The wounds were reopening; the Watergate debate was reviving. Henry Kissinger scoffed at the notion that he had ever called Richard Nixon "our meatball President. " En route to Dallas to deliver a foreign policy address, he asked: "What does that mean—meatball, meat head? I never used the word like that." Was Nixon drinking a lot and contemplating suicide as Watergate brought him down? "I saw no evidence of it, "said President Gerald Ford as he campaigned in Fresno, Calif. Had James St. Clair, Nixon 's chief Watergate attorney, flown off to Boston at a critical time without listening to the most damaging Watergate tape? "On that weekend, Washington just wasn 't a good place to be," he declared.
The rash of comments and no-comments erupted over the new Bob Woodward-Carl Bernstein book on Watergate, The Final Days. After TIME summarized the book's highlights in last week's issue (March 29), the New York Daily News and the Associated Press produced similar stories. At week's end, Newsweek, which is printing excerpts from the volume, released large sections of it. Finally, the Washington Post printed its own summary of the book's main disclosures.
Despite the pro forma disclaimers, Woodward and Bernstein weave a brisk and convincing narrative in their sequel to the bestselling All the President's Men. They do not alter the broad outlines of the now-familiar drama of Watergate. But with their spare, police-beat style, they do manage to pin down each painful, often poignant detail as the curtain dropped on a collapsing President and an embittered staff:
Facing the end, Nixon talked openly of suicide to his trusted aide, Chief of Staff Alexander Haig. "You fellows in your business," Nixon told the temporarily retired general, "you have a way of handling problems like this. Somebody leaves a pistol in the drawer. I don't have a pistol." It was, suggest the authors, "as if he were half asking to be given one." After that incident, Haig passed orders that Nixon not be allowed any pills, fearing he might take an overdose.
Nixon's two sons-in-law, Edward Cox and David Eisenhower, also worried that the President might attempt suicide. Seeking outside help, Cox telephoned Michigan Senator Robert Griffin. He reported that Nixon had been "walking the halls" of the White House late at night, "talking to pictures of former Presidents." The President, warned Cox, might be in a mood to kill himself. David also told friends that he thought the President might "go bananas" and seemed convinced that he "would never leave the White House alive."
The deterioration showed in Nixon's drinking habits. He would turn up at the office at noon with eyes already so glazed that Treasury Secretary William Simon was reminded of a "windup doll." Nixon let himself ramble incoherently at private dinners. At a pre-Christmas dinner in 1973 with a few intimates, including Political Adviser Bryce Harlow and Senator Barry Goldwater, he was unable to express himself. "Bryce, explain what I'm saying to Barry," he pleaded several times. Next day Goldwater called Harlow, asking, "Is the President off his rocker?" Replied Harlow, "No. He was drunk."