Dean’s evidence awaited

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33254, 18 June 1973, Page 13

Dean’s evidence awaited

(N Z. Press Assn. —Copyright) WASHINGTON,

June 17

Mr John Dean, the former White House legal counsel who alleges that he can link President Nixon with the attempted concealment of the Watergate Affair, yesterday met senate investigators in closed session for 41 hours and, when he appears before the Senate inquiry committee tomorrow he is expected to give explosive evidence.

He is expected to implicate several senior White House aids in the scandal, and to allege that, while Mr Nixon had no advance knowledge of the break-in, he agreed to provide up to SUSIm to help to silence the seven conspirators subsequently convicted for the Watergate burglary. The “Washington Post” says that Mr Gordon Strachan, who was an assis-

tant to the former White House chief of staff, Mr H. R. (“Bob”) Haldeman, plans to tell the Senate committee that Mr Haldeman was sent advance word of the breakin and bugging.

The Senate committee will question Mr Dean behind [closed doors tomorrow, and on Tuesday he will tell his story, again to the committee, (but this time in public and before national television.

The “New York Daily [News” says today there are I indications that Mr Dean [talked freely to the investigators yesterday, under a grant of limited immunity from prosecution. The newspaper quotes informed sources as saying that he is willing to talk about between 35 and 40 meetings he had with the President earlier this year, nearly all of them about efforts to cover White House! involvement in the Watergate Affair. Mr Strachan, who, like Mr Haldeman, has resigned from his Government post, is described by “Washington Post” sources as “the man

who can put 10 ropes around Mr Haldeman’s neck.” According to the newspaper, Mr Strachan will testify to the committee that everything Mr Jeb Stuart Magruder told him, he also told Mr Haldeman. (Mr Magruder said in evidence to the committee last week that he kept Mr Strachan fully briefed, either by telephone or by documents, during each stage of the Watergate operation, and that he assumed Mr Strachan passed all the information on to Mr Haldeman). Mr Magruder was deputydirector of Mr Nixon’s reelection committee at the time of the break-in. The chairman of the Senate committee, Senator Sam Ervin (Democrat, North Carolina) said on Friday that he saw no need for President Nixon to be called to testify, but that the former Attorney-General, Mr John Mitchell, would be summoned before the committee. ‘TRAGIC JUDGMENT’

Mr Nixon’s son-in-law, Mr David Eisenhower, said in Atlantic City, New Jersey, ; vesterday: “Once all the allegations are put to rest,' land we have the facts on the table about the Watergate Affair, the President will be vindicated in the eyes of the American people. “I think that the people are going to move on to new things, and that they will be ready to accept Richard Nixon’s leadership.” I Mr Eisenhower, who recently joined the staff of; I the “Philadelphia Bulletin” as a sports columnist, was in I Atlantic City to accept the' I New Jersey Order of De Moiay’s “Man of the Year” award on Mr Nixon’s behalf. De Molay is a Masonic group of young men). Mr Eisenhower, who is married to Mr Nixon’s

I younger daughter, Julie, said that the Watergate issue was not a simple matter of right and wrong: the break-in and I bugging, and the disclosures that followed, had to be viewed against the background of the student revolt; of the late 1960 s and early 19705. j “What happened was that Liddy (Gordon Liddy, one of the convicted Watergate conspirators) took quite literally demands that ‘middle’ America should stand up and fight back,” Mr Eisenhower said. “I think that those were the seeds of the present difficulties we are in. Unfortu-i nately, people didn’t have the! Judgment to realise that! America, being as strong as! lit is, would survive the dark!

night of the student revolt from 1968 to 1971.

“Apparently some people, who made this decision to bug the Democratic Party’s national headquarters, were not exercising good judgment and that was perhaps because they hadn’t had experience in the political field. “It is a tragedy that these people, who are basically good people—and I know most of them—made a very fundamental miscalculation, and then tried to cover it.” Mr Eisenhower added that he believed the case would be resolved in such a way that the people would understand the President’s role, “which was nil in this case.”