The Nation: More Evidence: Huge Case for Judgment

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with Dean sentence by sentence. Though Nixon has consistently claimed that he did not know of the cover-up activities until March 21, his dialogue with Ziegler shows that he was aware of them on March 13:

Ziegler:... What you had in mind was—President: The hang-out route.

Ziegler: Relaying the hang-out in terms of Segretti...

President: Segretti, and, and the Watergate ... There's no cover-up in this—to this point, period—not one talk of coverup.

Ziegler: That's right.

President: You know, not one bit. There's a little, there's feeling of it through here ... they're hanging tough and so forth ... I suppose he [Dean] could say there that I was telling him to cover up, wouldn't you say for Haldeman?

Ziegler: I suppose he could say that in the context at the time... still, there's nothing.

President: I didn't know.

Ziegler: ... You were talking about political problems, not illegal problems... Damn it, I know that's the case...

President: That's why I said, 'Cut it off at the pass.' But what I was thinking there, was basically not to get all those guys pissing on each other. But Dean could go out, with probably some justification, and said [sic] that he ... told the President all about this...

The President kept returning to Dean's possible strategy.

"... Dean is likely to tell the lawyer the story, Ron, from his vantage point... Goddammit. Oh, the son of a bitch defects.

I didn't know." Later he reflected: "I should have reacted before the 21st of March, actually. Dean shouldn't have had to come in to me with the 'cancer in the heart of the presidency,' which, to his credit he did."

Again the President fell to his doubts: "I mean, God, maybe we were talking about a cover-up—Watergate. I really didn't, I didn't know what the hell—I honestly didn't know ... It's not comfortable for me because I was sitting there like a dumb turkey."

Then he referred to the March 21 tape: "... That's a tough conversation. Unless Haldeman explains it—which he will. [Sighs] But I think we can survive that too." Replied Ziegler: "Yeah, absolutely. We'll survive it all."

H.R. Haldeman, in fact, tried later to explain the conversation to a grand jury in such a way that the President would be cleared of participation in the coverup. For that explanation, Haldeman was indicted for perjury.

The Defense: No Proof

Replying to most, but not all of the charges against Richard Nixon, Presidential Counsel James St. Clair issued a 151-page brief last week that took the defense lawyer's classic position in a criminal case: his client is innocent until proved guilty, and the evidence presented in the Judiciary Committee hearings fails to constitute such proof. Beyond that, St. Clair claimed "a complete absence of any conclusive evidence demonstrating presidential wrongdoing sufficient to justify the grave action of impeachment."

The President's lawyer concentrated on Nixon's most vulnerable position: his denial of any participation in a scheme to conceal the origins of the wiretapping and burglary of Democratic National Headquarters. The St. Clair brief offered