WATERGATE: Seven Charged, a Report and a Briefcase

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comment on the Nixon Administration was his ironically prophetic "Watch what we do, not what we say." Now he stands indicted on charges of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and four counts of making false statements to the FBI, the Senate Watergate committee or the grand jury. Last week Mitchell also went on trial in a New York federal court on six counts of perjury. He and former Commerce Secretary Maurice Stans are accused of attempting to intervene with the Securities and Exchange Commission to help Fugitive Financier Robert Vesco evade a massive fraud investigation in return for a secret $200,000 contribution to Nixon's 1972 campaign.

H.R. HALDEMAN, 47. As Nixon's stern chief of staff, the former California advertising executive once noted on a memo returned to a White House aide: "I'll approve of whatever will work and am concerned with results—not methods." The most formidable guardian of Nixon's Oval Office, Haldeman curtly and coldly ran a staff that protected the President against unwanted intrusions and unappreciated advice. Haldeman is charged with conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and three counts of perjury in his public testimony before Senator Sam Ervin's select Senate committee.

JOHN D. EHRLICHMAN, 48. Formerly Nixon's chief adviser on domestic affairs, the outgoing and often witty Ehrlichman has acidly termed Congressmen "a bunch of clowns" and argued that a President has the right to simply "set aside" anything Congress did that was "not in the public interest." A Seattle attorney who specialized in municipal and land-use law, he is charged with conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and three counts of lying to the grand jury and the FBI.

CHARLES W. COLSON, 42. A tough and wily political infighter, Colson was Nixon's special counsel, concentrating on soliciting labor support and punishing the President's political enemies. Colson's footprints kept appearing at the fringes of the Watergate scandal, although he insisted loudly that he would never be indicted—and for many months investigators seemed persuaded. Yet Colson, who once declared that "I would do anything that Richard Nixon asks me to do," and now professes to have "found God" in a religious conversion, was indicted for conspiracy and obstruction of justice.

ROBERT C. MARDIAN, 50. A wealthy Phoenix lawyer-contractor and a Western coordinator of Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign, Mardian was one of the architects of Nixon's Southern strategy on school integration while general counsel for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Rigidly conservative, Mardian later showed much anti-radical fervor but little savvy as chief of the Justice Department's Internal Security Division. Disappointed when he did not earn a higher position in the Nixon Administration, he said with foresight about the Nixon camp: "When things are going great they ignore me, but when things get screwed up, they lean on me." He was indicted for conspiracy.

GORDON C. STRACHAN, 30. A former junior member of the Nixon-Mitchell law firm in New York, Strachan was Haldeman's chief aide in the White House. He later became general counsel of the U.S. Information Agency as part of a White House effort to exert greater control over the federal bureaucracy by