Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 54

erpective a Section 2 Chicago Tribune. Sunday. May 13. 1973 James Reston John P. Roche Stayskal pin Mm: i I mm? Proxmire's charges and the news media The reverberations from 'Le Watergate' AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France The headline in the local paper tells of the arrest of the former chief of the Marseilles police vice squad for taking a bribe from a classy brothel.

Since all French reporting is "advocacy journalism," the writer has a field day, noting how for years this particular olficer had prided himself on his morality, on being so help me God "a cop honest." Now, as the broken man is led away in chains, the journalist is overjoyedanother phony saint brought down. Then to the serious business: Le Monde the French newspaper of recordwhere lo and behold we find the same scenario with a different cast of characters. "Le Watergate" has finally blown open, heads are rolling in Washington, 'President Nixon has done penance, and somehow or other even Daniel Ellsberg bas gotten into the act. The slogan of the Watergate troupe seems to have been "Have tools will travel." Le Monde, in its own austere way, finds the whole affair confirming its long-standing conviction that the United States of America is a lunatic asylum run by the inmates. I HAVE a basic loyalty to and faith in American political institutions and perhaps for subjective reasons cannot enjoy the spectacle of the President of the United States any President sit- hours the whole country knows about it.

Meanwhile, the President and his aides have access to the same network of communications. The White House said: "Any suggestion that the President was aware of the Watergate operation is untrue; any suggestion that the President participated in any coverup activity or activities is ptrue; any suggestion that the President ever authorized the offering of clemency to anyone in this case is also false All this has been widely reported, but the problem remains, for many other questions remain, and the White House spokesmen refuse to answer the questions. Accordingly, the press either has to take the word of officials who in many cases know less about the charges than the reporters, or, having been misled so often and so long by officials in the past, publish both the charges and the denials and let the readers judge for themselves. Proxmire is undoubtedly right that innocent people may be harmed by this rough struggle to get at the truth, but the problem i3 that all the safeguards of our democratic system have been violated in this case. The confidence on which the system rests has been broken.

NOW THE administration, whose own men have broken confidence with one another, broken confidence with the Congress, broken the law, covered up the conspiracy, and misled the American people, are asking the press to have confidence in them and in the system they have gravely weakened. It was not hard to understand this appeal only a few short weeks ago, when some White House aides were being damaged by third and fourth hand hearsay of wrongdoing, but now the texts of grand jury testimony are beginning to circulate, disclosing improper and even illegal acts which nobody is willing to deny. In such an appalling tangle, it is a bit hard to ask the press to pipe down at this late date. How do you shut off an underground geyser of such proportions? This is what we'd like to know, and while it is easy to agree with Proxmire's concern for innocent people, he didn't suggest how the thing could possibly be done. WASHINGTON In a speech on the floor of the United States Senate, Sen.

William Proxmire, Democrat of Wisconsin, has accused the press of being "grossly unfair" in reporting secret charges that President Nixon knew 8bout the coverup in the Watergate case. He said, "When former White House John Dean is reported thruout the country to have privately told grand jury investigators that the President was directly involved in a Watergate coverup, President Nixon is being tried, sentenced, and executed by rumor and allegation. "As the senator who succeeded Joe McCarthy in the U. S. Senate, I find this kind of persecution and condemnation without trial McCarthyism at its worst." THERE IS obviously a serious problem here, but it raises some fundamental questions: Would this scandal have reached the present point of disclosure if the press had not reported the'secret testimony of witnesses in this case? Is a government which had knowledge of this kind of political espionage and sabotage, and then tried to conceal the facts, entitled to bar reporters from getting beyond the screen of secrecy? Proxmire concedes that there is a dilemma here, but he thinks the press has done its job in helping force the case into the courts and Congress and should now wait until all the charges can be subjected to careful cross-examination.

Otherwise, he insists, the daily publication of more and more sensational charges will poison the public mind against the accused, interfere with the due process of a fair trial, and seriously damage the President and the Presidency. This may be true, for after all the lies and deceptions that have been practiced in this conspiracy, the credibility of the administration has all but vanished, but it would be helpful if Proxmire would suggest how a free and competitive press can suddenly shut off the torrent of charges at the height of the crisis. Some of the key witnesses and their lawyers are now talking in the hope of Indicating what they know and getting immunity to disclose even more. If one of the accused talks and his charges get into a single paper, the charges are immediately transmitted across the news agency tickers to hundreds of radio and television stations and to the other papers of the country, and within ting in the dock admitting he had surrounded himself with men of no integrity. Yet the conjunction of the two storiesof the "cop honest" and "Le Watergate" struck me as quite remarkable.

For more than four years, and particularly since last November, we have been exposed to a torrent of pious rhetoric featuring the "work ethic" Twhich I refuse to blame on the Protestants and denouncing the Kennedy-Johnson administrations for coddling the poor, funding boondoggles, and perhaps worst of all providing the American people with unrealistic expectations. What the Watergate developments have done is utterly demolish the moralistic pretensions of the Nixon administration, the carefully cultivated proposition that in defeating George Mc-Govern Richard Nixon received some sort of mandate from the American people to return to the "old virtues." After all, what right do the sponsors of the Committee to Reelect the President C. R. E. E.

P. and the Watergate have to criticize some hustler who took the Office of Economic Opportunity for a few thousand bucks? Hell, C. R. E. E.

couriers never seem to have traveled without a hundred thousand bucks in cash tucked in a suitcase. What did they do with all that green? And when it comes to giving the American people unrealistic expectations, the sponsors of C. R. E. E.

P. and the Watergate are unrivalled at least since the era of President JTarren G. Harding. -JJj WHY, FOR example, shouldnyone want to work in a factory weh he knows he could be sitting in a JKjJm in the Executive Office Building faking a State Department dossier on tbtvmur-der of Diem? Or that, with a litttaiught school training in electronics, can pick up a fat pack of hundred-dollar bills for planting a bug? The vopation of burglar has been given a new respectabilityit may even turn up as one of the categories in "Who's Who." Altho it must be obvious that I would get a certain grim satisfaction from seeing that bunch of moralistic fakirs at hard labor in striped suits, there is still an odd aspect about the whole affair, one that leads me to feel a sense of compassion toward the man Richard Nixon. Kins Features Syndicate John 'P.

Roche's column appears; regularly In Chicago Today. "Well, this break seems to have taken care of itself." Wayne Stayskal's cartoons appear Monday thru Friday In Chicago Today. Between the lines p-r That fa fte face of model MariIyn chambers, 21, on the box of Ivory Snow I jf fv" i at the left. "They wanted an ail-American, wholesome girl and that'a what I hH i I still am," she says. Her clean-scrubbed look was used by Procter 0t I 1 Gamble to help sell their Ivory Snow, which "softens as it cleans." But I i someone at Procter apparently saw dirt when it was discovered that Miss I BtHnC Chambers is the unclad star of a pornographic movie "Behind the Green fi i 'Vn Door." The company promptly took her soapbox and her contract away I Sf jljr si from her.

"I don't think they should be so uptight," says Miss Chambers. "I don't think sex Is dirty." Devotees of office gossip and who isn't? will be pleased to learn what I I the? ma7 have long suspected. The Information they pick up about their I i '1 colleagues and their firm on the organization grapevine is accurate 90 to 95 I I per cent of the time. This conclusion was reached after careful study by 1 I I I Keith Davis Professor of management at Arizona State University. Davis vL 1 I i notes, however, that most stories are Incomplete in detail.

He also found I that more employes would expect to learn of an organization change first 1 by the grapevine than by any other method. Men are just as active on the -1 1 1 grapevine as women. New York Times News Service -L. James Reston's column appears In Chicago Today. oooo ooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooo Vv AN jlKK A.

JL9v a A Ji VK 1 1 I I ooooo OOOOO OOOOOOOOOO OOOOOO OOOOOO J0 0 0 -Q gxx Aaron gold? Come 0 a shower for the bride I I It could just be the way he pulls in xBrjdal show.f be Taste-tempting af- r'J-N cgf? information from around the world especally yoi around some PV y- rCFS? a delectable qoodies like those in Thursday ll A What makes 1 Ww Aaron gold? It could just be the way he pulls in information from around the world and around town like how Bridal showers can be taste-tempting affairs, especially if you spread around some delectable goodies like those in Thursday's it 1 II mm llll aaa.a III I I I I ii 1 1 1 III 1 1 llll I I llll Food Guide. Perhaps you would like to try one of the tangy fruit punches (great with or -without alcohol) or an easy to decorate "shower flower" cake. In the Food Guide you will also find other fancy dessert and luncheon suggestions that just might make you the star of the day. on Tuesday he'll be able to tell you what pop singer Carole King is up to and what plans Mary Martin has for coming back to the musical stage under the direction of Josh Hogan. Aaron knows a lot more, too, on Tuesday and averv other weekday.

A WEDNESDAY 11 ii 111 Nukes, oil and earthquakes a story to shake you up The code name is Rio Blanco. The project to explore for oil with un-derground explosions. It's not science fiction, as our national correspondent, Bill Anderson, discovered. The first Rio Blanco blast is tentatively scheduled for May 17 in Colorado. And some environmentalists are uneasy.

One cause for concern: the possibility of earthquakes. Perhaps that's not so farfetched. Anderson learned of still another experiment- near the Rio Blanco sito where the government creates earthquakes then turns them off. An eye-opening three-part series starting with Anderson's Monday column in Perspective. There's plenty of fun coming this Weekend Want to make your 5 pad more liveable? It's easy when you've got pgr Home Guide section forCa friend.

Each Saturday'lt brings out purchasing and repair Ideas galore. It also takes you info the houses and apartments of people who have come up with some unique ways to make home much homier. The Tribune Home Guide you just might say it's an "Open House" every Saturday. Take, for instance, Lynn VanMatre's interview with and review of top folk guitarist David Bromberg who is scheduled to appear at the Quiet Night this weekend. Or look to Carolyn McGuire's "Fun to Do" item sketch of coming events.

Or well, there's much more great entertainment in and about Chicago, but you'll see that for yourself in Friday's Hope for the infertile? Once there was little hope for infertile couples. Today the problem is compounded by the scarcity of children available for adoption. In a two-part series starting Wednesday, Tempo takes on tho problem of infertility in men and women and discusses the kinds of medical treatment available and the chances of success. guiaa to gooa Times, our vveenena secnon. EN JWIiiEiriKlBilJNEE ALELWESK UDN'S Call 222-4100 for home delivery, Suburbs call collect.

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