THE CRISIS: Seven Tumultuous Days

(6 of 10)

appoint a new prosecutor, he summoned Haig and two of his counsel, J. Fred Buzhardt and Len Garment, to the Oval Office. The discussion, said Haig, was "very painful and anguishing." Confronted with the enormous public demand for impeachment, the President reversed field. He told Buzhardt to instruct Nixon's top tapes counsel, University of Texas Law Professor Charles Alan Wright, to inform Judge Sirica that he would comply with the judge's decision and turn over the tapes.

Wright, who was preparing to argue the Stennis compromise before Sirica at noon, was astonished. Nixon was surrendering in a battle he had waged for three months, causing the wear and tear of national controversy plus immense injury to his own reputation as one who wanted the full truth of Watergate exposed.

It was only 45 minutes before court time when Wright reviewed this turnabout announcement with Nixon in the Oval Office. No word of the switch had leaked out when Wright sat down quietly in Sirica's crowded courtroom at 2 p.m. At a table opposite him were eleven lawyers from the ousted Cox staff, apparently prepared to argue against the Stennis plan. Sirica entered, read tediously for 15 minutes from his original order demanding the tapes, and from the sustaining appeals court decision. Then he put down his papers and asked Wright: "Are counsel prepared at this time to file the response of the President to the modified order of the court?"

The courtroom was hushed. Everyone expected Wright to present the Nixon alternative plan—and everyone expected Sirica to reject it. Said Wright slowly: "I am not prepared at this time to file a response. I am, however, authorized to say that the President of the United States would comply in all respects with the order of August 29th as modified by the order of the court of appeals." He paused to let the meaning be absorbed, then continued: "It will require some time, as Your Honor realizes, to put these materials together, to do the indexing and itemizing as the court of appeals calls for."

Obviously surprised, but calm, Sirica interrupted: "As I understand your statement, that will be delivered to this court?" Replied Wright: "To the court, in camera."

Reporters stood to rush for telephones. Sirica ordered them to sit down. Still seeming suspicious, he asked: "You will follow the decisions or statements delineated by me?" Said Wright: "We will comply in all respects with what Your Honor has just read." Moments later, Wright added: "This President does not defy the law, and he has authorized me to say he will comply in full with the orders of the court." The judge smiled broadly. "Mr. Wright," he said, "the court is very happy the President has reached this decision."

This turnover of tapes, White House aides revealed, meant that the earlier offer to provide summaries of presidential tapes through Stennis to the Senate Watergate committee was dead. Senator Sam Ervin, who had come to realize that he had been lured into accepting the plan by a presidential plea to end the controversy because of the Middle East crisis, had been trying to get out of the plan and was not displeased.

Some of Ervin's associates contended that the committee's vice chairman, Senator Howard Baker, had helped mislead the