The Word from Washington
THE WORD FROM WASHINGTON Will he be impeached? Will he resign? Will he, in the course of his scheduled visit to Moscow, ask Leonid Brezhnev for political asylum? Will he join Robert L. Vesco in his...
...Richard Nixon and the Press...
...The "clarification" followed almost immediately...
...The prospect of a Presidential resignation has receded, in view of Richard Nixon's stiff-armed response to Conservative Senator James Buckley's suggestion, but some respected sources still suggest that resignation will be the President's ultimate recourse...
...Some others, equally respected, are quietly discussing the possible application of the Twenty-fifth Amendment, Section Three...
...Suppose you are the director of one of the United States Information Service's overseas libraries, and that you must select some books that will give foreign readers an informed (and, preferably, sympathetic) view of the United States...
...As Truman Capote once remarked, "A boy has to hustle his book...
...Next year, when Congress and the country have calmed down, Nixon declares himself recovered and resumes his office in time to preside over the celebration of the nation's Bicentennial...
...A puzzling choice only if you have forgotten that James Keogh is also the director of the U.S...
...The hospital filed for bankruptcy the other day...
...What books would you choose...
...According to Squires, who quoted "sources close to the CIA," a CIA consultant, Lee R. Pennington, was dispatched to the home of Watergate burglar James McCord immediately after the famous break-in to help Mrs...
...Representative Passman, who is old enough to know better, has already forgotten Warren Gamaliel Harding...
...The speculation is endless and intense and tedious, for no one really knows...
...McCord burn any and all documents linking McCord with the CIA...
...His weekly sessions with reporters—in themselves a departure from the current Washington mode—have become happenings that divert the press and send tremors through the Department of Justice...
...The Twenty-fifth Amendment deals with Presidential disability, Vice Presidential succession, and related matters...
...Section Three, for those of you who have not memorized it, reads as follows: "Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President...
...Information Agency...
...Justice tempered with mercy—it's a new idea at the Justice Department, but it's catching on fast...
...Second, conservative historian Daniel Boorstin's American Civilization—not our choice, perhaps, but defensible...
...We have been collecting the wit and wisdom of William Saxbe ever since he suggested, when he was still a Republican Senator from Ohio, that President Nixon had taken leave of his senses...
...The scenario being conjured up under Section Three runs approximately along these lines: The President, confronted with the imminent prospect of impeachment, declares himself unable to discharge the powers of his office...
...The Attorney General of the moment, William T. Sax-be, is swiftly establishing his claim to the title once held by Ms...
...he is, perhaps, exhausted by his overseas excursions in pursuit of a generation of peace, or disabled by the strains of transcontinental commuting, or suffering from an inflamed spleen...
...The Democratic Representative Otto E. Passman, a gift to the people of the United States from the people of the Fifth District of Louisiana, is not one to temporize or equivocate on the question of impeachment...
...How swiftly memory fades...
...The incumbent, he believes, is "the greatest President we ever had...
...Kleindienst, who faces a possible perjury charge in connection with his 1972 Congressional testimony on the International Telephone and Telegraph antitrust case, is said to be seeking "an appropriate misdemeanor charge" to which he can plead guilty without incurring a prison sentence or disbarment...
...Well, it may not have happened, but somehow it has the ring of plausibility...
...Is it possible that the Attorney General's own name should be inscribed on his "subversive" list...
...This strikes us as a far-fetched scheme, even for Richard Nixon, and we mention it here for only two reasons: First, because it is being seriously discussed by serious people, and second, because whenever we have, in the past, dismissed some scheme as too farfetched even for Richard Nixon, he has promptly executed it...
...The dominant view is that the House of Representatives will vote to impeach the President, but that the outcome of a Senate trial remains in doubt...
...Here, for your guidance, are the three leading books that are being chosen: First, and understandably, The World Almanac and Book of Facts...
...Will he join Robert L. Vesco in his Costa Rican sanctuary...
...Regrettably, we cannot vouch for the accuracy of the following story, which was reported, authoritatively, by Jim Squires of the Chicago Tribune and promptly denied, officially, by a spokesman purporting to speak for the Central Intelligence Agency...
...The Department was compelled to issue a quick "clarification...
...April 30, once set as the deadline for the House Judiciary Committee's impeachment inquiry, is hard upon us, and now there is talk of a new cut-off date in June, or perhaps July...
...His position is etched into the good, gray pages of the Congressional Record: "Mr...
...Speaker," he recently observed, "there are those who are after our President's hide, and who, insofar as I know, have never made one complimentary statement in our President's behalf...
...Last month in this space we mentioned, briefly, President Nixon's speech at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Miami, Florida—an institution that the President hailed as a shining example of free enterprise at its best...
...In their incendiary zeal, they forgot to open the fireplace flue, and the resultant smoke damage was so severe that three rooms had to be repainted...
...There is hardly an anarchist alive or dead who would want to take issue with that formulation...
...One of Attorney General Saxbe's many recent predecessors, Richard G. Kleindienst, is reported at this writing to be engaging in a bit of plea-bargaining with Special Watergate Prosecutor Leon Jaworski...
...Why do the critics have to dwell entirely on pointing out minor deficiencies rather than great accomplishments...
...It is difficult to tell the new disclosures from the old ones...
...A few months back, in his first comment on the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst, Saxbe set off a storm by announcing that if the FBI learned of her whereabouts, "we'd go get her...
...We decided a long time ago that rather than have this power in the hands of individuals or groups, it should be in the hands of the Government...
...Third, Richard Nixon and the Press, an apology for the President by James Keogh...
...Why should not our President be given credit for what he has accomplished in many, many areas which has benefited all Americans...
...More recently, during a rambling discourse on the Attorney General's list of "subversive" organizations, Saxbe felt impelled to offer the observation that during the McCarthy era, "the Jewish intellectual . . . was very enamored of the Communist Party...
...Martha Mitchell as the irrepressible source of this Capital's most ingenious and bizarre quotations...
...The days go by, and so do the new disclosures of tapes and tax rip-offs and campaign contributions...
...Vice President Ford assumes the powers and duties of the Presidency, and a diffident Congress spares the ailing President the embarrassment of further impeachment proceedings...
...Potomacus...
...Representative Passman, who will soon observe his seventy-fourth birthday and has served in the House since 1947, is persuaded that "we have never had a bad President," though he concedes that "some have been better than others...
...The prize item in our collection, from a Saxbe press conference last February 3, is this: "But when you come right down to basic elements of why we have a Government, it's a monopoly on power...
...Squires wrote, "Some CIA employes later paid into a special fund to pay for the repainting, the sources said...
Vol. 38 • May 1974 • No. 5
