THE LAST WEEK: THE UNMAKING OF THE PRESIDENT

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adverse evidence was about to be revealed. Stepping before television cameras outside the House Rules Committee room, he urged Nixon to resign "in both the national interest and his own interest." Added Griffin in a quavering voice: "It's not just his enemies who feel that way. Many of his best friends—and I regard myself as one of those—believe now that this would be the most appropriate course." Griffin said later that he considered the suggestion to resign as the earnest advice of one friend to another.

At the White House, General Haig began telephoning Cabinet members to prepare them for the shock of the coming revelations. After informing the Cabinet, Haig asked some 150 members of the White House staff to assemble in a large conference room in the Executive Office Building. "I hate to be the harbinger of bad news," he said, before reading the President's incriminating statement. "You may feel depressed or outraged by this," he concluded, "but we must all keep going for the good of the nation. And I also hope you would do it for the President too." Haig was warmly applauded. Explained one staff member: "The applause was not for what he said. It was for Haig himself. Everybody knows he's been under the gun for a year."

A similar but more difficult notification chore was undertaken by Lawyer St. Clair. He headed for the Capitol in a black limousine to brief the men who had stuck their political necks out for the President in the House Judiciary Committee meetings: the ten Republicans who had opposed every article of impeachment. All but Mississippi's Trent Lott and Iowa's Wiley Mayne were able to attend the meeting in the office of Republican House Whip Leslie Arends.

"Gentlemen, I'm sorry to say it, but I'm not the bearer of good tidings," St. Clair began. Then he explained the nature of the new evidence, which was soon to be described as more than the long-sought "smoking pistol" and actually, in the apt phrase of Columnist George F. Will, akin to a "smoking howitzer." St. Clair said flatly that he had been ready to resign if Nixon had opposed release of the material. "I have my professional reputation to think about," he explained, adding that any other action would have been to withhold evidence of a possible criminal conspiracy.

The Republicans' reaction was a mixture of anger and dismay. "We were just dumbfounded," said Ohio's Delbert Latta. "We'd put our trust in the President. We felt he was telling us the truth. I think every American has that right—to put his trust in the President. It was a terrible, letdown feeling." Indiana's David Dennis said that he was "shocked and disappointed." He had planned to fight for Nixon on the House floor. "We'd have got some votes too. The President would have gone to the Senate not in all that bad shape." But now Dennis was convinced that Nixon's "lack of frankness" had undercut his case and that he was impeachable under Article I as a member of the cover-up conspiracy. Angry at having been "led down the primrose path" by Nixon, Dennis said that he and his colleagues were not mad at St. Clair since, "we knew he'd been led down the primrose path too."

Within hours of