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It threatens the federal government's largest single enterprise, the pentagon, with a state of leaderlessness with Richardson's new assignment. In the White House, Haldeman and Ehrlichman had been the twin pillars of a management system in which they had been regarded as indispensable to the President. Haldeman, particularly, was the ultimate traffic controller and organizer of the flow of presidential business.
In the Justice Department the departure of Kleindienst came fresh upon the heels of the political melodrama of the decline and fall of acting FBI Director Gray, an episode that had already seriously demoralized the Bureau and the Department of which it is a part.
Nor was there any assurance that the events of yesterday would turn off the fearsome faucet of Watergate revelations. Ahead are the prospect of indictments, criminal trials, heavily publicized Senate hearings and the ever haunting question of presidential involvement. Watergate's political liabilities are still incalculable, with the polls registering the most precipitous drop of the President's popularity in his entire tenure.
When news of the White House shake-up reached the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday, during an appearance by Secretary of State William P. Rogers, Sen. Jacob K. Javits (R-N.Y.) said he was "very deeply disturbed" by reports that "the Watergate scandal has immobilized the government processes of the United States."
Rogers replied that from the standpoint of foreign affairs, "nothing has happened that has bogged down or anything of the kind. I can assure you and the American people that the government is functioning effectively in the foreign affairs area . . ."
But Rogers, for many years a political intimate of the President, said he had discussed with Mr. Nixon the need for "corrective action" in the political system -- particularly "campaign contributions and appointments . . . I talked to the President about it and he agrees. It is an evil that effects any particular administration; it is a fact of life."
In yesterday's statement, the President said Richardson's charter as new Attorney General will include recommending changes in the law "to prevent future campaign abuses of the sort recently uncovered." The abuses to which he referred were secret election funds for the 1972 campaign amounting by some estimates to more $2 million. A secret election fund was also the central issue in Mr. Nixon's 1952 "Checkers" speech.
The news of the Watergate shake-up was conveyed to reporters at a morning briefing by White House press secretary Ronald L. Ziegler. After Ziegler's seven-minute announcement the newsmen raced for phones in a scene of pandemonium. No one bothered with questions.
Ziegler said that the President left for Camp David intending to spend the weekend in solitude. As events developed in the Watergate case he was visited by Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Kleindienst, Secretary of State Rogers, Ziegler and a speechwriter, Ray Price.
Haldeman and Ehrlichman, in their letters of resignation, both pledged to cooperate fully with the Justice Department investigation and will meet this week with U.S. attorneys and with the Senate Select Committee investigating the Watergate affair.
"I fully agree with the importance of a complete investigation by the appropriate authorities . . ." wrote Haldeman, "but am deeply concerned that, in the process, it has become virtually impossible under these circumstances for me to carry on my regular responsibilities."
Ehrlichman wrote: "I have confidence in the ultimate prevalence of truth; I intend to do what I can to speed truth's discovery."
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