The President Resolves to Fight

"I am not guilty of any offense under the Constitution that is called an impeachable offense."

So said Richard Nixon last week as both he and the U.S. Congress dug in for a long and fierce struggle over whether the President should be removed from office. At the White House, Nixon told Conservative Columnist James J. Kilpatrick in a rare interview that after "long thought," he had resolved not to resign "under any circumstances."

Moreover, he ruled out "the rather fatuous suggestion that I take the 25th Amendment and just step out and have Vice President Ford step in for a while."

If impeached by the House, Nixon said he would "accept the verdict in good grace." But he promised a vigorous defense during the Senate trial that would follow. He explained: "I would do it for the reasons that are not--what do you call it--those of the toreador in the ring trying to prove himself; but I would do it because I have given long thought to what is best for the country, our system of Government and the constitutional process." Nixon believes that the removal of an innocent President through either "resignation or impeachment would have the traumatic effect of destroying [the nation's] sense of stability and leadership ... I will not be a party under any circumstances to any action which would set that kind of precedent."

Resignation Benefits. The interview, which was requested by Nixon, was the first he has permitted in his second term as President (see story page 16).

The unusual way that he chose to declare his determination signified the urgency he placed on stilling the rumors of his imminent resignation. They have whirled about the White House since he released edited transcripts of 46 tape-recorded Watergate conversations with his aides.

Similarly, on Capitol Hill last week, Democratic and Republican leaders alike tried to quell rank-and-file congressional demands that Nixon step down and save the nation the trauma of impeachment and trial. Senate Democratic Whip Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia warned that a forced resignation would polarize the nation. "A significant portion of our citizens would feel that the President had been driven from office by his political enemies," he said. "The question of guilt or innocence would never be fully resolved." Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield declared that "resignation is not the answer." House Speaker Carl Albert advised that it was preferable "for the constitutional process to run its course."

The Democratic leaders may well have been sincere in their statements against resignation, though in private they did not convincingly deny that they would be greatly relieved if Nixon did step down. In fact, House leaders even ordered staff members to examine resignation's possible financial benefits to Nixon. They found that if he were removed from office by conviction in the Senate, he would get a pension of only about $12,000 a year, due to him because of his 18 years' Government service as a Naval officer, Congressman and Vice President. If he left voluntarily, he would also get the normal presidential pension of $60,000 a year, plus up to $96,000 annually to maintain a staff and office. But the overt Democratic strategy has been to act as statesmen, avoid obvious partisanship and leave talk of resignation to the Republicans.

G.O.P. leaders, however, were having no part of it. Although none defended Nixon's conduct, they clearly had decided against asking Nixon to resign despite their outrage over the tawdry portrait of his presidency revealed by the transcripts. Tennessee Senator William Brock, chairman of the Republican Senate Campaign Committee, said that Nixon has a right to a Senate trial "if he wants it, which he seems to." Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania added: "I think our nation is strong enough to withstand the functioning of its own Constitution." The Republican leaders doubtless also had in mind the possibility that Nixon could be acquitted. White House Speechwriter Patrick Buchanan warned that if Republicans forced Nixon out of office and he were later found to be innocent of wrongdoing, it "would be close to fatal for the Republican Party."

Pleading Guilty. As the pressure for resignation eased, Nixon's men kept walking into Washington courtrooms to face justice. Dwight L. Chapin, 33, once the President's appointments secretary, was given a term of 10 to 30 months for lying to a federal grand jury about his role in directing Donald Segretti, the political dirty trickster of Nixon's 1972 campaign. Chapin said that he would appeal his case to the Supreme Court if need be. (Chapin is the fifth former White House aide or consultant to be sentenced to jail. Three others--John W. Dean III, Frederick LaRue and Jeb Stuart Magruder--have pleaded guilty to taking part in the Watergate cover-up and are awaiting sentencing.

A day later Richard Kleindienst, 50, the former U.S. Attorney General, pleaded guilty to the charge of a misdemeanor stemming from his confirmation hearings, which were conducted by the Senate Judiciary Committee. In effect Kleindienst admitted that he had not been completely candid when he testified that as Deputy Attorney General, he had not been pressured by the White House to drop an antitrust case against the International Telephone and Telegraph Corp., which was to pledge up to $400,000 to the G.O.P. In fact, the President himself had given Kleindienst such an order (which Kleindienst refused to carry out), saying: "You son of a bitch, don't you understand the English language?"

Kleindienst, who could be sent to jail for as long as a year but may get a suspended sentence, is only the second former Cabinet officer in history to be convicted of a crime. (In 1929 Albert Fall, President Warren G. Harding's Secretary of the Interior, was given one year for bribery in the Teapot Dome scandal.) Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski agreed to let Kleindienst plead guilty to a misdemeanor, in part because the former Attorney General had cooperated with the investigation of the ITT affair.

In the House, the Judiciary Committee's impeachment inquiry seemed to be moving more slowly last week than originally expected. Chairman Peter Rodino planned to hold the first televised public session this week. But it appears the week will again be spent behind closed doors as the committee continues to hear evidence accumulated by the staff in its investigation of 41 allegations of wrongdoing by the President. Last week the staff presented evidence on the Watergate cover-up and how $450,000 in funds from Nixon's reelection campaign was paid as "hush money" to the seven original Watergate conspirators. This week the committee will hear about Nixon's taxes, campaign financing and campaign "dirty tricks." At the earliest, the public phase of the hearings may not begin until next week.

Even though the committee members had promised to keep the staff evidence confidential, excerpts of its transcript of a Sept. 15, 1972 conversation between Nixon and two top aides leaked. In a letter to Rodino, Presidential Attorney James St. Clair protested that the leaks were "prejudicing the basic right of the President to an impartial inquiry on the evidence." St. Clair demanded that all further proceedings be conducted in public "so that the American people can be fully informed with regard to all the evidence presented." Rodino recommended instead that Nixon release all the Watergate-related tapes and other documents that he has refused to yield to the committee and Jaworski.

The leaked excerpts contained material deleted as irrelevant from the White House transcript of the Sept. 15 meeting. Although the omitted passages offered no new evidence of Nixon's guilt or innocence, one of them did provide a fresh example of his vindictiveness. In it the President said that the Washington Post, which was vigorously investigating the Watergate scandal, would have "damnable, damnable problems" in renewing the licenses of two television stations that it controls. Nixon also said of Attorney Edward Bennett Williams, who was representing both the Post and the Democratic National Committee at the time: "We're going to fix that son of a bitch."

Relevant Conversations. The committee sent two new subpoenas to the President. One demanded eleven tapes of his conversations with aides on April 4, June 20 and June 23, 1972. Special Counsel John Doar said the tapes are needed to determine if Nixon had prior knowledge of the break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters on June 17, 1972, and if he participated in the beginning of the cover-up the following week.

The second subpoena demanded the President's daily schedules from April to July 1972, when the break-in was planned and executed; from February to April 1973, when the cover-up was unraveling; from July 12 to July 31, 1973, when it was disclosed that presidential conversations were taped; and from October 1973, when Nixon fired Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. Doar said the committee needed the logs to determine whether there were other conversations relevant to Watergate that should be requested. Nixon seemed unlikely to comply with the subpoenas; the deadlines are this Wednesday. St. Clair once more contended that Nixon's already released transcripts provided all the evidence needed to establish his role in Watergate.

Many constitutional experts believe that Nixon has no right to refuse the Judiciary Committee's subpoenas. In an article published by the Yale Law Journal last week, Harvard Law Fellow Raoul Berger called the President's claim that the material is protected by Executive privilege an "extraordinary spectacle ... [that] stands history on its head." He also attacked St. Clair's argument to the Judiciary Committee that Nixon can be impeached only for indictable offenses. Berger called it "a pastiche of selected snippets and half-truths, exhibiting a resolute disregard of adverse facts." He went on to say that both Nixon and St. Clair disregard the fact that the framers of the Constitution saw impeachment as an exception to the doctrine of separation of powers and carefully made impeachment "both limited and noncriminal." Of St. Clair, Berger concluded: "He is not so much engaged in honest reconstruction of history as in propaganda whose sole purpose is to influence public opinion."

Timetable for Trial. In another dispute over Watergate evidence, Federal Judge John J. Sirica took under advisement White House lawyers' pleas against surrendering 64 presidential tapes to Prosecutor Jaworski. The President contends that Jaworski has not demonstrated that he needs the material. Among the tapes sought are three of conversations between Nixon and former Special Counsel Charles Colson on June 20, 1972, just three days after the Watergate breakin. The prosecutors hope that tapes of the conversations will shed some light on two other presidential conversations held the same day: one with former Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, which was partially obliterated by an 18 1/2-minute mysterious buzz; the other with former Attorney General and Campaign Director John Mitchell, which presidential aides claim was never taped. The prosecutors believe the tapes may also explain why Nixon could not shake the fear, as he put it on April 15, 1973, that Colson was "up to his navel" in the Watergate affair. Colson has specifically denied any involvement in the breakin.

With a presidential resignation no longer a serious option, many in the Congress and elsewhere in Washington figure that impeachment by the House is a foregone conclusion, though it is far too early to predict the outcome of the Senate trial. To speed up the process, Democratic House leaders plan to pass the remaining appropriations bills before July 1, thus allowing the Representatives to give complete attention to impeachment. The leaders' current timetable calls for the House Judiciary Committee to finish its investigation by the end of June and if it votes an impeachment resolution as expected, for the full House to vote on the matter by July 31. If articles of impeachment are approved, Nixon will be given a month to plan his defense, enabling the Senate to begin the trial by Sept. 3--the day after Labor Day. Although the Senators will meet six days a week with no recess for the fall campaigns, the leaders are not certain a verdict can be reached by Election Day, Nov. 5. At all costs, they want to keep the trial from going on into next year, when the 93rd Congress expires and the 94th begins. If that happens, some congressional experts believe that the impeachment process might have to start all over again, an unthinkable prospect.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.