Sensational new revelations now link Republican espionage and subversion during the election campaign directly with the White House.
Both Time magazine and the Washington Post connect one of President Nixon╒s close personal aides with the activities of Mr Donald Segretti, a Los Angeles lawyer, who had earlier been identified as one of the undercover agents working for the committee to re-elect the President. Time magazine further alleges that payments of more than $35,000 to Segretti were made through President Nixon╒s personal attorney, Mr Herbert Kamlebach.
There is still no direct evidence linking the President with the Watergate burglary and the other criminal or covert activities of the Republicans, but the finger is beginning to point in his direction.
(Seven men are awaiting trial for their part in the Watergate affair, which involved the bugging and breaking into the Democratic National Committee offices.)
Time magazine cites Justice Department files and says the White House aide who recruited Segretti in September, 1971, was Mr Dwight Chapin. The Washington Post quotes the sworn testimony of a lawyer friend of Segretti to whom Segretti said: ╥Dwight Chapin was a person I reported to in Washington.╙
Mr Chapin is the President╒s appointments secretary. He has easy access to Mr Nixon and sees him most days.
Another White House assistant, Gordon Strachan, is also named as having been involved with the undercover activities. Money paid to Segretti came from the secret fund kept in the safe of Mr Maurice Stans, Mr Nixon╒s former Secretary of Commerce, at the headquarters of the Committee to Re-elect the President. According to Time magazine Segretti received his payments through Mr Kamlebach, whose closeness to Mr Nixon is indicated by the fact that he was the attorney who negotiated the purchase of Mr Nixon╒s estate in San Clemente, California.
The Washington Post, quoting the sworn testimony of Segretti╒s friend, Lawrence Young, also a Californian attorney, alleges that White House aides rehearsed Segretti in the testimony he should give to the grand jury investigating the Watergate affair and promised him that he would be given an easy time by the prosecutors. Presidential aides were in possession of copies of two interviews which Segretti had with the FBI, one of them within 24 hours of his interrogation.
The Post quotes its official sources as saying that criminal offences in connection with the Republicans╒ undercover activities would be difficult to prove in court. But the officials described them as despicable and vicious.
According to these FBI and Justice Department sources the espionage and sabotage ╥represented a basic strategy of the Nixon re-election effort.╙
The activities included forgery, distribution of false information, disruption of Democratic campaign schedules and meetings, investigating Democratic party workers, and placing agents provocateurs in Democratic organisations. The activities were conducted across the country and throughout the primary election campaign.
At a press conference in June Mr Nixon said that the methods used at the Watergate had ╥no place whatever in our electoral process.╙ The White House ╥had no involvement whatsoever,╙ he said.
The White House yesterday was refusing to comment on the allegations made against Mr Chapin. So far the Watergate affair and the subsequent allegations of wide-ranging foul play by the Nixon campaign appear to have made little impact on public opinion. The new revelations, linking intimates of the President with these activities, may have come too late to have much effect on the course of the election campaign.
The FBI and the Justice Department, both under the control of recent Nixon appointees, are in charge of the investigations and can determine the timing of legal proceedings. The trial of the accused in the Watergate affair will not get going until after the election on November 7 is safely over.
