The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (20 page)

After Nixon repeated these questions, Ehrlichman admitted, “Ah, the short
answer to your question is, nothing.” “Boy, they’re doing it to us,” Nixon reminded them, and noted, “And it’s never happened that way before. Johnson screwed everybody, Kennedy.” He paused, then went back in time: “When we were out in ’52 the Truman people were kicking the hell out of me. In ’62 they kicked the hell out of me. In 1960 the bureaucracy mixed up my visit with Khrushchev, the Eisenhower bureaucracy,” he said with added disdain, and continued, “That’s part of the problem, the bureaucracy, and part of the problem’s our own God damned fault. There must be something that we can do.”

After further complaining from Nixon on this score, the extended discussion came to an end. Haldeman said he felt everybody had become especially gutless “with very good justification, because of this jackass operation at the Watergate. They are more sensitive than they would have been before, and they would have been very sensitive before.” He then added, “But we do have a knack for doing this stuff ineptly.”

“That’s for sure,” the president agreed. Both Haldeman and Ehrlichman assured the president that after the election they would move with a “vengeance” against the president’s enemies, with Ehrlichman suggesting people like U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. “Do we have stuff on him?” the president wondered. “Well, we’re trying to get stuff. He hangs around with snakes,” Ehrlichman responded. And Haldeman added, “They’ve just got a hell of a lot more snakes than we do. And their snakes are a hell of a lot tougher than ours.”

“They’re vicious, brutal,” the president complained.

Having mentioned the Supreme Court, Ehrlichman added that he had scheduled a private visit with Nixon’s chief justice, Warren Burger. “I’m going to talk to Burger this week, and I would be inclined to indicate to him that it is to your advantage not to have the Ellsberg case tried until after the election. Unless you have any serious objection, I’m going to give him that signal.”
*
Nixon approved, and Ehrlichman explained, “Ah, he [Chief Justice
Burger] has it literally within his control.” The president added, “And just say, I’d put it, in my opinion, I’d say that it really would raise hell with President Johnson and a lot of other things that would be very embarrassing to our foreign policy, and it’s just not a good thing right now, with the delicate negotiations on Vietnam. Put it in the basis that we had some other reason.”

“Alright,” Ehrlichman said. Then he added: “They’ve got a chance to really rub Mr. Justice Douglas’s nose in it by reversing him and making the case go to trial. So they’ll have to pass that lovely opportunity.”

“Temptation to screw Douglas?” the president asked. Ehrlichman said it could be, but Haldeman quickly added, “That’s a pyrrhic victory. Who the hell cares whether you screw Douglas, nobody, it won’t bother Douglas.” Ehrlichman told the president that Douglas’s stay to delay the trial was “the most dishonest opinion I have ever read,” although it actually created a favorable situation for them. Nonetheless, Ehrlichman added, “it may result in Ellsberg going free, and you’ve got double jeopardy, because they’ve already sworn in the jury. But I think that’s a small price to pay and kind of a nice out.” Haldeman reported that the Justice Department thought they would lose the case, but the president felt otherwise. There was more tough talk about Nixon’s enemies, even putting one—Carl Shipley, an anti-Nixon Republican who was active in District of Columbia politics—in jail.

Later that afternoon Ehrlichman met with the president in his EOB office, and the conversation again turned to bending the IRS to the president’s will, and how they could place their people in the IRS after the election. As a parenthetical, Nixon explained that he would never have become president if he had not investigated Alger Hiss. Ehrlichman wanted to know if they should start thinking about cabinet officers for the second term, but the president wanted his staff to stay focused on the election.
¹⁴
He felt Haldeman and others had become too “jumpy about the Watergate thing.” He acknowledged going after others was “hard,” but even so concluded, “I just think that they got to [do it], because basically they’re the ones fucking us.”

When Ehrlichman raised the problem of Howard Hughes, whose loan years earlier to Nixon’s brother Don of over two hundred thousand dollars had become an issue in the 1960 presidential election, Nixon erupted: “If anybody brings up that God damn Hughes loan again, I’ll break this [IRS stuff] over O’Brien’s head,” referring to O’Brien’s quarter-million-dollar retainer with Hughes. Ehrlichman advised Nixon that he was meeting with Secretary of the Treasury George Shultz the next morning to request that
the IRS dig out more information about the O’Brien-Hughes relationship. Ehrlichman assured the president his efforts would give O’Brien a few sleepless nights, which the president approved.

“George has got a fantasy,” Nixon said of his treasury secretary. “What is George trying to do, say that you can’t play politics with the IRS?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know,” Ehrlichman said, and then explained, “The way it came out, it didn’t come up in this setting at all,” referring to his request for information on O’Brien. “It came up [when] he called me, because this young fellow Roger Barth is over there.”
*
Ehrlichman said they had been trying to put Barth in one of the few political positions within the IRS. “And we’ve been wanting him to be deputy general counsel of IRS, because he’d be in a position to do a lot more. George calls up and says, Jesus, I am really having trouble with this. My bureaucracy is really wild about this. This guy, who’s known to be a loyalist, and a hard-ass, and so on, so I’ve had a lot of flak. And I said, George, that’s the only guy we’ve got in the whole IRS.”

An angry Nixon, wondering how many of those bureaucrats held secure jobs in the civil service versus political appointees, asked, “Aren’t there several?” Ehrlichman estimated, “Oh, sure, at the top, six or eight guys.” “Out with them!” Nixon demanded. “Every one of those bastards is out now! I think the whole bunch goes out just because of this. Don’t you agree?” At moments like this Ehrlichman would typically lift his chin and, with a smirk, agree, “Sure, it would be a great move. It would be a marvelous move.” The president, on reflection, decided that this was an action to be taken after the election. He would not only fire them but investigate them after they were gone. Ehrlichman would keep Roger Barth in place to get the names of who should be removed. With that subject resolved, they turned to domestic policy issues.

The president remained obsessively concerned about Magruder’s grand jury testimony, as he made clear during a conversation with Haldeman in the Oval Office.
¹⁵
They also addressed the ongoing story in
The Washington Post
about the twenty-five-thousand-dollar campaign contribution check from Kenneth Dahlberg that had ended up in a Watergate burglar’s bank account; it had come up again in a General Accounting Office (GAO) audit of the contribution.

After this discussion the president asked if the plan was still for the Watergate indictments to be handed down “about the middle of September.” Haldeman said that that was the case, so there would be no trial before the election. Meanwhile, the effort would be to try to control “these brush fires,” like “this stupid GAO thing.” But the GAO audit did not worry the president, and he was pleased that the Watergate break-in investigation did not appear to be attracting public attention. “I’m just not confident that it’s that interesting,” so he felt that it was not worth “brooding about it, it’s called a caper, it’s called all that crap. It doesn’t appear to be a serious attempt or a sinister this, that and the other thing,” the president observed.

Nor was Haldeman concerned. “I think if it comes to its worst, if the whole thing gets out, I don’t think it’s all that bad.” For Nixon, however, a line had to be drawn. “Well, I just don’t want Magruder to be involved,” the president said. Haldeman emphasized, “I hope we can keep Magruder out, and we sure as hell got to keep Mitchell out. We can survive Magruder’s involvement. We would have a real problem with Mitchell’s involvement.” Nixon agreed, for that was the only reason he was interested in Magruder. And on that front, Haldeman was encouraging: “And I think we’re, apparently, we’re home free on that.”

“But Magruder hasn’t testified yet. You don’t know when?” the president asked. Haldeman did not know, but Nixon instructed, “Get him out of the way.” Haldeman was not worried about Magruder. “But he’ll do alright on testimony. I was just thinking, if you have another campaign group, it might not be a bad idea to let Magruder sit in.” Such visits with the president were known as stroking sessions, and in this instance, Haldeman had a good reason for making the suggestion. His personal aide, Larry Higby, had spoken with Magruder earlier that morning and found himself apologizing for his not being invited along with his former White House peers for an evening outing on the presidential yacht,
Sequoia
. Both Haldeman and the president agreed it would be wise to give Magruder a little special attention. Haldeman suggested making it safe by including him in a large group: “Well, if you had thirty people in here, he’d be one of them. Not to get his name out, but just to put him in a sense, so he doesn’t feel ostracized,” although
Haldeman added that Magruder “knows that he is” ostracized.
*
“Well, he isn’t as far as I’m concerned,” the president countered. He instructed Haldeman to think about it. That afternoon, when working in his EOB office, Nixon himself called Magruder, which, as his records show, was highly unusual, for the president never telephoned him.
*

When Ehrlichman joined Haldeman and the president, at 1:05
P.M.
, they resumed their discussion about Larry O’Brien’s taxes, for Ehrlichman had an update based on his visit with Treasury Secretary George Shultz, who had assured Ehrlichman he would ensure that an audit of O’Brien was done. “Will O’Brien know anything on any of this?” the president asked. “Oh, believe me, he’ll know,” Ehrlichman assured him. “He’ll know,” he said again, and then explained the process. The audit was being undertaken in a western regional office, because that was the location of the Hughes and O’Brien files, so they would need to “bring agents around out there to conduct the investigation.” The president was pleased.

After discussing Haldeman’s report on Magruder, the president began quizzing Ehrlichman about his testimony. “Do you know when Magruder gets up to the grand jury?” Ehrlichman responded, “No, I don’t.” “How will he testify?” Nixon asked. Ehrlichman reported, “That he instructed Sloan to make money available to Liddy. He did it on the basis that Liddy was engaged in making sure that there were no demonstrations at the convention and, ah, for doing certain—”

“Security?” the president injected.

“Yeah, security and headquarters and all that sort of thing,” Ehrlichman elaborated. “That from time to time he was vaguely aware that Sloan was making disbursements to Liddy, and he assumed Liddy was doing what he was told, but that he was never given an accounting as such from Sloan.”

“And didn’t, frankly, follow it up,” Nixon injected.

“Didn’t follow it up—”

“Busy with other things,” Nixon added.

“Busy with other things and made a number of assumptions, but after this happened, he discovered that Liddy had grossly exceeded the scope of his employment. And so—”

“Asked for his resignation?”

“Then he was fired,” Ehrlichman stated more categorically.

As the president sat silent, thinking, this bogus account hung in the Oval Office like a bad odor, with all waiting for the air to clear, yet Nixon seemed to find reassurance in going through such a drill. He then asked, “How does Sloan handle this?” “Sloan has been promised immunity, and he has not testified yet before the grand jury,” Ehrlichman replied. “He’s only talked to the U.S. attorney and the Bureau and, ah—” Notwithstanding the fact that Haldeman had explained all this, Nixon asked, “Why was he given immunity?” Ehrlichman repeated the question, and the president rephrased it, “Why did they have to?”

“Because he said he’d take the Fifth Amendment otherwise. And they felt he was key,” Ehrlichman said. “That’s good,” the president concluded.

“He’s not going to testify before the grand jury, is he?” Haldeman asked.

“Yep,” Ehrlichman answered. When Haldeman sought clarity, Ehrlichman added, “Well, he was there very briefly. As soon as they learned that he was going to take the Fifth, they pulled him out. They brought him in for a conference with his attorney. He said he was going to take the Fifth because of technical violations of the Campaign Spending Act, or the Campaign Financing Act. So they granted him immunity, and then they’ve been interrogating him in the office. They’re not taking it back.”

Soon the president asked, “Is he, is he going to say that he was aware of all this, et cetera?” Ehrlichman said, “No. He’s going to say that he was told by Magruder to—” Nixon interrupted, “So he’s put the whole thing on Liddy,” making clear he understood. “Gave Liddy the money and he did it,” Ehrlichman explained. “He was just a conduit,” the president added. Ehrlichman continued, “And what he did in keeping unreported cash and handing it out and so on is a violation. There isn’t any question about that. Maury Stans’s face is very long, because some of this, obviously, it comes back to him, because Sloan couldn’t possibly have done all the things that it’s clear he did without Maury having some knowledge of it.”

“Is Maury involved?” the president inquired.

“Well, he undoubtedly had some knowledge of the fact there was a lot of cash,” Ehrlichman said, stating the obvious. Haldeman added, “I would be very surprised if Maury had any knowledge of what was being done with the
cash.” Ehrlichman noted, “Oh, I agree with that totally, when it comes to that,” referring to Liddy’s illegal actions. “I’m talking about these technical violations of the Campaign Spending Act.” Both Nixon and Haldeman concurred, and Haldeman added, “Maury had full knowledge of that, I’m sure.” Haldeman explained his understanding of what Stans actually was aware of: “Now, he knew that there was cash there, and he knew that they were using it for intelligence and dirty tricks business. He knew that Liddy was the guy that was doing that, and he knew that was X amount of money. Maury doesn’t let money go out without knowing about it.”