THE CRISIS: Another Week of Strain

For Richard Nixon, the inauguration of Gerald Ford as Vice President was only a brief part of an unusually frenetic week. In a burst of activity, the President discussed energy and economic policies with members of his staff. He chatted briefly with congressional leaders about his personal finances. He appointed nine new ambassadors. Several evenings, he slipped unannounced out of the White House—showing up at dinner with Daughter Julie and David Eisenhower, with Republican Chairman George Bush and with a group of Administration appointees.

He presided at a White House dinner, the first in two months, for visiting Rumanian President Nicolae Ceausescu. The next evening Nixon was in a rare jovial mood at a reception at the Rumanian embassy. He patted shoulders and threw mock punches. Urging Federal Reserve Board Chairman Arthur Burns to visit Rumania, Nixon declared: "You visit there one time and look at the girls. Rumanian girls are pretty." Then he was spotted by Secretary Rose Mary Woods, who exclaimed: "Doesn't he look well?"

On the contrary, the President at times was drawn and pale; lines of tension creased his face, and he seemed barely able to control the quaver in his voice. The source of strain was his continuing Watergate woes, particularly his staffs inability to explain how a mysterious hum obliterated 18 minutes of his conversation with former Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman on June 20, 1972, three days after the Watergate breakin. Even close White House aides conceded that the gap on the tape had seriously damaged his efforts to restore public confidence. Said one assistant:

"Somehow we've got to get this tape issue clarified or forgotten." It is not likely to be forgotten.

Federal Judge John J. Sirica heard more testimony about the tape from former White House Aide Lawrence M.

Higby, Chief of Staff Alexander Haig and Secretary Woods. She clung to her story that she may have accidentally erased "four to five minutes" of the tape during a phone call but not the entire segment. After hinting that he was not convinced by her testimony, Sirica urged Miss Woods to "tell everything you know." She responded: "If I could offer any idea, any proof, any knowledge, of how the 18-minute gap happened, there is no one on earth who would rather.

I'm doing the best I can."

"Sinister Force." On the stand, Haig told Sirica that at one point White House aides briefly entertained "the devil theory" to explain the gap. They wondered whether "some sinister force," an unexplained outside source of energy, had been applied to the tape. But Haig offered no suggestion as to just what he might mean by this James Bond or science-fiction scenario. He clearly continued the White House effort to put the responsibility on Rose Mary Woods.

Haig said that he believed she was responsible for the entire gap. When he left the courtroom, he told reporters:

"I've known women who thought they talked on the telephone for five minutes and actually talked for an hour."