‘Nixon on verge of resignation’

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33532, 13 May 1974, Page 1

‘Nixon on verge of resignation’

Speculation that President Nixon is on the verge of announcing his resignation is rife in Washington.

The White House denied it yesterday, and lawyers defending the President against the possibility of impeachment by the House of Representatives dismissed it as “ridiculous,” writes James M. Naughton of the New York Times News Service (through N.Z.P.A.).

However, each denial seems to give life to a new rumour and the capital is consumed with an almost morbid air of anticipation.

An aide to an influential Republican Senator, an official not normally given to idle gossip, said that he flatly understood from a senior Administration official that Mr Nixon would leave office “within 48 hours.”

Another cpngresional official said privately that he had authoritative information that an “extraordinary” development would occur within 24 hours. He indicated that it might relate to negotiations between the White House and the Watergate

special prosecutor, Mr Leon Jaworski, toward some arrangement that would enable Mr Nixon to leave office without facing prosecution in the Watergate and related cases.

A Cabinet official told an interviewer that a Cabinet meeting had been abruptly cancelled. The same official said Mr Nixon was “under a terrible strain and he doesn’t look well.” People’s business The President battling against the swelling demands for his resignation, flew to friendly territory in Oklahoma on Saturday night and appealed to Congress to move swiftly in its inquiry over his possible impeachment, N.Z.P.A.-Reuter reports. Repeating a theme put forward by his aides recently, Mr Nixon declared that he had surrendered all the evidence on Watergate in spite of demands by the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee for still more tapes and documents. In a brief reference to the crisis swirling around him, he told the graduating class at the Oklahoma State University: “Having presented all of the evidence to the Congress of the United States, I trust the House of Representatives will act promptly so that we can reach a decision, so that the President and the Congress can get on with the people’s business as we should." Cheers and applause from the crowd drowned out the jeers and boos of a small group of protestors as he I made his appeal. Working hard? Meanwhile. the VicePresident (Mr Gerald Ford) said that he believed Mr Nixon was innocent of any wrong-doing in the Watergate scandal and that he was confident the President would not resign or be impeached. On Thursday, Mr Ford spoke of a crisis of confidence in the Government, then on Friday he conferred with President Nixon in the White House.

Mr Ford spoke to a college audience on Saturday after making remarks on trips throughout the country which appeared to dissociate him from the President’s handling of the scandal. “The Government in Washington isn’t about to sink,” he said. After his talk with Mr Nixon, the Vice-President told reporters in Buffalo, New;

York, that Mr Nixon had not shown any displeasure but had advised him that perhaps he had been working too hard and should curtail his travelling.

‘Shame, outrage’ In Chicago, Senator Edward Kennedy (Democrat, Massachusetts) said that every American felt a deepening sense of shame and outrage at each new Watergate disclosure. However he said he would not urge President Nixon to resign; he believed constitutional procedures on impeachment should be allowed to take their course. “The White House transcripts are only the latest revelation of the sordid misuse of the people’s faith in those at the highest levels of our Government,’’ Senator Kennedy said. “Watergate may represent the worst betrayal of public trust and the most wholesale violation of official power in our nation’s history, but it also represents one of the finest chapters in the history of the courts, of the Congress, and of the press.” ‘Grain robbery’ Senator Henry j’ackson (Democrat, Washington) has criticised President Nixon’s plan to go to Moscow next month.

“There is plenty of time to negotiate under' calmer circumstances,” Senator Jackson told about 500 people at a Democratic fund-

raising dinner in Morgantown, West Virginia.

The Senator also accused the Nixon Administration of “mismanaging the economy” and struck at the Secretary of Agriculture (Mr Earl Butz) for “the Great Russian Grain Robbery of 1972.” Recalling that American farmers sold wheat to Russia for SUSI.6O a bushel while the Russians have “said they might be able to sell it back to us at six dollars a bushel,” Senator Jackson said. “I look forward to the day when we won’t have Butz to kick around any more.”

He also attacked the “obscene profits of major international oil companies,” blaming the President for vetoing oil price control legislation that he had cosponsored.