President Refuses to Turn Over Tapes; Ervin Committee, Cox Issue Subpoenas

Deputy press secretary Gerald L. Warren said Mr. Nixon had not heard the tapes before issuing his statement of May 22 that he had no knowledge of the Watergate cover-up and had never offered executive clemency to Watergate defenders.

Mr. Nixon first began listening to some of the tapes in early June, Warren said. He would give no further details.

Warren also confirmed reports that the taping of presidential conversations has been stopped. Asked why, he said that they had been "compromised" by public disclosure that they were being made.

In a separate letter yesterday to Ervin, the President said he did not believe any "useful purpose . . . would be served by our having a meeting at this time."

The President earlier had agreed to confer with the senator on the issue of presidential papers and Ervin had said he sought the meeting to avoid a "constitutional crisis" between the executive and legislative branches.

Ervin said yesterday that in view of the President's refusal of the tapes he agreed that nothing would be gained by a meeting at this time.

Expressing deep regret over the President's decision, Ervin said, "I love my country, I venerate the office of President and I have best wishes for the success of the present incumbent." But he said he had very different ideas from Mr. Nixon about separation of powers.

The President had written Ervin July 6 that he would not testify before the committee or make presidential documents available to it. The President wrote yesterday that he had "concluded that principles stated" in the earlier letter also applied to the request for the tapes.

It came to public knowledge last week that presidential telephone and office conversations were recorded on a daily basis when FAA Administrator Alexander Butterfield testified before the Ervin committee. Butterfield was the person responsible for setting up the operation in the spring of 1971, when he was a White House aide.

The tapes will remain "under my sole personal control," Mr. Nixon wrote in the letter received by the committee during its noon recess yesterday. "None has been transcribed or made public and none will be."

He said that "inseparably interspersed" in the tapes relating to Watergate are "a great many very frank and very private comments, on a wide range of issues and individuals, wholly extraneous to the committee's inquiry."

The President's most startling admission was that the tapes, while supporting his interpretation of his Watergate role, nevertheless might be interpreted in different ways by different persons.