Tot
Submer Daily
Sier Fdition of
TliIIMIICGAN DAILY
Edited and managed by students at the
University of Michigan
Friday, May 25, 1973 News Phone: 764-0552
Getting closer
to te truth
ELLIOT RICHARDSON has been approved by the Sen-
ate as attorney general, and the road is thus paved
for the government's independent investigation of the
Watergate scandal to begin.
Only time will' tell if Richardson can adequately
handle his new job of attorney general. We will be
watching him very closely. But of more importance right
now is the Watergate investigation, due to begin soon
headed by Archibald Cox.
There has been much concern in recent weeks that
a government investigation would not be independent
enough from the White House to allow charges to be
brought against the President, should the facts warrant
such action.
Richardson has apaarently allayed many of these
fears in his selection of former Solicitor General Archi-
bald Cox, as well as in laying out the framework of Cox's
investigation; a framework which should indeed allow
the cards to fall where they will-even to the oval office
of the White House.
Cox is 61, a Massachusetts Democrat, and a pro-
fessor at Harvard Law School. Whether he indeed is the
right person for the task of prosecutor also remains to be
seen.
(NE THING IS evident however- a great deal of truth
is bound to emerge from the various investigations
being held on Watergate and related political wrong-
doings.
We can only hope that the whole truth will come out.
Siininer S/aff
iARTi STERN
t~rior

Richard Nixon and Alger Hiss:
An ironic twist of history

By PETE HAMILL
LIVES IN a neat, sixth
floor apartment in Gramercy
Park in New York now, a tall, pre-
cise man, graying at 69, writing
a memoir of his beloved N e w
Deal, and selling printing supplies
for a living. Alger Hiss: The name
itself conjures ip blurred mem-
ories of banner headlines in the
Journal-American, lurid tales of
pumpkin papers and stolen docu-
ments, antique typescriters a n d
ruined friendships.
Richard Nixon left the b o n e s
af Alger Hiss to bleach in the
sin and went on to become Pres-
ident of the United States. Htiss
served 44 months in prison and
waited For time to exert its inevit-
able pressitres. Time now seems
on his side at last.
"My current hope," he said re-
cently. "is that someone familiar
with the actual skulldruggery in
my case will now feel like emulat-
ing those who have been making
a clean breast of things in the
Watergate. Because of Watergate,
and what Harry Reasoner calls 'the
secret, slimy felonies,' maybe
someone will say 'Jesus, why can't
we step forward and say what we
were doing?' I don't know whe-
ther that's a forlorn hope, but,
weve always hoped for that. The
trouble is there are fewer and
fewer of them. They're dying off."
IT IS DIFFICULT to explain how
innocent America thought its gov-
ernment was in 1947 and 1948,
when people like Elizabeth Bent-
ley and Whittaker Chambers start-
ed spining their elaborate tales of
deceit, Communist infiltration and
espionage. J. Edgar Hoover was
.e of the uos respected men in
the country, people thrilled to the
sight of the American flag, fresh-
men Congressmen, like Nixon,
seemed cut from the respectable
cloth coats of Mister Deeds.
"I've felt all along that event-
ually - not only would I be vin-
dicated," Hiss said, "but that I
was convicted far more by the
hysteria that was stirred up than
by the evidence. ff Chambers'
harges, which he first made to
Adolph Berle in 1939, had been
made public and brought to my
attention at the time, and there'd
been a trial - it would have been
laughed out of court. But it came
at a different time."
Now, of course, we live in a time
when the hired hands of the Pres-
ident of the United States can sit
in the White House, forging cables

ALGER HISS - The name it-
self conjures up blurred mem-
ories of . . . lurid tales of
pumpkin papers and stolen
documents, antique typewriters
and ruined friendships.
from a dead President that would
make him an a'ccomplice in a mur-
der. There is no room here to go
into the details of the Hiss case (he
was ultimately convicted of per-
jury), but there is nothing he was
accused of that comes close to
what has been happening during
the regime of his old persecutor.
HISS CITED the case of B o y d
Alexander in the Berrigan case and
various other recent examples of
"informers, provocateurs, and sin-
stable people," all of whom have
been working for the federal gov-
ernment. The same mentality per-
meated the 1972 Nixon campaign,
with Donald Segretti the chief op-
erative, working against Democrat-
ic candidates under White House
orders. Now, we also know t h a t
wiretapping is considered honor-
able activity by most of these peo-
ple (Henry Kissinger even moved
himself beyond redemption by or-
dering wiretaps on his friends).
"I remember my lawyer w as
told by an FBI agent, just before
I went down to Baltimore to tes
tify," Hiss recalls, ",hat there
were three file drawers of my tele-
phone taps, collected for years. The

FBI said the trouble was that they
didn't find anything there. But
they told the lawyers as ;asually
as that, because they felt they had
the right to tap anybody."
Hiss feels there is also a paratcl
to his case in the pressure that the
White House brought against Judge
Byrne in the Ellsberg trial. "In
my case, I thought Judge (Sam-
uel) Kaufman had been a f a i r
judge. God knows, he didn't rule
in our favor in every case, and he
wouldn't allow us to put in the
psychiatric evidence about Cham-
bers. But after the hung j u r y
(in Hiss' first trial), there w e r e
speeches in Congress and several
bills for the impeachment of Judge
Kaufman. This was clearly meant
to put pressure on the new judge
in the second trial." (After the
hung jury, Nixon said: "I think
the average American wanted all
technicalities waived in this case.")
HISS SAID that the ACLU is now
suing to obtain release of the
secret FBI files on the Hiss-Chum-
hbers case, which might reveal in-
formation similar to the informa-
tion that was finally presented to
Judge Byrne in the Ellsberg case.
Three books on the great case are
due for publication this year, in-
chiding an entire book on the fam-
ous typewriter (another parallel is
Hunt's complaint while forging the
Kennedy cable that he couldn't find
atypewriter that would match the
original White house model, and
cited the Hiss case as the reason).
Hiss talked for several hours,
speaking carefully, but obviously
feeling that some long, terrible
night was about to end. Unfortun-
ately there is no room in this space
to repeat everything that he, said,
"Someone asked me not long ago
whether I felt bitter or used," he
said. "Well, I don't feel bitter, but
I sure felt used. I felt it then. l3ut
now I feel the whole country his
been used."
Pet e amill is a soinnmnist for
the New York Post. Copyright
1973, New York Post Corporation.

William Saespeare:
Watergate witness
By DICK WEST
TiHE NEXT witness in the Watergate investigation is William Shakes-
peare of Stratford-on-Avon, an immortal bard, dramatist and inter-
national authority on impropriety in high places.
Q. Mr. Shakespeare, have you been following the Watergate case
in the press?
A. "This news is old enough, yet it is every day's news."
Q. Well, what do you make of it?
A. "I myself see not the bottom of it. And my imaginations are as
foul as Vulcan's stithy. I am cabin'd, cribb'd, confined, bound in to
saucy doubts and fears."
Q. Will the evidence show that' top White House aides were
involved?
A. "So I have heard, and do in part believe it. There is some-
thing in the wind. A very ancient and fish-like smell."
Q. BUT WEREN'T they convinced they were acting in the na-
tional interest, and simply let their zeal exceed their judgment?
A., "There is no vice so simple but assumes some mark of
virtue on his outward parts."
Q. If White House aides were involved, why did they try to
cover it up?
A. "Reputation, reputation, reputation! Assume a virtue, if y.u
have it not. Policy sits above conscience. , what may man within
him hide, though angel on the outward side!"
Q. In retrospect, wouldn't it have been better if they had admitted
their involvement at the outset?
A. "Delays have dangerous ends. The law hath not been dead,
though it bath slept. Men should be what they seem. Better a little chid-
ing than a great deal of heartbreak. Oftentimes, excusing of a
fault doth make the fault the worse by the excuse."
Q. BOW IS President Nixon reacting to the scandal?
A. "Sharp misery has worn him to the bones. A man whom
fortune bath cruelly scratched. The annointed sovereign af signs anc
groans. Is it possible that so short a time can alter the conditio°
of a man?"
Q. What about reports the President himself may have knov n
about the attempted coverup?
A. "They that stand high have many blasts to shake them. 7Ine
best in this kind are but shadows."
Q. There has been some speculation that Nixon may be for :ed
to resign. Do you agree?
A. "What though the mast be now blown overboard, the r able
broke, the holding anchor lost, and half our sailors swallow'd is the
flood? Yet lives our pilot still. With the help of a surgeon, he .igh;t
yet recover."
Q. TH-AiNK YOU, Mr. Shakespeare.

'tIE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL
I don't care if high government officials corrupted the
courts, FBI, CIA, Justice Department and the democratic
process! I want to see I Love Lucy!'