Nixon prepares for long fight back

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33380, 12 November 1973, Page 13

Nixon prepares for long fight back

(N.Z. Press Association— Copyright?

WASHINGTON, November 11. President Nixon has been spending a few calm hours at his Camp David retreat before beginning a campaign tomorrow to regain the confidence of the American people.

As Mr Nixon begins his large-scale effort to win his party back to his leadership and overcome the Watergate crisis, his position is a little better than it was last week.

The energy and tenacity with which he has said he will not yield to pressure from his opponents, and his repeated assertions that he will continue to exercise the functions with which the voters entrusted him, have begun to restore the flagging morale of supporters who had begun to doubt him. Members of the Presidential entourage say that Mr Nixon will take a series of steps aimed at dissipating the suspicions directed at him in the Watergate scandal.

In the coming days and weeks, this defensive action will take at least three forms:

Party unity First, Mr Nixon will have frequent meetings with Republican leaders in an attempt to restore the unity of the party. This phase of the campaign began on Friday, when Mr Nixon met a dozen Republican Congressional leaders.

After the two-hour meeting, most of the participants said that they had been impressed by the President’s desire to clear up Watergate and the other scandals of his Administration. As soon as he returns to Washington tomorrow, he will have breakfast with about 50 party leaders. The White House press secretary (Mr Ronald Ziegler) said that the meeting would be the first of a series of gath-

erings aimed at explaining the situation to the party.

Release of tapes?

Second, it has been decided to make public the controversial tape-recordings of Presidential conversations concerning Watergate, as well as all other Presidential documents, which, it is said, will serve to show that Mr Nixon was not involved in the illegal activities of his former aides.

This was the impression gained by Senator George Aiken, the senior Republican in the Senate, in a conversation with the President on Friday. However, this decision is subject to approval by Judge John Sirica, for the President is supposed to give the tapes and other Presidential documents requested by Federal investigators to Judge Sirica alone.

Third, the President is ready to explain his role to the Senate Watergate Committee, if a mutually acceptable formula can be found. Some members of the Democratic opposition want the President to appear at a plenary session of the committee, where he would testify under oath, like the other witnesses. The White House has ruled out this possibility, but the President might meet a delegation from the committee for an “informal conversation.”

Uphill task

This explanation campaign will certainly not dissipate all the suspicion about the President and put him beyond the reach of any attack.

As the “Washington Post” said recently: “The President

has manoeuvred himself into a position in which nothing he himself can do would restore his shattered credibility.” This scepticism is not limited to Mr Nixon’s Liberal Opponents. A poll commissioned by the American Broadcasting Company television network, which has been the most favourable of the three television networks to Mr Nixon, showed that two out of three Americans do not believe White House explanations on the nonexistence of two Watergate tapes requested by investigators.