WATERGATE: The President's Strategy for Survival

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the University of Utah. He objects to St. Clair's "defending this case on a petty criminal basis—raising every technical objection possible. This is a form of legal brinkmanship. He may be winning the legal battle but losing the more important battle of public confidence in the President." The University of Chicago's Harry Kalven Jr. agrees: "Delay has consequences for the whole country. It seems seriously inappropriate." It is also, of course, the opposite of what Nixon is arguing for: "I want a prompt and just resolution of this matter."

Many of St. Clair's recent statements on more specific Watergate issues are severely criticized by legal experts and other persons who have detailed knowledge of the various investigations of the scandal. Generally stated, these assertions by St. Clair include:

A President can be impeached only for crimes of a very serious nature committed in his governmental capacity.

As a practical—but not legal—matter, a serious criminal act by a President may have to be shown to enlist the two-thirds Senate vote for conviction and removal from office. Despite the views of Nixon and St. Clair, however, almost no reputable scholar contends that the "high crimes and misdemeanors" cited in the Constitution as bases for impeachment were meant to be taken in the modern sense of those words. Chicago's Kurland says that any "breach of trust of high office" falls within the meaning intended by the constitutional framers. This was shown by one of the framers of the impeachment provision, James Wilson, who said that what he had in mind was misbehavior, or what he called "malversation." James Madison added that impeachment was a protection against the "negligence or perfidy of the Chief Magistrate."

The President can claim Executive privilege in withholding requested evidence from the House Committee.

Disputing that, the University of Washington's Morris echoes the prevailing view among constitutional scholars: "In constitutional law, there really isn't any sort of Executive privilege that the President can raise against the House." The impeachment procedure was set up to cover a unique situation in which the separation of powers among the branches of Government can be broached by the Congress to determine whether an impeachable offense has occurred. Four U.S. Presidents—Andrew Jackson, James Polk, James Buchanan and Ulysses S. Grant—have declared that they would have no right to withhold anything from an impeachment proceeding.

The House Judiciary Committee must determine what an impeachable offense is before it seeks the evidence.

There is no legal requirement to do so. It is precisely because the Constitution is vague on what is impeachable that the committee wants to determine whether there has been wrongdoing before deciding whether what it finds is impeachable. Certainly, the multiple indictments and guilty pleas on criminal charges by 26 Nixon agents so far are reason enough to prompt a broad and deep inquiry into the President's conduct in office. To carry out that inquiry properly the committee needs all the evidence it can get about the President's conduct in the Watergate and related political-espionage and payoff scandals.

Because the President is the chief law-enforcement