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At San Clemente, Nixon last week spent what his still-ardent defender, Rabbi Baruch Korff, termed "a quiet, meditative, prayerful, reflective" 62nd birthday. The rabbi, who spoke to reporters in a thinly veiled effort to help raise money to meet Nixon's continuing legal expenses, said Nixon was pleased by the release of his accusers. "That is very good, to ease the burden of man in time of trouble," Korff quoted Nixon as saying. Korff said that the fund drive he heads has raised $95,000 for Nixon's costs, but it needs another $15,000 to meet a mid-January deadline for the next payment. Nixon is reading biographies of George Washington and Theodore Roosevelt, Korff said, as he prepares to write his own. But he tires easily, can only read 20 minutes at a time, has no appetite, and "I have never seen him so.thin."
Korff implied that Nixon would not be likely to confess any criminal activity. Privately, Nixon has admitted to him only what he has conceded publicly: he made "errors in judgment" on Watergate. On the contrary, according to Korff, Nixon feels that he had been "too yielding and perhaps at times too compassionate"—presumably about the involvement of his aides—during the scandal. From the perspective of Dean, Magruder and Kalmbach, however, that would not seem to be a realistic appraisal of Nixon's Watergate role.
* Key lines from Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree: "I'm comin' home, I've done my time; now I've got to know what is and isn't mine. If you still want me, tie a yellow ribbon round the ole oak tree."