(4 of 5)
Furious Infighting. Yet the innocence of Ehrlichman and Haldeman apparently will face a further challenge from Herbert Kalmbach, Nixon's dismissed personal attorney. Kalmbach has told Justice Department prosecutors that he will be a Government witness against Haldeman and Ehrlichman if they are indicted, as expected, for obstruction of justice. Kalmbach handled large amounts of campaign cash that apparently were used to finance disruption of Democratic campaigns and pay hush money to the convicted Watergate wiretappers. He reportedly will claim that Ehrlichman authorized the payoffs and that Haldeman supervised Kalmbach's handling of campaign funds.
As the furious infighting continued among estranged former Nixon officials, Charles W. Colson, who had been a special White House counsel, threw a body blow at a longtime rival for Nixon's favor, John Mitchell. Colson claimed that on three different occasions early this year he told the President that Mitchell had apparently helped plan the Watergate burglary and other aides were trying to cover it up. Colson told the New York Times that Nixon refused to believe that Mitchell could have been involved. This, as Colson interpreted it, meant that Nixon knew nothing about the Watergate plans, as he has publicly contended. But it would also seem to indicate that Nixon was either naively or deliberately disregarding repeated warnings that a cover-up was under way.
Colson, in turn, has been accused by two other aides, according to Watergate investigators, of proposing a burglary of the Brookings Institution in 1971 to obtain some unidentified classified information. Moreover, the investigators say, he then suggested that the burglars "fire-bomb" the place to conceal the breakin. These accusations have been made by John Dean and John J. Caulfield, a former intelligence agent brought into the White House by John Ehrlichman. Caulfield told investigators he considered the plan "insane" and it was never carried out. An associate of Colson confirmed that such discussions had taken place but contended that Colson had only been joking and should not have been taken seriously.
The televised Senate committee hearings on Watergate chaired by North Carolina's Sam Ervin, which resumed last week, seem to be moving rapidly toward pivotal sessions in which the former officials closest to the President will take their places in that highly revealing forum. The only potential hitch is the repeated effort by Archibald Cox, the special Watergate prosecutor, to prevent full televised airings of the testimony of key witnesses. So far rebuffed by unanimous opposition from the Ervin committee to any delay in its hearings, Cox has now retreated to a court plea that the testimony of John Dean and Jeb Stuart Magruder, the deputy director of the Nixon committee, be permitted in public, but without television cameras present. Cox claims that television so magnifies the publicity that a fair trial in future prosecution of the principals in the affair will be impossible. Ervin, on the other hand, contends that the courts have no constitutional authority to interfere with the procedures of the Senate. (For a discussion of the legal hazards of pre-trial publicity, see THE LAW).
Showdown. It now seems likely that John Dean will tell his full story next week before the Ervin committee.