Times, Cbs-tv Claim Nixon Used Epithet ‘jew Boy’ Several Times in Taped Conversations with Dean

Two news media claimed over the weekend to have had corroboration from reliable sources of reports that President Nixon used anti-Semitic slurs and other ethnic epithets during private conversations with aides in Feb. and March 1973. The New York Times said the epithet, “Jew Boy,” was used several times by Nixon in taped conversations with John W. Dean 3d on Feb. 28 and March 20 and that Nixon also referred to “those Jews” in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington and accused Jews in government of leaking material to “Jewish liberals” in the media.

CBS-TV news broadcast Friday night a report that anti-Semitic remarks by President Nixon were among comments deleted from transcriptions of his taped Watergate conversations. The report was by CBS correspondent Fred Graham who quoted an “authoritative source” as saying that Nixon referred to Daniel Ellsberg as a “Jew boy.” CBS deleted the Graham report from subsequent newscasts.

According to CBS officials it was withdrawn after White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig told the network that special Watergate prosecutor Leon Jaworski had said the tapes did not contain what Graham said they had. A CBS source told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Graham was checking out his report and that his findings would be broadcast on a later program. CBS said it pulled the story because Jaworski could not be reached for comment.

COUNSEL TO NIXON DENIES ALLEGATION

A statement by Fred J. Buzhardt, Counsel to the President, issued yesterday in Stillwater, Okla, where Nixon was on a speaking engagement asserted: “The tapes of recorded conversations do not contain racial slurs by the President. I have listened to them a number of times and know this to be a fact. The allegations by The New York Times that the President used the reference ‘Jew boys’ is just not true. It is a fabrication…unfounded and malicious.”

The first allegation that Nixon used the term “Jew boy” in his private conversations in the Oval Office was made two weeks ago by syndicated Washington columnist Robert Novak who was a panelist on a national network television interview program. The Times said it had conducted an inquiry into “rumors spreading through Washington” that Nixon had used racial epithets. The Times said such epithets were in tape recordings the White House turned over early this year to Judge Lee P. Gagliardi of the U.S. District Court in New York for use in the trial of former Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former Secretary of Commerce Maurice H. Stans.

According to the Times, “One of the President’s most sharply critical remarks about Jews in the Mitchell-Stans tapes came during the March 20 meeting with Mr. Dean, all sources agreed.” The Times said, “According to the sources, the President complained to Mr. Dean that “those Jew boys (in the Security and Exchange Commission investigation of Robert L. Vesco) are all over everybody. You can’t stop them!”

The Times reported further that according to its sources, Nixon referred to three prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington as “those Jews down there.” The references were to Earl J. Silbert, Seymour Glanzer and Donald E. Campbell. Silbert and Glanzer are Jewish. Campbell is a Presbyterian, the Times reported. The source, according to the Times, said Nixon talked about “stopping those Jews over in the U.S. Attorney’s Office” and specifically recalled a complaint by Nixon “about the difficulty of ‘sitting down there with a bunch of Jews.'” According to the Times, Nixon referred to Judge John J. Sirica, former Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court in Washington as “that wop.”