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Because so many of Nixon's closest political and staff associates have been named in the expanding scandal, the President already was being hurt. Columnist Jack Anderson even charged that Nixon personally approved an "overall espionage-sabotage operation" against the Democrats, designed to injure the front-running candidacy of Democrat Edmund Muskie and enhance the prospects of either George Wallace or George McGovern, whom Nixon considered the easiest to defeat. Yet there was no evidence so far of any such personal Nixon involvement.
Squalid. Still, Nixon's reluctance to disclose whatever the White House staff does know about Watergate or other campaign espionage has disillusioned some of the President's staunchest journalistic backers. Complained Conservative Columnist James Kilpatrick: "The White House record, by and large, has been a record of evasion, dissembling, expostulation and silence. What in the world is wrong with Richard Nixon? One might have supposed that he above all men would be acutely sensitive to the slightest appearance of impropriety. Clean as a hound's tooth—that was the standard Dwight Eisenhower fixed, and to that standard Nixon once willingly repaired." The whole affair, Kilpatrick charged, was "squalid, disgraceful and inexcusable."
Other columnists and editorialists also were reminded of Nixon's 1952 crisis, in which he was accused of accepting some $18,000 in secret campaign funds. Eisenhower at that time considered dropping Nixon as his vice-presidential candidate. Nixon's silence now contrasts sharply with the soul-baring stance of his famous "Checkers" television speech.
"The usual political thing to do when charges are made against you is to either ignore them or to deny them without giving details," Nixon said then. "I believe we've had enough of that in the United States. The best and only answer to a smear or to an honest misunderstanding of the facts is to tell the truth." Richard Nixon has as yet made no attempt to expose the full truth about Watergate. One can only wonder whether it is because he feels that the truth would be too damaging to reveal.
* On the day before McCord testified about Mitchell, his wife Martha telephoned the New York Times to claim that unspecified persons were trying to make her husband "the goat" in the Watergate affair. "I fear for my husband," she said. "I'm really scared. I can't tell you why. But they're not going to pin anything on him. I won't let them, and I don't give a damn who gets hurt. I can name names. She told the Times to send reporters to find her "if you hear that I'm sick or can't talk. Somebody might try to shut me up."