concluded he ought to be removed from office is now sitting back waiting for the legislators to do their duty.

Acting to maintain the President's momentum, his aides lashed out at Chairman Peter Rodino and his committee. Patrick Buchanan, Nixon's special consultant and once a wily practitioner of the anonymous news leak, assailed the "nameless, faceless character assassins on the House Judiciary Committee." Another adroit news manipulator, White House Communications Director Ken Clawson, charged that leaks from the committee were part of "a purposeful effort to bring down the President with smoke-filled-room operations by a clique of Nixon-hating partisans." Deputy Press Secretary Gerald Warren joined the chorus, deploring "prejudicial and one-sided information" that was depriving the President of "due process."

The great leak fuss had been reinforced by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's emotional protest in Salzburg over reports taking issue with his version of the 1969 initiation of wiretaps against Government officials and newsmen. That furor was surprisingly quieted last week as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee delayed any new hearings on the topic, as sought by Kissinger, until after he returns with Nixon from Moscow.

The President's hit-and-travel offensive was having one clear result: both on the Rodino committee and in the full House, Republicans were tending toward a more partisan view of impeachment. If they continue to do so, a party-line vote on impeachment in committee and on the floor might result. Given the Democratic majorities in both forums, the vote would presumably go against the President, but his chances for acquittal might be enhanced in the later Senate trial, where a two-thirds vote is necessary for conviction.

All Out. A key figure in this shifting Republican sentiment is Arizona's John Rhodes, the party's respected House leader. Critical of the White House tape transcripts, he had suggested that the President might consider resignation--and was stung by irate letters from party hardliners. Since then, Rhodes has been meeting with Republicans on the Judiciary Committee. "We give them the benefit of our advice, and we're briefed by them," he says. In fact, he is highly influential.

"Eventually, I will make a decision on impeachment, and when I do, I'll go all out," Rhodes last week told TIME Correspondent Neil MacNeil. Since Rhodes had earlier told MacNeil that he would withdraw from any active leadership role if he decided to vote for impeachment, he was in effect admitting that he intends to fight for Nixon.

Rhodes and other House Republicans are now challenging the generally accepted precept that impeachment is similar to a grand jury proceeding, in that only "probable cause" of presidential wrongdoing must be demonstrated, and the House's responsibility is merely to send the case to the Senate to be judged. Appealing to institutional prestige, Rhodes argues that the House would "look bad" if it impeached Nixon and the articles were overwhelmingly rejected in the Senate votes on them.

Another consideration affecting House Republicans is that the slow pace of the impeachment inquiry almost certainly means that Nixon will still be in office in November when they face reelection; some reason, perhaps dubiously, that their own chances of survival could be enhanced if the case against Nixon appeared to be weakening. In any case, the possibility has lessened that many had privately coveted for November: Gerald Ford in the White House refurbishing the party's image, and Watergate behind them and the nation's voters.

The Rodino committee clearly was on the defensive for the first time--even in Democratic circles. "The committee has taken too damn long," complained one congressional Democratic leader last week. "Timing is all important. They lost everybody's attention, and the President meanwhile went away on his mission of peace, glorifying himself." Said another Democrat with a hyperbolic despair not yet warranted by events: "They've about blown it. By the leaks, they've almost irreparably damaged the investigation." More realistically, another Democratic leader told Rodino: "Peter, the honeymoon is over."

Besides the leaks, much of the criticism centers on the slow, low-key presentation of evidence by the committee's chief counsel John Doar (see box following page). While most members consider his approach eminently fair, some feel that it so carefully weighs all factors with equal emphasis that the significance of the evidence is lost. "There's no advocate, no prosecutor," protested one Democratic leader. "The committee is drowning in a sea of material," added a proimpeachment Republican. "There's no direction."

For Rodino, the criticism is painful. In selecting Doar, a longtime moderate Republican, as counsel, he had seemed to move shrewdly to avoid partisanship. Certainly, if he had selected a fiery Democratic prosecutorial type, he would have been severely criticized much earlier. The procedure of presenting all the evidence to the committee and expecting the members to draw their own conclusions based on the facts seems proper in something as momentous as impeachment. A rushed series of briefings would have been sharply--and validly--assailed by the White House as unfair.

Rodino's strategy has been to try to impress all factions of his committee with the thoroughness and fairness of the staff work. Southern Democrats, under some political pressure from home to back Nixon, have been relatively qui et so far, but many are leaning toward impeachment because of the staffs factual presentation of evidence. The committee last week spent a day on the illegal secret bombing of Cambodia, mainly to mollify the more liberal Democrats, even though that issue can scarcely gain widespread support as a separate impeachment article.

Rodino's aim has been to lay out all of the major allegations of presidential misconduct to determine whether there is an overall pattern of impeachable activity. "Is there a relationship among these things?" Rodino asks, meaning such matters as the Watergate coverup, the ITT and milk deals, the underpayment of taxes by Nixon, the Ellsberg burglary and other "plumber" activities, the secret bombing and the spurning of subpoenas. "Is there a connection between him and them?" The question, Rodino suggests, is "whether there was a serious abuse of power, a failure to faithfully execute the laws, scandal and disrepute in office, a perverting of the whole system."

In retrospect, Rodino's biggest mistake may have been to push, with solid Republican support, for closed-door hearings on the evidence. Too much of this evidence and allegations against the President had already been made public. Rodino may have sensed that the public would get fed up with the whole issue if it heard the Doar briefings, then the debate over the same evidence in committee, again on the House floor, and finally once more in a Senate trial. Yet open hearings, belatedly backed by the White House, would at the least have largely eliminated the leak problem.

While regrettable in such a sensitive situation, the leaks have been shrilly exaggerated by the White House criticism. The most damaging to Nixon was a series of memos written by a staff lawyer, William P. Dixon, an assistant to Democratic Congressman Robert Kastenmeier of Wisconsin, who was his state's leader of George McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign. What hurt the President in those memos, first leaked by proimpeachment Democrats and later on a larger scale by a pro-Nixon Republican member of the committee, was not Dixon's carefully qualified interpretation of Nixon's conduct in the coverup. It was the fact that Dixon demonstrated that the tapes in the committee's custody vary sharply in many instances from the transcripts released to the public by the President (TIME, June 24).

Altered Remarks. The conclusion seemed inescapable that the White House transcripts had been edited to eliminate or alter some damaging presidential remarks. Since Nixon had voluntarily released those transcripts to the public, rather than giving them only to the Rodino committee, his action could be considered the most massive "leak" of all. In a sense, the leaked memos served to correct that public record.

Moreover, the Rodino committee is still trying to secure the tapes of other Nixon conversations; showing the unreliability of the White House transcripts could build support for the committee's request. Some committee members feel that if Nixon was bold enough to alter transcripts of tapes already in the committee's possession, he may have had little inhibition about misrepresenting in the released transcripts the tapes he is still steadfastly withholding.

An element of hypocrisy in the White House attacks on leaks was unexpectedly exposed in a dramatic form during Colson's appearance before Federal Judge Gerhard Gesell. Colson had pleaded guilty to obstructing justice "by devising and implementing a scheme to defame and destroy the public image and credibility of Daniel Ellsberg and those engaged in the legal defense of Daniel Ellsberg." His intent, according to his admission, was to influence the trial of Pentagon Papers Defendant Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg's image was to be destroyed, of course, through White House leaks about him. Moreover Colson's lawyer and former law partner David Shapiro argued that Colson himself had been the victim of "the most pernicious kind of publicity . . . mainly as a result of deliberate leaks from Government bodies." Shapiro irritated the judge by suggesting that such "smear stories" and "public expectancies" might affect Colson's sentence. "You're barking up the wrong tree," snapped Gesell.

Colson read an often eloquent statement in which he said that "the President on numerous occasions urged me to disseminate damaging information about Daniel Ellsberg . . . I endeavored to do so--and willingly. I don't mean to shift my responsibility to the President. I believed what I was doing was right." Colson said he had been guided by "one rule: to get done that which the President wanted done."

Blind Loyalty. Colson's statement produced a prime illustration of how partisan predispositions distort the analysis of the evidence. If Colson is going to jail for a felony that Nixon ordered him to commit, it is reasonable to ask whether Nixon might not also be culpable. Faced with that question, one Republican member of the Judiciary Committee instead wondered whether Colson had really done anything illegal. Said California's Charles Wiggins: "I don't condone disseminating derogatory material, but it's a novel theory to me to call it obstruction of justice."*

Judge Gesell did not find the theory novel at all. He sentenced Colson to one to three years in prison and fined him the maximum amount of $5,000. "Men of ambition, affected by blind, impulsive loyalty, react to the atmosphere in which they work," conceded the judge. "But morality is a higher force than expediency." Shaken at first, Colson, who had told friends he expected a six-month term at most and hoped for a suspended sentence, quickly recovered. He embraced members of his prayer group, including Iowa Senator Harold Hughes and Minnesota Congressman Albert Quie, as well as his wife and friends. Outside the court, he declared: "I can work for the Lord in prison or out of prison, and that's what I intend to do." Colson has already undergone questioning by the Rodino committee staff and undoubtedly will be called as a witness.

Also sentenced last week was Herbert Kalmbach, Nixon's former personal lawyer and a key campaign fund raiser. He had pleaded guilty to offering an ambassadorship in return for a $100,000 Nixon campaign contribution and to collecting campaign funds through an illegal committee. Kalmbach's admission was a result of plea bargaining with Special Watergate Prosecutor Leon Jaworski. In return, Kalmbach will testify in other cases, including his handling of hush-money payments to the Watergate conspirators at White House direction.

Kalmbach's attorney pleaded with Federal Judge John J. Sirica that his client had been "used" by White House officials whom he had trusted. Kalmbach told Sirica: "I want you to know how deeply embarrassed I am and how much I regret standing before you today." His face expressionless, Sirica sentenced Kalmbach to six to 18 months in jail. Kalmbach will be automatically disbarred under California bar rules.

Kalmbach too may become an important impeachment-inquiry witness, although the list of witnesses has not yet been decided on. Having finally completed its closed-door staff briefings last week, the committee will decide its remaining procedures in business sessions this week. Presidential Defense Lawyer James St. Clair, who has sat in on all the meetings, will probably be given a day to present rebuttal arguments this week. The calling of witnesses should begin next week, with St. Clair empowered to question them. The hearings will probably be public and televised.

Some Democratic leaders were astonished to learn that the cautious Doar wants six weeks after that to write a final report, including proposed articles of impeachment. Rodino insists that Doar must not spend more than a week or ten days on this. The chairman declares that his latest deadline of July 15 for completing the committee's work will not slip by more than one week.

That schedule nevertheless looked shaky to jittery politicians in Washington, where each new lag in the impeachment pace and prospects raises loud alarms. Without new weekly sensations, the indignation about past disclosures seems to fade quickly. Yet a survey of TIME correspondents round the nation last week indicated that much of the country may be more in tune with Rodino's steady pursuit of a subdued, careful inquiry than with the roller-coaster shifts in congressional sentiment.

Skipping Pages. With remarkable unanimity, TIME'S news bureaus report that most Americans have long since made up their minds about the President and are little influenced by his travels, embroideries on the broad tapestry of the evidence, or instant Washington causes celebres, such as the flap over news leaks. A majority of Americans, as the polls consistently show, now believe that Nixon was deeply involved in at least the Watergate cover-up conspiracy and should not finish his term. A minority of one-fourth to one-third of the nation seems ready to stand behind the President no matter what has been or may be revealed. Nearly all in both camps are tired of the daily details of the complex Watergate story. They do not discuss Watergate much any more. But if they are skipping pages, they are definitely not apathetic or uninterested--especially in the eventual outcome.

New York Correspondent John Tompkins finds little concern in his area about leaks. "People assume politicians have always used leaks for self-serving purposes and always will," he notes. Observes Atlanta Correspondent James Bell: "Thunderbolts perceived in Washington and New York have been only vaguely visible here, and few positions have changed. People are mad at Congress down here, not because it waffles on Nixon, but because it waffles on everything." Declares Detroit Correspondent Edwin Reingold: "Those who have made up their minds against Nixon have not been softened by the lull or the Middle East trip. But it is probable that many waverers would settle for almost any end to this thing that the Congress has enough courage to devise." A Western attitude noted by Los Angeles Correspondent Jess Cook is that "folks here will be relieved and delighted to see the leadership vacuum filled--the sooner the better, one way or the other."

What perhaps frightens Congressmen most may be a realization that while they will get severe flak no matter what final action they take on impeachment, their constituents expect them to make up their own minds and act decisively. Many in Congress undoubtedly hope for some development so absolutely clear-cut and irrefutable that it would relieve them of this heavy responsibility. Increasingly seen as one such pivotal outside event is the pending Supreme Court case on whether Nixon must yield 64 tape recordings to Prosecutor Jaworski, as ordered by Judge Sirica, or whether he can withhold them on grounds of Executive privilege.

On Its Head. Preparing for the arguments, which will be presented orally on July 8, both St. Clair and Jaworski delivered lengthy briefs to the court last week. In part, they repeated earlier claims heard twice by Sirica and once by an appeals court. To overrule Nixon's claims of privilege, St. Clair contended, would mean that "the constitutional balance would be altered in ways that no one alive today could predict or measure." To fail to do so, Jaworski argued, "would stand the Constitution on its head . . . Even if by extraordinary act of conscience, he [the President] could judge impartially the relative public advantages of secrecy and disclosure without regard to the consequences for himself or his associates, confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the legal system as between the high and the lowly still would be impaired through violation of the ancient precept that no man shall be a judge in his own cause."

Although Jaworski is seeking the tapes only for use in the cover-up conspiracy trial of six former Nixon men, both parties concede that the Supreme Court ruling could decisively affect impeachment. St. Clair contends that the subpoena is a "back-door route" by which the Judiciary Committee may get information for impeachment it cannot get directly from the President. If the court rules against Nixon, most legal experts apparently feel that the Rodino committee could acquire the tapes directly from Jaworski or by petitioning Judge Sirica, unless the Supreme Court places sharp restrictions on their use.

The President thus could be faced with the dilemma of yielding tapes that would cinch the impeachment case against him or of defying the Supreme Court--both almost certain routes to eviction from office. If the court rules in his favor, on the other hand, his refusal to honor subpoenas from the Judiciary Committee on similar claims of privilege would be strengthened. It is thus ironic that the Supreme Court, which is afforded no impeachment role by the Constitution, could in this case play the most significant part of all.

* In charging Colson, the special prosecutor cited Title 18, United States Code, Section 1503, which makes it a crime to "influence, obstruct or impede the due administration of justice" through "any threatening letter or communication" affecting any participant in a court proceeding.

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