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Republican charges and glib BILLYGATE headlines notwithstanding, the only comparisons turned up so far between the Billy affair and Watergate were surface trappings. A splurge of daily newspaper stories speculating on vague "intelligence" reports and plots, the convening of a special subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee with power to subpoena White House documents, even the revival of the old question, "What did the President know and when did he know it?"—these all had the ring of Watergate. So did the repeated anticipation of things they "forgot" to say. The vow of Indiana Democrat Birch Bayh, who will head the committee, evoked Watergate when he said: "We will pursue the truth wherever the truth may lead and let the chips fall where they may." Observed Tennessee Republican Howard Baker, one of the Watergate committee inquisitors: "I listened with an eerie feeling. Bayh said what I said at the beginning of the Watergate hearings."
Despite the Watergate echoes, there was no evidence at all that the President had committed a single illegal or unethical act. But he had certainly shown himself unable, or unwilling, to deal decisively with an intimate who was callously abusing his ties to the Oval Office. And he had once again made it possible to ask troublesome questions about his judgment. It simply made no sense that a member of the President's family had served as the agent of a foreign—and often unfriendly—nation. The President could and should have done something to stop it. Instead, the White House, perhaps accidentally, actually contributed to Billy's role as a go-between with Libya.
In terms of substance, Watergate was a world apart. Rather than fighting off all inquiries, destroying or altering evidence, even coaching witnesses on how to testify falsely and paying large sums to others to keep quiet, the Carter White House vowed to cooperate fully with the Senate investigation. Presidential Press Secretary Jody Powell announced that he and his aides do not expect to assert claims of Executive privilege to avoid answering questions, that all relevant documents will be readily supplied, that even the President will make himself available for questioning "consistent with the responsibilities and time constraints of his office." Powell explained that Carter might invite the Senators to the Oval Office rather than meet them on their own turf. Said Powell: "The President believes we will come out all right in the end because we have behaved in a proper manner. We have nothing to hide."
The White House tactic will be a "choke-them-with-candor operation," contended one senior presidential aide, in an unwitting reminder of the Nixon White House's deceitful "Operation Candor," launched as a desperate Watergate defense. But if the Republicans really want to "raise memories of things gone by," Powell warned, "it would be worthwhile to compare this to Watergate in detail. The President