Casey at the Bat

With a friendly wave, the Government's witness greeted the two celebrated defendants, whom he had known for years. Then William J. Casey, 61, the former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, settled back in a Manhattan courtroom last week to answer the prosecutor's questions about John Mitchell, 60, the former U.S. Attorney General, and Maurice Stans, 66, the former Secretary of Commerce.

Bill Casey went far to undercut the Government's main case against both. The two men are charged with taking a secret $200,000 cash contribution for Richard Nixon's 1972 presidential campaign from Financier Robert Vesco and, in return, trying to hinder an SEC investigation into his dealings with some overseas mutual funds.

Casey did testify that Mitchell phoned him in December 1971 or January 1972 to ask if the SEC staff was unfairly harassing Vesco. But Casey said that he had received a number of complaints about how the SEC was handling the Vesco case. What was more, Mitchell's call came several months before Vesco made his campaign contribution.

Asked by Defense Lawyer Peter Fleming if Mitchell had ever requested him to "fix" the Vesco affair, Casey replied: "Nobody ever asked me to fix the case." And Walter Bonner, Stans' top lawyer, inquired: "Is it not a fact, Mr. Casey, that Maurice Stans never, never asked you to fix this complaint?" Casey replied: "That's a fact."

Campaign Smear. The Government has charged that Mitchell induced John Dean, then President Nixon's counsel, to contact Casey before the 1972 election and ask him to postpone some SEC subpoenas served on some of Vesco's employees. Casey acknowledged that he got a request from Dean on Nov. 2, 1972 --five days before the election. Dean, he said, wanted the testimony of the employees to be delayed until after the election, lest their appearances before a grand jury somehow be used as a "last-minute campaign smear." But, Casey added, Dean did not say that Mitchell had asked him to make the call. Casey decided that the employees should testify as scheduled, before the election.

The witness who caused the biggest stir among spectators last week was Rose Mary Woods, Nixon's personal secretary. She testified that Stans left Vesco's name off one list of campaign contributors--thus raising the possibility that he might have been trying to conceal the gift. But she noted that the financier's name appeared on a second list in the impeccable company of the four Rockefeller brothers.

It went like that all week for the Government, just as it has since the trial began a month ago: one step forward and another backward. But while the prosecutors seemed to be making little headway in establishing the charges of conspiracy and obstruction of justice against Mitchell and Stans, they have been methodically accumulating testimony supporting the less spectacular charges of perjury.

Last week Casey backed the Government's charge that John Mitchell lied to a federal grand jury on April 24,1973.

Prosecutors claim that Mitchell, despite his claims to the contrary, phoned Casey to complain that the SEC staff had sent a cable urging the U.S. embassy in Geneva not to aid Vesco when he was jailed without bail in Switzerland. Casey testified that Mitchell did indeed make such a phone call to him. According to previous testimony at the trial, Mitchell phoned the Geneva embassy himself and got Vesco sprung five months before Vesco made his secret contribution of $200,000.

This week the Government is scheduled to call its two last major witnesses:

G. Bradford Cook, who was counsel for the SEC during this period--and the all-important John Dean.

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