THE CRISIS: Nixon Presses His Counterattack

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Nixon offered a strangely oblique defense—or nondefense—of his former Attorney General John Mitchell and his failure ever to ask Mitchell what he knew about the Watergate wiretapping operation. "I had every reason to believe that if he were involved, if he had any information to convey, that he would tell me," Nixon said. But then Nixon suggested: "Looking back, maybe I should have cross-examined him and said, 'John, did you do it?' " In another unusual remark, Nixon noted that in order to save fuel he had not brought the usual back-up aircraft to Florida, and added: "I don't need a back-up plane. If this one goes down, it goes down —then they don't have to impeach."

While declaring that "the man at the top must take responsibility," Nixon spread blame broadly for the present national turmoil over Watergate. He criticized Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor whom he had fired, for taking so long to indict or clear former Nixon associates of criminal charges—ignoring the fact that his own legal fight to protect his tapes caused much of the delay. He blamed his inaudible or nonexistent tapes partly on the inadequacies of the "lapel mikes" and "little Sony" recorders used in the White House, explaining, "This was no Apollo system."

He said he had taken a tax deduction of some $500,000 for his vice-presidential papers at the suggestion of former President Lyndon Johnson, and he declared: "I will be glad to have the papers back and I will pay the tax, because I think they are worth more than that." He had raised dairy price supports, he insisted, not because of large contributions from dairy producers but because "Congress put a gun to our heads." Democrats in Congress, he said, were demanding even higher support prices. So he had acted to ensure a lesser raise.

Asked whether he still believed in "absolute executive privilege," Nixon said that he had voluntarily turned over large numbers of documents for investigation but said he still had "a responsibility to protect the presidency" by assuring confidentiality of White House advice. He again cited the instance of President Jefferson's supplying information for the trial of Aaron Burr—and again had his history wrong.* Nixon promised to provide detailed written refutations of the various allegations made against him.

Buying Time. The week of whirlwind activity obviously bought Nixon more time in his uphill struggle to regain his party's and his nation's confidence. Yet he also reopened the self-inflicted wounds of the damaging Saturday Night Massacre at the Justice Department. He accused a foremost symbol of rectitude in his Administration, resigned Attorney General Elliot Richardson, of lying about his role in that showdown. And he was sharply, if indirectly, reprimanded by his continuing nemeses in the legal struggle: the federal courts. These setbacks were at least partly offset by his week-long demonstration of self-control and mental agility, which eased some of the mainly unspoken but widely held concern about his emotional stability.