P--That's why for your immediate things you have no choice but to come up with the $120,000, or whatever it is. Right?

D--That's right.

P--Would you agree that that's the prime thing that you damn well better get done?

D--Obviously he ought to be given some signal anyway.

P--[Expletive deleted], get it.

But St. Clair's 3D strategy--delay, diversion, denial--means that he will concede nothing. Instead, he tries to put everything in its broadest possible perspective, glossing over specific evidence of Nixon's cover-up role by saying that Nixon's knew blackmail could not work, that "you don't have to be a genius" to know that.

Meanwhile, St. Clair is fighting demands for more tapes and other evidence, possibly hoping to delay things long enough to reduce some of the impeachment fervor.

Undoubtedly, these tactics constitute good legal maneuvering, the sort that St. Clair has taught each spring since 1956 to a Harvard Law School class on trial practice. But given the unique status of St. Clair's client, are these tactics wise?

Alan M. Dershowitz, professor of Law, says that the St. Clair Stonewall--trying to delay a Supreme Court ruling on the tapes, refusing to cooperate with federal Judge Gerhardt A. Gesell in the "plumbers" trial, hoping to limit the scope of the House impeachment inquiry--gives the impression that Nixon has something to hide.

"He is playing lawyers' games," Dershowitz says of St. Clair. "He is handling the case precisely the way I would handle the case if my client was guilty, which I believe his is."

"I have the highest respect for his ability as a lawyer," Dershowtiz says, but he adds a qualification: "If his client is innocent, he's doing a terrible job."

Q: Your colleague at the Law School. Professor Dershowitz, said that your defense of President Nixon was that a lawyer gives to a man he believes is guilty. He said that you were delaying and refusing to produce evidence, and that that might give the public the impression that the president had something to hide.

A: Well, I don't know that Mr. Dershowitz said that, but if he did I wholeheartedly disagree.

Q: Is it possible that the same tactic that's good law is bad politics. Maybe that's what Dershowitz was...

A: It may or may not be in my judgment, good law in the last analysis is the practical, the good, practical approach in the last analysis. Mr. Dershowitz and I from time to time, I'm sure, have had differing views regarding matters and on occasion have had similar views. He's quite free to comment, of course, on his analysis and interpretation of what I'm doing. I am equally free to disagree with him, which I do.