THE CRISIS: Another Week of Strain

For Richard Nixon, the inauguration of Gerald Ford as Vice President was only a brief part of an unusually frenetic week. In a burst of activity, the President discussed energy and economic policies with members of his staff. He chatted briefly with congressional leaders about his personal finances. He appointed nine new ambassadors. Several evenings, he slipped unannounced out of the White House—showing up at dinner with Daughter Julie and David Eisenhower, with Republican Chairman George Bush and with a group of Administration appointees.

He presided at a White House dinner, the first in two months, for visiting Rumanian President Nicolae Ceausescu. The next evening Nixon was in a rare jovial mood at a reception at the Rumanian embassy. He patted shoulders and threw mock punches. Urging Federal Reserve Board Chairman Arthur Burns to visit Rumania, Nixon declared: “You visit there one time and look at the girls. Rumanian girls are pretty.” Then he was spotted by Secretary Rose Mary Woods, who exclaimed: “Doesn’t he look well?”

On the contrary, the President at times was drawn and pale; lines of tension creased his face, and he seemed barely able to control the quaver in his voice. The source of strain was his continuing Watergate woes, particularly his staffs inability to explain how a mysterious hum obliterated 18 minutes of his conversation with former Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman on June 20, 1972, three days after the Watergate breakin. Even close White House aides conceded that the gap on the tape had seriously damaged his efforts to restore public confidence. Said one assistant:

“Somehow we’ve got to get this tape issue clarified or forgotten.” It is not likely to be forgotten.

Federal Judge John J. Sirica heard more testimony about the tape from former White House Aide Lawrence M.

Higby, Chief of Staff Alexander Haig and Secretary Woods. She clung to her story that she may have accidentally erased “four to five minutes” of the tape during a phone call but not the entire segment. After hinting that he was not convinced by her testimony, Sirica urged Miss Woods to “tell everything you know.” She responded: “If I could offer any idea, any proof, any knowledge, of how the 18-minute gap happened, there is no one on earth who would rather.

I’m doing the best I can.”

“Sinister Force.” On the stand, Haig told Sirica that at one point White House aides briefly entertained “the devil theory” to explain the gap. They wondered whether “some sinister force,” an unexplained outside source of energy, had been applied to the tape. But Haig offered no suggestion as to just what he might mean by this James Bond or science-fiction scenario. He clearly continued the White House effort to put the responsibility on Rose Mary Woods.

Haig said that he believed she was responsible for the entire gap. When he left the courtroom, he told reporters:

“I’ve known women who thought they talked on the telephone for five minutes and actually talked for an hour.”

Haig’s testimony was full of minor conflicts with what Presidential Lawyer J. Fred Buzhardt had previously said, and contained frequent memory lapses remarkable in a bright West Point graduate who was noted for his organizational competence as Henry Kissinger’s longtime aide. For example, he could not recall what he discussed with Nixon, Rose Mary Woods and Press Secretary Ron Ziegler during a 24-minute conference the evening of the day he told Nixon that the gap on the tape lasted for 18 minutes—just three weeks before his courtroom appearance. Often Haig fidgeted, toying with his glasses or twisting his West Point class ring. At one point he protested to Richard Ben-Veniste, an assistant special prosecutor:

“You’re pressing me beyond my recollection. I want to be very clear that I do not regard myself as being involved in this thing other than when circumstances made me a conduit.”

In his testimony, Lawrence Higby disclosed that Haldeman still wielded a shadowy influence over some White House deliberations seven months after he was forced to resign. Higby said that Haldeman knew almost as soon as the President did—that is, on Nov. 15—that 18 minutes of the tape had been obliterated. Moreover, Higby testified that later that day Haldeman ordered him by phone to retrieve his handwritten notes on the meeting. Higby also said that four other sets of notes kept by Haldeman, including one subpoenaed by the Watergate prosecutors, were missing from the vault where they had been kept.

After Higby’s testimony, White House Assistant Press Secretary Gerald L.

Warren conceded that both Nixon and Ziegler occasionally talked with Haldeman, who now Lives in Los Angeles, about presidential affairs. In court, however, Haig declared: “Haldeman does not influence what we do in the White House.”

The mystery of the hum may be solved, at least in part, when Judge Sirica this week gets a report on the tape from electronics and acoustical experts.

Guarded by three federal marshals, they worked for two days in the laboratories of the Federal Scientific Corp. in New York City, trying to determine the source of the hum. Then they returned the tape to Sirica, who kept it locked up and closely guarded.

There were developments last week in the Administration’s other potential scandals:

HUGHES MONEY In closed session, the Senate Water gate Committee heard testimony from at least three employees of Superbillionaire Howard Hughes about $100,100 that he gave to Nixon Friend Bebe Rebozo in 1969 and 1970. Rebozo has said that the money had been intended for campaign purposes but was returned to Hughes this year. The Hughes associates’ testimony was not disclosed. At one point, however, Hughes Attorney Chester Davis opened a tattered briefcase and dumped bundles of subpoenaed $100 bills, bound in rubber bands, onto the table in front of Chairman Sam Ervin.

Davis snapped: “Here’s the money. Do what you want with it.” Ervin had the bills photocopied and returned to Da vis. Afterward, committee staffers began checking serial numbers to see if the bills are at least three years old. If they are, that would buttress Rebozo’s story that the money lay in a safe-deposit box for three years.

MILK FUND The committee also continued its investigation of whether the milk producers’ contributions of at least $527,500 to President Nixon’s re-election campaign helped buy a 1971 increase in federal price supports for milk (TIME, Dec. 3).

Officials of Associated Milk Producers Inc., the nation’s largest dairy cooperative, which was one of the contributors, have privately told the committee that White House files contain documents that will reveal a quid pro quo arrangement between the milkmen and the Nixon Administration.

The committee requested that the White House turn over those documents, as well as any others relating to the decision to raise supports. White House officials refused. But they did promise to turn them over to Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski, who is also investigating the contribution.

In the face of his mounting troubles, Nixon has shifted tactics in his Operation Candor, which was supposed to ex plain away his Watergate woes. For the moment, he plans no forays into the country, no television speeches, no press conferences and no sessions with Congressmen. Instead, he is concentrating on preparing disclosures of information on specific issues, like his comprehensive statement last week on his personal finances (see following story). Presidential aides are expected to issue papers this week on the White House role in the milk-support controversy and the President’s involvement in the ITT antitrust case. Undoubtedly, Nixon also will have more to say about the tapes, but not until Sirica decides what to do about the case of the mysterious hum.