Portrait of a Pitiful Giant?

By Hugh Sidey

Richard Nixon's statement on the Watergate affair was a portrait of the ship of state with its hull full of holes inflicted by the crew. It was a view of the most powerful man on earth duped by his confidants--a kind of "pitiful giant," to repeat a phrase from his 1970 speech on Cambodia. Can this truly be the state of the presidency?

In this town now, when one reaches a conclusion it is wise to retrace the ground and look for another meaning. The President's statement could be an alluringly deceptive decoy in a preliminary skirmish that may become a brutal battle for his survival. Richard Nixon has always been a gut fighter. His "secrecy" speech to the P.O.W.s last week was a familiar signal.

But there, in 4,000 carefully chosen words, was the picture of a man who was unable to pick up the telephone and ask the head of the CIA if he had any spook operations that might be upset by an investigation of the Watergate bugging.

There was a powerful executive machine halted in its tracks by a 75-year-old FBI head who didn't like the program of surveillance sent over from the White House with the approval of the President. Even though there were about 150,000 people of one sort or another involved in intelligence work under the employ of the President, no men could be found to examine the "flood" of news leaks that were thought to be threatening the national security. The White House had to create its own unit to handle the job.

Finally, the account says, those very fellows who had carried the Nixon presidency to the heights of success in four years went on a secret orgy of shattering both traditions and laws. The unsuspecting President was banqueting in Peking.

Perhaps that is an oversimplified interpretation, but it is one reasonable view of that remarkable document. But could it be that this lonely man, who is now more walled off than ever, really is in such a state of helplessness, imagined or real? Maybe Watergate has taken more of a toll than we know.

It was Richard Nixon who fielded what he considered the greatest team of political image makers ever assembled. In a few months they turned the most spectacular packaging job into the most spectacular public relations disaster.

It was Richard Nixon who collected a prize clutch of young lawyers, reared in the basic American values, schooled in the intricacies and subtleties of modern law.

They told us that all the time. Yet these men devised a program of lawlessness that on paper dwarfs anything ever tried at that level in Washington in anyone's memory.

It was Richard Nixon who assembled proud organizational experts to build a super executive machine. The leader of that machine, Roy Ash, is under assault for some of his actions as president of Litton Industries in his pre-White House days.

The new White House organization, which he helped devise, collapsed and was discarded before it got into full operation. Big John Connally, who turned Republican and joined the White House crew on a part-time basis, has hardly been seen or heard from since. The word about the city was that Connally suddenly decided that he had been slightly had.

Add it all up, and maybe, for the moment, one can see how Richard Nixon feels; he does not have the power he is supposed to have, nor is the glorious burden quite so appealing as in the advertisements. He sailed the evening waters of the Potomac River with only one aide. He went to Camp David alone on a rainy night. His lone excursion into the public domain was to the deck of an aircraft carrier, safe from doubters. The biggest White House event of the week was the dinner on the South Lawn for the P.O.W.s, a reassuring evening of mutual tribute to the old days of courage.

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