THE LAST WEEK: THE UNMAKING OF THE PRESIDENT

(6 of 11)

the publication of the transcripts, all ten Republicans on the Judiciary Committee announced that they would vote for the impeachment of the President. On Article I, at least, that would make the committee unanimously in favor of sending Nixon to trial in the Senate. Barely controlling his emotions, Wiggins read a statement saying that the new facts were "legally sufficient in my opinion to sustain at least one count against the President of conspiracy to obstruct justice." It was time, he added, for "the President, the Vice President, the Chief Justice and the leaders of the House and Senate together in the White House to discuss the orderly transition of power from Richard Nixon to Gerald Ford."

Specificity Had Been Found

"Devastating—impeachable," rum bled New Jersey's Charles Sandman, who had been the President's most vocal champion on the committee; now he finally found the "specificity" he had declared lacking in the evidence. When he learned of the news, Iowa's mild-mannered Mayne declared that "the President has today admitted deceiving the American people, the Judiciary Committee and his own lawyer. This is direct evidence."

The burdened St. Clair pushed on to give the same shocking message to Senate leaders, assembled in Republican Leader Hugh Scott's office. "I have some very bad news," he repeated. After relating it, he added: "I was tempted to resign. I framed the issue that the President would either have to make this disclosure or he'd lose a lawyer." Perhaps wishfully, St. Clair insisted: "I think I can honorably continue to defend him. There are elements here on which I can continue to make a case." He could no longer argue that there was no evidence against the President, he seemed to say, but he could still claim that the President should not be convicted since the investigation had been only briefly delayed.

Then St. Clair revealed some of the same lack of political awareness that has marked the President's own flawed self-defense. "Before this," he told the Senate leaders, "we had the case won." "Where?" asked the incredulous Scott. "I mean as a lawyer," St. Clair replied. To a man, the Senate leaders—Scott, Griffin, Texas' John Tower, Utah's Wallace Bennett and New Hampshire's Norris Cotton—were stunned by the evidence of Nixon's deception. "We were shaken," said one of them. "It's the worst thing we've had."

When the Nixon statement and the transcripts were finally released late in the afternoon in a mobbed White House pressroom, the words of the conversations were indeed damning. But the Nixon explanation glossed over the import with patronizingly mild language. Nixon implied that he had forgotten all about those June 23 conversations with Haldeman until he had reviewed his tapes in May. Only then, he suggested, had he "recognized that these presented potential problems." But he did not tell his counsel or the Judiciary Committee because, "I did not realize the extent of the implications which these conversations might now appear to have."

Both his forgetfulness and lack of appreciation of the implications were incredible. Nixon did admit, however, that "those arguing my case, as well as those