The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (105 page)

8
Mitchell Senate testimony, 4 Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (SSC), 1653 (July 10, 1973).

9
The strain that had always existed between Ehrlichman and Mitchell, meanwhile, grew more pronounced, and I would soon hear Ehrlichman criticizing Mitchell for having allowed Liddy and Hunt’s Watergate burglary, while Mitchell disparaged Ehrlichman for having permitted Liddy and Hunt’s break-in at Dr. Fielding’s office. Each was leveraging against the other.

10
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Conversation No. 739-4.

11
Richard Nixon,
RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon
(New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), 636.

12
I knew Silbert before Watergate and Glanzer after. Neither were partisans and both were rather good federal prosecutors. Silbert would be appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia during the Ford administration, and his opponents on the Senate Judiciary Committee were only Democrats, Senators John Tunney (D-CA) and James Abourezk (D-SC). See Helen Dewar, “Senate Committee Backs Silbert for Confirmation, 10–2,”
The Washington Post
, October 1, 1975, A-1.

13
Conversation No. 739-11.

14
See Maurice H. Stans,
The Terrors of Justice: The Untold Side of Watergate
(New York: Everest House, 1978), 202–4. Stans’s records as finance chairman of Nixon’s reelection committee show that playing by the rules was not enough.

15
Haldeman,
Diaries,
429.

16
Conversation No. 343-27.

17
Nixon,
RN
, 637.

June 22, 1972

1
Walter Rugaber, “4 Being Hunted in Inquiry in Raid on Democrats,”
New York Times
, June 22, 1972, 1.

2
Telephone interview with author, July 16, 2010.

3
For example, the
Post
reported:

• Hunt’s employer, Robert F. Bennett, the president of the Mullen & Company public relations firm, who had been a fund-raiser for the Nixon reelection committee, set up dummy committees for anonymous donors.
  
• The DC Police and FBI were looking for the four men who had signed into the Watergate Hotel (unaware that they were aliases).
  
• Larry O’Brien was claiming that Jack Anderson’s June 20, 1972, column about his travels and expenses had come from a missing file at the DNC’s Watergate office. (Remarkably,
  Anderson had run into the Miami burglary team at the airport when they arrived at Washington National Airport on June 16, 1972. Frank Sturgis was an old friend, so he said hello, and Sturgis introduced him to Virgilio Gonzalez, who was carrying a bag filled with lock-picking tools. Anderson asked what they were doing in town. Sturgis said they were visiting friends. Forty-eight hours later Anderson tried to bail Sturgis out of jail, smelling a gigantic story. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Earl Silbert objected, and the presiding judge agreed that giving Anderson custody of a Watergate burglar might not be a good idea.)
  
• Woodward had “reliable sources” in the Nixon reelection committee saying that Mitchell had ordered “an independent private investigation” of the bugging incident.
  
• In Miami, “federal sources” said the one-hundred-dollar bills found on the suspect had been traced to the Republic National Bank of Miami, which was in a Cuban neighborhood.
  
• U.S. District Court Judge Charles R. Richey (a Nixon appointee) had been assigned the DNC lawsuit and had scheduled a hearing for Monday, June 26, 1972.
  
• Superior Court Judge James Belson was holding another bail-reduction hearing that morning for the four Miami men, whose bail was set at $50,000, and McCord, whose was set at $30,000.
  

From Bob Woodward, “Democrats, GOP Tighten Security After Watergate ‘Bugging’ Case,”
The Washington Post
, June 22, 1972, 1.

4
Jon Katz, “White House Aide Missing from Job,”
The Washington Post
, June 22, 1972, A-8; and William L. Claiborne and Alfred E. Lewis, “Four More Sought in Wiretap Case,”
The Washington Post
, June 22, 1972, A-8.

5
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Conversation No. 344-14.

6
The entire White House staff, as well as the cabinet departments, became involved in preparing the president’s briefing book under the direction of Pat Buchanan. A significant number of presidential and policy decisions were made at the Nixon White House in the process of preparing for his press conferences. White House staff would reach out to the departments and agencies to get their input on issues likely to arise at the press conference, add their own thoughts, and submit the material to the president through Haldeman’s office. When Ron Ziegler earlier said that he had sent the president a series of questions and answers regarding Watergate, the reason the document had not arrived on the president’s desk was that it needed to go first through Haldeman’s office. John Ehrlichman once suggested I send a memorandum to the president on a matter, and when he took it to Alex Butterfield to give to the president, Haldeman discovered it and sent it back to me, with instructions that it was to go to the president though his office. As the president worked his way through background material for his press conferences, he would make decisions, and when he announced his position at the press conference, it became the final decision. A similar process was followed for the release of presidential statements, and when they were released, they became final decisions and the president’s policy.

7
Conversation Nos. 740-2, 740-3. An edited transcript of this press conference appears in
Public Papers of the Presidents: Richard Nixon 1972
at www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=3472.

June 23, 1972

1
Tad Szulc, “Cuban Veterans Group Linked to Raid on Democratic Office,”
New York Times
, June 23, 1972, 1.

2
Bob Woodward and Jim Mann, “Bond Cut for Bugging Suspects,”
The Washington Post
, June 23, 1972, C-1.

3
Peter Jay and Kirk Scharfenberg, “Exiles’ View of ‘Bugging,’”
The Washington Post
, June 23, 1972, C-5.

4
See Max Holland,
Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat
(Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2010).

5
Dean Senate testimony, __ Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (SSC), __; Petersen Senate testimony, __ SSC __. [TKs]

6
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Conversation No. 741-2.

7
Dean testimony
U.S. v. Mitchell et al.
(October 16, 1974), 2697–728; Haldeman testimony
U.S. v. Mitchell et al.
(December 3, 1974), 8478–88, 8799–824.

8
When Haldeman later met with CIA director Richard Helms and deputy director Vernon Walters, he only addressed the Mexican money, not the entire FBI investigation. See testimony of Vernon Walters,
U.S. v. Mitchell et al.
(November 11, 1974), 6124.

9
See Richard M. Nixon,
Six Crises
(New York: Doubleday & Co., 1962), 1–71.

10
June 23, 1972, Haldeman office log, NARA. Haldeman returned from the staff meeting with Colson and Mitchell. The log does not state when Colson departed, but it appears that Haldeman and Mitchell could well have discussed this between 9:00
A.M.
and 9:30
A.M.
, when he went to the Oval Office.

11
As he later explained, Helms had rarely approached him personally for any kind of assistance or intervention but had done so less than a year earlier, regarding the possible publication of a book by two disaffected CIA agents. Helms wanted White House support for legal actions by the CIA, despite the fact that there would be cries of suppression. Nixon gave him that support. See Richard Nixon,
RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon
(New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), 640. In March 1972, a security problem arose at the CIA when a former Russian language specialist, analyst and aide in the director’s office became disenchanted with the CIA and decided to write a book. Victor Marchetti was a security problem because he knew how the place worked. According to Helms’s biographer, Thomas Powers, on March 12, 1972, a CIA officer in New York learned that Marchetti had submitted his book proposal to nine publishing houses. The agency read it with alarm. Helms decided to go directly to Nixon, because the new attorney general, Dick Kleindienst, had not been confirmed, and he wanted White House backing to be sure the Justice Department aggressively pursued enforcing the confidentiality agreement Marchetti had signed—like all CIA officers. Following an unrelated meeting in the Cabinet Room with the president, on March 20, 1972, Helms asked the president if he could have a word in private with him. Together they went to the Oval Office and met from 4:48
P.M.
to 5:15
P.M.
Their discussion—Conversation No. 698-6—has been withdrawn for national security reasons. Powers reports that the president listened to Helms’s request, promised support and told him to take it up with John Ehrlichman, which he did. Ehrlichman called the Justice Department, which aggressively pursued the lawsuit, forcing Marchetti to remove some 168 passages from his book. See Thomas Powers,
The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970), 244–45.

12
See testimony of Vernon Walters,
U.S. v. Mitchell et al.
(November 11, 1974), 6124.

13
Conversation No. 741-10. Note: The audio quality of this recording is very poor, but I found it possible to transcribe more of the digital edition than the WSPF was able to accomplish with the analog version of the conversation. And because of its historical importance, I tried to dig out as much as possible.

14
Nixon,
RN
, 642.

15
A close listen to the conversation reveals Haldeman was not called back, but rather had returned to meet with the president for totally unrelated reasons, namely to enable Ehrlichman to join him in meeting with Helms and Walters. Ehrlichman had planned to go over the president’s statement on the higher education bill at the only time that Helms and Walters could meet. The president’s statement could not be delayed, because the White House had announced it, and the TV networks were setting up for a live presidential statement at 3:00
P.M.
, which the president needed to rehearse. Haldeman had tried to call the president at 10:41
A.M.
to explain the situation after their earlier meeting, because Ehrlichman had arranged for Helms and Walters to come to his office at 1
P.M.
, but given his tight schedule, it called for logistical changes. Rather than Ehrlichman, Haldeman would handle the signing statement
for the higher education bill. The president understood that releasing a statement that afternoon, and preparing his remarks for the teleprompter, which was done on a larger font typewriter, required several hours lead time. Because Ehrlichman had attended the meeting the president held with his economic advisers in the Oval Office from 10:30
A.M.
until 12:15
P.M.
, and then was scheduled to appear in the White House press room to do a background briefing on the higher education bill with then secretary of health, education and welfare Elliot Richardson, he would be busy right up to the time of the meeting with Helms and Walters. Thus, Haldeman took care of the statement for the higher education bill rather than Ehrlichman.

When Haldeman entered the Oval Office at 1:04
P.M.
Haldeman asked whether the president would read his statement on busing from a draft or did he want to read it off the teleprompter. He decided to use the teleprompter, and Haldeman gave the president copies of the draft statements. With pen in hand, Nixon can be heard editing the statements. The sound of his pen scratching sentences and adding new material was easily picked up by the microphones planted in his desk, and the edited drafts are in the Nixon library. In addition, the recording equipment also picked up the sound of an electric typewriter, which was not unusual. This meant that a door to the Oval Office remained open, so it is very likely, given the time pressures, that Haldeman was taking the president’s edited copy to one of the secretaries as he finished his editing. When the president finished editing, he added his comment about meeting with Helms and Walters.

16
Conversation No. 343-36.

June 24 to July 1, 1972

1
Helen Thomas, “Martha’s ‘Ultimatum,’”
The Washington Post
, June 24, 1972, B-3.

2
In addition to the conversations that follow, see Winzola McLendon,
Martha: The Life of Martha Mitchell
(New York: Random House, 1979), 63.

3
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Conversation No. 194-14.

4
H. R. Haldeman,
The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1993)
,
475.

5
Joseph Kraft, “The Watergate Caper,”
The Washington Post
, June 25, 1972, B-7.

6
Ibid.

7
Helen Thomas, “Martha Is ‘Leaving’ Mitchell,”
The Washington Post
, June 26, 1972, A-1.

8
Haldeman,
Diaries
, 475.

9
Conversation No. 742-8.

10
Conversation No. 742-14.

11
Conversation No. 343-37.

12
John W. Dean,
Blind Ambition: The White House Years
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976), 126.

13
Haldeman,
Diaries
, 476–77.

14
June 28, 1972, Haldeman office log, NARA.

15
Conversation No. 346-8.

16
Conversation No. 345-10.

17
Haldeman,
Diaries
, 478.

18
Conversation No. 347-4.