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account for their actions in a courtroom. Executive Privilege might
save them from trial, but if it failed they had to be prepared to save
themselves. Thus they functioned, so to speak, as predefendants, ready
to meet any accusation regardless of what it might turn out to be.
As
it happened the crime was Watergate - no doubt, it could have
been one of a dozen or even hundreds of others. There are entire
fields of this Administration's performance - e.g., Nixon's appoint–
ments to regulatory agencies - in which potential scandals are con-
Automaton,
from
Paul Klee and the Bauhaus,
courtesy of the New York Graphic Society.
(Paul Klee Foundation, Berne Museum of Fine Arts)
