WATERGATE: Moving in Committee and Court

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Doar and the committee's Republican counsel, Albert Jenner, last week gave the committee an outline of the procedure they would like to follow in the inquiry. By about May 1 the staff would complete a book of possible charges against the President, citing specific facts from the evidence the staff has acquired. With each such charge, a list of supporting documents, tapes, transcripts and testimony will be given. Any committee member could use this list to gain access to specific evidence. The aim of the procedure would be to minimize the likelihood of premature disclosure of the material.

The Rodino staff would then hold a series of briefings for the committee on the significance of this evidence. The members would be free to quiz both Doar and Jenner, perhaps basing their questions on their personal examination of the tapes and documents. The staff hopes that at this stage no witnesses would be called, since most key Watergate figures have already testified before various grand juries and Senate committees. Any member of the committee would have the right, however, to ask that particular witnesses be called. If approved by majority vote, a subpoena for such an appearance would be issued. These staff briefings, it is estimated, would last about six weeks. Whether they would be public has not been decided. This proposed procedure is aimed at a speedy presentation of the evidence. Also, it would avoid any immediate determination on whether Nixon would be represented through his counsel in the early stages of the inquiry—a demand by St. Clair that has split the committee along party lines. But committee Democrats appear ready to yield to St. Clair's insistence that he be permitted to question witnesses if they are called—not as a matter of right but to preserve an attitude of fairness.

As the impeachment inquiry moved forward, there were other developments in another busy Watergate week:

¶ After only two days of testimony and a surprisingly long two days of jury deliberation, the staff of Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski narrowly won the first case that it has brought to trial. Dwight Chapin, 33, Nixon's former appointments secretary, was convicted on two counts of lying to a grand jury about a White House-directed campaign of political sabotage in the 1972 presidential race. He was found guilty of perjury when he claimed that he had not discussed the distribution of campaign literature with Donald Segretti, who has just completed four months in prison for creating and spreading campaign materials defaming Democratic candidates. Segretti, who testified as a Government witness against Chapin, had admitted issuing on Democratic Candidate Edmund Muskie's stationery a phony release in which two other Democratic candidates, Hubert Humphrey and Henry Jackson, were falsely accused of sexual misconduct. Segretti also admitted distributing on Humphrey stationery the false information that Democratic Candidate Shirley Chisolm had been treated in a mental institution.