Swing against Nixon

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33527, 7 May 1974, Page 17

Swing against Nixon

(N,Z. Press Assn —Copyright) WASHINGTON, May 6. The White House today assesses the impact of its latest all-out campaign to win over public opinion on Watergate, after a new poll showing 55 per cent of Americans in favour of President Nixon’s resigning or being impeached. The poll, published by “Time” magazine, was conducted before Mr Nixon re-

leased the edited transcripts of Watergate conversations last week.

Opinion polls published in November last year showed only 39 per cent in favour of resignation or impeachment.

The “New York Times” has suggested in an editorial that Mr Nixon could best protect the office of the Presidency from further harm by “at least temporarily withdrawing from it.”

To counter the adverse effects of the publication of the transcripts, White House officials have repeatedly stressed that read as a whole they exonerate the President from the former White House counsel John Dean’s charge that he knew of the Watergate cover-up as early as September 15, 1972. Over the week-end the White House put out a list of alleged mis-statements made by Dean, comparing his testimony about his conversations with Mr Nixon given to the Senate Watergate Committee last summer with the records of the transcripts. Mr Nixon, meanwhile, fulfilled public engagements in Phoenix, Arizona, and Spokane, Washington, and two of his top aides, the Chief of Staff (Mr Alexander Haig) and the White House Watergate lawyer, Mr James St Clair, put the President’s case on television yesterday. Mr Haig, a former Army general, declared: “I think the time has come for all of us to ask ourselves a pretty fundamental question—at what point in the review of wrong doing does the review itself involve injustices, excesses and distortions which in effect result in the cure beng worse than the illness itself?”

Mr Haig added: "I think the time has come for all of us ... to bring this matter to a conclusion.” He said that the President had turned over “the full picture” on Watergate. Mr St Clair said in an

interview that he believed the fact that payment of hush money to the Watergate burglars might have been made was not crucial to President Nixon’s defence in the impeachment inquiry. The tapes made it clear that the President neither authorised the payment nor knew about it, he said.

The Congressional. Committee investigating Mr Nixon’s possible impeachment over Watergate starts the fact-finding phase of its inquiry this week. The formal process of laying down the case against President Nixon is expected to begin probably on Thursday or Friday, when the Chief Counsel, Mr John Doar, presents the findings of his staff to members of the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee. The evidence has been painstakingly gathered by 100 lawyers and investigators, who only last week received a 1300-page volume of transcripts of tapes of President Nixon’s conversations with his aides over Watergate. The committee had issued a subpoena for the tapes themselves. It has a request outstanding for tapes of more than 100 other Watergate conversations.

Mr Doar’s presentation is expected to take up. to a week. The 38-member committee then starts examining the mass of evidence collected during nearly six months of investigations.