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There are great potential errors, however, in depending too heavily on the official White House documentation of custody for both recorders and tapes. As the Sirica hearings have repeatedly shown, the record keeping was extremely sloppy. Tapes were sometimes withdrawn with no record at all of their return. In fact, the FBI interviews are quite logically starting from scratch, eliminating no period, from the time the June 20 tape was made until it was given to Judge Sirica, as beyond questioning.
Despite his early bravado, Presidential Counsel St. Clair had no success at all at week's end in trying to undermine the experts' testimony. If his questions could not be answered by the technician on the stand, that witness quickly gave way to another member of the panel who could answer them. St. Clair's quizzing finally grew so repetitive that Judge Sirica urged him to make his point and cease. Finally Sirica had heard enough. Carefully explaining that no crime had been proved and no individual had been found guilty of wrongdoing, he nevertheless declared: "It is the court's considered opinion that a distinct possibility of unlawful conduct on the part of one or more persons exists here. A grand jury should now determine whether indictments are appropriate."
The possible crimes: obstruction of justice, suppression of evidence, contempt of court for failing to produce evidence, and perjury in Sirica's fact-finding sessions on the tapes.
As the probers, directed by Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski and FBI Chief Clarence Kelley, pursue their quarry, they have perplexing problems to consider. Many center around Miss Woods, surely one of the most tragic figures in the whole Watergate mess. Was she a collaborator in the destruction of evidence, out of a near lifetime of loyalty to Nixon? Or was she an intended victim of a White House scapegoat operation? Her feisty lawyer, Charles Rhyne,* quite emphatically charged the latter as he gained Sirica's permission to read the sealed transcript of I a meeting of White House lawyers and prosecutors in the judge's chambers on Nov. 21.
The transcript quotes Buzhardt as saying that "we have discussed and discussed this—an obliteration for 18 minutes. It does not appear from what we know at this time that it could have been accidental." Buzhardt admitted last week that he had never told Miss Woods that he had given such information to the court and had never even discussed the long gap with her. She believed that he and Leonard Garment had represented her in previous testimony before Sirica, although they deny it. She then testified in December about her "awful mistake." The sequence, contended Rhyne, meant that "these lawyers for Miss Woods came down here and pleaded her guilty before this procedure ever started."
Darker Shadows. Sharply challenged by the technical testimony, Miss Woods' story also contains other curiosities. How could she have transcribed the June 20 tape for 2½ hours on Oct. 1, as she testified, if she only got the Uher machine at about 1:20 p.m. that day and then discovered a buzz on the tape and reported it to Nixon at 2:08 p.m.?