The Judgment on Watergate: “Expletive Deleted” 791to the grand jury investigating the Watergate affair
but that nothing would be revealed to the public.
He then named a new special prosecutor, Leon
Jaworski, and promised him access to whatever
White House documents he needed. However, it
soon came out that several tapes were missing and
that an important section of another had been delib-
erately erased.
Then Vice President Agnew (defender of law and
order, foe of permissiveness) was accused of income
tax fraud and of having accepted bribes while serving
as Baltimore county executive and governor of
Maryland. To escape a jail term Agnew admitted in
October that he had been guilty of tax evasion and
resigned as vice president.
Acting according to the procedures for presi-
dential and vice-presidential succession of the
Twenty-Fifth Amendment, adopted in 1967,
President Nixon nominated Representative Gerald
R. Ford of Michigan as vice president, and he was
confirmed by Congress. Ford had served continu-
ously in Congress since 1949 and as minority
leader since 1964. His positions on public issues
were close to Nixon’s; he was an internationalist in
foreign affairs and a conservative and convinced
Republican partisan on domestic issues.The Judgment on Watergate: “Expletive Deleted”
Meanwhile, special prosecutor Jaworski continued
his investigation of the Watergate scandals. In March
1974 a grand jury indicted Haldeman; Ehrlichman;
former attorney general John Mitchell, who had
been head of CREEP at the time of the break-in; and
four other White House aides for conspiring to block
the Watergate investigation. The jurors also named
Nixon an “unindicted co-conspirator,” Jaworski hav-
ing informed them that their power to indict a presi-
dent was constitutionally questionable. Judge Sirica
thereupon turned over the jury’s evidence against
Nixon to the House Judiciary Committee.
In an effort to check the mounting criticism, late in
April Nixon released edited transcripts of the tapes he
had turned over to the court the previous November. In
addition to much incriminating evidence, the transcriptsWhen the White House tapes were turned over to the special prosecutor, several crucial sections had been erased. Rosemary Woods, Nixon’s
personal secretary, attempted to demonstrate how she had accidentally erased the pivotal sections.