The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (28 page)

Haldeman, who had been making notes, responded, “Yep, he has to draw that conclusion, or else you’ll be—” Nixon interrupted, “There was no White House participant.” He explained how the report could state that Chapin had not directed Segretti, but Haldeman cautioned him that this was “shady ground.” As their conversation about Chapin, and also Strachan, continued, the president asked, “Well, what is your view, Bob, about Chapin, what we could do with him? Don’t forget, now is the time we’ve got to do something there.” Haldeman, without missing a beat, replied, “Well, I think he’s got to move out,” to which Nixon said, “No question about that.”

“And, I mean, out of government. I don’t think he should just move out of the White House,” Haldeman clarified, noting, “I think if he stays around somewhere else, you got a problem. But don’t rush him out.” The president suggested having him work for his foundation, but Haldeman thought not; rather, they might assist in placing him with the Marriott Corporation, which sponsored special events, a subject of interest to Chapin. As for Strachan, they would place him elsewhere in government. “Well, we’ve got to clean the skirts,” the president said, to sum up.

While Nixon was in New York, dropping by his former law firm, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie and Alexander, to say hello, Haldeman called for a meeting with Ehrlichman and me, and we gathered in Ehrlichman’s office for a lengthy afternoon session at which Haldeman reported on his conversation with the president. That evening Haldeman noted the outcome of our meeting in his diary: “Decided we’d have to follow the full-disclosure route on Segretti, and that we can’t do anything much on Watergate because of the court case.”
¹⁰
It was agreed that I should prepare a report on Segretti.

Although the president’s schedule, as well as his thinking, was dominated by his efforts to negotiate a peace settlement in Vietnam, Haldeman continued to share incidental matters of interest, such as the fact that Teddy Kennedy’s Senate subcommittee was undertaking an investigation of Segretti.
¹¹
In passing, the president asked about the Dean report, and Haldeman said, “Yeah, I should have it today, his draft.”

On Saturday the president slept late, had breakfast at 10:30
A.M.
and started making calls from his Aspen Lodge study. At 12:30
P.M.
he phoned Chuck Colson, who gave him information that would have a significant impact on the handling of Watergate:
¹²
“I just got a terribly tragic bit of news. That plane crash,” Colson said, referring to the widely reported crash of United Flight Number 553 the preceding Friday afternoon, December 8, at Chicago’s Midway International Airport. “Howard, Howard Hunt’s wife was on it, and it’s—” Nixon cut him off, “His wife is dead?” Colson, depressed and shaken, answered, “Yes, sir. She was killed in that plane crash in Chicago.” “Oh, my God,” Nixon replied. Colson understood that the loss of Dorothy Hunt—who he told the president was an extraordinary woman, brilliant, charming, polylingual and the mother of four beautiful children—would be devastating for her husband.

On Sunday morning Haldeman spoke with the president about the Chicago airline crash.
¹³
“That was a tragedy, wasn’t it?” Haldeman said, when Nixon raised the subject. “Oh, Christ! I don’t care what the hell he ever did or anything like that,” the president replied, and mentioned that he was going to send a condolence note to Howard Hunt. But when he learned more details on the aftermath of the crash, he decided against it. Haldeman informed the president that ten thousand dollars in cash, in hundred-dollar bills, had been found in Dorothy Hunt’s purse, which had been recovered from the plane’s wreckage. When Haldeman said that they would probably be tracking the serial numbers on the bills, the stunned president asked hopefully, “Who
gave ’em to him? We didn’t?” Haldeman did not know where the money had come from: “You know, whether it’s theirs, or there’s payoff money involved in it, it could be some of it, a lot of bills.”
*
Of course, if it was indeed payoff money, it could present a very serious new problem. When the president said he had not seen that information in the press reports, Haldeman reported that he had read about it in a wire service story.

When Nixon remarked that he hoped Hunt would be able to explain the cash, Haldeman pointed out that they “may not be able to track it, he may have been smart enough to wash it,” making it untraceable. “Suppose, incidentally, this money is tracked back, who is it tracked to?” Nixon asked, clearly concerned that it might be traced back to someone close to him. Haldeman did not think that was a problem, and explained, “They put together some cash to take care of these people. I don’t know where it came from. I assume they were smart enough to do it [so] that it was not traceable cash, as the other stuff,” Haldeman noted, referring to the money found earlier in Barker’s account.

Later in the conversation the president returned to Watergate: “Oh, incidentally, on the PR side, I thought of something else. I don’t like the White House staff getting bad PR, or bad raps; we need to look at that.” He didn’t want his “God damn good staff” getting smeared on “Watergate and Segretti,” spelling out his real point: “I want to get myself cleaned up.” He thought it important that Haldeman and Ehrlichman be cleaned up as well, because “you fellows carry out my orders.”

Further conversation about payoff money made it difficult to address the president’s wish to make Watergate disappear, so at one point Nixon began asking for more information, somewhat indirectly and softy confronting Haldeman: “I know the situation, what the hell? You had to know a little about it. Ah, Chapin knew a little about it, ah et cetera, et cetera. You know what I mean—” “Chapin doesn’t know anything about [Watergate], all he knows is Segretti,” Haldeman answered, avoiding the question of his own knowledge of Watergate.

“Yeah. What I might have, you had to know that something—” Nixon pressed. “I knew that something was going on,” Haldeman admitted. “You knew there was [a bug], bugging,” the president said, although these words
were slurred. He added, “You knew we were getting some information.” Haldeman acknowledged that he did, responding, “That’s right.” “But we didn’t know such a stupid thing was included, was going on,” the president continued, regarding the Watergate operation. “That’s right. I didn’t know we were bugging people,” Haldeman added but did not further clarify his knowledge, other than to concede vaguely, “I knew we were bugging the other side.” To this comment Nixon added, “Perfectly legitimate.”
*
Following a confused exchange about what White House aide Jack Caulfield was or was not doing, the president wondered if he had known of the Watergate operation, since Haldeman had earlier told him of Caulfield’s proposed Operation Sandwedge, which Mitchell had turned down. “Well, I’m not sure he did,” Haldeman said, “but I think what happened, obviously what happened, Mitchell set this apparatus up, did not stay in very close contact with him. We did talk about an early issue, and that was doing it out of New York versus doing it out of our own campaign offices. John pulled that back, pulled it out, set it up over there [at the campaign]. Then we started pushing and, and this is really, this is the point where what a lack of information there was, we weren’t getting the right kind of—” Haldeman continued without responding to a question from the president, who was concerned to know if he had done something to provoke it. “—we weren’t getting, the obvious stuff. When I asked, can we have tape recordings of not, ah, bugged stuff, of a public speech or this press conference—”

“Well, I asked about that. I asked for that God damn stuff all the time,” Nixon added, then talking over Haldeman, who continued, saying he wanted a record of what Humphrey and McGovern had said. Nixon then remembered that he had added Scoop Jackson to the list. Haldeman said, “And I pushed hard on that, but they weren’t getting it. Now what I’m told is, Magruder didn’t know much about this other apparatus,” referring to Liddy’s operation. “He knew that it was in place. He didn’t know what it did. He kept pushing them.” Haldeman explained that this occurred because the White House was seeking more information. “And Liddy’s story is that the reason he was bugging is, Magruder was lashing him so mercilessly on getting information, and then Liddy moved out and did it.” But that was not the whole
story, for after the arrests Haldeman had learned more, so he added, “Now I know there is another factor, in which they very much laid low, because Mitchell was pushing on using them, there was this, ah—”

“Paper,” Nixon injected.

“Secret papers, and financial data that O’Brien had, that he was going to get. I didn’t even know about that, so we weren’t pushing on that.
*
But we were pushing on trying to get this external information, which would not have required bugging at all, but just maybe as simple as holding a tape recorder at a press conference, or something like that, and getting pictures and words.” Nixon, still wondering if he were somehow complicit, asked in a barely audible rhetorical fashion, “Do you remember I used to talk to you sometimes, loosely, I [always said], Jesus Christ, they bugged us [
unclear
]. I personally [
unclear
] now fight back!” Haldeman responded that O’Brien had been the wrong person to bug.

After a brief pause in the conversation, the president expressed concern that Ehrlichman had concluded that nothing could really be done to deal with the situation, but Haldeman corrected him: “[Ehrlichman] wanted to strengthen the Dean report stuff, because there was some other things we could do on it,” but I was concerned about how far to go with it, “because the FBI knows a lot of stuff.” This prompted Nixon to ask what he should do about the FBI. Haldeman thought maybe Nixon should put Lou Nichols, an old friend and former FBI agent, back in and in charge of the agency, but the president rejected that idea, as he did Henry Petersen, who, he told Haldeman, “isn’t worth a shit.” Haldeman remarked that they might have to live with Gray’s getting torn up at a confirmation hearing. Still seeking information about Watergate, Nixon changed the subject to ask, “You don’t think Colson knew about the bugging?”

“No, not the Watergate bugging, anyway. But I think he knew about other things, and it’s awful close to Hunt, that’s my problem,” Haldeman noted. “That’s fine,” Nixon said. This exchange indicates that Haldeman and Ehrlichman had told the president that they wanted to get Colson off the staff. As Haldeman proceeded he again hinted at problems he was not sharing with the president about Hunt and Colson, if Haldeman actually knew—namely, the Ellsberg break-in, which involved Ehrlichman far more deeply than Colson. “That’s the one area that you have to watch it,” Haldeman said, referring
to the Hunt and Colson relationship. “If you look at all the possible problems on this, you’ve got to assume that one, or some of them, are going to evolve, and some aren’t.” Haldeman did warn that things could start to unravel. If the Cubans broke, for example, it could lead to other problems. With this comment Haldeman yawned loudly, very unconcerned, and changed the subject. He observed that Chapin would be a bad witness, because he was such a nice person, but Strachan, who “knew everything that was going on,” would be a good witness, because he could not remember anything. Regarding Strachan, the president asked, “Does he know about Watergate?” Haldeman said, “I don’t think he knows it was being done in advance, but I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know how much he knew, but he may have known they were gathering information.” The president believed the odds were that Strachan did know, but Haldeman remained uncertain. Then the president said confidently, “Mitchell had to know this,” with which Haldeman agreed.

The president had a four-hour Oval Office conversation with Haldeman, with occasional drop-ins by Ziegler and Ehrlichman.
¹⁴
While the subject was primarily postelection politics, Watergate wound its way through the discussion, beginning when Haldeman reported that Pat Buchanan had had a session with “Dean, Ehrlichman and Ziegler this morning,” and all had concluded that the White House should not “reescalate Watergate, we shouldn’t put out a Dean report until we have to or unless we have to.” Haldeman told the president that I had completed a report (he did not mention it concerned only Segretti), but given the fact that both the
Post
and Capitol Hill seemed to be pulling back a bit, it was not timely to do anything. The president returned to this subject later but first had a question about Dorothy Hunt: “Have they found anything on the traceability for the ten thousand dollars found in her bag?”

Haldeman reported that I had spent most of the weekend on that matter and been told that Mrs. Hunt had traveled to Chicago with the money to make an investment in a Howard Johnson restaurant with other members of her family, who had a pattern of dealing in cash. The money was still in the hands of the Chicago police, who would be turning it over to Howard Hunt. Haldeman added, “John [Dean] doesn’t know whether it’s traceable or not. He’s not particularly concerned, but he doesn’t think it is.”

The president returned to the matter of issuing a report, concerned that his entire administration had “sort of an aura of corruption,” and that he had not cleaned it up or answered questions about it. Haldeman explained the problem raised in the Buchanan, Ziegler, Ehrlichman and Dean session: “No matter what you say, you’ve raised more questions than you’ve answered, and you bring the thing back up to a level of public attention. And it’s a strategic question, not a tactical one. It’s whether you close it off better from the president by opening it one more time and trying to box it or by letting time fade it away.” Haldeman said there were unsatisfactory aspects to both approaches, and it bothered him that the Segretti matter had become tied to Watergate. But once you separated them and dealt with Segretti, where could you go with Watergate other than to repeat “nobody presently on the White House staff had any involvement?” Haldeman advised the president that the judge, without stating his name, handling the Watergate case—he was referring to Judge John Sirica—may prove to be a problem, because he seemed to be tying Segretti to Watergate, which brought them back to the question of a need for a statement. Again, nothing was resolved.