All The President — страница 4

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wiretapping. The United States Senate then voted to conduct an investigation of political espionage. During hearings on his nomination to be permanent director of the FBI, L. Patrick Gray revealed that he had given FBI Watergate files to John Dean. His testimony suggested that other top White House aides were involved in confidential activities. In March and April Nixon met with top aides to plan responses to the Gray announcements and to prepare for investigations. Howard Hunt issued a threat to tell about the plumbers’ activities unless he received hush money. $75,000 was advanced to Hunt that night. White House involvement in the Watergate burglary did not become evident until James McCord wrote a letter to Judge Sirica. In this letter McCord explained that he wanted to

disclose the details of Watergate. The letter made charges that witnesses had committed perjury at the trial and that defendants were pressured to plead guilty and remain silent. McCord implicated Dean and Magruder in the break-in. They accused other White House and CRP officials in return. Investigators were told that Mitchell approved the break-in. They also learned that transcripts of conversations taped at the Democratic National Committee Headquarters were given to Gordon Strachan, staff assistant to Haldeman, for delivery to Haldeman. Erlichman ordered the destruction of documents. On April 30, Ehrlichman, Haldeman, and Dean resigned. The White House Tapes Alexander Butterfield, a former White House official, testified in July 1973 that Nixon had taped conversations in his

office. Special Prosecutor Alexander Cox immediately subpoenaed tapes relevant to the investigation. Nixon refused to release them. Judge Sirica directed Nixon to let him hear the tapes. Nixon appealed the order, arguing that a president was excused from judicial orders enforcing subpoenas and that under the concept of executive privilege only he could decide which communications could be disclosed. The U.S. court of appeals upheld Sirica’s decision, but Nixon then proposed that Senator John Stennis (Democrat from Mississippi) listen to the tapes and verify an edited version that Nixon would submit to the grand jury and to the Senate committee. Cox rejected this proposal and Nixon’s order that he make no further attempts to obtain tapes. Attorney General Richardson, having

assured Congress that the prosecutor would be free to pursue the investigation, resigned rather than obey Nixon’s order to fire Cox. On October 20, Nixon dismissed both Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus and Cox. This “Saturday night massacre” ignited a rush of criticism, and triggered serious moves to impeach Nixon. Nixon then agreed to give the tapes to Sirica, and he appointed Leon Jaworski, a Texas attorney, to succeed Cox. Nixon guaranteed that Jaworski would be free of White House control. One shocking disclosure followed another. The White House said that two of the subpoenaed conversations had never been taped. One tape contained an eighteen-minute gap. White House officials and Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods, gave confusing testimony on how the gap

might have occurred. Six court appointed electronics experts said that at least five separate erasures had caused the gap. Many people concluded that someone had deliberately destroyed evidence. On March 1, 1974, seven former aides of the president – Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, Colson, Strachan, Robert Mardian, and Kenneth Parkinson – were indicted for conspiring to botch the Watergate investigation. Colson later pleaded guilty to charges concerning the Ellsberg case and was dismissed of the cover-up charges. Charges against Strachan were dropped. The remaining five went on trial and all but Parkinson were found guilty. Evidence against Nixon, given to Judge Sirica by the grand jury, was turned over by the judge to the House Judiciary Committee, which had begun its

impeachment investigation. When the committee subpoenaed forty-two more tapes, Nixon agreed to release publicly and to the committee the edited transcripts of forty-six conversations. Jaworski asked Sirica to subpoena sixty-four tapes and documents. Nixon refused to honor the subpoena, and Jaworski took the issue to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court rejected Nixon’s claim that he had absolute authority to withhold material from the prosecutor, and ordered him to obey the subpoena. Nixon finally did. On July 29 and 30 1974, the House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment. The first one said that the president knowingly covered-up the crimes of Watergate. The second said that he used Government Agencies to violate the Constitution of the United States. The