The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (26 page)

On Monday, back at the White House, when the president asked what Ziegler’s approach would be at the press conference, Haldeman said that he would “go out with a very strong personal reaction today, of indignity and disgust, really.”
²⁹
Nixon had read the latest charges made by the
Post
and observed that what “they’re trying to do is tie it to me, personally.” The paper wanted “to indicate that I was not telling the truth when I said that nobody in the White House was involved in it, correct?” Haldeman acknowledged that they were trying “to link the Spaghetti thing with the Watergate.”

“Are they linked?” Nixon pressed. “No,” Haldeman answered. “Under no circumstances?” Nixon pressed. “Nobody, nobody knew about it, huh?” Haldeman responded emphatically, “Nobody’s God damn lying,” and to be clear, he added, “on the Watergate, no.” Then he said, “And they are not linked, except in the sense that Howard Hunt—” Nixon now injected, clear that he understood, “—worked on both.” Haldeman repeated, “Worked on both, and I guess, because he apparently was in contact with Segretti,” reporting something he had discovered in the
Post
story, for he had earlier thought it was Liddy who had been the contact. “I just want to know whether Chapin or any of your guys were involved in Watergate,” the president asked. Haldeman was unequivocal: “No, sir.”

Nixon favored Ziegler and MacGregor both launching frontal attacks on
The Washington Post
, a tactic that could be carried out at the press conference. Ziegler called the Chapin story “malicious” but refused to take questions. Similarly, MacGregor read a statement saying that the
Post
was “using innuendo, third-person hearsay, unsubstantiated charges, [and] huge scare headlines [to try] to give the appearance of a direct connection between the White House and the Watergate,” which it knew was false. The orchestrated attack on the paper led executive editor Benjamin Bradlee to issue a statement: “Time will judge between Clark MacGregor’s press releases and
The Washington Post
’s reporting of the various activities of the Committee for the Re-election of the President. For now it is enough to say that not a single fact contained in the investigative reporting of this newspaper about these activities has been successfully challenged.”
³⁰

John Connally dropped by the White House to hold a brief press conference on October 17, which Haldeman attended. Afterward Connally reported to the president on his Democrats for Nixon organization, more specifically about their ongoing fund-raising efforts, and they had their first conversation about Watergate—largely a rehash of the Watergate and Segretti stories, which the president and Haldeman protested were the efforts of
The Washington Post
and not real problems.
³¹

The following morning the
Post
reported that Chief U.S. District Court Judge John J. Sirica, brushing aside the objections of defense lawyers, ordered that the trial of the seven men charged with the Watergate bugging incident begin on November 15, 1972. But the
Post
added, “Lawyers for the defendants indicated after the two-hour hearing that they would seek a postponement from the U.S. Court of Appeals.”
³²
That afternoon, in a meeting that included Ehrlichman, Haldeman reported to Nixon that Teddy Kennedy had changed his mind and was now going to investigate Segretti’s activities. This led to a discussion of a
New York Times
story reporting that twenty-eight phone calls had been made by Segretti to the White House, meaning either to Chapin or to Hunt, but because the recipients of the calls had not been identified, the piece was heavy on innuendo.
³³
Ehrlichman noted that the
Post
was “equating Chapin with Ellsberg,” which was beyond a stretch by both Ehrlichman, if he could justify his conclusion, which I cannot, and the
Post
. He added that the
Times
was busy building up Chapin’s
authority, making him responsible for “key decisions.” Both Haldeman and Ehrlichman remarked that the
Times
had him dealing with the president on a daily basis, although Haldeman had checked and found that “he was in here [the president’s office] once, but I think it was over a year ago.” The president could recall only a single visit in the previous four years.

While Haldeman and Ehrlichman were with the president, I was meeting with Henry Petersen at the Department of Justice to discuss the congressional investigations of Watergate. During that visit Petersen told me in the strictest confidence—because he believed the White House should know—that Mark Felt was the source of any number of FBI leaks. Petersen said he had not informed Pat Gray or Dick Kleindienst because he feared they might overreact, and Felt on the loose could cause even more serious problems. Petersen, who had once been an FBI agent, had known Felt for years and did not hold him in high esteem; he told me that Felt was known by his colleagues as “the white rat” because of his prematurely white hair and his inclination to talk to the press. When I asked Petersen how he knew Felt was leaking, he assured me that he had rock-solid evidence. An attorney whom Petersen had promised not to name represented one of the publications to which Felt had been leaking, and he had confided in Petersen because he was worried that they were receiving grand jury information and wanted to protect his client.
³⁴

Because of Haldeman’s schedule, I did not meet with him until the following afternoon, October 19, in his office, and shortly after our session ended the president called him to his EOB office. Their conversation began with a discussion of Nixon’s planned reorganization of the executive branch during his second term, and only when the president raised the possibility of a leak at the FBI did Haldeman reveal that he had learned who the leaker was.
³⁵
“You know, if there is a leak down at the FBI, why the hell can’t Gray tell us?” Nixon asked. “What the hell is left? You know what I mean?” Haldeman commented, “We know what’s left. And we know what’s leaked, and we know who leaked it. The FBI doesn’t know they have a leak. Gray doesn’t know who’s leaking, and it’s pretty high up.”

“Somebody next to Gray?” Nixon asked, and Haldeman minced no words: “Mark Felt.” Nixon, annoyed, wondered, “Now, why the hell would he do this?” Without attempting to account for Felt’s motive, Haldeman warned, “You can’t say anything about this, because it will screw up our source, and there’s a real concern. Mitchell is the only one that knows this,
and he feels very strongly that we better not do anything, because if we move on him, then he’ll go out and unload everything. He knows everything that’s to be known in the FBI.” Nixon agreed, as Haldeman continued to insist, “Can’t do anything! Never!”

Haldeman again warned, “He has access to absolutely everything. Ehrlichman doesn’t know this yet. I just got this information. I was going to tell Ehrlichman without telling him the source.” Nixon agreed, “Don’t tell him, don’t tell him the source,” and they discussed whether or not to tell Pat Gray, thinking they should at least warn him, even if not revealing precisely what they knew. Haldeman said that the last bombshell that Felt might leak would be the information about Jeb Magruder and Bart Porter funding Liddy’s operation. As the conversation continued, he explained, although
Time
magazine already had some of this information, he believed the reelection committee could explain those few facts.

“What would you do with Felt, Bob?” the president asked. “Well, I asked Dean on that,” Haldeman replied. Nixon pressed, “What the hell would he do?” “He says you can’t prosecute him,” Haldeman reported, which Nixon did not understand, so Haldeman explained, “He hasn’t committed any [crime].” When the president suggested that they would have to “live with it,” Haldeman proposed having him transferred to “Ottumwa, Iowa,” but Nixon worried that he might then go out and write a book.

“You know what I’d do with him,” Nixon said: “Ambassador.” Both fell silent to consider this option (which Nixon would later use as a way to dispose of CIA director Richard Helms), until Haldeman quietly agreed, “Something like that, yeah.” The president asked how Haldeman had learned about Felt, and he explained that it had come to “a guy” at the Justice Department whom Haldeman did not name. “The guy at Justice told John Dean,” Haldeman continued. “And he has not told anybody else, including Kleindienst or Pat Gray, because he’s afraid that either of them might react in such a way as to do more harm than good.”
³⁶
Nixon concluded, “It’s better to say nothing.” A surprised Haldeman asked, “Say nothing?” “Absolutely,” Nixon instantly affirmed.

The following morning, October 20, the president told Haldeman that he had thought further about Felt and the potential dangers of removing him.
³⁷
While he had concluded that they should not inform Gray, he noted, “Now, the other thing that concerns me is Ehrlichman’s relationship with this fellow. He says that this fellow has handled a lot of problems for him. I don’t
know what they are. Will you check with him and find out?” Haldeman said he would do so. Nixon continued, “Well, I think you better tell him what the situation is. But also, he’s got to see what kinds of games this fellow, what he knew, he may not. But I think Ehrlichman said that he is the man that did [things]; I’m not aware of anything.” Haldeman did not know either, but offered, “Ehrlichman said he had been involved in a lot of things with the FBI,” though he did not know specifically what those thing might have involved. “[Felt’s] his contact. See, that’s the thing I’m concerned with,” the president repeated, to make his point, and Haldeman assured him that he would speak with Ehrlichman but would not tell Gray anything.
³⁸

During an Oval Office conversation Haldeman advised the president that both Chuck Colson and John Ehrlichman were concerned about a CBS News story by Daniel Schorr that had been picked up by the
Post.
³⁹
The paper reported that “President Nixon has ordered a reopening of a White House investigation into the June 17 Watergate bugging incident, CBS News said last night.” The report stated, “According to Schorr, the inquiry was resumed, ‘after President Nixon was cautioned by acting FBI director L. Patrick Gray that the agency had established more serious direct links to the White House than the President might know about.” The piece added that I, “who had conducted the original Watergate inquiry for President Nixon, was said by CBS to have interviewed Dwight Chapin and Donald Segretti.” The
Post
wire-service story said that Schorr had not specified if I would be inquiring into “alleged sabotage and spying activities.”
⁴⁰

The president wanted to know if this was bad.
Haldeman thought not, although, he noted, “the Schorr thing is a complete lie.” All this talk of my investigations resulted in Haldeman’s asking me to gather the facts relating to the Segretti-Strachan-Chapin situation. When Haldeman mentioned this to the president later that morning, Nixon observed, “I just don’t see how we can do anything but lose by trying to come out in a white paper.”
⁴¹
Nonetheless, Haldeman wanted me to prepare one, “just because we ought to have one anyway” and to see “what it looks like.” In the early afternoon Colson told the president that the public thought the McGovern campaign was harassing Nixon with Watergate and Segretti, which was why it was having no impact on him in the polls.
⁴²

As Election Day approached the
Post
fired one last big volley, at Haldeman, which was as close to the president as they could get: an October 25 front-page story, along with a smiling albeit oversized picture of “H.R. (Bob) Haldeman,” with the banner headline: T
ESTIMONY
T
IES
T
OP
N
IXON
A
IDE TO
S
ECRET
F
UND
. This was the biggest Watergate story the
Post
had run, and its opening paragraph reported that the president’s chief of staff “was one of five high-ranking presidential associates authorized to approve payments from a secret Nixon campaign cash fund, according to federal investigators and accounts of sworn testimony before the Watergate grand jury.”
⁴³
The implication was obvious: The president’s top aide was connected to Watergate. There was, however, a fundamental problem with the account: It stated that Hugh Sloan had given this sworn testimony naming Haldeman, when, in fact, he had not, nor had Haldeman been interviewed by the FBI. Haldeman had denied the charges against him through White House deputy press secretary Gerald Warren when the
Post
sought a comment the preceding evening.

Not before this story, nor afterward, did Ron Ziegler so aggressively attack any news organization as he did the
Post
that morning—which itself became a front-page story the following day, quoting him denouncing the paper’s reporting as “political” and “the shoddiest type of journalism.” Even after learning that Sloan’s lawyer had informed the
Post
of its error, Ben Bradlee issued a statement saying, “We stand by our story.”
⁴⁴
Woodward and Bernstein later admitted that they “had assumed too much” and been persuaded “by their own deductions.” Even Mark Felt, meeting with Woodward at Deep Throat’s favorite underground garage, chastised them, calling their story “the worst possible setback,” because they had “people feeling sorry for Haldeman,” something Felt had not believed possible.
⁴⁵

In truth, and notwithstanding Ziegler’s highly staged furor, beyond the press room the story barely sent a ripple though the Nixon White House. A few wisecracks were made at the 8:15
A.M.
staff meeting during the discussion of how to handle it, and all agreed it should be addressed aggressively, since the
Post
was oblivious to simple denials. The president, who was in a prescheduled appointment with Henry Kissinger regarding a prospective peace settlement in Vietnam, phoned Ziegler, who stepped out of the staff meeting, and in the course of their conversation mentioned the Haldeman
story, which the president had not bothered to read.
⁴⁶
Ziegler told Nixon it was an opportunity to hit the
Post,
because the story was filled with errors, and that they were working on the response. The president, however, was more concerned about how they handled Vietnam.