The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (136 page)
Read The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It Online
Authors: John W. Dean
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This meeting with Ehrlichman and a later one, as well as the president’s meetings with Haldeman, were not on the president’s schedule or the president’s daily diary on May 2, 1973, although a two-minute call between 10:02 and 10:04
A.M.
with Haldeman was recorded by the White House operator, as was a six-minute call between 8:44 and 8:50
P.M.
, along with a one-minute telephone conversation with Ehrlichaman between 8:51 and 8:52
P.M.
The meeting times (and dates), however, were determined by NARA, because the meetings were recorded. Nixon undoubtedly instructed that they be kept off his schedule so the news media would be unaware of meetings that surely would have prompted questions. Because they were not on the president’s schedule, however, investigators were never aware of them either, and they certainly could have been of interest to prosecutors, not to mention to an impeachment inquiry.
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During his trial in
U.S. v. Ehrlichman et al.
, Ehrlichman would argue, unsuccessfully, that a “covert” operation did not mean an illegal one, merely a less than conspicuous activity as, say, when one looks for another job, they don’t tell their boss they are job hunting; rather, they covertly look for the new job. See, e.g., William Frates, closing argument,
U.S. v. Ehrlichman et al.
(July 11, 1974) 2403–5. However, as the government pointed out, everyone involved but Ehrlichman, it seemed, understood he had authorized an illegal operation.
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Within months, however, Nixon would personally begin attacking me on national television in speeches to the nation, and in press conferences. See, e.g., his August 15, 1973, address to the nation and statement about the Watergate investigations, and hs presidential press conferences of September 5, 1973, November 12, 1973, March 6, 1974, and April 29, 1974.
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Ehrlichman would commit perjury before the grand jury when he pretended his memory had totally failed him; he claimed he could not recall the answers to 125 questions, including whether I had told him of my conversation with Gordon Liddy on June 19, 1972, or during that week. Remarkably, when he was indicted for those false statements, and under cross-examination, he lost track of his false statements and admitted he had been told about Liddy that week, thus confessing his perjury. See counts 11 and 12, Indictment,
and closing argument of James Neal,
U.S. v. Mitchell et al.
(December 20, 1974) 11,699–11,701.
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The chairman of this committee was Senator John Stennis, who was not only fond of Richard Nixon but had been close to Fred Buzhardt for years. Stennis, however, had recently been shot and wounded in an attempted robbery on Capitol Hill and was recovering. The next ranking Democrat on the committee, Senator Stuart Symington (MO), was the temporary chairman when this question of the CIA connection to Watergate arose, which could not have been worse for Nixon, for Symington was a longtime anti-Nixon Democrat.
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On June 30, 1971, Nixon issued the following order to Haldeman: “I want Brookings, I want them to just break in and take it out,” he said, referring to a purported copy of the Pentagon Papers at the Brookings Institution. “Do you understand?” “Yeah, but you have to have someone to do it.” Nixon added, “You talk to Hunt. I want the break-in, well, hell, they do that. You break in the place, rifle the files and bring ’em out.” Conversation No. 533-1.
*
Surprisingly, Nixon never did invoke the “state’s secrets privilege,” which was established law. This common-law privilege empowers the president to refuse to turn over evidence he alone deems a state secret, and the president’s decision cannot be reviewed by the courts. See
Reynolds v. United States
, 345 U.S. 1 (1953).
*
Because the president told Bull he was not interested in the April 15, 1973, conversation with me between 9:17
P.M.
and 10:12
P.M.
, it was not learned until much later that this conversation was missing, if in fact at that time it was missing.
*
Dictabelt recordings were made using an analog recording system. These belts were a thin vinyl plastic that fit over metal cylinders that rotated the belt with a stylus engraving the sound on the belt as it turned. See, e.g., www.dictabeltrerecord.com/about.htm.
*
Eventually Nixon, Buzhardt and associates would send Dick Moore to the Senate to impeach my testimony. Moore, accompanied by Jack Miller, appeared before the Senate Watergate committee on July 12, 13 and 14, 1973. After delivering his prepared statement, which really did not contest my facts but rather my interpretation of them, much of the cross-examination was handled by Terry Lenzner. Moore was such an awful witness—still suffering from the terrible memory problem Nixon had first noticed when he quizzed him—that Lenzner was accused in the press of taking unfair advantage of Moore, not to mention that Moore did make a poor showing, diluting his testimony. A
Washington Post
piece reported on Lenzner’s cross-examination: “Moore was unable to respond in detail and began stammering slightly as he answered. At one point, asked by Lenzner about an apparent contradiction between an answer he had just given and one he had given earlier that afternoon in a closed-door session with the committee staff, Moore replied that “I’ll let my answer stand—whichever it was.’” Peter A. Jay and John Hanrahan, “Moore: President Was Kept in Dark,”
The Washington Post
, July 13, 1973, A-1.
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Buzhardt was correct on the fact that the special prosecutors would cast a doubting eye on the work of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in its initial investigation, but no formal investigation was ever undertaken, and Earl Silbert certainly made clear when he was later nominated to be U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia that they had done the best possible investigation under the situation with which they were confronted. See U.S. Senate
Committee on the Judiciary
, “Nomination of Earl J. Silbert to be United States Attorney,”
Hearings,
April 23–24 and 30, and June 26, 1974. Silbert served as U.S. attorney from 1974 to 1979.
*
It appears he had by then forgotten that I had told Len Garment, after my April 15 meeting with the president, that recordings existed of one or more of my conversations with him. Years later Garment told me he had reported my comment to him to Haldeman and Nixon.
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When I testified before the Senate Watergate committee, I had forgotten about Pappas, and indeed, his name was never mentioned during their inquiry. Ironically it was Nixon himself who surfaced Pappas, when he later produced the tape recording of our March 21, 1972, conversation. Pappas would be investigated by the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, and while they found he had violated the law, no prosecution was pursued. However, they did not have access to the information set forth in this book.
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Only four months later, on October 10, 1973, Agnew resigned.
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This was cash that had been given to me by Gordon Strachan and Colson’s aide Dick Howard. They did not know its owner, and they were concerned, because it was apparently left over from larger expenditures that had been made contrary to the campaign finance laws. It was all extremely vague. Indeed, it would take litigation to determine to whom the fund should be given, and it ultimately went to the CRP.
*
Buzhardt would not learn of the taping system until June 25, the first day of my testimony, when Nixon was in California and asked him to listen to one of our conversations. See
Appendix B
.
*
An average daily audience of some eighty million Americans.
*
Indeed, I had undertestified out of caution, and confused dates of a few events. I had taken pains to make it clear to the Senate that my memory was not a date-stamped tape recorder. See 4 Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (SSC) 1373, 1513.
*
Given the fact that this April 15, 1973, conversation later disappeared, the reel containing the conversation believed not to exist because the machine ran out of tape that day, makes this a fascinating conversation. It appears Buzhardt was given this conversation when the president was in California during my testimony. This is the conversation I told the Senate caused me to believe I was recorded (4 Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities [SSC] 1577). If there was any tape on which the president incriminated himself, and put the lie to his own defense, it was this conversation. And given this exchange with Steve Bull, it certainly appears that Fred Buzhardt solved that problem. (See
Appendix B
.)
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Either Nixon shared this thought, or others had the same thought, for soon Nixon’s supporters had bumper stickers that read: Nobody Drowned At Watergate.
*
While working on this book, a perfect opportunity to discuss the discovery of Nixon’s taping system arose at Chapman Law Review Symposium: “The 40th Anniversary of Watergate: A Commemoration of the Rule of Law,” Panel 1: “President Nixon’s Secret Tapes: Evidence that Politically, Legally and Historically Defined Watergate (and More),” Friday, January 27, 2012, Moderator: John W. Dean; Panelists: Scott Armstrong and Alexander Butterfield, reported in full at
Chapman Law Review
16 (Spring 2012): 9.
*
138 F. Supp. 812 (1956). Note: A highly respected federal trial judge had ruled that it was obstruction of justice under 18 USC 1503 to destroy four letters it was known a grand jury was interested in, even though the letters had not yet been subpoenaed.
*
That argument is outlined in the prologue.
*
See Part IV,
here
. Note: The November 1973 tapes hearing indicates that Bull obtained the April 15, 1973, conversation with me at that time.
*
See www.cbsnews.com/videos/who-erased-18-minutes-of-nixon-watergate-tapes/.
*
I have asked other Nixon historians familiar with his behavior and recorded conversations in other areas, such as the war in Vietnam and the planning for his China initiative, if he was similarly obsessive when discussing other matters, and I was told that to some degree he was but, from what I can gather, not as obsessive as he became with Watergate.
*
Notwithstanding that he was highly knowledgeable and intimately involved in virtually all decisions about how to portray the White House’s relationship to the Watergate scandal as it unfolded over some twenty-six months, Ziegler was never the focus of any investigation or prosecution, and he gave only a few general interviews when it was all over. Ziegler never wrote the book he once contemplated and never provided the Nixon library with an oral history; his White House files are little more than the product of the White House Press Office. Ziegler died of a heart attack on February 10, 2003, at age sixty-three.
*
See
Appendix A
.
