THE HEARINGS: Mitchell: What Nixon Doesn't Know...

Caught by the piercing television cameras in the Senate Caucus Room, the two John Mitchells seemed too much of a contrast to be reconcilable:

The first Mitchell was the familiar figure of old, the nation's serenely confident chief lawman and the President's top political strategist. The voice was firm, the denials of personal wrongdoing scathing ("a palpable, damnable lie"), the humor bitingly heavy (on the Watergate conspirators: "It would have been simpler to have shot them all").

The second Mitchell, harshly questioned about his judgment and his truthfulness, seemed shrunken and subdued. His words slurred, his eyes watered, his face was flushed. This Mitchell, out of power and in eventual danger of being jailed, was bitter, muttering into the microphones: "It's a great trial being conducted up here, isn't it?"

Millions of viewers might admire, however grudgingly, the bravado of the first Mitchell, and sympathize at least fleetingly with the pained posture of the second. Yet as the former Attorney General undoubtedly would agree, those sentiments do not really matter. What was of possible historical consequence was whether Americans believed the insistent protestations of both these Mitchells about the innocence of Richard Nixon in all of the many Watergate-related crimes and deceptions.

Frail Peg. Where the President was concerned, said Mitchell, his policy in effect had been "speak no evil," and the President had been quite ready to see and hear no evil. Mitchell claimed that he withheld what he knew from the President in their many conversations. Mitchell also claimed to be convinced, not by anything the President said but by what was not said in those conversations, that no one else, including John Dean, had told the President who had been involved in the Watergate planning or its cover-up until at least nine months after the arrests at Democratic national headquarters. Moreover, despite the mounting public furor over the scandal, only once did Nixon even ask his close confidant what he knew about Watergate—in a phone conversation three days after the bungled burglary on June 17, 1972. Mitchell testified that in this conversation he merely apologized to the President for "not knowing what the hell had happened, and I should have kept a stronger hand on what the people were doing" at the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, which Mitchell then headed.

That was a frail peg on which to hang the contention that Nixon did not know. Obviously, the Mitchell version runs counter to the voluminous testimony by Dean, Mitchell's onetime protégé at the Justice Department and the President's fired counsel. Dean had testified that beginning on Sept. 15, 1972, he and Nixon had discussed efforts to "contain" indictments to the seven low-level arrested Watergate wiretappers, offers of Executive clemency and payments of money to keep these men quiet, an attempt to influence a federal judge to delay Democratic civil suits until after Nixon's reelection, and ways to keep information from two impending congressional investigations.