When five men awkwardly surrendered in the Watergate apartment complex late last Spring, no one would have guessed that ten months later three present and former high aides to President Nixon would be implicated in the scandal.

But last week such an event came to pass, as panic spread through the upper ranks of the White House and strong signs of perjury and coverups by Nixon advisors emerged.

Jeb Stuart Magruder, chosen by the Institute of Politics for a fellowship here next year, broke the silence of the inner circle when he reportedly said last Saturday that John N. Mitchell, a past head of the Committee to Reelect the President and former Attorney General, had approved the Watergate bugging.

Magruder testified to a grand jury that he had met with Mitchell and presidential counsel John W. Dean III to plan the tapping and espionage enterprise. He added, according to Washington Post reports, that Mitchell had "arranged to buy the silence of the seven convicted Watergate conspirators."

As Magruder's claims smudged the credibility of Mitchell's protestations of innocence--Mitchell asserted Thursday that he had heard of the plans on three occasions but expressed disapproval each time--Dean bolted from his previous pristine silence.

In a thinly disguised warning, the head of Nixon's first investigation of the Watergate affair insisted that he would not become a "scapegoat."