A Fateful Trial Closes a Sorry Chapter
A former Attorney General of the U.S.: guilty. One of his top assistants: guilty. A President's once powerful chief of staff: guilty. The same President's highest adviser on domestic affairs: guilty. In effect and in absentia, the disgraced and deposed President himself: guilty.
By the time the results of the Watergate conspiracy trial interrupted the escapist football reveries of a scandal-weary public on New Year's Day, the essential details of the nation's worst siege of politically motivated criminality had long been distressingly familiar. Yet the soundly based judgment of a Washington federal jury carried a ring of authority and finality that seems certain to sound a warning into the future. The message from the jury of twelve citizens was clear: no matter how powerful their position, officials entrusted with shaping and enforcing the nation's laws cannot violate those laws without risking personal retribution.
Bad News. News of the impending verdict had galvanized defendants, attorneys and reporters waiting in Washington's U.S. Courthouse. Quickly they filled austere Court Room No. 2, in which Federal Judge John J. Sirica had presided over 61 days of legal argument, testimony and the playing of 34 tapes since the trial opened on Oct. 1. Sirica entered the room at 4:47 p.m. and faced the jury foreman, John Hoffar, a pale, retired superintendent of park police. Did the jurors have a verdict? "Yes, they have," Hoffar replied impassively.
Hoffar submitted a sealed manila envelope. Sirica directed Court Clerk James Capitanio to read its contents aloud. The reading was swift and spare. First the name of each defendant. Then the number of each count charged against each man in the indictment. After each count, the terse declaration: "Guilty" or "Not guilty." For four of the five defendants, the news was devastatingly identical: guilty on all counts.
John Mitchell's face flushed. As Attorney General, he had been the highest law-enforcement official in Richard Nixon's stern law-and-order Administration; he had been the President's most intimate political adviser and head of the Nixon re-election committee. Now he stood convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and three counts of lying to a grand jury and the Senate Watergate committee. Maximum possible prison term: 25 years.
H.R. Haldeman's expression hardened. Once Nixon's briskly efficient Oval Office guardian and a superpatriot who had publicly equated the acts of Viet Nam War protesters with treason, Haldeman was also pronounced guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and three charges of giving false testimony. Maximum sentence: 25 years.
John Ehrlichman expressed no emotion. The former director of the Domestic Council under Nixon, he was found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and two counts of lying. Possible maximum sentence: 20 years.
Robert Mardian's shoulders shook. He slumped into a chair, held his head in his hands and seemed to be sobbing. As chief of the Internal Security Division of the Justice Department under Mitchell, he had supervised some of the Nixon Administration's unsuccessful conspiracy cases against political dissidents . Now he was convicted of conspiracy. Maximum possible term: five years.
Tortuous Trail. The only good news was reserved for Kenneth Parkinson, a mild-mannered Washington attorney. Hired by the Nixon re-election committee to defend it against a civil suit brought by the Democratic National Committee, which had been burglarized at the Watergate, he was acquitted of the two charges against him: conspiracy and obstruction of justice. His eyes were moist with tears of relief as his attorney, Jacob Stein, slapped him on the back.
After Sirica thanked the jurors for their service and urged them to preserve the dignity of the judicial system by not disclosing what had transpired in their deliberations, Mitchell graciously reached over to seize Parkinson's hand and offer: "Congratulations." Although clearly shaken, Mitchell consoled his crestfallen attorney, William Hundley, whispering, "Don't take it too hard." From a second-row seat, Mardian's wife Dorothy stuck out her tongue at both judge and jury and made a "razzberry" sound.
So ended a series of criminal investigations in which three determined special prosecutors—Archibald Cox, Leon Jaworski and Henry Ruth—had exposed a tortuous trail of official deceit at the highest levels of the Nixon Administration. The cover-up that came apart under the prosecutors' attack had been undertaken to conceal the origins of the electronic eavesdropping of the Democratic National Committee offices on June 17, 1972. Shredding evidence, buying the silence of hired burglars with promises of clemency and secret payments of cash, lying both publicly and under oath, abusing the FBI, CIA and Justice Department—all those tactics were involved. The aim was first to ensure the re-election of Nixon in 1972, later to keep him in power.
Ghostly Presence. Technically, Nixon was not on trial—he had, after all, been pardoned by Gerald Ford. But he had also been named a co-conspirator by the original Watergate grand jury. He had not been indicted only because Jaworski had held that impeachment rather than court prosecution was the legally sound way to deal with criminal activity by a sitting President. Too ill to testify, although subpoenaed by Ehrlichman, Nixon remained a ghostly presence throughout the trial.
The prosecution's task in conspiracy cases is usually difficult. It must show that each defendant knowingly entered the conspiracy, even though there may never have been a precisely expressed agreement to do so. Then prosecutors must prove that one or more of the defendants committed at least one overt act in pursuit of the conspiracy's aims. Each act need not be a crime if taken alone. In this case, the grand jury had listed 45 overt acts to back up the 17 charges leveled against the five men. In the end, only the two counts against Parkinson were rejected by the trial jury.
After the jury of nine women and three men began its deliberations, it quickly reached unanimity on Mitchell. "Everybody knew he was guilty," declared one juror, Mrs. Thelma L. Wells. There were diverse opinions about the four other defendants. But all the jurors soon agreed on the guilt of Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Mardian. "It went along quite smoothly," said Mrs. Wells. "We didn't have to fight. To convince each one, we went back and heard the tapes and read the transcripts."
The most difficult job was determining the fate of Parkinson. All twelve jurors felt that he had not done anything to obstruct justice. But two thought that he had joined the conspiracy. Most of New Year's Day was spent resolving this dispute. Finally it was Parkinson's polite manner and wholesome appearance that proved to be persuasive. "We looked at Parkinson and wondered why he was there," said one juror. "He didn't carry the expression of a criminal on his face. He seemed to have done the least. He seemed not to want to get involved."
Juror Wells was most impressed by the prosecutors. "The Government did it beautifully," she said. "The witnesses, the tapes, Mr. Neal, the other prosecutors—all played a part." To another juror, Mrs. Ruth Gould, the testimony of John Dean was "impressive." Yet the jurors also felt some compassion for the convicted men. "I was sad for them," said Mrs. Wells. "I would have loved to see them all go home as I went home —free. Personally, I could have forgiven them and given them another chance. But the world wouldn't accept that. These people got into something they couldn't walk out of."
The jury was clearly impressed with the prosecution's strong and well-presented case. Among its specific charges against the major defendants:
MITCHELL. He sat through three meetings at which the illegal eavesdropping at the Democratic headquarters was discussed, and he approved the Watergate break-in at the final meeting. After the arrests at the Watergate, he authorized a false press release denying that Nixon's re-election committee had been involved. He suggested that Magruder burn some logs of intercepted telephone calls. He told Mardian to call Burglar G. Gordon Liddy and have him ask Richard Kleindienst, then the Attorney General, to help get the arrested men out of jail. When the restive burglars later began demanding money, Mitchell told Fred LaRue, his close friend and associate at the Nixon committee, to help arrange the payments. He asked Dean to seek Herbert Kalmbach's aid in raising such funds.
Whatever the eventual results of those appeals, the New Year's Day verdict meant that the nation could now begin to leave Watergate to the historians. However tardily, the courts, the Congress, the press and public had met the challenge of arrogant men at the pinnacle of Government acting unlawfully to preserve and expand their power. More investigations remain , and there could be more revelations of official misconduct. Yet most of the mysteries of Watergate have now been resolved. Most of the corruption has been exposed.
Whether the demands of justice have been fully met, especially in the case of the pardoned President, will long be debated. But certainly for Richard Nixon, as well as for his convicted coconspirators, Watergate has proved a personal disaster. The verdict was a reason for relief rather than jubilation. But it was a fitting way to close a sorry chapter in U.S. history and to begin a new year.
The Cases Still Open
The conviction of four top Nixon aides left plenty of work for Watergate Special Prosecutor Henry S. Ruth Jr. Among the investigations that his office is still pursuing:
> Former Presidential Counsel J. Fred Buzhardt, 50, faces possible indictment for his role in preparing the heavily edited tape transcripts released by Richard Nixon last April 30. There were serious discrepancies between the edited transcripts and the tapes that were eventually released. Buzhardt has insisted that he was solely responsible for editing the transcripts.
> The famous 18½-rninute gap on a tape of a White House conversation between Nixon and H.R. Haldeman on June 20, 1972, still has not been explained. Investigators have narrowed the list of suspects to Nixon, Haldeman, Secretary Rose Mary Woods and onetime Presidential Aide Stephen Bull.
> John Connally is scheduled to go to trial in March on charges of accepting a $10,000 bribe for helping to get a raise in milk-price supports after a dairy cooperative made a big contribution to Nixon's re-election campaign. The Government is also looking into possible violations involving dairymen's contributions to the 1972 presidential campaigns of Democrats Hubert Humphrey and Wilbur Mills.
> Charles G. Rebozo, Nixon's close friend, is under investigation concerning the $50,000 that he allegedly gave to Fred LaRue, a Nixon re-election committee aide, in 1973. Investigators suspect that half the amount may have gone into a "hush money" fund for the Watergate burglars.
> One former Nixon presidential counsel, Edward Morgan, has already pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate tax laws in backdating a deed that gave Nixon's pre-presidential papers to the National Archives and gained him a $576,000 tax deduction. Nixon's former tax lawyer, Frank De Marco, and the appraiser of the papers, Ralph Newman, are also under scrutiny in the papers incident.
> William O. Bittman, once the attorney for Watergate Burglar E. Howard Hunt, may be indicted for his repeated denials to Watergate prosecutors that he had received a memo from Hunt that stated the Watergate burglars' belief that they would receive pardons and support money in return for "maintaining silence."
> Maurice Stans, former finance chairman of the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, is under investigation for his soliciting and handling of donations to the 1972 campaign.
> Armand Hammer, chairman of Occidental Petroleum, is under investigation for a $54,000 contribution to the Nixon campaign illegally channeled through former Montana Governor Tim Babcock.
> International Telephone and Telegraph is still being looked into in connection with a favorable IRS ruling that permitted the conglomerate to acquire the Hartford Fire Insurance Co. in 1969. Federal authorities are also studying the sudden halt in 1972 of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into "insider" trading of ITT stock by company executives.
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