Learning to Live With the Scandal

On a recent Saturday afternoon, one of the men deeply enmeshed in Watergate was driving along 21st Street in downtown Washington, his considerable difficulties very much on his mind. He started a left turn from a center lane and almost caused a wreck. A policeman waved him to the curb and asked to see his driver's license. The officer looked at the name, glanced at the face and said, "Buddy, you've got enough trouble," as he waved Jeb Stuart Magruder on his way.

Such grace notes are rare for those involved in the Watergate scandal. From the grim prospect of the head of the household being carried off to jail to the daily annoyance of newsmen camping on the front lawn, the serial Watergate disclosures have made life for the implicated men and their families a time of anguish, anxiety and day-to-day uncertainty.

The immediate problem faced by most of the men is that they are out of work. Many of them are lawyers, and they face -if ultimately convicted -automatic disbarment and will have to find new professions. Some, like former White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, have simply refused to think about work for a while -and can afford to. He has inherited wealth. Others, like onetime Presidential Adviser John Ehrlichman, would like to take a job but feel they must wait until Watergate is unsnarled. Ehrlichman and his wife Jeanne have five children -Peter, 23; Jan, 20; Thomas, 18; Jody, 15; and Robert, 13 -and are planning to move from Washington back home to Seattle next month.

Big Loss. One who found a job was former White House Aide Herbert Porter. In March he landed a $40,000-a-year post with a Los Angeles communications company, but he lost it when a major client raised eyebrows at Porter's presence. Porter, his wife Carol and their three children are now living with his in-laws in Laguna Niguel, Calif. He had bought a $92,000 house in San Marino, Calif., then had to back out of the deal at a loss of almost $10,000. Said a friend: "When you don't have a job, the lending companies aren't keen about providing you with $65,000. He couldn't buy a $92,000 house on his good looks."

Gone for all, of course, are the perks and status of their former high-powered Washington roles. Men who used to travel by chauffeured White House limousine have once again got used to driving the family car. Haldeman was seen not long ago in Washington catching a bus on K Street, and a couple of reporters recently spotted John Ehrlichman on foot -walking across McPherson Square on the way to his lawyer's office, eyes straight ahead. About the only vestige of official advantages left is the gesture made by the Committee for the Re-Election of the President for its former officials; it is helping with their legal fees in preparing their testimony before the Senate, before grand juries, and in fighting the various civil suits growing out of the scandal. The aid does not apply to coping with any criminal charges.

The Washington social whirl now almost entirely passes the Watergate families by. The Ehrlichmans, once one of the city's most sought-after couples, seldom go out except to Christian Science church meetings Wednesday night and Sunday morning. Jeanne Ehrlichman continued to tutor black ghetto youngsters in remedial reading and math until the school year ended, and has gone on working as a volunteer for the Washington National Symphony. The couple stopped accepting social invitations because, Jeanne explained to one would-be hostess, "it would be awkward. It might be embarrassing to you." The women in Jeanne Ehrlichman's beauty shop were anxious about her first visit there after her husband's resignation April 30. "They were all nervous," says a friend, "they didn't know what they were going to say. Jeanne came in, and five minutes later everyone was at ease."

The Watergate families get away whenever they can. The Ehrlichmans were sailing in Virgin Islands waters last week. After his committee appearance, Magruder, wife Gail and two of their children took a raft trip down West Virginia's Shenandoah River. The Haldemans have cleared out entirely. The family accepted the offer of Los Angeles Stockbroker Warren Harding Crowell to lend them his $750,000, seven-room house in Newport Beach, Calif. En route west, the Haldemans stopped at the University of Minnesota for the summa cum laude graduation of daughter Susan; they have three other children -Hank, 19; Peter, 17; and Ann, 15. They are now ensconced on tiny Harbor Island, an exclusive community with a single access bridge where their home is guarded by private security agents, and they can spend time soaking up sun sailing, and for the most part successfully fending off the press.

Perhaps hardest to measure yet most deeply scarring is the effect the scandal is having on the children of Watergate families. Though some of these children now find their fathers spend more time at home, the relentless televised hearings often bring caustic remarks from schoolmates and friends. Chief White House Plumber Egil Krogh's young son Peter was riding past the Executive Mansion one day in a bus on a school outing. His classmates booed the White House, and reduced Peter to tears.

Watergate has been especially trying for Peter Haldeman. This spring, after repeated warnings, he was expelled from his private school because of his insolence to teachers and his flat refusal to do required work. Compassionate faculty members saw his rebellion as an anguished reaction to Watergate. Whitney Magruder, 12, has had some painful moments at St. Albans' School ("He's had to keep a stiff upper lip," says one teacher), but has endured occasional taunts from schoolmates so bravely that the school's headmaster wrote his parents to say how well the boy had done.

"The worst thing," says Jeb Magruder, "has been the press hounding us just outside the door and the kids not understanding why." Magruder has gone over his back fence several times to avoid cameras and microphones waiting for him in front of his house, and twice the family has been forced to spend the night with nearby friends. When Gail Magruder looked out her window one day and saw a TV reporter about to interview young Whitney as he came from school, she rushed out and grabbed the child away, yelling, "Leave my son alone!" Young Robert Ehrlichman, 13, is learning adult rituals quickly. The Ehrlichmans accept the reporters as one accepts crab grass, and Robert spoke knowingly to them as he left one morning for school: "My dad isn't going out this morning. My dad has no comment."

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