The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (27 page)

This matter was not taken up with the president again until Haldeman met with him in the EOB office later that morning.
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“Anything about Watergate?” the president asked. Haldeman said the
Post
did not mention the Watergate break-in per se and proceeded to summarize the serious errors in the piece. There was a brief discussion of who would respond, and Haldeman was happy to have Ziegler handle it.

The story was still being discussed the next morning, October 26, only because it had made front-page news in a number of newspapers. During a morning meeting in the Oval Office with Ehrlichman, Nixon mentioned and asked for his view on the fact that the
Post
had done stories on both Colson and Haldeman, but said, “[T]his whole business about sabotage is ridiculous,” because it was part of the normal presidential election process.
⁴⁸
Citing Democratic demonstrations conspicuously planned to disrupt some of his appearances, Nixon was troubled by the hypocrisy of refusing to call those efforts sabotage while accusing his own campaign of engaging in it. “What I’ve always told the people here, for Christ sake, let’s find out what the other side is doing, so that we can have intelligence,” the president asserted, though he did worry that Chapin had gotten carried away with Segretti.

“Actually, as near as I can tell, what Dean’s checking shows, Chapin never programmed this guy,” Ehrlichman reported. “He recruited him, he sent him over to do this kind of thing, to do disruption, but Dwight never programmed him. He never told him what to do, never told him where to go, only took reports from him a couple of times, and then in kind of a humorous offhand way, because Segretti just didn’t report to him.”
*

The president’s takeaway from the
Post
attack on Haldeman remains difficult to understand, based on the recorded conversations, as his reactions appear to be buried in the personal material withdrawn by NARA from the public. When dictating to his diary on October 25, however, he noted, “Haldeman spoke rather darkly of the fact that there was a clique in the White House that were out to get him. I trust he is not getting a persecution
complex.” The president added (although there is no record of the call in the president’s daily diary) that he phoned Haldeman from the residence to reassure him: “We were going to have to take some heat in the next two weeks, but that we would sail through and not be knocked off balance.”
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On October 27 CBS News televised a special Watergate report based largely on
Washington Post
coverage. The president, who had not watched it, read a detailed report about it in his news summary on October 28, which prompted him to ask Haldeman if he had viewed it as soon as he arrived in the Oval Office that morning.
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Haldeman said CBS had planned a one-hour special but had cut it back to only fifteen minutes. “Well, this is very damaging,” the president observed. Haldeman could see the president was reading the news summary’s report of the broadcast, so he explained that Mort Allin, Pat Buchanan’s assistant who had prepared it, had gotten very excited about it, but in fact there had been no new news in it. Haldeman also reported that Colson had called Frank Stanton, the president of the network, and learned that they were going to run more of it that night, programming that Haldeman dismissed as “despicable.” Colson was then summoned to the Oval Office and instructed to deal with CBS, to go “kick ’em in the ass.”

As the final week of the 1972 presidential campaign arrived, the president was preoccupied with his efforts to reach an acceptable peace accord with North Vietnam, and the record shows that neither Watergate nor his reelection campaign were given much consideration. Clearly he was already thinking ahead to his second term.

A
lthough Watergate had effectively become a nonissue as of the week before the 1972 presidential election, in an EOB office meeting during the early afternoon of November 1, Ehrlichman suggested that the president or the White House mention “a tentative investigation” on all the Chapin and other recent allegations. This, he said, would “set the stage for somebody, Dean or me, or somebody, to then make ourselves available, and say, Okay, here’s what we found out. Chapin did this and this, Segretti did this and this,” based on affidavits that would be gathered.
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Ehrlichman suggested an “investigative group in the White House [of] Dean, Dick Moore, who is an attorney and who has been in on this right from the beginning, and me.” The work would be completed “about the first of December, or sooner, if necessary.” The president approved of the idea.

In a rambling late-afternoon conversation on November 2 with Haldeman, in the EOB office, a frustrated Nixon pushed his chief of staff so he could better understand how the Segretti and Watergate debacles had come about. Haldeman had concluded that the core of all these problems was Liddy, which he summed up as “If you want to get right down to what went wrong.”
²
The president added that he felt “Martha and John is what went wrong,” but Haldeman explained that it had all started even before Mitchell went over to the CRP: What had happened was that they had Jeb Magruder, who hadn’t known what he was doing, and it was now clear that Liddy hadn’t either. (It is unfortunate that this conversation is not more audible, for at one point Haldeman takes Nixon back to the origins of the plan to gather intelligence
during the 1972 campaign—the idea of using Jack Caulfield—and that Mitchell had rejected that plan, called Operation Sandwedge.)

Shortly before noon on Friday, November 3, the president, joined by the First Lady, headed on a last campaign swing, flying to Chicago, Tulsa and Providence and calling supporters in the U.S. Senate from Air Force One as he moved about the country. On November 4, before leaving for another campaign flight, he met with Haldeman, and at one point in their EOB office conversation the president announced, “I have done some thinking in terms of Watergate.”
³
That thinking concerned how he was going to keep himself above the fray and defend himself, namely by repeating the following: He had been “shocked to learn of the break-in”; he had “read the riot act to everybody in the White House”; he had made “Dean responsible”; and he had “told Clark MacGregor he was responsible to investigate.” None of this happened to be true, as the record shows, but Nixon was constantly refining his defense.

After that meeting the president headed for his helicopter on the South Grounds of the White House, and then to Andrews Air Force Base and his final campaign trip, to Winston-Salem, Albuquerque and on to Ontario, California, which was followed by a short helicopter trip to his San Clemente compound. He continued campaigning via telephone and recorded television messages until he voted in San Clemente at 7:00
A.M.
on Tuesday, November 7, before flying back to the nation’s capital at ten that morning.

Nixon’s reelection victory was a massive landslide in which he carried every state but Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia, by significant margins. When the votes were all tallied he had received 60.67 percent of the popular vote and 538 electoral votes, or 96.65 percent of the Electoral College, placing him just behind Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson in historic wins. Nixon, however, failed to carry Congress, which was the only hope—a quiet but not unspoken White House staff hope—to bring an end to Watergate. Nixon had not bothered to campaign for congressional candidates or to make any real effort to win GOP control, and he did not have sufficient coattails to give the Republicans control of either the Senate or the House of Representatives, which meant that Watergate would not end with the trial of the Watergate seven.

To most all who saw Nixon on election night it was clear that his victory had not really boosted his spirits. He was in a terrible mood, depressed and barely able to even pretend he was a winner, later writing that he was “at a loss
to explain the melancholy that settled over [him] on that victorious night.” He did suggest in his memoirs that to “some extent the marring effects of Watergate” weighed on him. He clearly understood that his failure to win Congress meant Watergate would loom large in the coming days and months.
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*

To the absolute surprise of nearly every member of the White House staff, the cabinet and the subcabinet, they were all fired. After the president attended the morning staff meeting to thank the group for its help in his reelection, and to request their assistance in reorganizing the executive branch for the second term, Haldeman took over the meeting and asked for everyone’s resignation. From there the president went to a cabinet meeting in which he gave a similar talk, and was again followed by Haldeman requesting everyone’s resignation, along with instructions to obtain the resignations of all the presidential appointees within their departments or agencies as well. The process was handled brutally, and everyone was confused, if not angry. During my meeting with the president on September 15 I had become privy to these plans, and Haldeman had told me that, because of Watergate, I would be asked to remain on staff. He had also requested that I check on several legal issues before the mass resignation requests were issued. (Haldeman also submitted his resignation, along with Ehrlichman’s, when flying back to Washington from San Clemente on Election Day, but the president rejected both.
⁵
)

By midmorning on November 8 it occurred to me that the White House would not want to upset Assistant Attorney General Henry Petersen, who was in charge of the Watergate investigation, so I called Haldeman to get his approval to assure Petersen he would not lose his job as the head of the Criminal Division. Both Haldeman and Petersen appreciated that I had taken care of this detail before I flew off to California to meet with Donald Segretti to pull together a quick investigation of what, in fact, he had done for and with people in the Nixon White House. The president, meanwhile,
accompanied by Haldeman and Ehrlichman, headed to Florida to focus in earnest on the task of reorganizing the executive branch with new personnel (including shifting some tested people to new jobs) as he sought to reinvigorate his administration. In the coming weeks it was clear that Nixon and his senior staff had created a remarkable amount of ill will in Washington with their postelection ingratitude, a problem that would soon return to haunt his presidency.

No sooner had I completed an extended interview with Segretti in Palm Springs on November 10 than I was summoned to Key Biscayne. On November 11, I met with Haldeman and Ehrlichman at the guest house in the presidential compound so that they could listen to the recording of my session with Segretti (which was made with his consent). As usual, Haldeman made detailed notes, and then went to the president’s home to report what Segretti had revealed. While not sinister, his actions were political pranks in the extreme.

On November 12 Haldeman told me I should return to Washington with the president when he and his staff departed on Air Force One that evening. During the flight Nixon came back to the guest compartment to meet my wife, and he warned her, “We’re going to keep your husband damn busy.”
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My role had changed. With Watergate I had been simply picking up tidbits of information from Liddy, Magruder, Mitchell, Mardian and Kalmbach, as well as from the lawyers hired to represent the reelection committee, and became a go-between for Haldeman and Ehrlichman with Mitchell. Now I was responsible for directly investigating Segretti’s relationship to the White House, a project on which I worked, along with my many other assignments in the counsel’s office, until early December.

After his postelection respite in Florida, the president headed for Camp David on Monday morning, November 13, where he remained based for much of the rest of the month, with Haldeman and Ehrlichman joining him for lengthy stays. It was there they worked on the fundamental reorganization of the executive branch of the government, creating presidential counselors
who would have jurisdiction over various departments and agencies while reporting directly to the president or his senior staff. Along with the restructuring of the lines of authority, the three men were busy deciding who would actually run the government. The president decided to keep Kleindienst as attorney general for a year, and said to Ehrlichman on November 14, in a discussion of the Department of Justice, that he would tell Kleindienst, “We can’t make an exception of your department, Dick. We’re cleaning up all the departments, so they’re going to go.”
⁷
But then, remembering Watergate, the president remarked, “We can’t start making exceptions, with the possible exception of Petersen.” Then he said to Ehrlichman, “I understand you want to keep him.” Ehrlichman chuckled, sarcastically responding, “I don’t necessarily want to, but we’ve got to, he’s got the—” The president interrupted, saying, “He knows too much.” And Ehrlichman kept talking, explaining, “He’s got the keys to the can.”

Another Watergate-sensitive appointment that arose during this conversation was the director of the FBI. The president wanted a cop at the FBI, and liked Jerry Wilson, who was the head of the DC Metropolitan Police, as long as Ehrlichman was “sure he’s a ballplayer.” “I just don’t want Gray to have to go up for confirmation,” Nixon added. “That’s the problem with Gray.” He liked the idea of appointing Gray as undersecretary of state, seemingly forgetting that this, too, was a post that would require confirmation.

The subject of Henry Petersen arose again when the president returned to the White House for a day. Nixon complained to Ehrlichman during a morning meeting in the Oval Office: He was annoyed that the Justice Department had yet to prosecute anyone regarding Watergate.
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Still, the president told Ehrlichman, he wanted to give an appearance of change, although he acknowledged that “Petersen has got to be kept.” Ehrlichman agreed and said he had confirmed that after further checking, and added, “He’s adequate, and when this thing is over, we’ll find a nice judgeship for him, and he can go out.”

During a brief meeting before heading to New York City that afternoon, the president explained to Haldeman that he had been doing further thinking about Watergate:
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“I had thought that what ought to happen, I been doing some more reading about the Watergate thing, and so forth. Why the hell don’t you get Mitchell and John Ehrlichman, you and Dean and sit down and thrash the damn thing out?”

“Ehrlichman, Dean and I are going to do that right now. Let us go one round first before we get into—”

“Here’s what I would like to do with it, and right here, maybe Dean will have to say something,” he began telling Haldeman. “The main thing that we’ve got to do is to protect the presidency, and on that, we need a simple, clear statement, and we need it early, which simply says again what we’ve already said, by Dean, and in the form of a report to the president.” He began describing what my report should say: “‘Pursuant to your request, I have made an investigation in regard, for the so-called Watergate incident now, [and] I have found that there is no present member of the White House staff who was, who had knowledge of it, or was involved in the, da da da, Watergate matter.’” He then explained, “You see, I have said that publicly, and I want him to say it again.” But the president wanted even more, although he was not clear on how it would be phrased: “Ah, [then, I would] go on to say, I’ve also found that ah, that ah, ah, that ah, neither ah, neither ah, ah,” but when he could not clarify his thoughts he fell silent for a moment, until he finally continued. “If he can, you ought to use the opportunity to clear Stans, and the finance committee, you know what I mean? Just say that they were not involved. As far as your campaign committee, if they’re not cut out, they’re, it is because, you should just say they’re going on with the investigation, but, but, I conducted, my investigation indicates that ah, that, that, at least Stans, I mean, maybe you can get that out of the way, such, so that I can, so you say, that Secretary Stans had no knowledge, nothing to do with it, and Attorney General Mitchell, former attorney general Mitchell. Don’t go any further than that, don’t go any further. Don’t go down to Magruder or people like that, because you’re going to get your ass caught.”

Then he said, “Now, with regard to the Segretti thing, he should just say that, ah, maybe that statement has to come a little later, but it should be one. We get all the business about, as John [Ehrlichman] says, letting it all hang out. Let’s find some sort of a peace. But in the end, there may not be that flat, categorical statement. And I think it’s got to come from Dean, that I conducted an investigation pursuant to your direction. I have found that, and then maybe this will fix everything, if he names names. For example, he should tick them off: that Mr. Haldeman was involved. Untrue. Mr. Colson was involved. Untrue. That, ah, as far as Mr. Chapin was concerned, he recommended, and so forth.”

He soon continued, “I think that kind of statement is needed from the standpoint of the presidency. Now, I don’t want to do anything that will
harm other individuals if we can avoid it, but you see, by that you get the very simple statement that that’s what it was about. That’s the kind of thing, you see, that will, that we can stand on. As Ziegler says, there’s the statement that we stand on. And now John Ehrlichman’s view probably will be, and Dean’s as a lawyer, we’ll let it all come out, and it will be clear that the president’s not involved.” But he did not want to wait on the legal process, telling Haldeman, “This is a public relations exercise as much as anything else. Dean has got to report that pursuant to my directions he has conducted a thoroughgoing investigation of this and has found that so forth. See what I mean?”