Nixon Under Siege

...In addition, by going on the attack, the President is, it appears, trying to intimidate the networks from using their considerable, albeit largely untapped, resources to investigate the seamier aspects of his Presidency...

...But it is highly doubtful that this pretense of mastery in international diplomacy is a strong enough reed to save a President widely perceived as having bobbed beyond the shores of legitimacy in the conduct of his office...

...The main threat to the Nixon Presidency, though, is the 38-member House Judiciary Committee...

...the equally independent Elliot Richardson and William Ruckelshaus backed up that guarantee...

...When fighting erupted last October 6, the President was immediately informed by reliable intelligence sources that the USSR had instigated the Arab attack, and that its objective was a military defeat of Israel...

...As a result, the United States was eventually compelled to send massive arms shipments to Israel to counter the Soviet-Arab thrust...

...The response of Cox's Army will be to "go public," i.e., to hold press conferences and air fresh charges of a cover-up, thus feeding the impeachment fire...

...As a result, Rebozo flew to Washington, checked into the guest suite at the White House and let Richard Nixon know what he thought Cox was trying to do to them both...

...What happened next, it appears from here, is that the Israelis breached the truce in an effort to secure their position, causing the Soviets to flex their military muscles...

...Besides playing the foreign policy theme, he charges that his accusers are up to the usual partisan games...

...To an extent that Nixon never appreciated, however, Archibald Cox, who hounded him, also guaranteed his ability to function as President...

...According to this line of thought, the USSR could find itself in the unhappy position of a holdup artist who happened to choose as his victim a well-armed man who has been told by his doctor that he only has a few months to live...

...Washington-USA NIXON UNDER SIEGE BY ANDREW J. GLASS Washington If one reads him correctly, Richard Nixon would like us to believe he should be allowed to remain in office because he has looked Leonid Brezhnev in the eye without blinking and is therefore our best insurance against the threat of a nuclear war...

...For another, Nixon's own performance during the crisis does not exactly merit unqualified approval...

...It is fair to say that the prospective reintroduction of Soviet troops, this time in the guise of a truce-keeping force, did not induce a warm feeling at meetings of the National Security Council...

...Kissinger, apparently, has no real faith in the viability of the center in American life...

...Public opinion, certainly, is no obstacle: People are especially suspicious about Nixon's tax shelters and subsidized houses—among the areas that Cox was delving into when he got the ax —and the forced Agnew resignation has shown them that removing an official of the Executive branch does not necessarily cause political trauma...

...In fact, the most critical change on Capitol Hill is that conservative Republicans are now attracted to the idea of life without Richard Nixon—provided the safe and sane Gerry Ford takes over...

...To achieve the latter, the President will probably employ salami tactics, picking off members of the prosecution team one by one...

...But was this adequate reason to proclaim, as Nixon did, that the country was faced with its "most difficult crisis" since Nikita Khrushchev sought to supply Cuba with missiles 11 years ago...

...It cares less about who the new special prosecutor will be than securing his complete independence...

...This, of course, is precisely what Archibald Cox was doing before he was fired...

...In private talks, Kissinger had even suggested that the Soviet presence in Egypt was a stabilizing influence, given the number of hot-heads in the Egyptian Army...

...The self-serving sponsorship of this theory should alone be sufficient to render it suspect, for one might just as plausibly argue that Watergate has made the Russians careful, and that whatever restraint they have displayed in their Mideast adventures is grounded in the fear that Nixon, with little to lose and much to gain, is apt to behave recklessly should he be offered the opportunity...

...But Cox was more interested in the proposition that the White House was being run as a kind of Mafia operation...

...alliances in Europe—in the crunch, the Europeans pursued what they saw as their own interests, attempting to straddle a nonexistent fence...

...To that end, it is willing to suspend all sorts of transactions with the White House (including the confirmation of a new attorney general) until it is sure that the matter is settled...

...Brezhnev sent a note telling Nixon, in effect, to keep your boys in line or face the consequences...

...As he sees matters, only an imperfect Richard Nixon stands astride the floodgates, barring the tyranny of the Right...

...Why, to return to the foreign arena, did Kissinger equate the notion of a Soviet-American Mideast presence, admittedly a poor idea, with an apocalyptic turn in world affairs...

...Nixon may feel that Congress, by refusing to permit him to sit as judge in his own case, is being as unreasonable as Cox was...

...Therefore, likely as not, there will come a time when Nixon discovers, as Agnew has, that a candle can burn for only so long before it goes out...

...A credible U.S...

...It should be added, moreover, that those commentators who in a spirit of fair play have praised Nixon for his handling of the Middle East situation, before citing reasons why he should be impeached, may be giving away too much...

...By its very nature, an impeachment inquiry puts the President in the weakest possible legal position should he try to withhold evidence or witnesses...

...By all accounts, Nixon is making great efforts to relieve the political siege...

...In answer, 2 million American fighting men throughout the world were ordered on alert...

...As is his wont, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger responded more in sorrow than in anger at his October 25 press conference when questioned about the alert and, more generally, about Watergate's effect on international relations...

...Not, one gathers, by accepting the President's resignation...

...If, indeed, the elusive lifeline has snapped between the Chief Executive and the people, probably no amount of maneuvering with Moscow will keep him afloat—although it could be a while before the political waters finally close over him...

...But how would the Secretary of State end this crisis of authority...

...It would seem the White House, as gingerly as possible, seeks to foster press speculation that the Russians will test American resolve so long as the impeachment tide is running...

...But a legislative majority cannot be budged on this issue...

...Nor does Congress shrink from the idea of a successful impeachment any longer...

...Nixon wants to narrow the scope of the coming investigation, but he may not be able to...

...Yet Nixon's personal stake in detente was too heavy to risk that step...

...With the three of them gone, nothing stands in the way of Nixon's demise...

...He would also like to get rid of the bright young lawyers whom Cox recruited, but he may not be able to do that either...

...The dispatch of Russian soldiers to Egypt is hardly a novel proposition...

...For one thing, not enough attention has been paid to the fact that the latest Arab-Israeli war exposed the critical weakness of U.S...

...Most of the intellectual community had turned against the Administration some time ago in the belief that it had overstepped Executive authority and endangered the political equilibrium...

...After all, more than 25,000 Russian "technicians" helped emplace a missile-defense shield along the Suez Canal and they drilled the Egyptian Army and Air Force in modern battle tactics until Anwar el-Sadat threw most of them out of the country last year...

...Their alleged disreputable purpose is to try to undo the results of the 1972 election...

...Another key question still to be worked out is the range of the future inquiry and the fate of Cox's staff, which survived the initial blood-letting almost intact...

...Cox had begun to examine the $100,000 transaction between C. G. ("Bebe") Rebozo and Howard Hughes...

...An even more potent weapon is the documents it holds, and Cox's staff will be discreet only if it believes there is reason to be so...

...But the broad middle in this country is as strong as the Iowa corn, and it has given up on the President, content in its belief that the Republic will survive his passage from the political stage...

...Although Nixon then proceeded to tell the special prosecutor that he must not go to court to seek any more Presidential papers, Cox unfortunately failed to perceive the manifest reasonableness of this request and, regrettably, had to be asked to leave the team...

...One cannot have a crisis of authority in a society for a period of months without paying a price somewhere along the line," he opined...

...policy would have required the toughest possible response to Moscow...

...It has made the judiciary panel the instrument of its resolve...

...And the USSR agreed to a cease-fire only after the Israelis punched a hole through the Egyptian missile shield and surrounded large numbers of enemy troops...

...The committee will pursue the same kind of evidence as Cox did (perhaps from Cox's own files) and sooner or later it will get what it wants...

...A few days before he was ousted...

...The congressional leadership, buttressed by full support from organized labor, has decided that Nixon must go...

...As a warning to the White House, some documents have already found their way to the Senate Watergate Committee, where they are being treated with the reverence anti-Bolsheviks once afforded smuggled Tsarist jewels...