Source of Strength

"You are our greatest advocate," a grateful Richard Nixon told Rabbi Baruch Korff, 60, last spring, and the tribute stands unchallenged. For the past year the beleaguered President has been extravagantly extolled and defended by Korff, sprightly founder and head of the National Citizens' Committee for Fairness to the Presidency, Inc. Last week Nixon found time to meet with Korff in San Clemente, Calif., where he accepted a token of the rabbi's devotion: a copy of a hagiographic paperback called The Personal Nixon: Staying on the Summit, which Korff s organization is rushing into the bookstores.

Later in the week, Nixon addressed by phone some 2,500 diehard supporters who were attending a rally in Washington, B.C., that Korff had organized. Said the President: "Rabbi Korff s eloquence, his intelligence, his dedication, have been a great source of strength to me and all of us in these difficult times." In reply, Korff told the President: "We love you dearly." He brushed away a tear as he hung up the receiver.

Bizarre Plot. Some members of the President's inner circle, however, are a bit embarrassed by the genially egotistic rabbi. He also seems to be a bit of an embarrassment to other Jews. Last week Rabbi Alexander M. Schindler, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, denounced him as "an apologist for rampant immorality [who] aspires to out-Watergate Watergate in the name of fair play."

Korff was born in the Ukraine, the son of a rabbi; his mother was shot during a pogrom. During World War II, Korff was a member of a group that bribed the Nazis to allow some Jews to leave Germany. After the war Korff was involved with the terrorist Stern gang, which fought to oust the British from Palestine. In 1947 he was arrested by the French for allegedly taking part in a bizarre plot to bomb London with propaganda leaflets attacking the British stand on Palestine. He denied any wrongdoing and the French later released him without trial.

Good Rapport. In the early '50s Korff became what he calls "a smalltown rabbi" while living in Rehoboth, Mass. Last summer, after his retirement (he suffers from a heart ailment), Korff determined to counter what he considered unfair attacks on Nixon. Starting with $1,000 that he had put aside for his and his wife's vacation, the rabbi began soliciting contributions and taking out ads supporting the President in some 25 newspapers round the country. Korff claims that his committee now has a membership of 2 million Americans who have given $1,000,000 to the cause. Most of the contributions have ranged between $1 and $10, but the Teamsters Union donated $25,000.

The President and the rabbi seem to have developed a good rapport. At one point, the rabbi says, he told the President: "Had I been you, I would have made a bonfire and burned the tapes." Nixon's reply: "Where were you eight months ago?"

The heart of Korff's paperback is a report of a long interview that Nixon granted to him on May 13 at the White House. Some of the main points made by the President:

HOW DOES HE VIEW THE PRESS? Admitting that many newsmen had acted responsibly, Nixon added that he knew some White House correspondents "hate my guts with a passion. The point is that if I were basically a liberal by their standards, if I had bugged out of Viet Nam, which they wanted, Watergate would have been a blip. They wouldn't have cared, but it is because I have not gone down the line with them that they care."

WHAT SUSTAINS HIM DURING WATERGATE? Nixon cited his inheritance --"strong mother, strong father"--and the toughening experience of having weathered past crises during his career.

"In more personal terms," he said, "it gets down to what the Quakers call peace at the center--[which] means that whatever the storms are that may be roaring up or down, that the individual must have and retain that peace within him, and that will see him through all adversity."

HAS THE WATERGATE INVESTIGATION BEEN FAIR? The President found no fault with Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski "whom I respect very much." But Nixon criticized "some of the activities of some of his eager-beaver staffers" for unfairly harassing witnesses during Watergate investigations.

WHAT WOULD MAKE THE RABBI TURN AGAINST THE PRESIDENT? "Treason, and it would have to be proved beyond the flicker of an eyelash." Says Korff:

"I regard him as a man who has been vilified, savaged, brutalized, whose blood has been sapped by vampires. I see him holding out against willful people who are unworthy of polishing his shoes."

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