The Nation: Pointed Questions for the President

• Share

Unable to arrange a face-to-face meeting with Richard Nixon, the Senate Watergate committee in January authorized its members to send written inquiries to the President. Last week Republican Lowell Weicker, one of the committee's most persistent interrogators, became the first to do so. His questions, supplemented by numerous citations from presidential statements and public testimony, pinpoint weaknesses in Nixon's position on Watergate. It is unlikely, however, that the President will reply. Among the most pointed of Weicker's eleven queries:

When John Ehrlichman discussed Executive clemency with you in July 1972, prior to any indictment, trial or conviction, why didn 't you ask how such a matter could possibly relate to what was being called a "third-rate burglary "?

As Weicker notes, Nixon himself concedes that he discussed Executive clemency for the arrested Watergate burglars with Ehrlichman in July 1972. Nixon said he told Ehrlichman that "under no circumstances" could clemency be considered. But why did the topic arise at all if, as the White House was claiming at the time, the crime was insignificant and no one close to Nixon was in any way involved? Nixon said the subject came up "as a result of news reports that clemency might become a factor." But, says Weicker, no news stories referring to clemency at that time have been found.

You claim that on March 21, 1973, you "personally ordered those conducting the investigation to get all the facts and report them directly to me," and yet nobody has testified to receiving such an order. Has somebody committed perjury?

Weicker notes that the FBI'S Gray, the then Attorney General Richard Kleindienst and the Justice Department's then Criminal Division Chief Henry Petersen all denied in their Senate Watergate testimony that any orders for an investigation had come to them at that time from the President. Ehrlichman, according to Nixon, did not begin investigating Watergate until March 29. Since the White House concedes that Dean revealed his own role in the cover-up to Nixon on March 21, he would hardly have been the one to appoint to gather additional facts. Who if anyone, asks Weicker, was ordered to handle a stepped-up investigation?

You heard what you have termed "serious charges" on March 21. When you met as part of your "investigation" with Messrs. Mitchell, Ehrlichman, Haldeman and Dean the next day to "discuss the whole matter," why didn't you seek refutation or corroboration of those charges?

As cited by Weicker, the four participants at that March 22 meeting with Nixon testified that Nixon did not question them about Dean's claim that each was implicated in the coverup. According to H.R. Haldeman, the discussion centered on "approaches to dealing with the situation rather than a review of the facts."

When you learned of Watergate crimes on March 21, the law required you to turn this evidence over "as soon as possible" to a judge or person of civil authority, " not Mr. Dean or Mr. Ehrlichman. Which judge or law-enforcement official did you contact?