Executive Privilege

NOW THAT PRESIDENT NIXON has accepted responsibility -- but not blame --for the Watergate affair, he has adopted a see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil attitude. He implores the American people to overlook a few mindless campaign shenanigans, so he can return to the sanctity of the Oval Office, unbowed and untarnished.

But if President Nixon is blind and deaf to the evil which permeates his administration, the American people are not. The day-by-day developments of the scandal, while not all screaming banner-headline material, suggest an underlying insidiousness that the President will be unable to ignore when public hearings begin next Tuesday.

Nixon is not foolish enough to close his eyes or ears to the burgeoning scandal, but he has tried his damndest to close the eyes and ears of the American people. Last Friday, he issued a "speak-no-evil" directive, reinvoking the policy of executive privilege which he had clamped on his aides during the first nine months of the Watergate investigation.

When the President announced that "major new developments" had come to his attention, the muzzles were temporarily removed. But only four days after he told a nationwide television audience that he would prevent any attempt to impede justice, President Nixon threw up the biggest roadblock of all: executive privilege.

The term executive privilege applies primarily to personal conversations held with the President on matters which involve national security. What actually constitutes national security is debatable, and is presently being debated at the Ellsberg and Russo trial in Los Angeles.

In the case of the Watergate investigation, however, Nixon seeks, through executive privilege, to protect himself and his administration rather than the nation at large. He could constitutionally bind and gag his present and former associates in cases of security, but he will find it difficult to silence his critics and impossible to silence the Senate investigating committee of Sam Ervin (D-N.C.).

It is conceivable that at a closed session of the Watergate grand jury. White House officials could refuse to answer questions on the grounds of executive privilege, although it is inconceivable that any question of national security could enter into an investigation of the illegal "third-rate" bugging of Democratic National Headquarters. But it is even more inconceivable that Ervin and his committee, before a national television audience, will be satisfied if Ehrlichman, Haldeman and the entire cast of Watergate characters obstruct the committee's attempt to bring out the facts about the bugging. When Ervin -- and the country -- demands to know if the Presidency was used for espionage purposes, or to cover up, it will not be sufficient to reply, "I refuse to answer on the basis of executive privilege."

Through the last few harrowing weeks, the President has repeatedly reminded the public that these men -- particularly Haldeman and Ehrlichman -- believed in the action they took. There is no assurance that Nixon did not also believe in the espionage as well. Somehow, misguided idealism is less comforting than intentional wrongdoing and is the first giant step to a total disregard for civil liberties.

Nixon seems prepared to use executive privilege as a presidential umbrella for sheltering his misguided aides. But there is an underlying suspicion that he is using it to protect the American system from a constitutional disaster. The American system needs no favors from Richard Nixon, and the American people need no protection from the truth.