Nixon’s response awaited

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33514, 20 April 1974, Page 15

Nixon’s response awaited

f.v.z. Press Assn —Copyright)

WASHINGTON, April 19.

The White House is pondering what to do about a sweeping subpoena w’hich orders President Nixon to produce a mass of tapes and documents to be used in the Watergate cover-up trial of his former aides.

The subpoena, issued yesterday by District Judge John Sirica, directs Mr Nixon to give the Watergate Special Prosecutor tapes and documents covering 64 Presidential conversations. The Special Prosecutor, Mr Leon Jaworski, asked Judge Sirica last Tuesday to issue the subpoena after what he said were unsuccessful efforts to negotiate a voluntary agreement with the White House. Mr Nixon’s chief Water-

gate lawyer, Mr James St Clair, did not oppose the motion' before the subpoena was issued. It orders the materials turned over by iff a.m. on May 2. “The matter will be considered by the special counsel,” a deputy press secretary Mr Gerald Warren said at the White House. This is the latest in a series of subpoenas directed at Mr Nixon since the Watergate controversy began almost two years ago with a burglary at Democratic Party headquarters. But it will probably be the hardest to overcome.

Withholding subpoenaed materials needed for the conduct of a trial is a tougher legal problem than resisting such requests from investigatory bodies. Two of the defendants in this case joined the prosecutor in requesting that the materials be subpoenaed. The new subpoena requests materials speci-

cally for evidence in the, 'trial, scheduled to start on; ! September 9, of the for-1 mer White House Chief of I ; Staff, H. R. Haldeman; the former chief domestic adviser, John Ehrlichman; the former Attorney-General and Presidential campaign manager, John Mitchell; and four others. Some of the tapes also are being sought by the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives, which is studying impeachment, in a separate subpoena under consideration by the White House. Another subpoena from the Senate Watergate Committee lis still in the courts.

, The conversations sought' by the Prosecutor's office range from late June 1972, I immediately after the Water- ; gate break-in, to June 4, 1973, the day on which Mr Nixon spent 12 hours listening to some of the earlier tapes. Judge Sirica's brief order said only that the court had “determined that the motion should be granted.” In another Watergate development today, the Senate Republican leader, Mr Hugh Scott, said that if Mr Nixon refused to co-operate with the House impeachment in- . quiry, it would put his Ad(ministration in grave danger.