The President Gambles on Going Public

"Never before in the history of the presidency have records that are so private been made so public. In giving you these records--blemishes and all--/ am placing my trust in the basic fairness of the American people."

With those words in his televised address to the nation last week, Richard Nixon declared the greatest bet of his lifetime of high-risk politics, making a desperate and dangerous wager on his place in history. The stakes were nothing less than his survival in office and his ultimate image as a man and as a President. In still another effort "to put Watergate behind us," to show once and for all "that the President has nothing to hide in this matter," he announced that he was making public 1,254 pages of transcribed tape recordings of his personal conversations about the Watergate scandal with his most trusted aides.

That was not what had been asked of him. He was acting against the deadline of a subpoena by the House Judiciary Committee, which is weighing his impeachment, for the actual tapes of 42 White House conversations. But he would or could not deliver the tapes, for reasons he did not explain in his speech. (Later the White House said that tapes of eleven of the requested discussions had been lost or never, in fact, existed.) Instead, the President chose to gamble that he could defy the subpoena and go over the heads of the Congressmen to protest his innocence directly to the American people, basing his case on the enormous mass of evidence contained in the 150,000-word transcripts.

Best Light. He admitted that the extraordinary picture they painted of deliberations in the inmost sanctity of the White House was in places ambiguous, confusing and contradictory. At various times the President can be found saying, as he and his aides tried to cope with the exploding Watergate scandals, such diverse things as "I am being the devil's advocate," "We have to keep the cap on the bottle," and "I say [expletive removed] don't hold anything back." He acknowledged that even with the White House's deletions of the obscenities, the style and tone of many of his talks with aides "will become the subject of speculation and ridicule." But, he said, "I know in my own heart that, through the long, painful and difficult process revealed in these transcripts, I was trying in that period to discover what was right and to do what was right."

The President's speech was followed a day later by a 50-page legal brief by his attorney, James St. Clair. It attempted to argue the best case possible for the President by seeking to discredit the testimony of former White House Counsel John Dean against Nixon and by pointing up parts of the transcript that show the President in the best light. "In all the thousands of words spoken," it says, "even though they are often unclear and ambiguous, not once does it appear that the President of the U.S. was engaged in a criminal plot to obstruct justice."

Damning Evidence. Speaking as an advocate, St. Clair could hardly be expected to read evidence of wrongdoing into any Nixonian ambiguities. But many a reader of the transcripts did just that--and saw a record of presidential transgressions against both the letter and the spirit of the law. That was all the more damning because the conversations on which St. Clair had based his brief were selected by Nixon and his staff. The mass of material that they did not hand over or that was found "unintelligible" by Administration stenographers could hardly have been more helpful to the beleaguered President.

The searing reality of the transcripts made the White House campaign an almost Sisyphean enterprise. By delaying their issuance for half a day so that St. Clair's brief could have an unrivaled circulation, the White House won a few hours of suspended judgment. But once the transcripts became available and began to be plumbed, the severity of the President's difficulties soon began to seep across the capital and the rest of the nation. Not many Republicans, who had initially rejoiced at his speech, had the temerity of Vice President Gerald Ford, who proclaimed that the transcripts "show the President to be innocent." With few exceptions, the press analyses were devastating.

By and large, legal and law enforcement professionals were aghast at the damning evidence against Nixon. Chicago Professor Philip B. Kurland, one of the nation's leading experts on the Constitution and a consultant to the Senate Watergate Committee, said that he found "strong evidence" in the transcripts that Nixon was guilty of inducing his aides to commit perjury and of obstructing justice--both indictable crimes and therefore impeachable offenses by Nixon's own definition. Kurland added: "I can't find either ambiguity or any evidence which tends to exonerate him." Dean Michael Severn of Columbia University Law School looked closely at the transcript for the crucial March 21, 1973, meeting at which, Nixon later said, he learned for the first time that White House aides were deeply enmeshed in Watergate. Sovern concluded: "In context, the transcript would support a prima facie case for impeachment." One former high Nixon Administration official said bluntly and bitterly that the President's impeachment was now guaranteed, adding: "If I were Pete Rodino [Judiciary Committee chairman], I'd say we don't need anything else. I'd say thank you, Mr. President--and adios."

The President in his speech and St. Clair in his brief attempted to defend Nixon in some--but not all--of the most potentially damaging areas of evidence presented in the transcripts. An analysis of their contentions and of the transcript evidence in three key areas:

When did the President learn of the coverup? John Dean testified to the Senate Watergate committee that he inferred that Nixon was "fully aware" of the effort to hide White House staff involvement in the Watergate break-in as early as Sept. 15, 1972. Nixon and St. Clair argue that the President learned of the cover-up only on March 21, 1973, when Dean told him. They point out that Dean, after all, himself requested the meeting to lay out for the President all the facts of the coverup. They cite that in the process of doing so. Dean said: "I can just tell from our conversation that these are things you can have no knowledge of."

There may well have been many aspects of the cover-up that Nixon had no knowledge of until Dean spelled out the chapter and verse on March 21. But the transcripts before indicate he certainly had knowledge that more than just the seven men indicted on Sept. 15 were involved, and that in at least one instance, that of White House Aide Gordon Strachan, a member of his staff had twice lied to federal investigators in denying knowing about the break-in and was prepared to lie again before the Senate Watergate committee. Dean told Nixon of that on March 13, and Nixon agreed that committing the perjury was probably a good idea: "I guess he should have, shouldn't he?" The exchange even led Nixon to wonder whether Strachan might have informed White House Chief of Staff H.R. ("Bob") Haldeman of the coverup.

On learning of the coverup, what did the President do? The operation that Dean described to the President on March 21 constituted a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice. By law, any citizen must report the discovery of a crime at once. In his speech, Nixon asserted that "after March 21, my actions were directed toward finding the facts and seeing that justice was done fairly and according to the law."

But he also admitted that, in trying to decide what to do, he was motivated by more than simple considerations of justice and law. He was concerned for "close advisers, valued friends" who might be involved, the "human impact on ... some of the young people and their families," and "quite frankly," the "political implications." He said: "I wanted to do what was right. But I want ed to do it in a way that would cause the least unnecessary damage in a highly charged political atmosphere to the Administration."

However laudatory or understandable in human terms, those motives might not hold up in a court of law--or an impeachment proceeding. They do not really explain why, having learned of evident crimes from Dean on March 21, it was not until April 16 that Nixon finally discussed with his Attorney General his knowledge of probable crimes by White House aides. That conversation was initiated by Richard Kleindienst, then Attorney General. Moreover, the evidence of the transcripts (see excerpts beginning page 20) shows time and again a President torn between trying to let the truth come out and then agreeing to some fresh device or attempt to avoid just that. His disclosures on April 16 seem to have come only because so many of the conspirators were talking to the Watergate prosecutors. Clearly, the cover-up was going to be exploded with or without his acting. When he learned that Jeb Stuart Magruder, deputy director of the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, had gone to the prosecutors and changed his earlier perjured story, Nixon asked almost pathetically: "What got Magruder to talk? I want to take the credit for that."

Did Nixon order the payment of hush money to E. Howard Hunt? One of the reasons that Dean laid out the cover-up for Nixon on March 21 was that at least one of the jailed Watergate seven was escalating his money demand for keeping silent. The immediate problem was a fresh request for $120,000 by Hunt, the CIA alumnus and White House consultant who had pleaded guilty to break-in and bugging charges. Dean did not know how to meet the urgent request. Hunt was threatening to tell about some of his preWatergate clandestine activities for the White House, including the burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist. (Ellsberg was the man who released the secret Pentagon papers on the Viet Nam War.) Authorizing or paying such money is, of course, a crime.

In his speech, Nixon said: "I returned several times to the immediate problem posed by Mr. Hunt's blackmail threat, which to me was not a Watergate problem but one which I regarded, rightly or wrongly, as a potential national security problem of very serious proportions."

Little Choice. "I considered long and hard whether it might in fact be better to let it go forward, at least temporarily, in the hope that this national security matter would not be exposed in the course of uncovering the Watergate coverup. I believed then and I believe today that I had a responsibility as President to consider every option, including this one, where protection of sensitive national security matters was at stake.

"In the course of considering it and of just thinking out loud, as I put it at one point, I several times suggested that meeting Hunt's demands might be necessary ... [but] my conclusion at the end of the meeting was clear. And my actions and reactions ... show clearly that I did not intend the further payment to Hunt or anyone else be made."

The evidence in the transcripts seems far less ambiguous than the President has suggested. The last time the President raises the Hunt money problem, he says: "That's why for your immediate things you have no choice but to come up with the $120,000, or whatever it is. Right?" Dean replies: "That's right." And Nixon says: "Would you agree that that's the prime thing that you damn well better get that done?" To which Dean says: "Obviously he ought to be given some signal anyway." And the President says: "[Expletive deleted] Get it."

That same night, according to a Watergate grand jury, Hunt was given $75,000, and in the subsequent discussions in the White House all anxiety about Hunt's blackmail vanished. The subject did not come up again until much later, when the cover-up was collapsing.

Given the enormous hazards for Nixon in the transcripts, it seemed baffling that he released them at all. He may have felt that he had Little choice. Having resolved not to turn over the tapes to the Judiciary Committee, he had to make some extraordinary gesture to avoid almost certain impeachment for defying Congress. He pondered the move all the previous weekend in the privacy of Camp David. Then, Sunday afternoon, he learned that former Attorney General John Mitchell and former Secretary of Commerce Maurice Stans had been acquitted in New York City of charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and conspiracy. The welcome news may have convinced Nixon that at last things were looking up. That same weekend he decided to release the transcripts.

According to aides, he reasoned that the move would end the spiraling demands of the committee--as well as those of Special Watergate Prosecutor Leon Jaworski--for more tapes. Explained one presidential adviser: "We felt a growing concern that it was becoming a test of manhood between the two branches. We decided this might be a way to defuse that feeling." In addition, aides reported, the President saw disclosure as a way of repairing his damaged credibility. Said St. Clair: "People were getting more and more imbued with the idea that the President had something to hide."

Touchdown Cheers. Nixon had already spent many hours reviewing the transcripts, which a staff of secretaries and lawyers, headed by White House Special Counsel J. Fred Buzhardt, had been painstakingly preparing since mid-March. After the secretaries transcribed each tape, it was gone over by Buzhardt and his assistants, who marked proposed deletions of irrelevancies, national security matters and profanity. But the final editor was Nixon. "As far as I know," Buzhardt said, "he read the entire package, and he had the final say on it all."

About three dozen passages were marked "Material not related to presidential actions deleted." Buzhardt explained: "These were sections that had no relation to what he did or knew. Other people came into the room. He was interrupted by a telephone call. Other topics were discussed."

At first--before what was in the transcripts became widely known--the Nixon counteroffensive brought joy to the Republicans. Supporters looked on the offer of transcripts as the evidence of innocence they had been begging the President for months to release. Washington Governor Dan Evans said that he felt "like a football fan cheering on the home team. I think the President threw a touchdown pass." The Richmond (Va.) News Leader exulted: "This is an immensely happy development. For the first time, those who want to support the President--those who have clung to vestiges of hope that he was not involved--have something tangible."

There was much negative reaction as well, centered mostly on the fact that the President was not obeying the law by complying fully with the subpoena. The Gallup poll surveyed some 700 adults by telephone following Nixon's speech and found that it had left 17% with a more favorable opinion of Nixon but 42% with a less favorable view. By 44% to 41%, those interviewed said that they thought there was now enough evidence for the House to impeach the President, though by 49% to 38% they said Nixon's actions were not serious enough to justify the Senate's removing him from office. A survey conducted earlier for TIME by Daniel Yankelovich, Inc., found that 55% of Americans wanted Nixon to resign or be impeached, up from 39% in November (see story page 19).

Members of the House Judiciary Committee agreed that Nixon had not satisfactorily met the terms of their subpoena. They also resented the fact that he had replied to it with a public speech. Democrat John F. Seiberling of Ohio complained: "To respond to a lawful subpoena by going on television was not a decent thing to do." But the committee members split over what their reaction should be. Republicans urged another attempt at negotiation. Michigan Congressman Edward Hutchinson, the committee's ranking Republican, argued: "In our system of government, it was never contemplated that the separate branches should confront each other. It should be avoided at all costs." A few Democratic liberals wanted Nixon cited for contempt of Congress.

Chairman Rodino, however, wanted to avoid the question of contempt to keep the committee from splitting irrevocably on partisan grounds. In a rare night session, he persuaded the members to approve a letter that mildly chastised the President by advising him that his delivery of edited transcripts instead of tapes "failed to comply" with the committee's subpoena. Even on that relatively innocuous rejoinder, the committee split 20-18, by party (although two Democrats and one Republican crossed party lines). But Rodino had succeeded in keeping the committee from being diverted from the hearings on Nixon's impeachment that it will open this week.

Dropped Words. The first few sessions, in which the committee staff will summarize the evidence it has collected, will be closed. But, partly in anger at Nixon's use of television, the committee voted unanimously to allow the rest of the hearings, which are expected to last about six weeks, to be televised. In addition, the committee granted Lawyer St. Clair the right to question and call witnesses. Mindful of his reputation as a brilliant courtroom tactician, the committee also granted Rodino stringent powers to shut off St. Clair if necessary to stop him from obstructing the proceedings or filibustering.

During the meeting, Committee Counsel John Doar disclosed that some of the transcripts released by Nixon "are not accurate," though they were apparently not intentionally altered. He explained that the committee staff had made transcripts of the seven tapes that had been given to it by Special Prosecutor Jaworski. When comparing them with the White House documents, they found that the Administration's transcribers had dropped out certain words and identified as "unintelligible" some segments that the committee staff found intelligible. Doar blamed other differences on the White House's inferior playback equipment and inattention by the people who operated it. Jaworski's staff found similar discrepancies between tapes and transcripts.

Indeed, so many notations of "unintelligible" occur at critical points on the transcripts that suspicions inevitably arose that some of the missing portions were intentionally left out. For example, in discussing the possibility of offering clemency to Howard Hunt, Nixon apparently had a precedent in mind, but the transcript for that meeting on March 21, 1973, quotes the President as telling Dean: "The only thing we could do with him would be to parole him like the [unintelligible] situation." Again, the transcript for an April 17, 1973, meeting has Nixon saying to Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and Ronald Ziegler: "Damn it, John Dean's highly sensitive information was on only one count. Believe me guys, we all know --well--the [unintelligible] stuff regarding Bob." ("Bob" is Haldeman.)

The gaps and discrepancies were one reason why investigators insisted that they needed the tapes. Only a study by experts of the tapes themselves can set to rest any suspicions that they have been cut, erased or otherwise violated. There were other reasons as well. Explained one expert who has heard the tapes that are in the Special Prosecutor's possession: "The tapes themselves give the mood, the anxiety, the attitudes. Some of them reflect people banging on the tables, moving from here to there, raising voices. On that March 21 tape, Dean sounds as if he's pleading with the President. That doesn't come through at all on the transcript."

Once out, several newspapers published all the transcripts; most others ran extensive excerpts (see THE PRESS). Broadcast journalists read lengthy passages. The transcripts, sold by the Government Printing Office at $12.25 a copy, moved briskly. In Washington, the GPO at first had only 792 copies, which it sold in less than four hours, but thousands more were being printed. In addition, three publishers planned to have paperback books containing the complete transcripts on sale this week.

The initial favorable reaction to Nixon's gambit quickly dissipated as the transcripts became available. A case in point was the Los Angeles Times. On Tuesday morning, it felt that Nixon had "taken a giant step toward resolving the controversy over his relationship to the Watergate crimes." By Thursday, its editors had studied the transcripts and found that "the President and his chief aides seem, time and again, more concerned with self-serving manipulation and control of evidence than with the open and full pursuit of justice."

Changed Mood. There was a similar evolution of opinion among Congressmen, particularly Republicans. On Tuesday, they lined up to praise Nixon from the floor of the House. After a day of reading, however, the Republican mood began to change. As Democratic Leader Thomas P. ("Tip") O'Neill of Massachusetts noted, on Wednesday "not one man took the floor" to laud Nixon. In fact, many Republicans were profoundly shaken by what they learned. Conservative Republican Congressman H.R. Gross of Iowa concluded that the documents "do prove conclusively that Mr. Nixon made many misleading statements to the American people on his knowledge of the Watergate cover-up." Gross also found "an amazing lack of ethical sensitivity in the office of the presidency." Similarly, Republican Senator Robert W. Packwood of Oregon said that he considered Nixon's view of Government "rather frightening" because "there are not even any token cliches about what is good for the people." Senator Robert Dole of Kansas, former head of the Republican National Committee, was asked by a reporter if he would want the President in his state during his campaign for reelection. Replied Dole: "Sure. Let him fly over any time."

On the Democratic side, Party Chairman Robert S. Strauss said: "I've seen just about everything. But this reading of these tapes has upset me more than anything else in my life. I told my wife over the third martini last night, I'm embarrassed to have our kids read this and think it's part of the life I'm in." Democratic Congressman Morris K. Udall of Arizona made a pitch for politicians in general, saying: "They deserve better than to be branded with the cynical iron that has marked the burglars, buggers and influence peddlers of this Administration."

Both Nixon and St. Clair regarded the transcripts as seriously compromising John Dean, the President's chief accuser at the Senate Watergate Committee hearings. Earlier, White House aides had welcomed the not guilty verdicts for Mitchell and Stans as evidence that Dean was no longer credible. Dean was one of 59 witnesses at the trial of the former Cabinet members. Both had been charged with nine counts of perjury, obstruction of justice and conspiracy to hinder an investigation of Financier Robert Vesco's tangled affairs in exchange for a secret $200,000 cash contribution to Nixon's 1972 campaign. But the jury found them not guilty on all counts.

Dean Under Fire. Some jurors found Dean to be an impressive witness during his testimony, which bore on three of the perjury counts against Mitchell. But they were put off by his admission that he was awaiting sentencing for his confession of guilt on conspiracy to obstruct justice in the Watergate coverup. Moreover, they were unsettled by the fact that he admitted under cross-examination that he hoped his performance at the Mitchell-Stans trial would be noted by the judge who would mete out his punishment. Clarence Brown, a postal employee, expressed his fellow jurors' feelings: "I liked John Dean. I didn't fully believe him, though. He was a man trying to save his own skin."

Both Nixon in his TV address and St. Clair in his brief took dead aim at Dean, attempting to discredit him. As the week went on, the White House, having put together what in the transcripts is called a "PR team," increased the firing on Dean. Administration aides prepared a summary of contradictions in his statements and gave it to South Carolina Republican Senator Strom Thurmond, who had it published in the Congressional Record. When presidential aides found Thurmond's entry had gone largely unnoticed, Communications Director Ken Clawson gave another detailed list of the alleged Dean contradictions to the press. At the same time, Press Secretary Ziegler declared: "Anyone who says the transcripts support John Dean hasn't worked at his reading or is looking at it with a totally partisan or biased eye."

The White House assault made no mention of the fact that Dean's testimony was corroborated, in most respects, by other witnesses. A close comparison of his testimony with the President's transcripts showed that while he was self-serving before the Watergate Committee, he was remarkably accurate. His occasional errors were relatively minor and can perhaps be explained by the Administration's refusal to let him have access to his White House files in preparing his testimony.

Both Committee Chairman Sam Ervin and Vice Chairman Howard Baker, a Republican, said that they have faith in Dean's credibility. Special Prosecutor Jaworski continues to count Dean a key witness in the Watergate trials. In a way, the White House blitz on Dean seemed either a diversionary tactic or mere vindictiveness. Now that the evidence of the tapes is available, Dean's testimony is far less vital or relevant.

Court Battle? Nixon's decision, in another transcript phrase, to "stonewall" his opposition, also applied to Jaworski's subpoena of tapes. Lawyer St. Clair presented a brief to Federal Judge John J. Sirica, arguing that Jaworski's subpoena for 64 additional tapes should be quashed because he had not shown that the material was relevant to the trial of the seven Nixon associates charged in the cover-up.* St. Clair also argued that all portions of the subpoenaed materials that had not been made public were protected by Executive privilege and could be kept confidential by the President. Sirica scheduled a hearing on the argument for this Wednesday. Aides to both Nixon and Jaworski said that they were willing to carry the fight to the Supreme Court, thus raising the prospect of another lengthy court battle reminiscent of the one the White House lost last fall. That fight led to Nixon's firing of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox and the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his assistant William Ruckelshaus.

As a further part of the Nixon strategy, General Alexander M. Haig Jr., the White House chief of staff, refused to answer questions before the Senate Watergate committee last week. He presented a letter from Nixon ordering him not to testify on grounds that it would be "wholly inappropriate for the committee to examine you about your activities as chief of staff."

The White House also gave no sign that it would comply with the Judiciary Committee's request for tapes of 142 additional conversations between Nixon and aides. The tapes bear on the Watergate coverup, the Administration's 1971 decision to increase milk-price supports and its antitrust settlement with ITT that year. St. Clair urged the committee to study the transcripts before demanding more evidence. He declined to say how the White House would respond if the committee pressed on.

At week's end Nixon took to the road to sell his side of the transcript story to the public. His first stop was Phoenix, Ariz., where his audience of 13,000 at a Republican fund raiser was mostly friendly. But shouts of "Hail to the thief!" and rhythmic clapping from a handful of hecklers in the balcony rattled Nixon. His voice quavered, his hands tightly gripped the flower-bedecked lectern, and he occasionally mispronounced words. Still, cheers drowned out the boos when he said that he had furnished "all the relevant evidence" needed "to get Watergate behind us" and promised "to stay on this job." On Saturday, Nixon opened Expo '74 in Spokane, Wash., where he was welcomed with a few impeachment signs.

Of the eleven additional presidential conversations subpoenaed by the committee, White House aides claimed that the tapes of those exchanges, which all took place in 1973, either were missing or were not made through failures in the recording equipment. Thus there are no accounts of:

> A Feb. 20 meeting with Haldeman to discuss finding a suitable job for Jeb Stuart Magruder, the former deputy director of Nixon's re-election campaign committee. Magruder had made clear to Haldeman that he wanted a high Government job in recognition of his efforts for Nixon.

> A Feb. 27 session with Haldeman and Ehrlichman concerning the need for Dean to report directly to Nixon, rather than through them, on matters relating to Watergate. In the ensuing six weeks, Dean met with the President more than 70 times.

> An April 15 telephone conversation with then-Attorney General Richard Kleindienst in which they discussed Watergate problems.

> Four meetings on April 15, when the White House cover-up on Watergate was clearly crumbling. The meetings were with Ehrlichman, Dean, Kleindienst and Assistant Attorney General Henry Petersen, who was then heading the investigation into the break-in at the Democratic National Committee offices. The White House says that the tape ran out in midafternoon of April 15.

> Three meetings on April 16 with Haldeman and Ehrlichman to discuss their resignations and Dean's request for immunity from prosecution in exchange for testimony about Watergate before the grand jury.

> An April 18 phone conversation with Petersen in which Nixon reportedly told him to stay out of the investigation of the break-in at the offices of Ellsberg's psychiatrist because it involved national security.

The transcripts that the White House provided offer fresh details about the origin of the plan to bug the Democratic national headquarters, as well as precisely what the undercover team was after. At their March 21, 1973 meeting, Dean told Nixon that the operation originated with an order from Haldeman to "set up a perfectly legitimate campaign intelligence operation" within the Nixon re-election committee. In January 1972, White House "Plumber" G. Gordon Liddy came up with an incredible scheme that he said would cost $1 million. According to Dean, it involved "black-bag operations, kidnaping, pro viding prostitutes to weaken the opposition, bugging, mugging teams."

Liddy's plans were twice vetoed by John Mitchell, then Attorney General, who was later to head the re-election campaign. But in February, Dean said, Strachan began stepping up efforts "to get some information." Dean said that he believed Haldeman, who was Strachan's boss, had assumed that Liddy's operation was "proper." In any case, Dean said, Jeb Magruder took Strachan's message "as a signal to probably go to Mitchell and to say, 'They are pushing us like crazy for this from the White House.' And so Mitchell probably puffed on his pipe and said, 'Go ahead,' and never really reflected on what it was all about."

Dean told Nixon that the bugging team "might have been looking for information about the Democratic conventions." Liddy had earlier informed him that there was a plan -- never carried out -- to bug Democratic Chairman Lawrence O'Brien's hotel suite in Miami. The Liddy operation was a failure from the beginning. The team first tapped the telephone of Democratic Committee Official R. Spencer Oliver. Ehrlichman told Nixon on April 14, 1973, that "what they were getting was mostly this fellow Oliver phoning his girl friends all over the country, lining up assignations." Ehrlichman said that "Liddy was badly embarrassed by the chewing out he got" from Mitchell for providing such weak "intelligence" and promised: "Mr. Mitchell, I'll take care of it." Ehrlichman added: "The next break-in was entirely on Liddy's own notion." During that operation on June 17, the bugging team got caught.

The transcripts provided new in sights into Nixon's former top associates and his working relationships with them. Some of the revelations:

JOHN DEAN. Before the Senate Watergate committee, he seemed to be only a minor functionary, a modest clerk. Now he emerges as having played a key White House role, first in making sure the cover-up held through the election, then in advising Nixon on how to cope as it fell apart in early 1973.

JOHN EHRLICHMAN. Always considered one of the staff heavyweights, he often demonstrates a better perception of the law than the President. Early on, as the Watergate revelations began to threaten the White House itself, he offered Nixon the best advice of all. He suggested that the Administration take the "hang-out road" and tell the truth about its role in the break-in and coverup, letting the chips--and men--fall where they might.

H.R. ("BOB") HALDEMAN. The most formidable guardian of Nixon's Oval Office, the chief of staff was considered the most powerful man in the White House after Nixon. Indeed, it appears that in private he often dominated the President, as well as the rest of the staff.

JOHN MITCHELL. He was one of Nixon's closest friends and political confidants. But the President was willing to let Mitchell take the rap for overseeing Watergate, drawing the heat away from the White House--if a way could be found to get him to agree. The disclosure bore out Martha Mitchell's celebrated telephone call on March 31, 1973, which seemed wildly improbable at the time. She complained to a reporter: "I think this Administration has turned completely against my husband."

Among those who surrounded Nixon, one man whose reputation was particularly damaged by the transcripts was Assistant Attorney General Henry Petersen. Nixon picked him to run the investigation into the cover-up in April 1973 when Richard Kleindienst removed himself from the case because of his close ties to John Mitchell. Petersen's gravel-voiced testimony before the Ervin committee last summer was considered by many to be a virtuoso display of candor and integrity. The transcripts, however, reveal that Petersen was callously manipulated by the President, who even went so far as to boast to Ehrlichman and Ziegler, "I've got Petersen on a short leash."

Perhaps from an excess of loyalty, zeal and awe of the presidency, Petersen appeared eager to give the White House every break he could. He was used to undermine his own investigation. On March 21, Nixon asked John Dean why the Assistant Attorney General had "played the game so straight with us." Said Dean: "Petersen is a soldier. He kept me informed. He told me when we had problems, where we had problems and the like. I don't think he has done anything improper, but he did make sure that the investigation was narrowed down to the very, very fine criminal thing, which was a break for us."

Even with the hundreds of "inaudible" and excised passages, the transcripts provided an extraordinary look at Nixon in private. His conversations were often bizarre, involving hours of foggy and imprecise musing. Instead of a tough, calculating, incisive Nixon, the transcripts revealed a lonely, aloof President who could not remember dates, could not recall Watergate Conspirator E. Howard Hunt's name, and who forgot that another of the convicted conspirators, G. Gordon Liddy, was in prison. In the transcripts, Nixon made few decisions, issued few orders and almost never exhibited the quick, encyclopedic mind that associates claim he has.

From time to time the President did exhibit odd grace notes. He expressed deeply felt concern for Hunt, whose wife Dorothy was killed in a plane crash in Chicago. He worried about "poor Bob" Haldeman, who was "totally selfless and honest and decent" but because of Watergate was "going through the tortures of the damned." There were even attempts at humor, albeit rather heavyhanded. For example, Nixon joined in the merriment on March 22, 1973, when Haldeman joked that "John says he is sorry he sent those burglars in there" and that he was glad "the others didn't get caught." "Yeah," said Nixon, "the ones he sent to Muskie and all the rest; Jackson; and Hubert, etc."

For the most part, however, Nixon came across in the transcripts as a coarse and cynical President, chiefly bent on manipulating associates and plotting strategies to keep himself isolated and insulated from Watergate. The transcripts showed a President creating an environment of deceit and dishonesty, of evasion and coverup. In public, Nixon was pictured as detached, too busy with affairs of state to probe Watergate. In private, the transcripts showed that he wanted to know every detail of the scandal's effect on the press and public. Stratagems were devised; "scenarios" were roughed out and rehearsed. Answers were shaped for questions sure to be asked.

For the Record. Nixon's aides sometimes included imaginary press reaction as part of their scenarios. On April 14, 1973, Ehrlichman sketched what he thought might be "the newsmagazine story for next Monday" if he were to present Nixon with a report naming John Mitchell and Jeb Stuart Magruder as ringleaders in the Watergate breakin. Ehrlichman suggested that the story might say: "The President then dispatched so and so to do this and that ... Charges of cover-up by the White House were materially dispelled by the diligent efforts of the President and his aides." The story obviously pleased Nixon. "I'll buy that," he said.

At times, Nixon sounded in the transcripts like a man speaking for the taped record, rather than spontaneously. During a discussion on April 14, 1973, with Haldeman and Ehrlichman, Nixon said of the Watergate coverup: "Well, I knew it. I knew it. I must say, though, I didn't know it, but I must have assumed it though." On April 16, 1973, in the middle of a period in which Nixon and his top aides were concocting "scenarios" to isolate the President from Watergate, he told Dean: "John, tell the truth. That is the thing I've told everybody around here." A day later, the President and Haldeman were trying to recollect what happened when Dean told Nixon that Hunt was demanding hush money.

Nixon: I didn't tell him to get the money, did I?

Haldeman: No.

Nixon: You didn't either did you?

Haldeman: Absolutely not!

In one of the many war games and scenarios on how to handle the deteriorating situation, Attorney General Richard Kleindienst on April 15, 1973, advised Nixon: "One aspect of this thing which you can always take and that is, as the President of the United States, your job is to enforce the law." Whether as a public relations tactic, as Nixon and his men seemed to view most things, or as his sworn duty, it was surely advice that he ought to have taken.

* Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Charles Colson, Robert Mardian, Kenneth Parkinson and Gordon Strachan.

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