The Presidency: Memories of a Prosecutor

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Leon Jaworski knew Presidents. He was in a White House bedroom one day when Lyndon Johnson disrobed, and the Texas lawyer beheld the Emperor without a stitch on. Later, as president-elect of the American Bar Association in 1971, he met with Nixon for an hour. "Nixon was eager to discuss matters and be of help," recalls Jaworski. "I can see Ehrlichman yet, sitting right next to him taking notes on a yellow pad." It was a good meeting.

At John Connally's ranch the next year, Jaworski was one of the Texas dignitaries asked over to meet Nixon. By then Jaworski was president of the A.B.A. "When are you going to stop putting all those liberals on the court?" asked Nixon. Jaworski pondered the remark, decided it did not make sense and pushed it to the back of his mind. Then came the day last year when Nixon's chief of staff Alexander Haig called and asked him to be the special Watergate prosecutor. Jaworski hesitated. Haig sent a plane for him. The next morning Jaworski was again in the White House. Haig agreed to his conditions: total freedom of action and safeguards against dismissal. Jaworski accepted. "Don't you want to go in and talk to the President?" asked Haig. Jaworski's instincts recoiled. He was in a new world. He told Haig no. This temperate man, son of a Polish immigrant, had been given the job that would ultimately lead to deposing the President. There has been no confrontation of its kind in history.

Jaworski came to Washington alone and took a double suite at the Jefferson Hotel. His office, four blocks away, was a cramped, bare-walled cubicle with the curtains pulled to thwart snoopers. He walked unrecognized from hotel to office, a single figure among Washington's masses. Across McPherson Square and down two blocks was the White House, floodlighted, guarded, crawling with people and heavy with the trappings of power.

Jaworski never saw Nixon again in the flesh. He went to the White House many times to see Haig and Nixon Attorney James St. Clair. The visits were brief, cloaked missions. Haig would politely lead Jaworski into the Map Room, a dim, mellow place on the ground floor so named because Franklin Roosevelt charted the progress of World War II there.

These were meetings of protest against Jaworski's demands for tapes and documents. "We thought you had all you needed," Haig would say. "But you want more, more. When does it end?" There was never anger. But there were the hard edges of power in collision: Haig for the presidency, Jaworski for the rule of law. "You know there is no such thing as enough," Jaworski would reply. "I am not going to make agreements, I do not know what all we will need." Three times Haig "wondered" if Jaworski should meet with Nixon. Each time the lawyer stopped it with polite language. "I would prefer not to. I would have to disclose such a meeting. Then there would be speculation."