Colson Reported Urging Bugging

From First Page White House aides, and Earl J. Silbert, the chief government prosecutor.

Haldeman is known to be under inquiry to determine whether his office had a role in the initial bugging operation or in any subsequent attempts to obstruct the investigation.

Ehrlichman was cited by L. Patrick Gray III, who resigned Friday as acting director of the FBI, as being present at a meeting 11 days after the Watergate breakin at which Gray was handed a file containing documents belonging to one of the Watergate participants. Gray reportedly was urged to make sure they "never see the light of day," and subsequently destroyed them.

Time Magazine first reported that Colson had been implicated in the bugging through statements by Magruder, the deputy director of the Nixon re-election campaign. Additional details of Magruder's allegations, and those by LaRue, were subsequently obtained by the Washington Post.

Time also said Colson recruited young men during last year's presidential cam-

paign to pass as homosexual supporters of Sen. George McGovern, in an attempt to link the Democratic nominee with the gay liberation cause.

In the bugging case, according to highly reliable sources, Magruder has told federal prosecutors Colson telephoned him in February, 1972 and asked: "When the hell are we going to get this bugging plan approved and into operation?”

Following Magruder's meeting with the prosecutors, the sources reported, LaRue, a principal deputy to former Atty. Gen. John N. Mitchell, confirmed that Colson had made the telephone call to Magruder, but said it came in March, not February.

Federal investigators told the Washington Post last summer that Colson and convicted Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt Jr. directed an extensive "dirty tricks" operation of political sabotage against Democratic candidates during the 1972 presidential campaign.

On ABC-TV's "Issues and Answers." Sen. Charles H. Percy, R-Ill., said he will introduce today a resolution calling on Nixon to take the case out of the hands of his appointees in the Justice Department and place it with a politically independent spe-

cial prosecutor of irreproachable reputation and "impeccable" integrity.

Percy said, however, that he hopes Nixon will seize the initiative by making a full statement on the case and by firing all those members of his staff who have lost public confidence.

Sen. Lowell P. Weicker Jr., R-Conn., on the same TV program, said the White House may be putting out a deliberately false impression by implying Gray was forced out of his job as acting FBI director.

Weicker a member of the Senate Committee on Watergate, said Gray was assured last Thursday evening that Nixon wanted him to stay on the job as acting FBI director. After the newspaper accounts the next morning of his destruction of documents, the senator said, Gray about noon decided to quit, and was informed by the Florida White House that his decision was acceptable.

The national governing board of the Ripon Society, a liberal Republican organization, concluded its annual meeting yesterday by issuing a tough statement calling for a special Watergate prosecutor, dissolution of the President's re-election committee and distribution of its assets to Republican state committees.