One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon (35 page)

The president, providing guidance, said, “Give them a lot of gobble-de-gook, that’s all. Then let them squeal.”

Ziegler, checking his notes, said: “We’ve made it very clear that no one in the White House directed espionage and sabotage.”

Nixon made his position perfectly clear. “Espionage and sabotage is not illegal, do you understand? That’s the point I’m making. Espionage and sabotage is illegal only if it’s against the government.”

The president acquitted himself masterfully at the March 15 press conference, where seven of the thirteen questions dealt with Gray, Dean, the forthcoming Watergate Committee hearings. He parried every one. Why had he banned Dean from testifying at Gray’s confirmation? Nixon stood upon the Constitution to justify the obstruction of justice.

Mr. Dean is Counsel to the White House. He is also one who was counsel to a number of people on the White House Staff. He has, in effect, what I would call a double privilege, the lawyer-client relationship, as well as the Presidential privilege.… I consider it my constitutional responsibility to defend the principle of separation of powers.

I am very proud of the fact that in this Administration we have been more forthcoming in terms of the relationship between the executive, the White House, and the Congress, than any administration in my memory. We have not drawn a curtain down.… All we have said is that it must be under certain circumstances, certain guidelines, that do not infringe upon or impair the separation of powers that are so essential to the survival of our system.

In that connection, I might say that I had mentioned previously that I was once on the other side of the fence, but what I am doing here in this case is cooperating with the Congress in a way that I asked the then President, Mr. Truman, to cooperate with a committee of the Congress 25 years ago and in which he refused. I don’t say that critically of him now. He had his reasons. I have mine.

And he flatly proclaimed, “Members of the White House staff will not appear before a committee of Congress in any formal session” at any time. That assertion of executive privilege seemed to slam the door on the Senate Watergate Committee once and for all.

But after the barrage of questions, Nixon asked Haldeman and Ehrlichman if Dean should write a Watergate report to feed the hunger of the press corps and Congress. They concluded that it would be impossible—and potentially suicidal. Dean himself told the president on the morning of March 16: “There are some questions you can’t answer.”

Minutes later, Nixon and Haldeman spoke alone in the Oval Office. Any report Dean could write would have to reveal criminal conduct. “Then you get into a real mess,” Haldeman said. “I just wonder if it isn’t a losing game.”

That afternoon, Ehrlichman laid out his own Watergate report for the president. His synopsis was startlingly detailed. Liddy and Hunt, spurred by Colson, demanded and received from CREEP at least one hundred thousand dollars for the Watergate break-in. “Liddy, being kind of a nut, sat down with Hunt and said, ‘Okay, how are we going to pull this off?’ And Hunt said, ‘Listen, I know five Cubans who will come up here for that kind of dough and they’ll crack the United States Treasury.’ So they had to call McCord for equipment,” because the CREEP security director had eavesdropping expertise from his career at the CIA. “McCord says, ‘What the hell are you guys up to?’ And they told him.”

How could Dean put this on paper? It would unravel threads that ran right to the White House. “We can’t do it,” Ehrlichman said succinctly. In the evening, Nixon telephoned Dean. The president still wanted a report—even if it only added another layer to the cover-up. “I realize the problems of being too specific,” Nixon said. “Just put it in general terms, you see? I don’t know. Do you think that’s possible?”

“It’s going to be tough but I think … it’s a good exercise, and a drill that is absolutely essential,” Dean said. The White House counsel also had a news flash for the president: “Maximum John” Sirica would impose sentences on the Watergate defendants in one week.

In an Oval Office conversation with Dean on March 17, Nixon elaborated on what the report should say. “I think what you’ve got to do, John, is to cut it off at the pass,” the president said. “Liddy and his bunch just did this as part of their job.”

On Monday, March 19, Howard Hunt’s lawyer delivered a blackmail message to Dean, face-to-face in the White House. If Hunt didn’t get $122,000 in cash within forty-eight hours, he would have some startlingly seamy things to say at his sentencing. Dean called John Mitchell in New York and asked, referring to Tom Pappas, “Is the Greek bearing gifts?”

On that same day, James McCord signed, sealed, and delivered a letter to Judge Sirica. McCord had not demanded hush money. His silence had not been bought. And he had heard scuttlebutt from his fellow defendants and some of their lawyers that infuriated him. The word was that the White House wanted to lay Watergate at the feet of the CIA, where he and five of his codefendants had served. McCord was intensely loyal to the CIA and Richard Helms. The idea that the Agency could take the fall for the crime and the cover-up compelled him to compose his letter. It would be read by the judge from the bench at the sentencing, four days later.

McCord wrote, “[I]n the interests of restoring faith in the criminal justice system, which faith has been severely damaged in this case, I will state the following:”

1. There was political pressure applied to the defendants to plead guilty and remain silent.

2. Perjury occurred during the trial in matters highly material to the very structure, orientation, and impact of the government’s case, and to the motivation and intent of the defendants.

3. Others involved in the Watergate operation were not identified during the trial, when they could have been by those testifying.…

Following sentence, I would appreciate the opportunity to talk with you privately in chambers.

The fa
c
ade of the cover-up was about to crack. Judge Sirica, upon reading the letter in his chambers, turned to his law clerk and triumphantly said, “This is going to break this case wide open.” Nixon’s attorney general, Richard Kleindienst, wrote in his memoirs: “Future historians, in a more detached environment, might well conclude that the McCord letter was not only the turning point in Watergate but perhaps a turning point in modern civilization.”

Tuesday, March 20, 1973, was the last day of Richard Nixon’s presidency unscathed by Watergate. The president was still the most powerful man on earth and the leader of the free world. He hammered home that message in a speech he made that morning in the Cabinet Room of the White House to two dozen Republican leaders in Congress and the chairman of the Republican National Committee, George H. W. Bush. Fortunately for future historians, the Cabinet Room was wired.

“The only threat to the world’s freedom and the world’s peace is the Soviet Union today and the People’s Republic of China twenty years from now,” the president proclaimed. “The United States, therefore, has to use this last ultimate moment. It is the last moment because whenever we fall behind we’ll have no chips at all.”

“There is a chance for peace,” he said. “It’s never going to be because … Zhou En-Lai and Nixon shook hands and got to know each other; Brezhnev and Nixon hit it off because they both came from poor families; all that gobble-de-gook you read in the columns. That’s all crap. It happens only because the President of the United States … is strong enough and respected enough to be paid attention to. We are the force for peace in the world.”

*   *   *

On the morning of March 21, John Dean reported to the Oval Office to present a full picture of the legal problems confronting the president. Their conversation remains the most remarkable tape Richard Nixon ever recorded.

“I have the impression that you don’t know everything I know—and it makes it very difficult for you to make judgments that only you can make,” Dean began. “I think that there’s no doubt about the seriousness of the problem we’ve got.”

“We have a cancer within, close to the presidency,” Dean said. “It’s growing daily. It’s compounding. It grows geometrically now.”

“One, we’re being blackmailed; two, people are going to start perjuring themselves very quickly that have not had to perjure themselves to protect other people.… And there is no assurance—”

“That it won’t bust,” Nixon said.

Dean began to lay out facts, many of which Nixon knew very well: “Where did it start? It started with an instruction to me from Bob Haldeman to see if we couldn’t set up a perfectly legitimate campaign intelligence operation over at the Re-Election Committee.” Dean continued: “I came up with Gordon Liddy.… I was aware of the fact that he had done some extremely sensitive things for the White House … going out into Ellsberg’s doctor’s office.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Nixon, who had learned about that break-in from Ehrlichman.

“Took Liddy over to meet Mitchell,” Dean said. “Liddy laid out a million-dollar plan that was the most incredible thing I have ever laid my eyes on: all in codes, and involved black bag operations, kidnapping, providing prostitutes to weaken the opposition, bugging, mugging teams.” The review of the break-in, arrests, trial, and imminent sentencing of the Watergate burglars was Dean’s throat-clearing cough before the cancer diagnosis.

The burglars had demanded hundreds of thousands of dollars in blackmail to keep silent. Mitchell had raised hush money as recently as the week before from the gift-bearing Greek. Haldeman had handed over $328,000 in CREEP funds for payoffs. Ehrlichman and Dean were entirely enmeshed in the crimes and the cover-up. It all constituted a conspiracy to obstruct justice, Dean told the president. “Bob is involved in that. John is involved in that. I am involved in that. Mitchell is involved in that.”

Dean turned to “the continued blackmail” by the Watergate defendants. “It’ll go on when these people are in prison, and it will compound the obstruction of justice situation. It’ll cost money. It’s dangerous,” he said. “People around here are not pros at this sort of thing. This is the sort of thing Mafia people can do: washing money, getting clean money, things like that.… We are not criminals and not used to dealing in that business.”

“That’s right,” said the president. Then he asked, “How much money do you need?”

Dean took a guess.

“These people are going to cost a million dollars over the next two years.” Silence filled the Oval Office for a few seconds.

“We could get that,” Nixon said. “You could get a million dollars. And you could get it in cash. I know where it could be gotten.… You don’t need a million right away, but you need a million. Is that right?”
*

“That’s right,” Dean said. They agreed that the immediate problem was Howard Hunt, who could sink Ehrlichman, Colson, and Dean with a single deposition. “Don’t you have to handle Hunt’s financial situation … damn soon?” Nixon said. “Either that or let it all blow right now.”

“If this thing ever blows and we’re in a cover-up situation, I think it’d be extremely damaging to you,” Dean said. “What happens if it starts breaking, and they do find a criminal case against a Haldeman, a Dean, a Mitchell, an Ehrlichman?”

Nixon returned the conversation to the blackmail. “Let me put it frankly: I wonder if that doesn’t have to be continued?” Dean kept silent, overawed at engaging in a criminal conspiracy with the president.

“Let us suppose that you get the million bucks and you get the proper way to handle it,” Nixon said. “That would be worthwhile.” Otherwise, “the thing blows and they indict Bob and the rest.”

The president continued: “Jesus, you’d never recover from that, John.”

“That’s right,” Dean said.

“It’s better to fight it out instead,” Nixon concluded.

The fight resumed the next morning. The Watergate files Pat Gray had handed to the Senate held a deadly accusation. FBI agent Angelo Lano had concluded that Dean had lied to him by concealing the existence of Howard Hunt’s White House safe. Sen. Robert Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat, asked Gray on March 22 if Dean had deceived the FBI.

Gray replied, “I would have to conclude that that probably is correct, yes, sir.” Lying to the FBI meant slammer time.

The president’s men convened in the Oval Office. “Gray is dead on the floor,” Ehrlichman told the president. “He accused your counsel of being a liar,” Haldeman said sardonically. “He may be dead,” Dean said with false bravado, “’cause I may shoot him.” The last laughs on the White House tapes echoed and faded.

Later that day, Nixon had a heart-to-heart with John Mitchell, who had flown down from New York to consult and comfort the president. But Nixon could not be consoled. He had concluded that obstruction of justice was the only recourse. “I don’t give a shit what happens,” he said. “I want you all to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment, cover up or anything else.… We’re going to protect our people, if we can.”

*   *   *

The president and Haldeman fled Washington for the Florida White House on the day of the Watergate sentencing, Friday, March 23. They spent more than five hours that afternoon mulling over the case while they awaited word from Judge Sirica’s courtroom.

The judge read McCord’s letter from the bench. “The courtroom exploded,” recalled Sam Dash, a law professor preparing to serve as chief counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee. “It was a stunning development.… It looked as if Watergate was about to break wide open.”

Sirica gaveled the court into silence. Then he brought down the hammer on the other defendants: up to twenty years for Liddy, thirty-five for Hunt, and forty for the Cubans. He said the sentences would be reduced if the men cooperated by coming clean with the Senate committee.
*

Nixon and Haldeman spent four days in Key Biscayne consumed by the case. Dean holed up in Camp David laboring on a written Watergate report for the president. Haldeman called him there on March 24. Dean said, “The problem is we’ve been bailing out everybody else and it’s gotten out of hand and compounded the problem. Now we have to protect ourselves.” They spoke again the next day. “He’s back to his cancer theory, that we’ve got to cut the thing out,” Haldeman recorded in his diary. But where to make the first cut? He and Dean talked a third time on Monday, March 26.