The Watergate Casualties

President Nixon spent this week attempting to make believe that Watergate and its consequences didn't exist--or, at least, that they didn't matter much in the grand scheme of what he likes to describe as the 1972 mandate of the American people.

Nixon faced the nation Monday night--only a few hours after his personal lawyer, Herbert W. Kalmbach, pleaded guilty to two charges stemming from political fundraising--and began his press conference by explaining that the energy crisis was no longer a crisis, but only a problem.

Whether his statement that "there is a better than even chance" there will be no need for gas rationing in the United States this year helped to defer people's minds from the continuing revelations of Watergate is open to question. It did not, however, deter the press.

One reporter asked whether Nixon believed a full trial in the Senate would be beneficial in setting the Watergate questions once and for all. "A full impeachment trial in the Senate comes only...when the House determines that there is an impeachable offense," Nixon said. "I do not believe that the Congress will reach that conclusion."

He added that he does "not expect to be impeached," and reiterated once again that he has no intentions of resigning. That he does not want to be impeached he made even clearer: During his conference, he stated that he believes only "a criminal offense on the part of the president is a requirement for impeachment"--a definition almost in direct opposition to the conclusions reached earlier by the House Judiciary Committee.

Nixon smiled at a reporter's question on his feelings about the loss of Vice President Gerald R. Ford's traditionally Republican seat in Michigan's fifth district, in a race that featured Nixon as its primary issue. The one-man attack, he stated, had been used before, had failed, and would fail again in this year's congressional elections. Only the nervous edge on his voice gave a suspicious ring to the response.

But it was only after the grand jury for the trial of former Atty. Gen. John N. Mitchell and former Commerce Secretary Maurice H. Stans was safely sequestered in New York, waiting to hear testimony on influence peddling, that the most serious charges came forth.

The Watergate grand jury, which had been investigating the case for about 20 months, returned seven indictments against some of Nixon's top aides--and dealt the heaviest blow to date to the president himself.

Indicted in the cover-up of the Watergate burglary were H. R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman, Nixon's former chief of staff and top domestic policy adviser; Mitchell; Charles W. Colson, former White House special counsel; Robert C. Mardian, former assistant attorney general; Gordon C. Strachan, a former aide; and Kenneth W. Parkinson, an attorney to Nixon's reelection finance committee.

The charges include perjury, lying, and conspiracy, exercised "for the purpose of concealing and causing to be concealed the identities of the persons who were responsible for, participated in and had knowledge of the activities which were the subject of the investigation and trial" of the seven Watergate burglars.

Although no charges were made directly against Nixon, the grand jury alleged that Haldeman lied to the Senate Watergate Committee when he testified this summer that Nixon said "it would be wrong" to meet demands from the Watergate defendants for $1 million in hush money. Many observers considered the charges the most serious implication of the president thus far in the Watergate matter.

What remains to be seen is the content of the sealed envelope given to Chief District Judge John J. Sirica with the indictments yesterday. Speculation has abounded in Washington that the documents tell the untold about the president's possible involvement, and that if forwarded to the House Judiciary Committee they may fan the flames of impeachment even faster.

Far from forcing Nixon's hand, yesterday's action brought no comment on the Haldeman charges and a confident statement that "the indictments indicate that the judicial process is finally moving toward the resolution of the matter. It is the president's hope that the trials will move quickly to a just solution."

But Sen. Lowell P. Weicker (R-Conn.), a member of the Senate Watergate Committee, said he stood by an earlier statement: "The significance is not in the acts of men breaking, entering and bugging the Watergate, but in the acts of men who almost stole America."