Nixon on Watergate

For two years Richard Nixon maintained almost total legal silence on his role in the Watergate scandal and a number of related matters. As President, he declined to testify under oath "on constitutional grounds." After he resigned, his phlebitis condition and a long convalescence made his testifying impossible. Last week Nixon's silence finally came to an end. Responding to a request from Watergate Special Prosecutor Henry S. Ruth, Nixon testified under oath before Ruth, several attorneys from Ruth's office, and two of the 20 members of the remaining Watergate grand jury, whose term ends this week. A total of eleven hours of questioning took place over a two-day period in a Coast Guard compound adjoining Nixon's San Clemente estate. It is the first time a President or former President has been known to testify in person under oath before a grand jury.

As the first session opened, an affable, jaunty Nixon, looking thin but fit, sat down confidently. When the final session ended the next day, Nixon rose, pale and shaken. The ordeal "took a lot out of him," said one close associate. "It was very rough." Although grand jury testimony remains secret unless it is introduced in a trial or ordered released by a judge, it is known that Nixon was questioned closely about four matters still under investigation by the special prosecutor's office:

> The alteration of the White House transcripts of taped conversations that were turned over to the House Judiciary Committee during its impeachment inquiry.

> The 18 1/2-minute gap in the tape of a Nixon conversation with H.R. Haldeman three days after the Watergate breakin.

>The $100,000 campaign contribution from Billionaire Howard Hughes received by Nixon's close friend Charles G. (Bebe) Rebozo.

>The extent to which the Internal Revenue Service was used during Nixon's terms in office for harassment of his political "enemies."

Though it is not known what light Nixon shed on any of these matters, there was, said one Watergate source, "a fifty-fifty chance" that the grand jury would hand up indictments relative to some of them before it disbands this week. But that need not happen for Nixon's testimony to prove useful. The special prosecutor's office is prepared to present evidence to future Washington grand juries in Watergate cases.

Nixon arranged to testify--and to have news that he had done so announced publicly--by special agreement with the prosecutors and U.S. District Judge George L. Hart. It was Hart who gave approval for the two grand jurors and the prosecutors to fly to California to interrogate Nixon. Because of President Ford's pardon of him on Sept. 8, 1974, Nixon cannot be prosecuted for any crimes he may have committed as President. But he can be charged with perjury if any of his statements to the grand jury last week were false.

Ruth has been prepared to press the matter of Nixon's testifying ever since the former President's health improved to the point where he was seen publicly in recent days playing golf. A Nixon friend quotes the former President as once saying that he "would rather die" than return to Washington to testify before a grand jury or in a courtroom. For the moment that outcome has been avoided. But Nixon could be summoned as a witness should indictments be handed up in any of the four areas in which he was questioned. And he is still subject to being required to give depositions in some 20 civil suits currently pending in the courts.

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