Tacking Toward the Impeachment Line

Political partisanship flared openly in the House Judiciary Committee last week, shaking the fragile facade of impartiality that had enhanced its impeachment inquiry. A surprisingly tough Chairman Peter Rodino pushed the committee into making critical procedural decisions that should ensure a July conclusion of its historic investigation of Richard Nixon's presidency.

Despite angry objections from most Republicans and a few Democrats, the committee set July 12 as the deadline for completing its questioning of a limited number of witnesses. It set July 15 as the date to begin debating and voting on articles of impeachment, which are now being prepared by its staff. It targeted the week of July 22 for completing that vote. Special Counsel John Doar will be given just ten days after that to prepare a final committee report for transmittal to the full House.

House leaders, meanwhile, were moving with unusual efficiency to clear the chamber's agenda for a full-scale airing of impeachment charges beginning the first week of August. The House has been acting fast on major funding legislation, in anticipation of a pro-impeachment recommendation from the Rodino committee. The leaders expect the House to vote on the articles by Aug. 23. Assuming that a majority of the House approves charges of impeachable conduct, the Senate should be able to try the President this year.

Stepping up the tempo, the Rodino committee for the first time put in a full five-day week of deliberation. Long criticized for its slow pace and three-day weeks, the committee suddenly came under opposing fire from the White House for its haste. The President's special counsel, Dean Burch, assailed the committee as "a partisan lynch mob" acting under orders from the Democratic "hierarchy" of the Congress. Chairman Rodino came under intense personal criticism after Los Angeles Times Reporter Jack Nelson indirectly quoted him as saying in an informal chat with three newsmen (Rodino thought it was off the record) that all 21 of the committee's Democrats were prepared to vote for impeachment. White House Communications Director Ken Clawson claimed that this confirmed that Nixon was the "subject of a witch hunt." Rodino heatedly denied the statement, but another reporter present, ABC'S Sam Donaldson, said Rodino had observed that it was his "sense of the mood" of the Democrats that they would vote in such a way. Other observers, too, had assessed this sentiment in a similar fashion (see box)--and the notion that no committee member had formed any tentative judgments after hearing so much evidence was ridiculous.

Emotional. The White House was particularly upset by the committee's decision to schedule only five witnesses definitely, while ordering staff interviews of five others to see if it would be worthwhile to spend time on their testimony.

Adopted in an emotional closed meeting, the committee's list of certain witnesses includes two urged by James St. Clair, Nixon's chief Watergate defense lawyer. They are former Presidential Counsel John Dean and Frederick LaRue, a Nixon campaign aide who has pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in the Watergate cover-up conspiracy. In its attempt to clarify key points left in doubt by its closed-door staff briefings on the evidence, the committee also voted to hear Herbert Kalmbach, Nixon's personal lawyer, who has pleaded guilty to illegal campaign fund-raising activities; Henry Petersen, head of the Justice Department's criminal division; and Alexander Butterfield, a former Nixon aide and now the Federal Aviation Administration chief, who first revealed the existence of Nixon's secret taping system. St. Clair will be able to question the witnesses who testify.

Omitted from the list but cited as potential witnesses were four men also requested by St. Clair: former Attorney General John Mitchell; former White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman; William O. Bittman, former lawyer for convicted Watergate Conspirator E. Howard Hunt; and Paul L. O'Brien, a lawyer for Nixon's re-election committee. The fifth member of the backup list is Charles W. Colson, who has pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in the Ellsberg burglary case (see following stories). He is not one of the witnesses whom St. Clair wants the committee to call. Although St. Clair had first said that Colson's testimony could help Nixon's case, he apparently is now much less sure of that.

The question of whether to schedule all of St. Clair's witnesses set off the most partisan wrangle of the committee hearings so far. Democrats argued that most had already testified in other forums and would delay the committee's work. The debate continued for nearly six hours, with four Democrats at one point joining a solid Republican lineup for including the St. Clair choices. That produced a 21-to-17 vote in St. Clair's favor. But then Chairman Rodino called a recess, caucused with the committee Democrats and persuaded two of the four (Don Edwards of California and James Mann of South Carolina) to switch their votes. The resulting 19-19 tie killed the motion. By a vote of 33 to 5, the committee then approved the two-list compromise. Once the decisions were made, the partisan feelings subsided somewhat, and the committee seemed united in its determination to complete its work promptly.

As the committee returned to its closed-door briefings, St. Clair spent two days giving his version of the evidence that had been presented over the past six weeks by Doar and the committee's Republican counsel, Albert Jenner. St. Clair concentrated on Nixon's role in the payment of hush money to Hunt, a topic that the edited White House tape transcripts show was discussed at length by Nixon in a meeting with Dean and Haldeman on March 21,1973. St. Clair contends that Nixon's possible impeachment hangs almost solely on whether he approved such a payment at that meeting. St. Clair's witnesses apparently all could testify about the circumstances of any such payment.

Left Hanging. Republican members of the committee leaked St. Clair's arguments last week. He said that Nixon had not approved a payment to Hunt, despite the transcripts' revelation that the President considered such a payoff and finally said unambiguously to Dean about the money: "(Expletive deleted) Get it." St. Clair cited the testimony of Dean--whose credibility the White House has repeatedly assailed--at the Senate Watergate hearings in June 1973. Dean at that time had testified that the matter of paying the money "was very much left hanging" after the discussion with Nixon, which he thought had occurred on March 13.

St. Clair also suggested that LaRue will back up a White House contention that Dean phoned LaRue on March 21 to propose that Hunt be paid--and that this was done before the discussion with Nixon. Thus, St. Clair argued, although $75,000 may have been paid to Hunt's attorney Bittman on the evening of March 21, it was not at Nixon's direction. Moreover, Mitchell, according to St. Clair, would testify that the money was intended for legal fees, not to keep Hunt from telling of White House involvement in the various illegal activities of Nixon's secret team of "plumber" investigators.

At least as relayed by committee Republicans, that defense was hardly persuasive. It runs counter to specific overt acts in the cover-up indictments issued by a Watergate grand jury, which detail a chain of telephone calls between Haldeman and Mitchell and between Mitchell and LaRue that set up the $75,000 payment. These calls occurred after the Nixon-Dean-Haldeman conference. The March 21 transcript, in addition, leaves no doubt that Hunt's threats to the White House had created the need for a quick payment rather than any sudden demands for legal fees.

St. Clair apparently also contended that if Nixon had ordered the payment, the full $120,000 sought by Hunt, not $75,000, would have been paid. Yet the transcript quotes Nixon as saying "some signal" of White House response should be given to Hunt--and $75,000 would seem to be a fairly reassuring sign.

Democrats on the committee often interrupted St. Clair to protest that he was drawing conclusions instead of presenting evidence and that this violated the committee procedures. Doar and Jenner, they contended, had carefully refrained in their briefings from that kind of argumentation. Democrats raised a more serious objection, however, when St. Clair cited the edited transcripts of tapes that Nixon refuses to give the committee. If those tapes make such a good case for Nixon, the Democrats argued, why must the committee accept the less reliable transcripts? In one instance, St. Clair referred to a Nixon conversation for which the White House has not even provided a transcript, much less the tape itself. Said New York's Elizabeth Holtzman: "If that tape exonerates the President, I for one would like to hear it."

The controversy over witnesses may well crop up again after the staff finishes interviewing those on the back-up list and a decision is made on which ones, if any, to call. Another partisan argument will have to be settled early this week when the scheduled witnesses are to begin testifying. Most Republicans are pushing for open, televised hearings; Democrats want to keep the hearings closed. With so much of the impeachment evidence already on the public record, however, the argument for continued committee secrecy is weak.

The committee seemed to be admitting as much when it also voted to release more than 7,000 pages of documents and evidence that it has been considering in its inquiry to date. Most Republicans opposed this step while Democrats largely supported it.

The massive evidence, which will be screened by Rodino and Edward Hutchinson so they can delete offensive personal characterizations, may appear either in bulk or in segments beginning this week. Although no sensational disclosures are expected, the cumulative effect of the evidence is likely to further damage Nixon's case.

Rude Reminders. While President Nixon basked in the soothing spotlight of Moscow summitry, it thus became increasingly evident that he will return this week to many rude reminders of his Watergate troubles. The staff of Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski will be pressing its case against former Nixon Aide John Ehrlichman and the President's band of secret gumshoes in the Ellsberg burglary trial. Next Monday, Jaworski and St. Clair will argue before the Supreme Court on the potentially fateful issue of whether Nixon's unprecedented claims of Executive privilege to protect possibly incriminating presidential tapes will prevail--or will be cast aside as unfounded in law or the Constitution.

Later in the week, Senator Sam Ervin's Watergate committee will issue its report on what it learned from its televised hearings and its 16-month investigation. Also, Rodino's committee will be presenting its evidence and hearing witnesses in an accelerating drive to clear up any remaining ambiguities in those White House-edited transcripts and withheld tapes.

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