Word: clairs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Sony recorder had been disconnected by the Secret Service. Even more important, Nixon Aide Stephen Bull delivered duplicate tapes rather than the originals to the President. After Nixon listened to the tapes, trusted secretaries prepared verbatim transcripts, and, in accordance with Sirica's wishes, copies went to St. Clair...
...Instantly, the stunned St. Clair knew that the contents were devastating to Nixon's defense. The transcripts showed that just six days after the Watergate wiretap-burglary, Nixon was fully aware that Re-Election Campaign Director John Mitchell and two former White House consultants, E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, had been involved-even though Hunt and Liddy had not then been arrested (see box page 18). He was told by Haldeman that "the FBI is not under control," and that agents were tracing money found on the burglars to Nixon's re-election committee...
Reading the transcripts, St. Clair had no doubt about what should be done: they must be released promptly and publicly. He knew that once Jaworski got them under the Supreme Court order, they would eventually become public, if only at the cover-up conspiracy trial of six Nixon aides. He knew that the Senate could acquire them for its probable trial of the President, and he feared that their contents might leak out earlier. Release in any of those forms would look involuntary. That would not only destroy Nixon but it could ruin St. Clair professionally, since he could...
With Haig's backing, St. Clair braced Nixon. Stressing the dire dangers, legal and political, in withholding the damaging information any longer, the lawyer urged its release. Implicit in St. Clair's appeal was the threat that he would have to resign from the Nixon defense if his advice was not taken. Fatalistically, Nixon finally concurred. "What's done is done," he said...
Just how to explain the transcripts publicly was a dilemma. Before the details were worked out, Nixon could conceivably change his mind. In a move that seemed designed to block any such possibility and to assess Congressional reaction, Haig and St. Clair on Friday, Aug. 2, asked the President's ablest defender on the House Judiciary Committee, California's Charles Wiggins, to come to the White House. He had never been in Haig's office before...