Nation: That Mishandled Marston Affair

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On Nov. 4, the same day Baker signed an immunity order requested by Marston to aid him in his investigation, Eilberg telephoned Carter to urge that Marston be fired. As the President recounted it, Eilberg offered no reason and Carter did not ask; the System was at work. Carter thought so little of the matter that days passed before he got around to calling Attorney General Griffin Bell about it. A White House telephone operator caught up with Bell in the Washington Brooks Brothers outlet and put him through to the President. Carter's message: there was local Democratic pressure to get rid of that Republican Marston in Philly. See to it.

Carter's credibility troubles began when he professed to remember none of this at the start of his Jan. 12 news conference. In reply to the first question on the subject, he said that replacing Marston was Bell's concern, "and I've not interfered in it at all." Lie—or memory lapse—No. 1.

Then Carter said: "I've not discussed the case with the Attorney General." Lie —or memory lapse—No. 2.

A reporter indicated that the press knew about Eilberg's call. Carter blandly acknowledged that, yes, the Congressman had been in touch with him, but only after the President had jogged Bell into action on Marston—which, of course, contradicted Carter's claims that he had not interfered at all or talked with Bell about the matter. Lie—or memory lapse—No. 3. (This Carter emendation was contradicted when Bell, in giving his version of his Brooks Brothers conversation with Carter, said that the President had specifically mentioned Eilberg's inquiry into Marston's status.)

Carter also claimed ignorance of Eilberg's troubles: "As far as any investigation of members of Congress, however, I'm not familiar with that at all, and it was never mentioned to me." That, by Carter's own admission last week, also turned out not to be so. Lie No. 4—or perhaps a clumsy and misleading effort to separate what he knew in November at the time of the calls from what he later found out.

Carter's knowledge of the Eilberg investigation emerged when the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility requested affidavits on the matter from eleven Justice Department employees, plus a letter from the President. Carter wrote that he had heard of the Eilberg inquiry "a few minutes before the press conference" from his congressional liaison, Frank Moore. (That was tardy staff work: the Marston probe had been in the Philadelphia Inquirer two days before the press conference.) The affidavits produced another contradiction: Baker said he had told his boss, Criminal Division Head Benjamin Civiletti, about the Eilberg matter; Civiletti could not remember being told. In any case, nobody told Bell or Carter at the time, perhaps because Marston had not made it seem very important and almost certainly because Baker (and perhaps Civiletti) did not think it very important.