The Great Shark Hunt Part 20

"And I suspect the Congress will respond to the fact that Watergate happened with legislation to a.s.sure that Watergate never happens again. Today the prospects for further restrictions on private campaign financing, full disclosure of the personal finances of the candidates, and public finance of all federal campaigns seem to me better than ever -- and even better than if a new Democratic administration had urged such steps in early 1973. We did urge them in 1972, but it took the Nixon landslide and the Watergate expose to make the point.

"I believe there were great gains that came from the pain of defeat in 1972. We proved a campaign could be honestly financed. We reaffirmed that a campaign could be open in its conduct and decent in its motivation. We made the Democratic party a place for people as well as politicians. And perhaps in losing we gained the greatest victory of all -- that Americans now perceive, far better than a new President could have persuaded them, what is precious about our principles and what we must do to preserve them. The nation now sees itself through the prism of Watergate and the Nixon landslide; at last, perhaps, we see through a gla.s.s clearly.

"Because of all this, it is possible that by 1976, the 200th anniversary of America's birth, there will be a true rebirth of patriotism; that we will not only know our ideals but live them; that democracy may once again become a conviction we keep and not just a description we apply to ourselves. And if the McGovern campaign advanced that hope, even in defeat, then, as I said on election night last November, 'Every minute and every hour and every bone-crus.h.i.+ng effort. . . was worth the entire sacrifice."

-- George McGovem in the Was.h.i.+ngton Post, Was.h.i.+ngton Post, August 12th, 1973 August 12th, 1973 Jesus. . . Sunday morning in Woody Creek and here's McGovern on the mini-tube beside my typewriter, looking and talking almost exactly like he was in those speedy weeks between the Wisconsin and Ohio primaries, when his star was rising so fast that he could barely hang onto it. The sense of deja vu deja vu is almost frightening: Here is McGovern speaking sharply is almost frightening: Here is McGovern speaking sharply against the system, against the system, once again, in response to questions from CBS's Connie Chung and Marty Nolan from the Boston Globe, two of the most ever-present reporters on the '72 campaign trail. . . and McGovern, brought back from the dead by a political miracle of sorts, is. .h.i.tting the first gong of doom for the man who made him a landslide loser nine months ago: "When that [judicial] process is complete and the Supreme Court rules that the President must turn over the tapes -- and he refuses to do so -- I think the Congress will have no recourse but to seriously consider Impeachment." once again, in response to questions from CBS's Connie Chung and Marty Nolan from the Boston Globe, two of the most ever-present reporters on the '72 campaign trail. . . and McGovern, brought back from the dead by a political miracle of sorts, is. .h.i.tting the first gong of doom for the man who made him a landslide loser nine months ago: "When that [judicial] process is complete and the Supreme Court rules that the President must turn over the tapes -- and he refuses to do so -- I think the Congress will have no recourse but to seriously consider Impeachment."

Cazart! The fat is approaching the fire -- very slowly, and in very cautious hands, but there is no ignoring the general drift of things. Sometime between now and the end of 1973, Richard Nixon may have to bite that bullet he's talked about for so long. Seven is a lucky number for gamblers, but not for fixers, and Nixon's seventh crisis is beginning to put his first six in very deep shade. Even the most conservative betting in Was.h.i.+ngton, these days, has Nixon either resigning or being impeached by the autumn of '74 -- if not for reasons directly connected to the "Watergate scandal," then because of his inability to explain how he paid for his beach-mansion at San Clemente, or why Vice President Agnew -- along with most of Nixon's original White House command staff -- is under indictment for felonies ranging from Extortion and Perjury to Burglary and Obstruction of Justice.

Another good bet in Was.h.i.+ngton -- running at odds between two and three to one, these days, is that Nixon will crack both physically and mentally under all this pressure, and develop a serious psychosomatic illness of some kind: Maybe another bad case of pneumonia.

This is not so wild a vision as it might sound -- not even in the context of my own known taste for fantasy and savage bias in politics. Richard Nixon, a career politician who has rarely failed to crack under genuine pressure, is under more pressure now than most of us will ever understand. His whole life is turning to s.h.i.+t, just as he reached the pinnacle. . . and every once in a while, caving in to a weakness that blooms in the cool, thinking hours around dawn, I have to admit that I feel a touch of irrational sympathy for the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Not as The President: a broken little bully who would sacrifice us all to save himself -- if he still had the choice -- but the same kind of sympathy I might feel, momentarily, for a vicious cheap-shot linebacker whose long career comes to a sudden end one Sunday afternoon when some rookie flanker shatters both his knees with a savage crackback block.

Cheap-shot artists don't last very long in pro football. To cripple another person intentionally is to violate the same kind of code as the legendary "honor among thieves."

More linebackers than thieves believe this, but when it comes to politics -- to a 28-year career of cheap shots, lies and thievery -- there is no man in America who should understand what is happening to him now better than Richard Milhous Nixon. He is a living monument to the old Army rule that says: "The only real real crime is getting caught." crime is getting caught."

This is not the first time Richard Nixon has been caught. After his failed campaign for the Governors.h.i.+p of California in 1962 he was formally convicted -- along with H.R. Haldeman, Maurice Stans, Murray Chotiner, Herb Klein and Herb Kalmbach for almost exactly the same kind of crudely illegal campaign tactics that he stands accused of today.

But this time, in the language of the sergeants who keep military tradition alive, "he got caught every which way". . . and "his a.s.s went into the blades."

Not many people have ever written in the English language better than a Polack with a twisted sense of humor who called himself Joseph Conrad. And if he were with us today I think he'd be getting a fine boot out of this Watergate story. Mr. Kurtz, in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Heart of Darkness, did his thing. Mr. Nixon also did his thing. did his thing. Mr. Nixon also did his thing.

And now, just as surely as Kurtz: "Mistah Nixon, he dead."

Rolling Stone #144, September 27,1973 Fear and Loathing in Was.h.i.+ngton: The Boys in the Bag It was a Nice Place. They Were Principled People, Generally.

-- Quote from Robert C. Odle, office administrator for CREEP.

"Mr. McGovern described the president personally as a 'blob out there' of no constant principle except opportunism and political manipulation, a man 'up to his ears in political sabotage' who was 'afraid of the people' and regularly favored the 'powerful and greedy' over the public interest. The president's defense programs were 'madness'; he had 'degraded the Supreme Court' and, on three occasions at least, Mr. McGovern drew parallels between the president and his government and Adolf Hitler and his Third Reich. As for the Nixon administration, it was the 'most morally bankrupt, the most morally corrupt, the trickiest, most deceitful. . . in in our entire national history.' " our entire national history.' "

-- White House speechwriter Patrick J. Buchanan, in The New York Times, The New York Times, November 24th, 1972 November 24th, 1972 "'When I am attacked' Richard Nixon once remarked to this writer, 'it is my instinct to strike back.' The president is now clearly in a mood to obey his instincts. . . So on Wednesday, July 18th, at a White House meeting, it was agreed unanimously that the tapes should not be released. This decision, to use the sports cliches to which the president is addicted, meant an entirely new ball game, requiring a new game plan. The new game plan calls for a strategy of striking back, in accord with the presidential instinct, rather than a policy of attempted accommodation. . ."

-- columnist Stewart Alsop, Newsweek, Newsweek, August 6th, 1973 August 6th, 1973 "The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes and all his imprecise talk about 'new policies' and 'honesty in government' is one of the few men who've run for president of the United States in this century who really understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon. McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for. Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be president?"

--Rolling Stone correspondent Hunter S. Thompson, writing on the Nixon-McGovern campaign, September 1972 correspondent Hunter S. Thompson, writing on the Nixon-McGovern campaign, September 1972 "The Third Reich, which was born on January 30th, 1933, Hitler boasted would endure a thousand years, and in n.a.z.i parlance it was often referred to as 'The Thousand Year Reich.' It lasted 12 years and four months. . ."

-- author William s.h.i.+rer, from The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich For reasons that will never be clear to anyone -- and especially not to the management and other guests in this place -- the National Affairs Desk is operating once again at the Royal Biscayne Hotel, about 900 crooked meters from the Nixon/Rebozo compound on the other side of the island. The desk itself is a round slab of what appears to be low-grade jacaranda wood.

The centerpiece is a bright orange electric typewriter that I rented several days ago from a business-machine store on 125th Street in North Miami. It is a Swedish "Facit" -- a deceptively sharp-looking machine about five times slower in both directions than the IBM Selectric and totally useless for any kind of speed-lashed gonzo work. For all its style and voltage, the Facit is about as quick in the hands as one of those 1929-model Underwoods that used to be standard equipment in the city room of the New York Mirror. New York Mirror. n.o.body knows exactly what happened to all those old Underwoods when the n.o.body knows exactly what happened to all those old Underwoods when the Mirror Mirror died of bad age, but one rumor in the trade says they were snapped up at a dime on the dollar by Norman Cousins and then resold at a tidy profit to the died of bad age, but one rumor in the trade says they were snapped up at a dime on the dollar by Norman Cousins and then resold at a tidy profit to the Columbia Journalism Review. Columbia Journalism Review.

Which is interesting, but it is not the kind of thing you normally want to develop fully in your cla.s.sic Pyramid Lead. . . and that's what I was trying to deal with, when I suddenly realized that my typewriter was as worthless as t.i.ts on a boar hog.

Besides that, there were other mechanical problems: no water, no ice, no phone service, and finally the discovery of two Secret Service men in the room right next to me.

I was getting a little paranoid about the phone situation. It followed a series of unsettling events that caused me to think seriously about going back to Was.h.i.+ngton when Nixon left the next day, rather than staying on in order to open a special account in Bebe Rebozo's bank over in the shopping center across Ocean Drive. The Key Biscayne Bank seems like as good a place as any to do business, primarily because of the unusual investment opportunities available to special clients.

I have applied for "special" status, but recent developments have made me less than optimistic. Several days ago, on my first visit to the Nixon compound, I got no further than the heavily guarded gatehouse on Harbor Drive. "Are they expecting you?" the state trooper asked me.

"Probably not," I said. "I thought I'd just drop by for a drink or two, then have a look around. I've never seen the place, you know. What goes on in there?"

The trooper seemed to stiffen. His eyes narrowed and he stared intently at the black coral fist hanging on a chain around my neck. "Say. . . ah. . . I'd like to see your identification, fella. You carrying any?"

"Of course," I said. "But it's out there in the car. I don't have any pockets in these trunks." I walked across the hot asphalt road, feeling my bare feet stick to the tar with every step, and vaulted into the big bronze convertible without opening the door. Looking back at the gatehouse, I noticed that the trooper had been joined by two gentlemen in dark business suits with wires coming out of their ears. They were all waiting for me to come back with my wallet.

To h.e.l.l with this, I thought, suddenly starting the engine. I waved to the trooper. "It's not here," I shouted. "I guess I left it back at the hotel." Without waiting for an answer, I eased the car into gear and drove off very slowly.

Almost immediately, the big railroad-crossing-style gate across Nixon's road swung up in the air and a blue Ford sedan rolled out. I slowed down even more, thinking he was going to pull me over to the side, but instead he stayed about 100 feet behind me -- all the way to the hotel, into the parking lot, and around the back almost into the slot behind my room. I got out, thinking he was going to pull up right behind me for a chat -- but he stopped about 50 feet away, backed up, and drove away.

Later that afternoon, sitting in the temporary White House press room outside the Four Amba.s.sadors Hotel in downtown Miami about 10 miles away, I told New York Times New York Times correspondent Anthony Ripley about the incident. "I really expected the b.a.s.t.a.r.d to follow me right into my room." correspondent Anthony Ripley about the incident. "I really expected the b.a.s.t.a.r.d to follow me right into my room."

Ripley laughed. "That's probably where he is right now -- with about three of his friends, going through all your luggage."

Which may have been true. Anybody who spends much time around the Secret Service and acts a little bent has to a.s.sume things like that. . . especially when you discover, by sheer accident, that the room right next to yours is occupied by two S.S. agents.

That was the second unsettling incident. The details are vaguely interesting, but I'd prefer not to go into them at this point -- except to say that I thought I was becoming dangerously paranoid until I got hold of a carbon copy of their room-registration receipt. Which made me feel a little better about my own mental health, at least. It is far better to know know the Secret Service is keeping an eye on you than to suspect it all the time without ever being sure. the Secret Service is keeping an eye on you than to suspect it all the time without ever being sure.

It was the third incident, however, that caused me to start thinking about moving the Desk back to Was.h.i.+ngton at once. I was awakened in the early hours of the morning by a telephone call and a strange voice saying, "The president is going to church. You'll have to hurry if you want to catch him."

What? My mind was blank. What president? Why should I want to catch catch him? Especially in a church? him? Especially in a church?

"Who the h.e.l.l is is this?" I said finally. this?" I said finally.

"Tony," said the voice.

I was reaching around in the darkness for a light switch. For a moment I thought I was still in Mexico. Then I found a light switch and recognized the familiar surroundings of the National Affairs Suite. Jesus! I thought. Of course! Key Biscayne. President Nixon. It all made sense now: The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds were setting me up for a bust on some kind of bogus a.s.sa.s.sination attempt. The agents next door have probably already planted a high-powered rifle in the trunk of my car, and now they're trying to lure me over to some church where they can grab me in front of all the press cameras as soon as I drive up and park. Then they'll "find" the rifle in the trunk about two minutes before Nixon arrives to wors.h.i.+p -- and that'll be it for me. I could already see the headlines: NIXON a.s.sa.s.sINATION PLOT FOILED; SHARPSHOOTER SEIZED AT KEY BISCAYNE CHURCH. NIXON a.s.sa.s.sINATION PLOT FOILED; SHARPSHOOTER SEIZED AT KEY BISCAYNE CHURCH. Along with front-page photos of state troopers examining the rifle, me in handcuffs, Nixon smiling bravely at the cameras. . . Along with front-page photos of state troopers examining the rifle, me in handcuffs, Nixon smiling bravely at the cameras. . .

The whole scene flashed through my head in milliseconds; the voice on the phone was yelling something at me. Panic fused my brain. No! I thought. Never in h.e.l.l.

"You crazy son of a b.i.t.c.h!" I yelled into the phone. "I'm not going near that G.o.dd.a.m.n church!" Then I hung up and went instantly back to sleep.

Later that afternoon, Ripley stopped by the hotel and we had a few beers out by the beach-bar. "Jesus Christ!" he said. "You were really out of your mind this morning, weren't you?"

"What?"

He laughed. "Yeah. You screamed screamed at me. h.e.l.l, I just thought you might like to catch the scene over at Nixon's church." at me. h.e.l.l, I just thought you might like to catch the scene over at Nixon's church."

"For Christ's sake don't call me with any more tips for a while."

"Don't worry," he replied. "We're leaving today, anyway. Will you be on the plane?"

"No," I said. "I'm going to sleep for two days, then take a boat back to Was.h.i.+ngton. This has not been a good trip for me. I think I'll give up covering Nixon for a while -- at least until I can whip this drinking problem."

"Maybe what you should do is get into a different line of work, or have yourself committed."

"No." I said. "I think I'll get a job teaching journalism."

In the context of journalism, here, we are dealing with a new kind of "lead" -- the Symbiotic Trapezoid Quote. The Columbia Journalism Review Columbia Journalism Review will never sanction it; at least not until the current editor dies of brain syphilis, and probably not even then. will never sanction it; at least not until the current editor dies of brain syphilis, and probably not even then.

What?

Do we have a libel suit on our hands?

Probably not, I think, because n.o.body in his right mind would take a thing like that seriously -- and especially not that gang of senile hags who run the Columbia Journalism Review, Columbia Journalism Review, who have gone to considerable lengths in every issue during the past year or so to stress, very heavily, that who have gone to considerable lengths in every issue during the past year or so to stress, very heavily, that nothing nothing I say should be taken seriously. I say should be taken seriously.

"Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." George Bernard Shaw said that, for good or ill, and I only mention it here because I'm getting G.o.dd.a.m.n tired of being screeched at by waterheads. Professors are a sour lot, in general, but professors of journalism are especially rancid in their outlook because they have to wake up every morning and be reminded once again of a world they'll never know.

THUMP! Against the door. Another G.o.dd.a.m.n newspaper, another cruel accusation. THUMP! Day after day, it never ends. . . Hiss at the alarm clock, suck up the headlines along with a beaker of warm Drano, then off to the morning cla.s.s. . . To teach Journalism: Circulation, Distribution, Headline Counting and the cla.s.sical Pyramid Lead.

Jesus, let's not forget that last one. Mastery of the Pyramid Lead has sustained more lame yoyos than either Congress or the Peacetime Army. Five generations of American journalists have clung to that petrified t.i.t, and when the deal went down in 1972 their ranks were so solid that 71% of the newspapers in this country endorsed Richard Nixon for a second term in the White House.

Now, 18 months later, the journalistic establishment that speaks for Nixon's erstwhile "silent majority" has turned on him with a wild-eyed, coast-to-coast venom rarely witnessed in the American newspaper trade. The only recent example that comes to mind is Nixon's own blundering p.r.o.nouncement of Charles Manson's guilt while Manson was still on trial in Los Angeles.

In addition to introducing the Symbiotic Trapezoid Quote as the wave of the future in journalism, I have some other ideas to get into: mainly about Richard Nixon, and some of these are ugly. . . or ugly by my standards, at any rate, because most of them revolve around the very distinct possibility that Nixon might survive his Seventh Crisis -- and in surviving leave us a legacy of failure, shame and corruption beyond anything conceivable right now.

This is a grim thing to say, or even think, in the current atmosphere of self-congratulations and renewed professional pride that understandably pervades the press & politics circuit these days. Not only in Was.h.i.+ngton but all over the country wherever you find people who are seriously concerned with the health and life expectancy of the American Political System.

The baseline is always the same: "We almost blew it," they say, "but somehow we pulled back from the brink." Names like Sirica, Woodward, Bernstein, c.o.x, Richardson, Ruckelshaus are mentioned almost reverently in these conversations, but anybody who's been personally involved in "the Watergate affair" and all its nasty sidebars for any length of time knows that these were only the point men -- invaluable for their b.a.l.l.s and their instincts and their understanding of what they were doing in that never-ending blizzard of Crucial Moments when a single cop-out might have brought the whole scene down on top of them all. But there were literally hundreds, maybe thousands, of others who came up to those same kinds of moments and said, "Well, I wasn't really planning on this, but if that's the way it is, let's get it on."

There are a lot of people in this country -- editors, congressmen and lawyers among others -- who like themselves a lot better today for the way they reacted when the Watergate octopus got hold of them.

There are also a lot of people who got dragged down forever by it -- which is probably just as well, for the rest of us, because many of them were exposed as either dangerous bunglers, ruthless swine or both. Others -- many of them peripherally involved in one aspect or another of "Watergate" but lucky enough not to get caught -- will probably be haunted by a sense of nervous guilt for a while, but in a year or two they will forget all about it. These, in a way, are almost as dangerous as the ones who are going to jail -- because they are the "good germans" among us, the ones who made it all possible.

I've been trying to finish The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich for at least the last three months; hauling the huge b.u.g.g.e.r along in my baggage to places like Buffalo, Oakland, Ann Arbor, Houston, and finally all the way down to the jungles and lost fis.h.i.+ng villages of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. . . for at least the last three months; hauling the huge b.u.g.g.e.r along in my baggage to places like Buffalo, Oakland, Ann Arbor, Houston, and finally all the way down to the jungles and lost fis.h.i.+ng villages of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. . .

But things have been happening too fast, and there was never enough time or privacy to get seriously into the thing -- not even down in the Yucatan, lying around in big hammocks in 50-peso-a-night hotels where we had to keep the Hong Kong-built ceiling fans cranked up to top speed for enough wind in the room to drive the roaches back into the corners.

At one point, I tried to read it in a hotel room near the ruins of the Mayan civilization at Chichen Itza -- thinking to get a certain weird perspective on American politics in the Seventies by pondering the collapse of "The Thousand Year Reich" while sitting on the stone remnants of another and totally different culture that survived for more more than a thousand years before anybody in Europe even knew that a place called "America" existed. The Aztec socio-political structure was a fine-tuned elitest democracy that would have embarra.s.sed everybody connected with either the French or American revolutions. than a thousand years before anybody in Europe even knew that a place called "America" existed. The Aztec socio-political structure was a fine-tuned elitest democracy that would have embarra.s.sed everybody connected with either the French or American revolutions.

The ancient Greeks and Romans seem like crude punks compared to what the Mayans, Aztecs and Incas put together in Mexico and South America in the 20 or so centuries between 500 BC and the ill-fated "Spanish Conquest" in 1525. The Mayan calendar, devised several centuries before the birth of Christ, is still more precise than the one we use today: They had the solar year broken down to exactly 365.24 days, and 12 lunar months of 29.5 days each. None of this sloppy "leap year" business, or odd-numbered months.

According to most military experts, Adolf Hitler went over the hump somewhere around the middle of 1942. At that point -- even according to Albert Speer, his personal architect and all-round technical wizard -- the Reich was spread too thin: militarily, financially, industrially, politically and every other way. Speer had all the blueprints, the plans, the figures, and an almost daily fix on what was happening to boiling Hitler's head. Given all that, Speer says, he knew in his heart they were headed downhill after the summer of '42.

But it was almost three years and at least three million deaths later that Hitler finally admitted what Speer, one of his closest "friends" and advisers, says he knew all along -- or at least during those last three years when Albert and all the others in the Fuhrer's inner circle were working 20, 22 and sometimes 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to keep the Reich propped up on an ever-eroding base of conquered slave labor and frenzied schemes to create a "super-weapon" that would somehow turn the tide.

None of this rotten madness worked out, of course, and as a reward for his stupid loyalty to Hitler, Albert Speer spent 20 years of his life locked up in Spandau Prison as one of Germany's major war criminals. Hitler was consistent to the end. He had no stomach for jail cells or courtrooms -- unless they were his his -- so as soon as he got word that Russo-American tanks were rumbling into the suburbs of Berlin, he went down in his private bunker and killed both himself and his faithful mistress, Eva Braun, with what some people say was a very elegant, gold-plated Walther machine-pistol. -- so as soon as he got word that Russo-American tanks were rumbling into the suburbs of Berlin, he went down in his private bunker and killed both himself and his faithful mistress, Eva Braun, with what some people say was a very elegant, gold-plated Walther machine-pistol.

n.o.body knows for sure, because the bunker was ravaged by fire soon afterward. . . and the only alleged witness to Hitler's death was his personal aide and adviser, Martin Bormann, who either escaped at the last moment or was burned to such an unrecognizable cinder that his body was never found.

Everybody who knew Bormann hated and feared him -- even Hitler, who apparently treated him like a pet cobra -- and few of the Reich's survivors ever accepted the fact of his death in that fiery bunker. He was too evil and crafty for that, they insisted, and the general a.s.sumption was that Bormann had kept his personal escape plan finely organized, on a day-to-day basis, since the winter of '43.

West German military intelligence now lists him as officially dead, but not many people believe it -- because he keeps turning up, now and then, in places like Asuncion, Paraguay, the Brazilian Matto Grosso, or high in the Argentine lake country.

Bormann was the Tex Colson of his time, and his strange relations.h.i.+p with Hitler seems not much different from the paranoid fragments of the Nixon-Colson relations.h.i.+p that emerged from the now-infamous "White House Transcripts" of April 1974.

We are drifting into some ugly parallels here, and if I'd written this kind of thing two years ago I'd have expected to pick up The New York Times The New York Times a week later and see myself mangled all over the Op-Ed page by Pat Buchanan, and then beaten into a b.l.o.o.d.y coma the next evening by some of Colson's hired thugs in an alley behind the National Press Building -- a long stone's throw, as it were, from the White House. a week later and see myself mangled all over the Op-Ed page by Pat Buchanan, and then beaten into a b.l.o.o.d.y coma the next evening by some of Colson's hired thugs in an alley behind the National Press Building -- a long stone's throw, as it were, from the White House.

But like Tommy Rush says, "Times ain't now, but like they used to be. . ."

Which is true. There is not much doubt about that. But after watching the TV news on all three networks last night and then reading all the Nixon stories in today's Was.h.i.+ngton Post Was.h.i.+ngton Post, I have an eerie feeling that the times ain't now quite like they appear to be, either. have an eerie feeling that the times ain't now quite like they appear to be, either.

There was something oddly hollow and out of focus about last night's main TV-news story on the U.S. Supreme Court's dramatic and potentially ominous decision to postpone its traditional June recess and stay on through July to render what will clearly be an historic judgment, one way or another, on Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski's either bold or desperate leapfrog attempt to force an immediate High Court decision on President Nixon's right to ignore a subpoena -- for 64 tape recordings and other White House doc.u.ments -- from a special prosecutor appointed under extremely sensitive circ.u.mstances by the U.S. Senate with his independence explicitly guaranteed by the new U.S. attorney general as a condition of his taking office.

All three networks treated this latest development in The Strange and Terrible Saga of Richard Nixon as a staggering and perhaps even fatal blow to his chances of survival in the White House. The mere fact that the Court was willing to stay over and hear Jaworski's argument, they implied, was a sure sign that at least four of the justices (enough, in this case) were prepared to rule, just as soon as the question is formally presented, against against Nixon's claim of "executive privilege" with regard to Jaworski's subpoena. The special prosecutor had apparently won a major victory, and the president was in very deep trouble. Only David Schumacher on ABC hinted, very briefly, that there had been no victory celebrations among Jaworski's staff people that afternoon. But he didn't say why. . . Nixon's claim of "executive privilege" with regard to Jaworski's subpoena. The special prosecutor had apparently won a major victory, and the president was in very deep trouble. Only David Schumacher on ABC hinted, very briefly, that there had been no victory celebrations among Jaworski's staff people that afternoon. But he didn't say why. . .

And, frankly, I'll be f.u.c.ked if I can either. I brooded on it for a while, but all that came to mind was some half-remembered snarl from the lips of President Andrew Jackson when the Supreme Court ruled against him on some kind of question involving a federal land grant to the Seminole Indians. Jackson, a veteran Indian-fighter, took the ruling as a personal insult. "Well," he said, "the judges have made their decision -- now let them enforce it."

Josef Stalin, about 100 years later, had similar views with regard to the Roman Catholic Church. He had gone into one of his rages, according to the story as I heard it, and this one had something to do with a notion that seized him, after five days and nights in a brutal vodka orgy, that every Catholic in Moscow should be nailed up on a telephone pole by dawn on Easter Sunday. This announcement caused genuine fear in the Kremlin, because Stalin -- like Colson -- was known by his staff to be "capable of almost anything." When he calmed down a bit, one of his advisers suggested that a ma.s.s crucifixion of Russian Catholics -- for no reason at all -- would almost certainly raise hackles in the Vatican and no doubt anger the pope.

"f.u.c.k the pope," Stalin mumbled. "How many divisions does he have?"

These stories are hard to nail down with any real certainty, but there is a mean kind of consistency in the punch lines that makes them hard to forget. . . especially when you start pondering the spectacle of a borderline psychotic with the brain of a small-time chiseler and the power to literally blow up the world never more than 60 seconds away from his gnawed-red fingertips, doing everything he can to force a h.e.l.lish confrontation with the highest judicial and legislative authorities in his own country.

This is what Nixon has been trying to do for at least the past three months -- and, if Stewart Alsop was right, since July 18th of last year. That was the Wednesday meeting at the White House, he said, when "it was agreed unanimously that the tapes should not be released."

I would like to have talked with Stewart Alsop about that meeting, but he died last month of leukemia -- after writing very candidly and even casually, at times, about his impending death from a disease that he had known for at least two years was slowly and steadily killing him. I didn't know him personally and as a journalist I rarely agreed with him, but there was an uncommon sense of integrity and personal commitment in everything he wrote. . . and an incredible sense of style, strength and courage in the way he chose to die.

Stewart Alsop, for all his experience in politics and all his friends in every eyrie in Was.h.i.+ngton, seemed baffled all the way to his grave by the reality of "Watergate" and its foul implications for some of the ideas and people he believed in. As one of Was.h.i.+ngton's ranking journalists, he was privy to things like that meeting last July in the White House, where Nixon and a handful of others sat down and gave serious thought to all their possible options with regard to those reels of harmless looking celluloid that had suddenly turned into time bombs. Alsop could understand all the facts facts of a scene like that, but not the Reality. Like most of the people he grew up with, Stewart Alsop was of a scene like that, but not the Reality. Like most of the people he grew up with, Stewart Alsop was born born a Republican. a Republican.

It was as much a way of life as a thought-out political philosophy, and along with all the privileges came a certain sense of n.o.blesse oblige.

Alsop understood understood these things -- which explains probably better than anything else why it was almost genetically impossible for him to come to grips with the idea that the Oval Office of the White House -- under a second-term Republican president who had also been a Republican vice-president, senator and congressman -- was in fact a den of thieves, fixers and felons. these things -- which explains probably better than anything else why it was almost genetically impossible for him to come to grips with the idea that the Oval Office of the White House -- under a second-term Republican president who had also been a Republican vice-president, senator and congressman -- was in fact a den of thieves, fixers and felons.

This kind of savage reality was too much for 60-year-old elitist Republicans like Stewart Alsop to cope with. It was like showing up at the White House for your monthly chat with The President on some normal afternoon and finding the Oval Office full of drunken h.e.l.l's Angels. . . and The President so stoned on reds that he can't even recognize you, babbling distractedly and shoveling big mounds of white powder around on his desk with the b.u.t.t of a sawed-off shotgun.

There are not many senior political columnists in Was.h.i.+ngton who could handle a scene like that. Their minds would refuse to accept it. . . for the same reason they still can't accept the stark and fearful truth that President Richard Milhous Nixon is not only going to be impeached, but he actually wants wants to be impeached. Immediately. to be impeached. Immediately.

This is probably the one simple fact, right now, in a story that is going to become so heinously complicated in the next few months that every reporter a.s.signed to it will need both a shrewd criminal lawyer and scholar in the field of const.i.tutional law right next to him or her at all times.

There is no question at all -- even now, in these last moments of calm before the s.h.i.+train starts -- that this "Nixon impeachment" saga is going to turn some of the best minds in American journalism to mush before it's over. . .

And that statement will just have to sit there; I refuse to even try to explain it. There will be plenty of time for that; thousands of hours in G.o.d only knows how many courtrooms. And Nixon will eventually be impeached, if only because he has the leverage to put the House of Representatives in a position where it will have no other choice.

Nixon's lawyers -- who have already cost the taxpayers nearly $400,000 in legal fees -- have now abandoned all pretense in their efforts to insult and provoke Congressman Peter Rodino's House Judiciary Committee into exactly the kind of quick, angry and ill-considered vote for for impeachment that Rodino and committee counsels John Doar and Albert Jenner have been bending over backward to avoid. . . until they can put together enough evidence -- before the hearings are opened to the public and the full House convenes on TV to hear the charges -- to build a far more solid and serious case for impeachment than the one they appear to have now. Nixon would like nothing better than to stampede the House of Representatives into a televised Yea or Nay showdown, based on charges no more serious than Contempt of Congress, Contempt of Court(s) and, by implication, the grossest kind of contempt for everybody in the country with an I.Q. higher than 50. impeachment that Rodino and committee counsels John Doar and Albert Jenner have been bending over backward to avoid. . . until they can put together enough evidence -- before the hearings are opened to the public and the full House convenes on TV to hear the charges -- to build a far more solid and serious case for impeachment than the one they appear to have now. Nixon would like nothing better than to stampede the House of Representatives into a televised Yea or Nay showdown, based on charges no more serious than Contempt of Congress, Contempt of Court(s) and, by implication, the grossest kind of contempt for everybody in the country with an I.Q. higher than 50.

But not even Ron Ziegler is counting on a farce of that magnitude. On May 27th, the UPI wire carried an official statement by Ziegler, from Key Biscayne, to the effect that formal impeachment proceedings against The Boss would "come as no surprise" to him. Nor would impeachment itself, he implied. So why don't they just get on with it?

Why indeed?

One of the main reasons has to do with all those tapes that Nixon apparently decided quite a while ago that he would never turn over to anybody, anywhere, for any reason at all. Thus far, he has shrugged off subpoenas for more than 100 of his taped conversations -- 64 from Jaworski and about 50 from the Rodino committee. Many of these are overlapping, and n.o.body in Was.h.i.+ngton seems to know which set of subpoenas would have legal preference -- or even who will have to decide that question, if it ever comes up in real life.

If Nixon hangs tough on his "stonewalling" strategy with regard to the tapes, not even a definitive ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court can force him to give them up. Noncompliance would put him in contempt of the highest court in the land and const.i.tute further grounds for impeachment -- but why should that worry him? The Court has no more divisions than the pope did in Stalin's time -- and no more real power over Nixon than it did over Andrew Jackson.

It is hard to imagine Chief Justice Burger signing a "no-knock" search warrant and sending a squad of U.S. marshals over to the White House with instructions to kick down the door and tear the place apart until they "find those G.o.dd.a.m.n tapes."

Special Prosecutor Jaworski is aware of all this, but it doesn't seem to bother him. He wants a ruling from the High Court, anyway, and before the end of July he will have one. It may not make any tangible difference, in the end, but at the very least it will be one more nail in Nixon's plastic coffin. . . and another piece of sharp, hard-nosed legal work by Jaworski, who must be feeling about nine feet tall today -- after replacing Archibald c.o.x in a cloud of almost universal scorn and suspicion that he was nothing but a hired fixer brought in by Nixon and Connally to "put the cap on the bottle."

Jaworski was a definite sleeper, or at least that's the way it looks from outside his amazingly leakless operation. If he's a Nixon-Connally fixer, he's been pretty clever about it so far and he's fooled a lot of people, including some of the most cynical heads in Was.h.i.+ngton.