THE ADMINISTRATION: Nixon's Nightmare: Fighting to Be Believed

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cooperating with the White House to protect high officials in the Watergate scandal. Although no one assailed Ruckelshaus personally, the tough former head of the Environmental Protection Agency became the target of a revolt within the FBI against any more political appointments. All but one of the FBI'S 59 field-office heads joined in a telegram to the President demanding that "qualified executives within the FBI" be considered for the top spot. Ruckelshaus, who does not want the permanent directorship, tried to calm the top FBI officials in a 20-minute meeting. But after he left, they met for two hours and still insisted that someone whom the White House could not control be named to head the bureau.

On the sound theory that the Administration simply cannot be trusted to investigate itself, no matter how independent Attorney General Richardson may prove to be, a bipartisan clamor arose for him to name an outside prosecutor in the Watergate case. Nixon said Richardson was free to do so, and the Attorney General-designate indicated that he will.

The stage is thus finally set for a full and hard-hitting inquiry in which any protection of the men around Nixon—or of the President himself—will be most unlikely. The federal grand jury in Washington, which has been looking into the Watergate case since last summer, will continue to take testimony from all the suspects and from other witnesses. Senator Sam Ervin's Select Committee on Campaign Practices expects to begin televised hearings next week on Watergate and Republican campaign-disruption tactics.

The most potentially explosive witness, Counsel Dean, talked privately to one Senate committee member last week, Connecticut Republican Lowell Weicker. Some lawyers suspect that Dean hopes to air his testimony publicly before the committee, then plead that the widespread publicity would make it impossible to find an unbiased jury for any trial on criminal charges. Others too might try this tactic, or seek immunity from the grand jury, creating something of a marketplace for officials trying to avoid jail.

Dean, who remarked to associates that he feared for his life, took away from his office nine documents that he says are marked secret and shed light on the Watergate hearing. He said that he removed them to prevent "illegitimate destruction" and then stashed them in a bank deposit vault; he gave the keys to Federal Judge John Sirica, whose pressure on the convicted wiretappers helped release new disclosures.

How could such pervasive corruption of ethics start in an Administration of such seemingly square-shooting disciples of law and order? Some of Nixon's critics contend that he set the general pattern in the earliest stages of his political career, when he used some questionable tactics. More important, the closeness of Nixon's first two presidential campaigns, against John Kennedy in 1960 and Hubert Humphrey in 1968, bred an almost paranoid insecurity among Nixon's campaign workers. The slim win over Humphrey was a special shock.

Once he gained the presidency, Nixon became unusually obsessed with protecting Administration secrets. The Administration's appalling willingness to spy, snoop and wiretap can be traced as far back as 1969. TIME has learned that the spying operation started early in 1969, when Nixon became furious over leaks to the