BELEAGUERED PRESIDENT STEWART ALSOP DISCUSSES THE CASE FOR MR NIXOX

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33235, 26 May 1973, Page 14

BELEAGUERED PRESIDENT STEWART ALSOP DISCUSSES THE CASE FOR MR NIXOX

i By

STEWART ALSOP.

in “Newsweek." reprinted by arrangement)

(Copyright Newsweek Inc.. 19/u)

WASHINGTON.—Is it not about time for someone to stick his neck out and try to make the case for Richard Nixon? This is such an attempt. Ii is largely based on conversations with the dwindling band of loyalists, in and out of the White House, who are still willing to defend the beleagueied President.

The case against the Presi]dent has been made hard and (often in this space. It boils (down to the charge that the (President and the men around him have not been practising (politics in the traditional American manner. Instead, they have been making war !—a special, dirty, covert kind (of war. in which the political opposition was treated, not as an opposition, but as an enemy.

The response of the Nixon (loyalists is that they did not start this war; that the opposition was the first to treat, the Nixon Administration as the enemy. They cite the following examples: First, it became clear as early as 1969 that the leftwing opposition had infiltrated the secret vitals of the Nixon Administration. The leaks to the press which began then showed that the purpose of this infiltration was political and ideological —i.e., to undermine, and if possible to wreck, the Nixon (foreign policy. Leaks and taps One example was the 1969 | leak of the project for bombling the major North Viet-] namese base areas in Cam-: ibodia, with the secret concurrence of Prince Sihanouk,: I then ruler of Cambodia. The: purpose of the leak seemed] (obvious—to wreck the pro-1 iject, and force Sihanouk into (the arms of the Communists. Other leaks, on Israel, North Vietnamese negotiations, Korea, and especially the secret U.S. position papers on the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks with the Russians, (seemed equally clearly (designed to undermine the (Nixon foreign policy. ! In this situation, President Nixon and Henry Kissinger turned to the professionals of the F. 8.1. for help. Taps—legally at the time, and by ]no means for the first time i in recent history—were put | on the telephones of the principal suspects. This has been described by I one commentator as the] “passive acceptance of dirty tricks” by Dr Kissinger. In fact, the protection of vital | Government secrets is the I legal responsibility of the National Security Council secretary, and it has been so (regarded by all Kissinger’s predecessors, right back to Harry Truman’s Kissinger, Admiral Sidney Souers, who] (twice ordered F. 8.1. investigations of a pair of youthful journalists named Alsop. Not with a merry laugh Evidence that the opposi-] tion was prepared z to treat the Nixon Administration asi the enemy, and to use any] and all means to bring it] down, was not confined to the | N.S.C. leaks. The Nixon loyalists cite much further evidence. There was, tor example, the report to the President by J. Edgar Hoover that a group of conspirators were plotting to kidnap Kissinger and to blow up major government installations. This is not the sort of thing that any head cf government can dismiss with a merry laugh. Or there was the march oni Washington in May 1971. Thel declared purpose of the march was to “bring the government of the United States to a halt,” and that purpose, and much violence, was very nearly achieved. That is not the sort of thing that a head of government can laugh off either. Instead, the President un-( wisely decided to fight fire with fire, and unwisely put John Ehrlichman in charge of the fire-fighting. Enter here G. Gordon Liddy and E.l Howard Hunt, a pair of professional secret-service types hired as covert fire-fighters by Ehrlichman. There followed in due course, the idiocy of the Watergate break-in. That idiocy can only be explained in terms of

I the idiocy of the Bay ot Pigs. At the time of the Bay of i Pigs, a group of sophisticated, pragmatic, able men had just taken over the government —; McGeorge Bundy, Robert | McNamara, Dean Rusk, John! and Robert Kennedy. These men were somehow hypnotised into believing that Fidel Castro and his million-man | army could be toppled by! putting a couple of thousand. Cuban refugees ashore m; Cuba.

A childish faith How could such men have come to believe that such an inherently unbelievable scheme might succeed? The answer lies somewhere in the mystique of the secret-service professional vis-a-vis the amateur. Somehow, in such a confrontation, the amateur. tends to put a childish faith [ in. the confident assertions of! the professional. Liddy and Hunt had already] made what the British call “al fair muck” of their attempt to steal the papers of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. But somehow the secret service mys- , tique clung to them. Somehow (“Now don’t worry about a thing— We have the whole [situation taped”) they were [able to persuade the Presi-I dent’s principal subordinates] [to give a green light to the]; Watergate operation — a scheme, mind you, no more] inherently idiotic than the Bay of Pigs operation. On June 17, the Waterigate operation blew up in ( the faces of the President’s j men, just as the Bay of Pigs had blown up a decade ear-

lier. Only this time, the President was not involved. This time, the first instinct of those who were involved was to keep the President ignorant of their roles. In some of their minds, this was • no doubt rationalised on the ground of “not worrying the; President.” Keeping the President ignorant meant keep-1 ing the press and the people ■

' ignorant, and this in turn (meant resorting to all sorts [of artful dodges, including the attempt to use the Central Intelligence Agency .[as cover. 1 Shenanigans and shock As for the President, he (turned to John Ehrlichman, himself deeply involved, and (asked him to find out (whether any White House i people were’involved in the (Watergate scandal. Ehrlich;man duly reported to him that it was strictly a lowlevel affair, and the President, being human, sighed a sigh of relief and inquired no further. Thus the revelation in March, which left no doubt that most of his most trusted subordinates were indeed involved up to their armpits in this and many (other shenanigans, came as [a genuine shock to the [President. That, in brief, is the case [for Mr Nixon made by the (remaining Nixon loyalists. How good a case is it? The answer will depend in part on the political predilections of the answerer. This writer could rather easily write another column knuckling big holes in the case. And yet, even to those who are convinced that Mr Nixon is a bad man through (and through, there must be [some answer more satisfactory than the simple bad(ness of the man to the question: how could a professional politician as experienced and as intelligent as Richard Nixon have risked his own ruin for such small ends?

I Ultimately, it may not matIter very much whether the case for Mr Nixon is a good icase or a bad case. What will I matter is whether the Prejsident retains the credibility • and authority necessary to govern. That remains much jin doubt, the more so since l the Sam Ervin Show opened 'on Capitol Hill.