Ex-Aides Say Watergate Had Roots in White House Politics

A former aide to President Nixon yesterday blamed the Watergate scandal on Nixon's reliance upon his staff--instead of cabinet members and other sources--for advice.

"The seed of Watergate was planted when a staff man was put at the head of the advisory system," Stephen Hess told a Business School forum.

Hess was one of five ex-presidential aides who participated in a panel discussion of "The Changing White House." He listed four of Nixon's personality traits that he said helped prepare his administration for Watergate: narrowness of interests, absence of innate political talent, lack of managerial abilities, and distrust of his administration.

High Intelligence

Hess called Nixon a man of "high intelligence and narrow interest" who had misallocated his time toward foreign policy rather than domestic concerns during his first term in office.

Watergate is a result of basic errors in the routine organization of the White House under the Nixon administration, he said, because the creation of a staff that mirrored Nixon's own policies and desires disrupted the system of administrative checks and balances.

Doris H. Kearns, associate professor of Government and a former aide to President Johnson, said "Watergate represents the White House staff running rampant."

Hess also cited Nixon's mistrust of the inner workings of his administration as a harbinger of the Watergate scandal--"it is one step from spying on departments to spying on opponents."

The panel agreed that it is important to run a more open administration. "In your oval office you can bitch like hell about the press, but keep talking to them," Hess said.

A Great Thing

"Leaks are a great thing, especially if they do not come from the White House," Richard Neustadt, professor of Government and a former aide to President Truman and consultant to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, said.

James Rowe, a former aide to President Roosevelt, said that the White House was overextended in its concerns and that three-quarters of the people in the White House are unnecessary--"What we need is a small White House."