Drive to Discredit Dean

The White House-inspired campaign to discredit President Nixon's chief Watergate accuser, former White House Counsel John Dean, continued last week. But the special prosecutor's staff took the unusual step of defending Dean's credibility in a public federal court hearing in Washington.

The major element in the anti-Dean drive has been selective leaks of summaries prepared by the White House of Watergate-related conversations between Dean and President Nixon. After looking at them, Senate Republican Leader Hugh Scott insisted that they exonerate Nixon on some aspects of Watergate, presumably the cover-up of the origins of the wiretap and burglary at Democratic National Headquarters. Scott said that they also provide reasons for charging Dean with perjury in his Senate Watergate hearings testimony Last week Columnist Jack Anderson printed some excerpts from the White House summary of a March 21, 1973, Nixon-Dean talk. The summary, Anderson reported, supports the President's version of the conversation.

Also last week, Egil Krogh Jr., the head of Nixon's White House plumbers unit who pleaded guilty in the burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, appeared on CBS-TV'S 60 Minutes news program. He claimed that a conversation of his own with Dean on March 20, 1973, casts a shadow on Dean's public testimony. CBS's Mike Wallace interpreted this to mean that Dean had committed perjury, but Krogh would not agree to that term.

The doubts about Dean's credibility seem at least partially based on a misunderstanding of his Senate testimony Krogh, Scott and Anderson all implied that Dean had claimed that Nixon was fully aware of all aspects of the cover-up before March 21, 1973. On that date, both the President and Dean agree, Dean outlined the conspiracy in detail. By this reasoning, also advanced by the White House, if Nixon expressed great surprise about Dean's revelations on March 21, Dean must be in error about any previous knowledge by Nixon.

Thus Krogh told Wallace that Dean had confided to him on March 20 that "the President is being badly served. He just doesn't know what's been going on." To Krogh, this was inconsistent with Dean's claim that Nixon had been aware of the cover-up as early as September. Actually, Dean had only contended that Nixon had known about specific parts of the cover-up earlier than March 21. This knowledge did not necessarily include the precise involvement of his various political and White House aides, nor the legal ramifications.

Not Understood. Moreover, Krogh's description of Dean's comments to him on March 20 neatly coincides with a talk that Dean told the Senate committee he had held with another White House aide, Richard Moore, on that same day. Claimed Dean: "I told him that I really didn't think the President understood all the facts involved in the Watergate and particularly the implication of those facts."

Dean had testified that Nixon, on Sept. 15, 1972, had congratulated him for helping confine the Watergate indictments to seven low-level operatives; this implied that Nixon must have known that higher officials, but not necessarily just who or in what way, were involved. In fact, said Dean, the President on Feb. 27, 1973, called his top aides, John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman, "principals in the matter."

Dean claimed that he tried to warn Nixon about the serious legal implications the next day, but was rebuffed by the President. On March 13, Dean testified, he first told Nixon about payments being made to keep the seven defendants quiet. The President, said Dean, admitted having talked to other aides about Executive clemency for E. Howard Hunt for the same purpose. It was on March 21, Dean testified, that he first detailed the precise cover-up roles of specific Nixon associates.

According to the White House-prepared summary of the Dean-Nixon conversation of March 21, as reported by Anderson, Dean told the President: "This is going to take you by surprise." But this statement actually agrees with Dean's contention that Nixon did not fully understand all of the facts in the case. The White House also reported that Dean told Nixon that he [Dean] was legally implicated in the cover-up and the President replied, "Oh, John, you have no problem." This is precisely what Dean had testified that Nixon had told him. The summary quotes Nixon as asking "Is Bob involved?" referring to Haldeman. Dean had not mentioned such a question, but it would not be unnatural for Nixon to ask it as Dean ran through the list of those he thought were implicated--nor would the question conclusively mean that Nixon did not know of any Haldeman involvement.

Other quotes from the White House summary are equally inconclusive. A discussion of raising hush money of up to $1,000,000 and granting Executive clemency, which Dean had thought occurred on March 13, actually took place, according to the White House, on March 21. Haldeman, who had listened to the March 21 tape, had testified to this pos sible confusion of dates by Dean. Denied access to his files in the White House, Dean largely constructed his remarkably detailed account from memory. There are two serious discrepancies between Dean's testimony and the White House summary, however: 1) that Nixon added "That we can't do" to the discussion of silence money, and 2) that he declared that "We can't offer clemency to anybody." These points provide significant conflicts. The thrust of Dean's testimony was that Nixon had raised no objection to these cover-up activities.

On these points, the tapes presumably are the best evidence of whether the White House summary is accurate. The summaries the White House has been leaking -- but has refused to release to the public -- were prepared for the use of Mississippi Senator John Stennis at the time when the White House wanted him to "authenticate" such summa ries after listening to the tapes. This plan collapsed when former Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox refused to agree with it -- and was fired.

No Perjury. Nixon then turned the tapes over to Federal Judge John Siri ca. The staff of the new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, has since heard the remaining tapes, including those of March 13 and March 21 and apparently believes that they support Dean's testimony. Last week attorneys for Dwight Chapin, Nixon's former aide who faces a trial for perjury in the scandal, noted that Dean will be called as a Government witness against him. The attorneys demanded to know whether the Government has any evidence that "Mr. Dean has lied even in matters extraneous to this case." Replied Assistant Special Prosecutor Richard J. Davis in court: "We have no basis to believe Mr. Dean has committed perjury in any proceeding. There is no basis to bring any charge of perjury against him."

Another development last week heightened the controversy over the tapes. TIME has learned that Nixon's chief Watergate counsel, James St. Clair, initiated a meeting with Judge Sirica and the Jaworski staff. The reason: to chal lenge the findings of the jointly selected panel of experts that an 18-minute era sure in one tape had, in effect, been made deliberately. In doing so, St. Clair argued that these experts should not be permitted to examine the other tapes given to the court as originally agreed by both sides. Sirica withheld judgment on whether the experts should proceed to examine these tapes; yet the White House nervousness about such an examination added new doubts about the integrity of the remaining recordings.

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