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Resign Demands. William Loeb, the ultra-conservative publisher of the Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader, joined the growing although still small group of those demanding that Nixon resign. "Looking at it from a perfectly coldblooded, hardheaded standpoint," Loeb wrote, "Mr. Nixon has destroyed his credibility and his support, not just with the left wing, but with the average American. They have no confidence in his ability or his skill. They see him as a discredited bungler."
Moderate Republicans also were critical. At the National Governors' Conference along Lake Tahoe, Michigan's William Milliken said of Nixon: "If there's anything that remains unsaid or unknown, he ought to say it, no matter how painful or destructive to him. It has dribbled out—a little each day." Washington's Daniel Evans agreed: "Good grief, it's painful. I wince every time there's a new statement from the White House. I want to believe the President, but I find myself more and more distressed every day as new information comes out. We need a full laying out of what the President knows."
Clearly, Nixon's last attempt to explain Watergate, his lengthy White Paper of May 22, satisfied almost no one who critically examined it. In the document, he claimed that any moves he made that might have looked like an attempt to cover up White House involvement in the various Watergate-related activities were really intended to protect "national security." Even Nixon's new Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, declared last week: "I think the national security justification, even as put forward by the people who were directly involved, is not convincing."
Most devastating to that defense was the publication of a series of CIA memos detailing conversations between CIA officials, Acting FBI Director Gray and White House Aides Ehrlichman, Haldeman and John Dean. Repeatedly, these discussions concerned ways in which the CIA could be used to keep the FBI investigation limited or to help keep the arrested Watergate conspirators from implicating higher officials. Always, the conversations were couched in political terms rather than in any regard for national security. The implication of the talks was that 1) Nixon had failed utterly to convey his concern for national security, or 2) these officials on their own had decided that politics was the priority aim, or 3) Nixon's security explanation was contrived after the fact.
Those documents also tended to undercut the emerging White House attempts to portray Ehrlichman and Haldeman as acting on Watergate only in response to the President's concern over security, while lesser aides became over-zealous about political considerations. Pretrial depositions by Ehrlichman and Haldeman in a Democratic civil suit over the Watergate activities were released last week, and in sum they pointed to former Attorney General John Mitchell and Counsel Dean as the high officials most deeply involved.