On top of his $300,000 annual expense account, Nixon's 24-hour-a-day Secret Service protection will cost the taxpayers between $500 and $1000 a day for as long as he lives -- a conservative figure, considering the daily cost of things like helicopters, patrol boats, walkie-talkies and car telephones, along with salaries and living expenses for ten or 12 full-time agents. There is also the $40,000 a year Ron Ziegler still commands, as a ranking public servant. Add another $30,000 to $50,000 each for personal aides like Stephen Bull and Rose Mary Woods, plus all their living and travel expenses -- and the cost of maintaining Richard Nixon in exile adds up to something like $750,000 a year. . . and these are merely the expenses. His personal income will presumably derive from things like the $2 million advance on his memoirs, his $100,000 a year stipend from Reader's Digest, and the $5000 a crack he can average, with no effort at all, on the year-round lecture circuit.

So. . . what we are looking at here is a millionaire ex-president and admitted felon; a congenital thief and pathological liar who spent 28 years on the public sugar tit and then quit just in time to avoid the axe. If he had fought to the bitter end, as he'd promised Julie he would “as long as even one senator believes in me,” he risked losing about 95% of the $400,000 annual allowance he became qualified for under the “Former Presidents' Act” by resigning. . . But a president who gets impeached, convicted and dragged out of the White House by U.S. marshals is not covered by the “Former Presidents' Act.” If Nixon had fought to the end and lost-- which had become absolutely inevitable by the tune he resigned-- he would have forfeited all but about $15,000 a year from the federal dole. . . So, in retrospect, the reason he quit is as easy to see as the numbers on his personal balance sheet The difference between resignation and being kicked out of office was about $385,000 a year for the rest of his life.

Most of this annual largesse will come, one way or another, out of the pockets of the taxpayers. All of the taxpayers. Even George and Eleanor McGovern will contribute a slice of their income to Richard Nixon's retirement fund. . . And so will I, unless Jaworski can nail the bastard on enough felony counts to strip him not only of his right to vote, like Agnew, but also his key to the back door of the Federal Treasury -- which is not very likely now that Ford has done everything but announce the date for when he will grant the pardon.

The White House announced yesterday a negotiated agreement with Richard M. Nixon under which the former president and the U.S. government will have joint custody of White House tapes and presidential documents but with Mr. Nixon determining who shall have access to them.