Damaging Tales

G.O.P. fears of Nixon's tapes

In the National Archives in Washington is a windowless chamber that can be entered only by a handful of Government officials with top-secret clearance. Inside Room 2W-2 is a locked steel-wire cage that safeguards a political Pandora's box: 4,000 hours of still secret tape recordings from the darkest days of Richard Nixon's presidency.

Every morning, five archivists walk into the room, clamp on earphones and spend eight hours listening to tapes. They are cataloguing the conversations, according to a 1974 law that gave the Government possession of the secret recordings, as well as those that were made public during the Watergate investigations and trials. Eventually the Government intends to set up as many as eleven centers around the country to give historians, and just plain curious citizens, easy access to the recordings.

For five years, Nixon has fought in court against release of the tapes. First he challenged the constitutionality of the 1974 law, but the Supreme Court ruled against him. Now he is claiming that making public the 950 five-inch reels will violate his privacy. Federal Judge Aubrey Robinson is expected to issue his decision this summer, but his ruling is certain to be appealed, by either the Government or the former President.

Next to Nixon, no one fears more what might be revealed by the tapes than Republican Party officials. At least three potential G.O.P. candidates for President could be tarnished by the conversations. One is General Alexander Haig, who served as Nixon's last chief of staff and who resigned last week as commander of NATO (see following story). In a June 4, 1973, tape made public by the House Judiciary Committee, he apparently advised Nixon to plead forgetfulness to blunt the impact of a previously released tape on which Nixon approved paying for the silence of the Watergate burglars. Says Haig: "That's exactly right ... You just can't recall. It was in a meeting." Haig now claims that since he had held his job for only one month at the time of the conversation, he did not fully understand the President's problem. Says he: "It was an offhand remark that meant nothing."

Another potential victim of the tapes is Tennessee's Howard Baker, who played a leading role on the Senate Watergate Committee while managing to maintain close ties with the White House. Insists Ron McMahan, the Senator's press secretary: "Baker knows that his conversations with Nixon will be on the tapes, but he has no problem if they are released."

Republicans believe that the most damaging revelations of all concern Texan John Connally, whom Nixon and his aides consulted frequently even after he resigned in 1971 as Secretary of the Treasury. Leon Jaworski has reported that Connally suggested to Haig's predecessor, H.R. Haldeman, that John Mitchell should be persuaded to accept all the blame for Watergate. Republican enemies of Connally point to a tape played during his 1975 trial on charges of accepting money from milk producers in return for higher price supports. Though hard to decipher, it seemed to record Connally and Nixon discussing a large contribution from oilmen. But the tape was virtually unintelligible and little was made of it at the time. Connally has denied that the conversation had anything to do with oil.

According to a former Government official, another tape is all too clear. It recorded Nixon telling aides that Connally is "a piece of [expletive deleted]."

No matter what is on the tapes, Connally's staff members dismiss them as unimportant. Says aide Julian Read: "At a time when the barn is burning, do you want to stop and take the fireman's fingerprints? Hell no!"

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