The huge bulk of the Watergate committee testimony contains so many diversions, evasions, conflicts and lies that the record of what has been learned is still unclear.
There is more to be heard. After a month-long recess Senator Sam Ervin's Select Committee still expects to question seven further witnesses about the Watergate burglary and the subsequent coverup. Also missing from the record is the potentially (but not necessarily) decisive evidence from the tapes of conversations secretly recorded by the President. Nixon's latest account of the affair, presumably to be given this week, could alter the weight of evidence already before the committee.
Yet the hearing recess provides a fitting opportunity for the Ervin committee staff to begin sifting the testimony in search of tentative conclusions—and perjury. TIME, too, has assessed the evidence to date and, without attempting to indicate individual criminal culpability, offers this analysis:
The 1970 Intelligence Plan
UNDISPUTED FACTS. President Nixon on July 23, 1970, notified four federal intelligence-gathering agencies—the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency —that he had approved a new plan for the use of some previously banned tactics in gathering information on antiwar demonstrators, campus rioters, radical bomb throwers and black extremists. The tactics included breaking and entering, the opening of personal mail and the interception of communication between U.S. residents and foreign points. One of the plan's originators, Nixon Aide Tom Huston, pointed out in a memo that breaking and entering, at least, was "clearly illegal." The plan was opposed by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (for reasons not entirely clear, since the FBI has not been above breaking and entering in espionage cases); his objections were supported by Attorney General John Mitchell.
IN DISPUTE. Nixon said in his May 22 statement that because of Hoover's protests, he rescinded his approval of the plan five days after granting it. He said the plan never went into effect. Neither Mitchell nor John Dean, then White House counsel, could recall seeing orders canceling the plan. No such documents were produced. Questions by Senators indicated some doubts about whether the plan had actually been promptly and completely killed.
WEIGHT OF EVIDENCE. The lack of any evidence that any illegal acts have been carried out by the intelligence agencies seems to indicate that the plan was indeed rescinded. Similar acts, however, were carried out by the White House "plumbers."
WHAT DID NIXON KNOW? However temporarily, he approved the plan—and thus approved acts that he had been advised would be illegal.
Creation of the Plumbers