God bless who?
President Nixon Monday, at long last,
moved to get himself and the presidency to
high ground and out of the direct path of the
deluge currently flowing from the Watergate
scandal. He fired presidential counsel John
Dean III, and accepted the resignations of
three other top men in the Nixon
Administration. Attorney General Richard
Kleindienst, White House Chief of Staff H.R.
Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, the
President's chief advisor on domestic affairs,
all three announced that they were leaving
Nixon's government
Monday night, Nixon appeared in a
nationally televised address on the Watergate
affair. Early in his speech, the President said,
"The inevitable result of these charges
(charges that members of his staff and of the
Committee for the Re-election of the
President were involved in the Watergate
mess) has been to raise serious questions
about the integrity of the White House itself.
Tonight I wish to address those questions."
The President went on for nearly 25 minutes,
but provided few answers to the Watergate
questions. Most of his speech was devoted to
a restatement of the charges and the
questions. President Nixon offered few new
insights which would make the integrity of
the White House any less questionable than it
was before Monday evening.
Throughout the development of the
Watergate affair, Nixon has repeatedly
discounted news media reports implicating
several of his top aides as accomplices, either
before or after the fact, in the Watergate
espionage. The President explained Monday
night: he received repeated assurances from
his staff that there were no members of his
administration involved in the Watergate.
Loyal Royal
Smelly
Editor's note: Bob Russell's horse
sense column will not appear in the
Daily Nebraskan this week iwcause
Russell is out of town. Instead, a
special edition of Arthur Hoppe's
innocent bystander column appears
below.
Once upon a time, In the Kinqdon
of Nixylvania, a Senator posing by
,aid he smelled a smell in the Loyal
Royal Palace.
But y., the Senator was a member of
the Loyal Royal Opposition Pat ty and ,
had no love for the King, nobody paid
much attention. After all, Opposition
Parties were always smelling smells in
the Loyal Royal Palace.
The King, of course, ignored the
Senator. He said he was very busy with
his secret plans to spread peace,
prosperity, honesty, decency and hard
work throughout his Kingdom. He was
making "real progress," he said. And
he had not time for smelly Senators.
But other leaders of the Loyal
Royal Opposition took up the cry.
"Something smells in the Loyal Royal
Palace1" they shouted. And they were
very noisy about it.
To set the matter to rest, the King
issued a statement: "All my life," he
Nixon now has admitted that his hand-picked
White House staffers lied to him. Yet, at the
same time-almost in the same breath the
President praised Haldeman and Ehrlichman
as "two of the finest public servants it has
been my privilege to know."
One cannot help but wonder what kind of
company the President keeps. As one political
cartoonist stated it last week: if Nixon knew
about the Watergate break-in, what is he
doing in the White House; and if he didn't
know about the Watergate affair, what is he
doing in the White House?
Nixon said Monday night that new
information came to him in March which
persuaded him "that there was a real
possibility" that some of the charges reported
by the press were true and "suggesting further
that there had been an effort to conceal the
facts" from both the public and the President.
As a result, Nixon said, he launched his own
investigation of the Watergate.
However, statements made last March by
Nixon and members of his staff do not
indicate that there was any new White House
policy of openness concerning the Watergate
scandal. The presidential inquiry began on
March 21. On March 24, Nixon was quoted as
saying, "I have nothing to hide. The White
House has nothing to hide. I repeat, we have
nothing to hide, and you can make that
statement in my name." On March 26, White
House Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler "flatly"
denied "any prior knowledge on the part of
Mr. Dean regarding Watergate." Dean
conducted the eailier investigation which
supposedly cleared all White House staff
members of Watergate involvement.
Nixon said he "was determined that we
should get to the bottom of the matter, and
that the truth should be brought out-no
matter who was involved." Yet, both of the
statements quoted above were made after
Nixon determined to get at the truth and
after the March 21 decision to start a new
presidential investigation of Watergate. And
both of those statements subsequently have
been proven false. Dean was fired, Haldeman
and Ehrlichman have resigned because of their
involvement in the Watergate scandal and
other associated political espionage.
In his .Monday night speech, Nixon
accepted the responsibility, but not the
blame, for the Watergate misdeeds. He denied
any prior knowledge of the bugging incident
or of the White House coverup of the scandal.
Nixon said that he removed himself from the
1972 campaign for the presidency. It is,
nevertheless, difficult to unquestioningly
believe that a man who has run his own
political campaigns for 27 years would
suddenly remove himself from the 1972
operation or totally cut himself off from all
campaign information.
"We must maintain the integrity of the
White House, and that integrity must be real,
not transparent. There can be no whitewash
at the White House," President Nixon said
Monday. But Nixon's television appearance
confirmed that there has been a whitewash at
the White House. And it now is no less
difficult to see through the thinning veneer of
honor which Nixon believes covers him
because he is the President.
The White House shake-up and Nixon's
public statement were involuntary reactions
to a scandal which could not be covered up
and which threatened to envelop even the
President himself. All of God's blessings called
down upon the American people by Nixon, or
the collected sighings of relieved Republicans
should not be allowed to enable Nixon to
play the character of the white knight in
shining armor who has come to battle evil. In
the Watergate scenario, Nixon clearly is not
suited to that role.
Tom Lansworth
orthur hoppe
innocent
i 1
V iri
said, "I have been, rightly or wrongly,
against smells. And if there is a smell
in the Loyal Royal Palace, I would be
the very first to smell it. "
Yfni'ft think th.it wn'ilH thr end
Vof it. But the newspapers began
sniffing here and sniffing thei e. As the
months passed, so mi; began detecting
faint scents and others reported shong
odors emanating from the Loynl Royal
Palace.
The King's Chief Advisor resigned
to devote more time to listening to his
wife, Martha. Seveial Special
Assistants suddenly remembered
appointments in private industry. The
King was very, very annoyed,
"I have ordered my Chief Smeller
to smell as hard as he can," he said.
"Furthermore, I have instructed the
Federal Bureau of Smelling to smell
every nook and cranny. I have
complete confidence in my Chief
Smeller and I can assure you that
nobody, now employed in the Loyal
Royal Palace, smells."
But the p'oblem wouldn't go away.
More ,irui more people s.iid ihey
smelled something. At last, the
Senators said they wanted to smell
around thi,nselves. The Opposition
Senators wonted to prove then; was a
smell. And the Loyal Royal Senators
wanted to prove there wasn't.
The King indignantly refused their
request. "Thdt would be a violation of
the Doctrine of Royal Perogatives," he
said angrily. "It would destory my
Divine R ight to Smell."
By now, however, every subjeei n,
the Kingdom smelled a smell in the
Loyal Royal Palace'. Expert sulleis
burn j score of different pacK w'e
hot on the scent, f'ven the I. oyd
Royal Senators wen worried.
It was then that the King made his
historic announcement. "My loyal
subjects,'' he said, "I have made a
momentous discovery: Something in
The Loyal Royal Palace smells!
"fh,;nks solely to the keeness of
my well-trained nose," he added, "I
alone was able to detect it. But rest
assured I have a secret plan to end the
smell on which I am making teal
p'oguss Whoever smells shall be
banished fron the Loyal Royal Palace.
f oi if there is one thing I cannot
tolerate for a moment, it's smells."
Oh, how pleaded and happy all his
subjects were' "Huzah for our King's
nose!" they cried. "Once again, he's
come up smelling hk; j rose."
Mural: In unbelievable fairy tales,
He who smells last smells best.
"-'i-yr.'itit i.m, note ruu,-,i,,t) ci. i ;;:( ;y
page 4
daily nebraskan
Wednesday, may 2, 1973
