White House speech writer Patrick Buchanan, meanwhile, has stepped up his attacks on the press, charging that “the big media” distort their coverage of the news by giving “enormous, positive and favorable publicity to movements associated with the far left.” He listed some of these causes as “the antiwar movement, the civil rights movement, the consumer movement.”

But the circle of those who are out to “get” the President is much larger, according to this view, than enemies in Congress and the press. “They” include the “McGovern crowd,” liberals generally—the whole “Eastern establishment,” in fact, with its roots in sections of both parties. Together, it contended, they compose “the impeachment lobby,” elements that have always hated Richard Nixon and have seized on this opportunity to bring him down.

Offers of interviews. The Administration has been making a number of major officials more accessible for questioning on matters affecting their departments. The purpose clearly has been to counteract the latest unfavorable disclosures about the President.

In one such interview, for instance, Gen. Alexander M. Haig Jr., the White House chief of staff, reported on the impression of foreign attitudes he brought back from his recent trips with Mr. Nixon to the Middle East, Western Europe and the Soviet Union. Western Europeans, he said, “look to the United States... to its continued leadership,” while the Russians “desire to continue detente.” Asked whether Watergate had diminished Ameri can influence abroad, General Haig said “almost precisely the opposite” was true.

Administration officials have also been conspicuously present at pro‐Nixon gatherings. At a dinner In a Washington hotel ballroom organized by Rabbi Korff after his San Clemente visit, Secretary of Agriculture Earl L, Butz, Secretary of Commerce Frederick B. Dent and a large proportion of the White House staff were among the 1,500 guests. Mr. Nixon informed the guests in a telephone message that “We are going to continue until we win.” A Baptist minister, in an invocation, suggested that the press was endangering “world peace.”

The underlying message in all this appears to be that in view of the poisoned atmosphere created by the media and by investigators within and outside Congress, and considering the overriding importance of Mr. Nixon's international leadership, it would be best to declare the whole impeachment process mistrial,

The role of political martyr is one Richard Nixon has assumed before—when he piotured himself as the victim of savage attacks by Communists and fellow travelers for his investigation of Alger Hiss; when he defended himself against charges of venality in his “Checkers” speech; when he told the press corps, after losing the California gubernatorial race, that they wouldn't have a Nixon to “kick around” any more How effective is such defense likely to be in the impeachment process?

According to most seasoned observers, the new offensive may well aggravate some partisan emotions in Congress. But the general feeling is that the process has gone beyond the reach of public relations efforts. From now on, it is felt, only the evidence will determine the outcome of the probable impeachment vote in the House.