WATERGATE: The End Begins With Bitter Fratricide at Trial

It was an appropriately bizarre way to begin the final phase of Watergate. After the opening statements, Federal Judge John J. Sirica’s Washington courtroom was eerily silent for up to 100 minutes at a time. Muff-sized earphones clamped on their heads, judge, jury, defendants and spectators alike were transported by tape recording into former President Richard Nixon’s Oval Office. They heard Nixon curse and connive with his top aides to conceal the truth of Watergate from all others, including his own Justice Department. Reproduced publicly for the first tune, the ghostly voices, disembodied but all too real, conveyed the intent to deceive with far more impact than any previously printed transcripts.

The five defendants, accused of having joined in that secret conspiracy, have now abandoned any pretense of a common front. H.R. Haldeman, Nixon’s former chief of staff, swiveled around to turn his back on the jury and grinned as he heard his own high-pitched laughter played back in a rare moment of taped levity. John Mitchell, the former Attorney General, listened casually through one earphone, as if he wanted to hear as little as possible. The others, John Ehrlichman, Robert Mardian and Kenneth Parkinson, were somber.

At one point, a fleeting smile enlivened the face of a woman juror. Titters rippled through the courtroom when Charles Colson, an imprisoned former Nixon aide, was heard telling Convicted Watergate Burglar E. Howard Hunt not to get too specific about why he wanted hush money. “This is a serious matter,” the stern Sirica scolded. “Serious to the defendants … serious to me. There will be no more laughter.”

Indeed, the opening weeks’ testimony in the Watergate conspiracy trial carried grave judicial implications for the defendants, and portended adverse historical consequences for Nixon. As outlined in the clear, confident opening argument of Assistant Special Prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste, in the familiar, matter-of-fact testimony of Perpetual Watergate Witness John Dean and in the devastating tapes, the Government’s case was impressive indeed.

Ben-Veniste wasted no time in grappling with the question on everyone’s mind: the complicity of Nixon, who was not in court and is safe from prosecution because of his pardon. The prosecutor, in effect, pronounced Nixon guilty, contending that the conspiracy to obstruct justice had “involved the participation of even the President himself.”

Misled and Lied. Nixon was also condemned by Ehrlichman’s attorney, William Prates, as one who had “deceived, misled and lied.” With three of the defendants turning against each other, and two assailing Nixon, the basic details of Nixon’s role seem certain to emerge—just as predicted by the retiring Special Prosecutor, Leon Jaworski (see box following page).

Although there were no major new disclosures—indeed, few are expected in the trial—some fresh links in the chain of evidence supporting the conspiracy charge were forged:

>The Government, Ben-Veniste told the jurors, will show that $25,000 of some $400,000 secretly paid to the seven men first convicted in the 1972 burglary and wiretapping of Democratic national headquarters came originally from Bebe Rebozo, Nixon’s longtime personal pal. The cash was picked up at Key Biscayne on Mitchell’s orders by Frederick LaRue, a Mitchell assistant.

> In February 1973, Nixon aides met at the LaCosta spa near San Diego to plan a counteroffensive on Watergate. According to Ben-Veniste, one participant, Special Counsel Richard Moore, reported to Nixon on April 19 of that year that the need to pay hush money to the Watergate defendants had been discussed at LaCosta. Shortly thereafter, Ehrlichman reassured Nixon that Moore’s memory about LaCosta “had become feeble beyond measure.” Nixon, in turn, expressed satisfaction to Haldeman that Moore’s powers of recall had “dimmed a bit.”

>Bearing out Dean’s testimony that he had warned Nixon about White House involvement in Watergate before March 21,1973, a previously unreleased March 17 tape was played by the prosecution. Dean could be heard reporting to Nixon that he had attended meetings in Mitchell’s office at which G. Gordon Liddy had proposed plans to bug the Democrats. Nixon advised Dean to prepare a general statement for use at the impending Senate Watergate hearings but not to mention the bugging plans. “You could say that they were gonna engage in intelligence operations … you could make self-serving goddam statements.”

Pure As Snow. In opening statements, attorneys for Ehrlichman, Mardian and Parkinson made no attempt to deny that there had been a high-level White House coverup. Instead, they argued variously that their clients had been duped by those above them or that their Watergate involvement was insignificant. David Bress, the attorney for Mardian, claimed that Mitchell, 61, had developed “a sort of father-and-son relationship with Mardian,” who is 51. Thus Mardian, former head of the Justice Department’s Internal Security Division, was misled by Mitchell. “Mardian was as pure as a driven snow,” Bress argued. “He is dragged in at the tail end of an extensive conspiracy indictment simply because of suspicion.” That brought a warning from Sirica that “you are going a little bit too far”; Mardian, after all, had been charged by a grand jury. Parkinson’s lawyer, Jacob Stein, also contended that Mitchell and Mardian had deceptively led Nixon’s re-election-campaign counsel into a peripheral role in the scandal.

While attorneys for Haldeman and Mitchell deferred arguments until the prosecution completes its case, Ehrlichman’s attorney was acidly vocal. “John Ehrlichman was had by his boss, who happened to be the President of the United States,” said Frates. Ehrlichman had not known about the Nixon recording setup, and the tapes show how Ehrlichman was used by Nixon and Haldeman. “The tapes … are the greatest thing that ever happened to John Ehrlichman,” stated Prates. As one example, Prates quoted Nixon as telling Haldeman on March 20,1973: “Ehrlichman doesn’t know a goddam thing about Watergate.” Repeatedly, Prates argued, Ehrlichman had urged Nixon to make a “full disclosure” on Watergate and “let it all hang out.”

But Dean, wan from his imprisonment and his voice quavering at first, soon repeated his testimony that within days after the Watergate arrests, Ehrlichman had ordered him to tell Liddy to leave the country and to “deep-six” some evidence found in Hunt’s Executive Office Building safe.

Dean testified too that Ehrlichman had discussed clemency for Hunt with Nixon and had told Dean that all of the restive defendants could be given “general assurance” of presidential clemency. Under the questioning of James Neal, the tough trial prosecutor, Dean readily admitted that he had been a member of the cover-up conspiracy; then, one by one, he implicated all of the other defendants.

With each day in court, the prosecution seemed to strengthen its case. The defendants hardly helped their cause by assailing each other; their main strategy was clearly to lure Judge Sirica into making errors that could lead to a successful appeal. Haldeman’s crusty attorney, John J. Wilson, was particularly provocative, and Sirica was often irked by his baiting tactics. When the judge allowed the tapes to be played without any pause for immediate sentence-by-sentence defense objections, for example, Wilson told the judge he would put that decision “in my error bag, which is getting bigger and bigger.”

Testing Tempers. More such friction can be expected as the long trial tests the tempers of lawyers and judge. But for the first time, Nixon’s attorney, Jack Miller, raised the possibility of even more dramatics: Nixon, he told Sirica in a hearing, was recovering from his ailments and might be well enough to testify after all. Miller said that he could furnish a new report on Nixon’s health in about two weeks. Since the defense does not expect to need Nixon’s testimony before then, Sirica postponed a final decision on whether or not to order an independent medical examination of the former President.

Any appearance by Nixon would, of course, be a grueling experience indeed; the crossfire of questioning from defense and prosecution would be intense. Such an ordeal would, in a sense, be fitting. It was because of Nixon that so many of his former aides have gone to prison or been charged with crimes. He resigned to escape impeachment; he was pardoned to avoid trial. Yet his story has still to be told under oath.