The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (14 page)

Given the confessional tone the conversation had taken, MacGregor now offered, “I’ve been asking myself, Mr. President, if there’s anything in my background, political or otherwise—”

“Forget it,” the president said.

“—that would redound on you—”

“Forget it.”

“And I don’t think that there is,” MacGregor concluded.

“Let me say this. Everybody’s got something in his background, everybody,” Nixon observed.

Haldeman pointed out that if there was anything in MacGregor’s past, it likely would have come out when he ran against former vice president Hubert Humphrey for the U.S. Senate in 1970, assuring him that they would not find anything now, because the McGovern people were “a lot more confused than Hubert’s people.”

“It’s a bizarre business, period,” Nixon said again. “I don’t know that you should comment on this Hunt fellow. Did you ever meet Hunt? I’ve never seen him.”

“No, sir,” MacGregor responded.

After a speculative exchange about Hunt, and his having a gun, the president said, “The main thing, frankly, that I was concerned about was Colson, because Colson did work with him on the Pentagon Papers, whatever the hell it was they were working on.” But the president said he was no longer
worried, because Colson had been questioned by the FBI, and while a staffer might lie to him, it was not likely he would do so to the FBI.

Haldeman added, “I honestly don’t think there is any guy in the White House” who was involved in Watergate. Rather, Haldeman explained, “I think there obviously were some contacts at the committee. There was a contact with McCord. I don’t know what the hell they were, and there’s nothing at any level of authority, and I don’t know whether there was any contact with us in that way.” Haldeman was effectively notifying MacGregor that while low-level people might have some involvement, no one of authority—meaning Mitchell, Stans, Ehrlichman, himself and the president—did.

“Well, the real problem we deal with, though, from a governmental viewpoint,” Haldeman explained, “that has nothing to do with politics at all, is that the lines from these people lead to places we don’t want led to.”

“The CIA understands,” the president said.

Again, using equivocal terms rather than identifying the FBI investigation to which he was actually referring, Haldeman said, “And the investigatory people are on those lines and don’t know that they cut in, they don’t know where one thing crosses the other.”

The president elaborated, “Trouble is, frankly, that Helms’s shop does not want to be involved in these things, we just won’t say anything further about it, it could very well involve some anti-Castro activities. The Cubans are frightened to death of McGovern, frightened to death, you know, because he made this statement that he’d get along with Allende—”

After MacGregor’s departure, Nixon and Haldeman assessed their visit with him.

“How did he react to the remarks?” the president wondered.

“Damn prudent,” Haldeman repied.

“He has every right to know what he’s getting into,” the president observed, “and he asked the right questions. In my mind, he should take this job without asking about Watergate.”

“I told him about the Liddy thing,” Haldeman explained, “because he’s going to find it out right away anyway, and it was better to let him know there was a guy.” But Haldeman also had new information to tell Nixon dealing with Liddy’s involvement in Watergate. “What we’re talking about is, we’re going to write a scenario—in fact, we’re going to have Liddy write it—which brings all of the loose ends that might lead anywhere at all to him. He’s going to say that, yeah, he was doing this, he wasn’t authorized.” Haldeman, of course, had not only been told by Gordon Strachan, his aide
and liaison to the reelection committee, that Liddy’s intelligence operation budget had been approved, but he had also given Strachan instructions in early April 1972 to have Liddy change his focus from Muskie to McGovern.
²⁸
It was still not clear from these conversations whether Haldeman knew if Mitchell had authorized an illegal break-in and bugging at the DNC, but he clearly suspected it. Haldeman was certainly aware, however, that Jeb Magruder would not have authorized such an action without Mitchell’s blessing, and that Magruder was directly involved in the Watergate operation.

“Well, what else?” Nixon pressed for more of the scenario.

Haldeman obliged by spinning out the story he had discussed with Mitchell. “He thought it was an honorable thing to do. He thought it was important. Obviously, it was wrong. He didn’t think he should ask for authorization, because he knew it was something that he didn’t want to put anybody else in a position of authorizing. How did he get the money? See, we’ve got that one problem, the check from Dahlberg. What happened is, and that works out nicely, because the check came in after the spending limit thing [on April 7]. So it was given to him with the instruction to return it to Dahlberg. Instead he subverted it to this other purpose, deposited it in the bank. That explains where the money came from. That explains everything. And they’re [Mitchell and his aides] working on writing out a scenario.
*
I think that’s the answer to this, and admit that, by God, there was some campaign involvement.”

“But without Mitchell’s knowledge,” the president qualified, and Haldeman repeated, “But without Mitchell’s knowledge.”

“Or authorization,” Nixon further confirmed. Haldeman echoed, “Or authorization.”

“He’s fired.”

“And he’s fired,” Haldeman assured the president.

“What does he get out of it? What’s his penalty?” the president asked.

“Oh, not too much. They don’t think it will be any big problem,” Haldeman said. Then he added, “Whatever it is, we’ll take care of him.”

Nixon could not imagine this having taken place without Mitchell’s authority, but then, he told Haldeman, he was still not sure. Haldeman speculated, “I can’t imagine that he knew specifically that this is what they were
doing. I think he said, for God’s sake, get out and get this God damn information, don’t pussyfoot around.”

The president wanted to know about the money: “How’d he [Liddy] get the check?”

“He was processing the checks. It was an illegal check,” Haldeman concluded, incorrectly placing a worst-case potential on it by blending fact with the fiction of the scenario; when all the facts were gathered, it turned out to be a legal contribution. Haldeman guessed, “You know, he was going to run it down to Mexico and put it into cash or something.”

“Then what did we do, return the money to the guy? What, what happened?” the president asked, confused about what was the true story and the bogus scenario.

In fact, the check was never given to Liddy to return to the donor; instead, Liddy offered to get it cashed, and ultimately he returned the cash to the reelection committee.
²⁹
But Haldeman explained how the scenario would handle it: “That’s what they’re going to say he was supposed to do. But he didn’t. He on his own initiative decided this was a good source of funds for this covert operation he was running. So he took the check, processed it through this Mexican bank, and ran it up here, which is what he did do.”

The president asked, “When would he do this?”

“Quickly, and hopefully, I think the thing to do is do it during the Democratic convention. The way to do it, they know [the FBI has] some lines into him, and Dean says, they’ve identified him as a suspect in the case, and they’re on this. Before he was just a source of information that didn’t pan out, so if you let them follow their routine investigation, he doesn’t offer up anything, they just catch him, but he works out his whole plan beforehand, so what they catch him at—” This plotting seemed to bring it to an end. Yet Haldeman noted there were problems: “But there may be some flaw in this, and that’s what they are going to kind of work out. It has the great advantage of being—”

“He thought it up?” the president asked. Haldeman did not know. “’Cause he’s going to have to lie about that, you see,” the president noted.

“Well, maybe we can turn it off on that basis. They know there are other lines involved. We can get them not to ask about that, maybe,” Haldeman opined.

Nixon was thinking about Hunt’s role and talked over Haldeman, stating, “But then, on the basis of the CIA, but the Hunt outfit was involved for other reasons?”

Haldeman suggested, “Maybe he [Liddy] ties Hunt in. Maybe that’s the better way. They’ve got to work that out.” Nixon suggested another approach: “He found this group of people that were very amenable—” Haldeman picked up Nixon’s train of thought and offered his own, which was closer to the truth: “—[Liddy] met them over here when he was working on this other project, and he used them on the side, for this project.” The president and Haldeman exchanged ideas about how to bring the Cubans into the scenario, until Haldeman changed the direction of the conversation with a question: “You know who Dahlberg is?”

“No,” Nixon said.

“He’s [Dwayne] Andreas’s bagman.” Andreas, a wealthy industrialist and Democratic backer of Hubert Humphrey in Minnesota politics, had contributed a portion of the money that Liddy had converted to cash for the CRP. The president was mildly surprised, but Haldeman saw other potentials for the scenario he was developing that could include the Democrats as well. “So it, all of a sudden, starts running over to the other side, too. It’s kind of intriguing,” Haldeman mused.

“Well,” the president began, and after pausing for a bit, announced, “I agree. I think the best thing to do is to cut your losses in such things, get the damn thing down. It’s just one of those things, and they were involved.”

“Otherwise they’re going to keep pursuing these things that lead into the wrong directions,” Haldeman said, and began again to explain the entangling connections of the White House to the men arrested at the Watergate. More people than Colson were involved, he said, because there were other projects. “Hunt’s tied to Krogh, Liddy’s tied to Krogh. They’re all tied to Ehrlichman,” Haldeman reported.

“You mean they worked here?” the president asked.

“Sure.”

“Well, what the hell’s wrong with that?” Nixon asked dismissively.

“They’re tied in to Dave Young,” Haldeman added, before responding, “Nothing any more than there is with Colson.” But he did not point out that they all—Hunt, Liddy, Krogh, Young, Colson and Ehrlichman—had been involved in the break-in at Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office some nine months earlier.

Again, Nixon pressed, “Yeah, that’s what I mean. No, but not in any hanky-panky. The only thing that you mean is the Pentagon Papers? What the hell is the matter with that?” This question was posed with a tone of alarm and concern in the president’s voice.

Haldeman answered vaguely, “The investigation, the process.”

“What?”

“Just the process that they used,” he answered, again using ambiguous words to describe the illegal break-in.

Not surprisingly, the president could see the problem, and he declared, “Well, that’s perfectly all right.”

At this extremely sensitive moment in this conversation, when Haldeman might have explained the true dimensions of the issues now confronting the White House, Ron Ziegler walked in and interrupted. When he left, it returned to Watergate, and Nixon asked, “When will this Liddy scenario [be done], is Dean working on it?”

“Dean’s working on it with Mitchell,” Haldeman said, but then corrected himself. “‘I suggest,’ Mitchell said, ‘Dean write it.’ I suggested that, let Liddy write it, Liddy knows more of the facts than anybody, let him sit down and spend as long as it takes to and spin out the whole web, see where it comes.” Both men sat silent for a moment, until Haldeman finished, “If he’s willing to take the heat, which he apparently is.”

“The guy’s apparently a true believer,” Nixon said with admiration.

“Yeah. He says he is. He says it doesn’t make any difference what they do, he will not [talk].”

“And we’ll take care of him, too,” Nixon said. He then added, “Well, it’s good to have some people like that.”

“He may have to go to jail for a while or something, but he’ll survive that,” Haldeman volunteered.

“What the hell, there’s worse than that. His breaking into the Democratic committee, Christ, that’s no blot on a man’s record,” the president said.

Haldeman now raised another potential problem in the scenario they were concocting: “Well, the embezzlement of those funds, too, and violation of the Campaign Spending Act.”

“Yeah, that’s probably a fine,” the president said.

“Wrapping it all up in this way, it doesn’t make much difference. After, if he gets hung on it, then we’ll wait a discreet interval, pardon him,” Haldeman said.

“After the election.”

“Sure.” After a moment of silent reflection, Nixon shared his thinking. “Let me tell you something interesting. Don’t be that worried about things of that kind. How much effect did Bobby Baker’s thing, where he was
directly involved, where he was convicted, where everybody knew that [President Lyndon] Johnson was in the bag and all that sort of thing? How much did it affect [Johnson]?”

“Probably a lot.”

“Bullshit,” Nixon snapped. “Johnson, how could he be hurt when he won sixty-one to thirty-nine?”

“Oh, it didn’t hurt in the election. It hurt his image,” Haldeman added.

“A little,” Nixon conceded. But Watergate was different. “This does not personally involve the president. We’re in a different area. This involves the campaign committee, which we don’t like it worth a damn. But Clark and a lot of others are terribly sensitive about this, that and the other thing. But we don’t like this.”

“Well, Clark’s got a good right to be. If there’s something there, he’d better know what he’s got to cope with,” Haldeman said.

“Well, I’m sorry, but I guess that’s the way it has to work. You can’t cover this thing up, Bob. The best thing is to cut it. That’s why I was hoping to get the damn guys charged.” This was the first time Nixon mentioned that they “can’t cover this thing up,” which he would periodically repeat in the weeks and months ahead. Based on this conversation, it appears as if any responsibility would stop at an unauthorized Liddy, although the president knew this was not true. For Richard Nixon, though, this did not constitute a cover-up; a cover-up, it seems, would result in no one’s being held responsible, including those apprehended and arrested in the DNC.