magazine editors:
marty porter
tony schwartz
contributing editor:
laura berman
Sunday
miagozifle
inside:
books in review-pages 4 & 5
Number 7 Page Three
FEAT
October 28, 1973
FURES.
A week of
Washington
madness:
in
a
daze
By DAN BIDDLE
WASHINGTON
TUE, OCT 23, 12:00 P.M.: "Ladies
and gentlemen, for those of you who
haven't been to Washington before,
that modern, curvaceous-looking com-
plex coming up on the left of our
aircraft: that's the Watergate, that
you've heard so much about."
* * *
THE OFFICES of the Committee to
Re-Elect the President still
exist in a building on Pennsylvania
Ave., about half a block from the
White House. In the lobby stands a
fountain, a perfect hollow cylinder of
water flowing flawlessly out of a
round hole in the ceiling. On closer
inspection, it is in fact a cylinder of
shiny wires with water trickling down
a few of them. It creates the eye-
pleasing illusion of uniformity.
The base of the fountain is ringed
by plastic plants.
The people in CREEP's offices have
no answers. Even the office doors
have no indication of what, if any-
thing, is inside.
rHE SECRETARY smiles, stops
smiling, and speaks. "I'm sorry,
Mr. DeVan Shumway is our press
representative, and I'm afraid he's
tied up all morning."
What does she mean by that?
"Well, I'm not really looking for
any kind of news story. Can I just
take a look around and chat with
anyone who's not too busy?"
"NO, I'M SORRY. We're all pretty
busy."
In one corner of the office a bald-
headed guy is doing a crossword
puzzle.
"Now, let's get this straight. This
is the Committee to Re-Elect the
President. If I'm not mistaken, he's
already been re-elected. How can
everyone still be so busy? Can't I
just chat with somebody?"
"No."
"Can I talk to you?"
"No."
"ARE YOU prohibited from saying
anything?"
"No, I'd really just rather not say
anything."
"Oh. Well, thanks anyway. Can I
just take a look around?"
"No. You
Shumway in
"Thanks."
might try calling Mr.
the morning."
* ~* *
IT WAS a week so chock full of
reversals, turnarounds, contra-
dictions, and paradoxes in the na-
tion's capital that it wouldn't have
been surprising to see people walking
backwards down Pennsylvania Avenue
crashing into mailboxes and tele-
phone poles.
Appropriately, the widespread ad-
vance to the rear was consummated
by the President of the United States.
The President awoke early Thurs-
day, looked out upon his lush gardens
and saw that it was a lovely autumn
day. Clay-faced secret servicemen
crisscrossed the White House lawns in
perfectly symmetrical patterns, filling
the air with the October sound of
f a 11 e n leaves crunching beneath
leather boots. The agents frowned at
the small clusters of rosy-faced dem-
onstrators hovering outside the fence.
PRESIDENTS, it is well known, must
take decisive action, and Mr.
Nixon moved swiftly and decisively
to make the day rotten.
It didn't take long, either. At dawn,
White House staff dropped dire hints
that America was in the midst of a
full military alert, a procedure last
employed during the Cuban missile
crisis. And God knows none of those
days were any fun.
The contradictions multiplied like
rabbits or Wang calculators.
On Wednesday, White House
mouthpiece Gerald Warren told re-
porters that the President would not
give a speech as planned, but would
hold a press conference Thursday in-
stead, because the Arab-Israeli crisis
was taking up too much of his time.
Warren was "pleased to report that
(Middle East) matters are calming
down."
ON THURSDAY, Dr. Henry Kissin-
ger, Secretary of State and Pro-
fessor of American foreign policy,
announced that' things were boiling
up, not calming down. Hence the
alert.
The Russians, he said, appeared to
be preparing to send troops. At the
heart of the matter, said Dr. Kissin-
ger, were some suspicious-looking
Soviet transport planes.
Later that day it was learned that
nearly eight hours before the alert
began, U.S. intelligence-of question-
able quantity these days-found the
funny Russian planes to contain
harmless cargo. The contradictions
spread with the intimate rapidity of
a social disease.
BUT THIS was no unprecedented ill-
ness. The reversals were not, as
it were, conceived the week before.
Witness:
Many months ago, President Nixon
called for the appointment of a spe-
cial Watergate prosecutor with "a
free hand" to seek the truth about
some recent scandals. Then last Sa-
turday night, he cancelled the special
prosecutor, Archibold Cox. Mr. Cox,
it seemed, had attempted to slip his
"free hand" into the President's
pocket.
But give Mr. Nixon the benefit of
the doubt. As White House spear-
carrier Bryce Harlow told the House
GOP leadership Thursday, "Does a
free hand mean that the Special
Prosecutor can' put a stiletto under
his coat, walk into the President's
office, and kill the President?"
Certainly the President did not
mean to allow that. Such permission
would have placed Mr. Cox above the
law, and that's something nobody
gets away with.
IN ANY CASE, Mr. Cox apparently
reached too far, and the Presi-
dent cancelled him.
Having made turnarounds the order
of the day, Mr. Nixon went on with
what could only be described as a
reversal rampage. He cancelled Elliot
Richardson, William Ruckelshaus,
and the entire Watergate prosecution
team. A slew of respected administra-
tion men were suddenly out of jobs.
Some were led to believe that the
President had cancelled his avowed
plans to reduce unemployment as
well.
Thus observers' heads were already
spinning like weathervanes when the
President announced he would release
the Watergate tapes. This came after
months of subtle and blatant indica-
tions that Hell could both freeze and
thaw before anyone would ever see
those tapes.
Cox fired
Richardson resigned
BUT HELL apparently did both and
was back in full heat by the
middle of last week. The President
announced a television speech. Then
he cancelled it. He announced a press
conference, but before you could say,
"Say what?" the conference was re-
scheduled and actually happened. For
all of 38 minutes.
Ah, but we should have known.
When Warren announced the press
conference, he said, "Now don't make
a crisis out of this. All it means is he
doesn't have time to write a speech."
Alas, everybody knows that it takes
longer, particularly for Nixon, to pre-
pare a press conference than it does
to write a speech, for it means con-
frontation-with what he later called
"the most outrageous, vicious, dis-
torted reporting I have ever seen."
WHEN YOU walk into a crowd like
that, you better not have your
zipper down.
"But Mr. Warren," said a mystified
Daily reporter, "Can't it be inferred
from this that the President has
chosen a press conference as a more
successful means of lessing public
furor than a speech?"
"No. The correct inference is that
he doesn't have time to write a
speech."
BUT HE fooled 'em: The press con-
ference didn't take long to pre-
pare. And it only lasted 38 minutes.
Meanwhile, the people of the na-
tion, like pimples on the posterior of
progress, picked up the flip-flop in
grand style. By Friday morning, at
least 16,000 voters had written, called,
or telegraphed their representatives
to declare outrage at the events of
the weekend and demand Mr. Nixon's
impeachment. Less than 1000, by the
best estimates, sent messages of sup-
port for the President.
AP Photo
Capitol Hill was flabbergasted. Last
Sunday, a group of duly elected Con-
gressmen were attending a NATO
environmental conference in Ankara,
Turkey. They called House Speaker
Carl Albert and asked if the reports
of trouble back in the states should
be taken seriously.
YOU BETTER believe it," Albert an-
swered, his voice quivering. "You
guys better hurry on back here, we
might have to vote on impeachment."
Congress was finally backed into
earning its pay. No one had seen a
landslide of public sentiment like this
-and this was the final, crucial turn-
around - since the re-election of
Richard Nixon in 1972.
What was once a mandate was
rapidly evolving into a manhunt. Hav-
ing once sought passionately to ex-
tend the presidency of Mr. Nixon four
more years, the people now seemed
ready to cancel him, once and for all.
UAC Daystar
The hassles of rock promo in A
By STEPHEN HERSH
NOT EVERYONE who sponsors rock
concerts comes out dripping with
diamonds and driving a Mercedes.
UAC Daystar, unlike most college
promotion groups, gets no financial
compensation from the University.
But they put on one of the best con-
cert series in the country, outdoing
most schools that can throw away
tens of thousands of dollars on shows
a year.
Promoting concerts in Ann Arbor is
a business rife with hassles and frus-
trations. Take what happened to the
group last summer, a classic tease:
Daystar was offered the Allman Bro-
thers and the Grateful Dead for a
concert at the football stadium, be-
fore the bands were offered to Wat-
kins Glen. With one or two stadium
shows per summer, Daystar could
gather enough money to carry such
unlucrative but attractive events as
With all the problems that Daystar encounters in
rock promoting in Ann Arbor, it is amazing that they
put on any shows at all. If they're not dealing
with
innumerable financial woes, t h ey must harangue
with greedy, money hungry managers and t h e ir
tempermental performers.
us two years ago," she says. During his
encore, after the check had been
handed over to his road manager, he
destroyed the keyboard of our rented
piano with a hammer. Rod saidhe
did it because he didn't like that
piano. We're still trying to get him to
pay for it."
He must cater to the personal idio-
syncrasies of the artists. Freddie
Hubbard wouldn't perform until he
was provided with a bottle of Martel
cognac.
But the real troubles for Daystar
are financial. If five dollars could be
added to each student's tuition for
Daystar's benefit, it would be possible
to put on those unprofitable but tasty
shows, and ticket prices for students
could be held to a maximum of two
dollars. That would take a student
referendum, though, and it doesn't
seem likely considering the sorry state
of SGC. The possibility of summer
stadium concerts is still open also,
IT'S ALSO DIFFICULT to deal with
performer's managers, who gen-
erally take whatever they can from
Daystar. The Moody Blues' manager,
Jerry Weintraub, did Daystar a "fav-
or" by giving them the group. Wein-
traub offered to compensate Day-
star only for the expenses in putting
on th eneert. nvstar's orivinator
past two years the Commander's tick-
et sales haven't equalled the cost of
putting on his show. Daystar's annual
jazz concert is also taken for granted,
but jazz shows are also consistent fin-
ancial bombs: Dorm dances have also
cost the organization money: But Day-
star has been able to provide funds
to several grouns that underwrite nor-
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