The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (118 page)

15
E.g. Conversation No. 39-106 (Colson, June 6, 1973); Conversation No. 937-5 (Haig, June 12, 1973).

16
Conversation No. 962-4 (Haig, May 23, 1973).

17
Conversation No. 168-28 (Colson, June 3, 1973).

18
Conversation No. 168-30 (Ziegler, June 3, 1973).

19
Ibid.

20
Conversation No. 39-37 (Ziegler, June 3, 1973).

21
Ibid.

22
Conversation. No. 39-129 (Colson, June 7, 1973).

23
Conversation No. 441-35 (Buzhardt, June 7, 1973).

24
Conversation No. 935-6.

25
Conversation No. 962-4.

26
Conversation No. 926-5.

27
Conversation No. 927-3.

28
Conversation No. 39-16.

29
Conversation No. 928-12. It appears the tape was changed during this conversation, and the first few minutes may have been unrecorded.

30
Conversation No. 929-5.

31
Conversation No. 440-65.

32
Conversation No. 168-32.

33
Conversation No. 168-36.

34
Conversation No. 168-38.

35
Conversation. No. 39-37.

36
Conversation No. 441-2.

37
See Conversation Nos. 442-1 through 442-69. NARA has taken the “Draft Transcript Prepared by the Impeachment Inquiry Staff for the House Judiciary Committee of a Recording of the President’s Work-Day, June 4, 1973” and broken this 170-page document into sixty-nine segments, interlaced with the telephone calls that occurred throughout the day. The recording is basically the recording of Nixon listening to select conversations with me, and his reactions along the way, which he shared with Haig and Ziegler. Because the president wore a headset during the afternoon, it is not possible to know precisely which conversations Nixon did actually listen to on June 4, 1973—the only occasion during his presidency that he appears to have listened to the recordings.

38
Conversation No. 864-4 (February 27, 1973); Conversation Nos. 866-3, 866-4 and 866-17 (March 1, 1973) and Conversation No. 865-14 (February 28, 1973).

39
Conversation No. 39-78.

40
Conversation No. 39-79.

41
Conversation Nos. 39-80, 39-81 and 39-83.

42
Conversation No. 441-23.

43
Conversation No. 933-1.

44
Conversation No. 933-3.

45
Conversation No. 933-11.

46
Conversation No. 39-104.

47
Conversation No. 443-35.

48
Conversation No. 934-5.

49
Conversation No. 441-35.

50
Conversation No. 935-4.

51
While there had been no substance to the earlier scandal charge, what Nixon knew but only a few others did was that Kleindienst had lied during his confirmation hearing concerning talking with the president about the ITT merger. Richardson’s amendment to the Cox charter would surface Kleindienst’s false testimony. But Kleindienst would negotiate a plea deal for a misdemeanor and only receive a slap on the wrist. The investigation of ITT by the special prosecutor’s office produced nothing else of note. Re Kleindiesnt: Richard Ben-Veniste and George Frampton, Jr.,
Stonewall: The Real Story of the Watergate Prosecution
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977), 377–78.

52
Conversation No. 935-7.

53
Conversation No. 935-11.

54
Conversation No. 444-5.

55
Conversation No. 936-1.

56
Conversation No. 936-3.

57
Conversation No. 40-20.

58
Conversation No. 937-3.

59
These were less than challenging question, most of which I answered when testifying before the Senate in my opening statement. It appears Nixon incorrectly thought I was not going to discuss my own role in the cover-up. Several of Nixon’s questions are based on incorrect assumptions. His seven questions were: “(1) How often did you see Henry Petersen after the break-in? (2) Did he tell Petersen about the meetings he had had prior to the break-in with regard to it? (3) Did he tell Petersen about his talks with Walters asking him to put ‘buggers’ on the CIA payroll? (4) Did he tell Petersen about his meeting with Magruder and Mitchell when he suggested that Magruder lie about his role? (5) Did he tell Petersen about the fund-raising activities of Kalmbach that he was aware of, and the awareness of the $350,000 fund? (6) Did he tell Petersen of his offers of clemency to others? (7 ) How often did he see Gray? Did he tell Gray about these offers—or some of these other matters? In other words these are questions concerning all these things that happened before March.” Fred Thompson’s first questions of me during his cross-examination related to Petersen, but they appear based on my testimony rather than on the questions fed to him by the White House—although it is not clear.

60
Conversation No. 937-5.

61
Conversation No. 937-8.

62
Conversation No. 40-28.

63
Conversation No. 937-19.

64
Conversation No. 40-33.

65
Conversation No. 938-6.

66
Conversation No. 938-12.

67
Conversation No. 40-43.

68
Conversation No. 40-49.

69
Conversation No. 939-2.

70
Conversation No. 445-6.

71
Conversation No. 40-70.

72
Conversation No. 445-22.

73
Conversation No. 40-86.

74
Conversation No. 40-95.

75
Conversation No. 940-2.

76
Conversation No. 40-111.

77
Conversation No. 446-6.

78
Conversation No. 942-1.

79
Conversation No. 942-6.

80
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, “Nixon Expected to Alter Stance, Abandon Aide,”
The Washington Post
, June 18, 1973, A-1.

81
Conversation No. 943-1.

82
Conversation No. 943-2.

83
Conversation No. 944-2.

84
Conversation No. 41-1.

85
Conversation No. 41-3.

86
Conversation No. 447-11.

87
Buzhardt would also push this approach in Conversation Nos. 945-3, 945-7 and 447-40.

88
Dean Senate testimony, 3 Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (SSC) 935–36, 1025, 1374–78 and 1390–93; see also, John W. Dean,
Blind Ambition: The White House Years
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976), 302, 326–27.

89
Conversation No. 944-7.

90
Samuel Dash,
Chief Counsel: Inside the Ervin Committee—The Untold Story of Watergate
(New York: Random House, 1976) 161.

91
Conversation No. 945-1.

92
George Lardner, Jr., and Timothy S. Robinson, “Nixon Subpoena Studied,”
The Washington Post
, June 19, 1973, A-1.

93
Conversation No. 945-3.

94
Conversation No. 945-5.

95
Conversation No. 169-16.

96
Dean Senate testimony, 3 SSC 1019, 1030–31, 1576–77, 1588.

97
Dash,
Chief Counsel
, 159.

98
White House press briefing No. 1762, 10:21
A.M.
, PDT, at the Western White House with Ron Ziegler, June 25, 1973.

99
Richard Nixon,
RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon
(New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), 890.

100
Nixon,
RN,
893.

101
See, Final Report, SSC (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1974).

102
Conversation No. 947-3.

103
Conversation No. 947-5.

104
Conversation No. 947-15.

105
Conversation No. 947-16.

106
Conversation No. 948-3.

107
I was asked about the president’s interest in tax cases. I responded: “It gets more and more painful to bring these names out, as it was painful to bring the president’s name out. It is painful to bring out other people. It was Rose Mary Woods who kept asking me the status of the case, because this individual was seeing the president a good deal.” When pressed further, I said: “I told Miss Woods at one point that she should just stay as far away from the case as possible. She was seeing the individual, having encounters with the individual who was the subject of the tax case, and he would protest his innocence to her. He is a fine man, and she was quite convinced of his innocence and could not believe he was being harassed by agents that were trying to get somebody who was close to the president. The individual was using the president’s name a great deal; he was traveling with the president to China and Russia and other places.” Without naming the individual, I continued testifying that no one at the White House had tried to influence the case. See 4 SSC 1558–60. And when I testified I did not know that Dr. Kenneth Riland, an osteopathic physician, had been indicted in New York on April 10, 1973. According to news accounts, he later went to trial and was found not guilty, and another of his high-profile patients, Nelson Rockefeller, assisted him with the back taxes.

108
Conversation No. 948-10.

109
Conversation No. 41-61.

110
Conversation No. 948-14.

111
Conversation No. 948-18.

112
Nixon,
RN
, 898.

113
Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, “Senate Unit to Act on Nixon Files: Senate Probers to Decide on Subpoena of Nixon Files,”
The Washington Post
, July 11, 1973, A-1.

114
Fred D. Thompson,
At That Point in Time: The Inside Story of the Senate Watergate Committee
(New York: Quadrangle, 1975), 83.

115
Conversation No. 949-7.

116
Conversation No. 949-10.

117
Alexander M. Haig, Jr., with Charles McCarry,
Inner Circles: How America Changes the World
(New York: Warner Books, 1992), 374.

118
Thompson,
At That Point in Time
, 87.

119
Leonard Garment,
Crazy Rhythm: My Journey from Brooklyn, Jazz, and Wall Street to Nixon’s White House, Watergate, and Beyond
 . . . (New York: Random House, 1997), 277.

120
Haig,
Inner Circles
, 373.

121
Nixon,
RN
, 899–900.

122
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein,
The Final Days
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976), 58.

123
4 SSC 1466.

124
Haig,
Inner Circles
, 375.

125
Garment,
Crazy Rhythm
, 278.

126
Ibid.

127
Haig,
Inner Circles
, 375.

128
Richard Ben-Veniste and George Frampton, Jr.,
Stonewall: The Real Story of the Watergate Prosecution
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977), 112.

129
Haig,
Inner Circles
, 379.

130
Richard Nixon, Handwritten Notes re Tapes, dated 7/21, Nixon library, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

131
Gladys Engel Lang and Kurt Lang, “Polling on Watergate: The Battle for Public Opinion,”
Public Opinion Quarterly
4
(1980): 530–47.

132
Nixon,
RN
, 901.

Epilogue

1
Unless more specifically noted, the following sources have been very helpful in assembling this chronology: R. W. Apple, Jr. (narrative); Linda Amster (chronology); and Gerald Gold (general editor),
The Watergate Hearings: Break-in and Cover-up; Proceedings
(New York:
Viking, 1973), 219–77; and
Watergate: Chronology of a Crisis
(Washington, DC:
Congressional Quarterly
, 1975).

2
Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong,
The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), 287, 295. Note: From law clerks debating what Nixon meant by “definitive” to Justice Brennan leading the effort to get an 8 to 0 vote against Nixon to leave no doubt that it was a “definitive” ruling. Clearly, baiting the high Court had been a foolish ploy by Nixon, for this statement would not have been made by Gerry Warren without direction from the president.

3
Leon Jaworski,
The Right and the Power: The Prosecution of Watergate
(New York: Readers Digest Press, 1976), 47.

4
The following conversations were included (listed here with the later created NARA identifications)—Abbreviations: HRH (Haldeman); JDE (Ehrlichman); JWD (Dean); RLZ (Ziegler); RGK (Kleindienst); JNM (Mitchell); HEP (Petersen); and WPR (Rogers)—National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Conversation No. 779-2 (September 15, 1972: HRH and JWD), Conversation No. 865-14 (February 28, 1973: JWD), Conversation No. 878-14 (March 13, 1973: JWD), Conversation No. 882-12 (March 17, 1973: JWD), Conversations No. 37-175 and 37-176 (March 20, 1973: JWD), Conversation No. 886-8 (March 21, 1973: JWD and HRH), ConversationNo. 421-18 (March 21, 1973: JWD, HRH and JDE), Conversation No. 422-33 (March 22, 1973: HRH, JDE, JWD and JNM), Conversation No. 44-50 (March 28, 1973: JDE call to RGK), Conversation No. 890-19 (March 30, 1973: JDE and RLZ), Conversation No. 44-103 (April 8, 1973: JDE), Conversation No. 428-19 (April 14, 1974: HRH and JDE), Conversation No. 896-4 (April 14, 1973: HRH and JDE), Conversation No. 428-28 (April 14, 1973: HRH and JDE), Conversation No. 38-31 (April 14, 1973: JDE call to RGK), Conversation No. 38-34 (April 14, 1973: HRH), Conversation No. 38-37 (April 14, 1973: JDE), Conversation. No. 896-6 (April 15, 1973: JDE), Conversation. No. 38-44 (April 15, 1973: RGK), Conversation No. 38-52 (April 15, 1973: HRH), Conversation No. 38-53 (April 15, 1973: HEP), Conversation No. 38-55 (April 15, 1973: HEP), Conversation No. 38-58 (April 15, 1973: HEP), Conversation No. 38-63 (April 15, 1973: HEP), Conversation No. 897-3 (April 16, 1973: HRH and JDE), Conversation No. 897-9 (April 16, 1973: HRH and JDE), Conversation No. 897-11 (April 16, 1973: HRH), Conversation No. 427-2 (April 16, 1973: HEP), Conversations No. 427-5 and 427-6 (April 16, 1973: RLZ and JDE), Conversation No. 427-10 (April 16, 1973: JWD), Conversation No. 38-80 (April 16, 1973: HEP), Conversation No. 898-6 (April 17, 1973: HRH), Conversation No. 898-12 (April 17, 1973: HRH, JDE, RLZ), Conversation No. 898-19 (April 17, 1973: JDE), Conversations No. 898-20 and 898-21: HEP), Conversation No. 898-23: HRH, JDE, RLZ), Conversation No. 429-3 (April 17, 1973: WPR, HRH, JDE), Conversation No. 38-100 (April 18, 1973: HEP), Conversation No. 429-22 (April 19, 1973: Wilson and Strickler) and Conversation No. 906-17 (April 27, 1973: HEP and RLZ).