THE CRISIS: Nixon Presses His Counterattack

Once more a presidential counterattack on Watergate was under way. For no less than the 13th time since the scandal began to unfold eight months ago, Richard Nixon vowed to disclose all of the facts and put the sorry affair to rest. After a blitz of nine White House meetings and two public appearances, he had shed little new light on the controversy. But he had emerged, however belatedly, out of isolation and boldly entered the public arena, where the fate of his presidency will be determined.

Nixon tried manfully to assuage the doubts of 21 Republican Party leaders, 220 G.O.P. members of Congress, and 46 generally sympathetic Democratic legislators. He drew a rousing ovation from 3,000 friendly members of the National Association of Realtors when he declared: "As far as the President of the United States is concerned, he has not violated his trust and he isn't going to violate it now." He took on the tough televised questions of news executives at the Associated Press Managing Editors convention in Florida. Through it all, the President managed to make one point clear: he intends to fight to keep his job.

Although visibly nervous and erratic in his pronunciation and syntax, the President used his hour-long press conference in a hotel at Florida's Disney World for a bravura performance. Forcefully he repeated his earlier explanations of various aspects of the entire affair, including his nonexistent tapes, his large tax deductions, his personal finances and his dealings with dairy producers. If there was little new in this, it was extraordinary to hear the President declare: "The people have to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I am not a crook. I have earned everything I've got." He had "never profited from public service," Nixon said. "And in all my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice."

No Back-Up. Scrappily and sometimes humorously defending himself, Nixon said that many of the improprieties in his 1972 campaign occurred because "I was frankly too busy trying to do the nation's business to run politics." He still felt that his departed aides John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman "were dedicated, fine public servants" who will "come out all right" when criminal investigations are complete. He assailed the injustice of a situation in which "they have already been convicted in the minds of millions of Americans by what happened before a Senate committee."In an embarrassing slip of the tongue, Nixon declared: "Both men ... are guilty until I have evidence that they are not guilty."