The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (30 page)

Nixon, his mind elsewhere, asked, “What about [doing something] with Magruder? What can we do there? Is there anything?” Haldeman reported that Magruder was interested in the Bicentennial Commission, but the problem was that it was a very “politically visible spot,” which prompted the president to immediately reject it. Haldeman said that Magruder did not really want anything, a fact that surprised and pleased Nixon, “And wouldn’t consider anything until after the trial. He doesn’t want to be thought of for anything.”

“What’s the present plan for the trial?” Nixon asked, wanting to know “whether they’re going to plead guilty or go to trial or what?” Haldeman said some would plead, but they were still making motions. Nixon wanted them all to plead guilty. They discussed whether Congress would go forward with the trial under way (Nixon thought not), and Haldeman reported that Kennedy’s staff investigation of Segretti had largely faded away. Then, thinking of the toll this had taken so far, Haldeman added, it was “too damn bad,” because Colson was “a substantial loss, there’s no question.” So, too, was Chapin “a substantial loss.”

Colson, Nixon said, would “find a way to be back in and out of the White House. He said that there’s only one thing he’s asking for is, at the end, he would like to take a trip, a little trade fair or something.” Haldeman knew about this and indicated that they were looking for a nice junket for him.

Nixon said he recognized that “these fellows” involved in Watergate had thought they were part of “a good cause,” but he was still not clear on who had been pushing whom and said he “thought it was Mitchell” who had pushed.

“Mitchell did not push them, apparently,” Haldeman said, and then
offered his interpretation, employing somewhat obtuse metaphors and descriptions that Nixon apparently understood: “Mitchell’s thing really was an awareness of machinery rather than an initiative. Mitchell, at the point that was going on, Mitchell was not taking a very active role at all.” After a long pause the president asked, “But Colson was? Colson’s pushing Magruder, is that what it was?” Haldeman answered, “And Liddy,” a fact the president was not pleased to hear. Haldeman continued, “Yeah, and it gets down to undeniable specifics. I mean, there’s specific needs, times and places and that sort of thing, and—” The president, thinking like the lawyer he was, raised an important distinction: “Yet the point is whether he was pushing to receive information on that, the question of perjury and so forth, whether he was pushing to get information, or whether he was pushing to get information through bugging, you know?” Haldeman reported that Colson’s push was “very specific” and a “venture” known to “the committee.”

While Haldeman was meeting with the president I received an urgent call from Paul O’Brien. Hunt was at the breaking point, I was told, as his criminal trial was about to begin. Colson was refusing to take calls from Bittman, who wanted to discuss executive clemency for Hunt. Soon after my discussion with O’Brien, Colson called me to ask if I had seen the letter from Hunt. I had not, but fished it out of my inbox and told Colson I wanted to speak to Ehrlichman about the situation, which I did at noon. Ehrlichman felt that Colson should listen to Bittman’s proposal.
⁷

That evening I joined Ehrlichman in his office to meet with Colson after his conversation with Bittman. Colson arrived uncharacteristically shaken; whatever Bittman had told him obviously troubled him, and he now said he felt it was imperative that Hunt be given an assurance of clemency. Ehrlichman said he wanted to think about the situation and instructed Colson to not discuss the matter with the president. Two days later, with no word from Ehrlichman, Colson ignored his injunction.

Neither Ehrlichman nor Colson mentioned the Hunt situation when they spoke with Nixon on January 4, but when Colson met with the president on the following day in his EOB office, he raised it. The audio on this recording is extremely poor, virtually impossible to transcribe,
⁸
but the National Archives Subject Log indicates, as did I, that they also heard the discussion of
clemency during this exchange.
⁹
The president made a contemporaneous note in his diary: “Colson told me on Friday [January 5] that he had tried to do everything he could to keep Hunt from turning state’s evidence. After what happened to Hunt’s wife, etc., I think we have a very good case for showing some clemency.”
¹⁰

Although Nixon also interpreted the information from Colson during their January 5 conversation as more finger-pointing among his subordinates, the truth was that his staff was slowly (and finally) giving him the basic facts about what had actually occurred—while not really explaining their own roles in the affair. On this point, Nixon recorded in his diary: “It was Colson’s view apparently that either Haldeman or Ehrlichman or both might have been more deeply involved than has been indicated. Of course, it is all hearsay. Colson’s point is that Magruder is a name dropper and that Magruder may have mentioned the names of Haldeman and Ehrlichman and telling the Watergate people to get information. Apparently, according to Colson, too, some of the meetings took place in Mitchell’s office at the Justice Department (since he would not move to the CRP until March 1972). This would be hard for me to believe but then again during the campaign people are not as rational or responsible as they normally would be. This, I know, must be a great burden for Haldeman and Ehrlichman during this past tough week and I could see that something was eating them without knowing what.”
¹¹

The president met at Birch Lodge with Haldeman, on January 7, which Haldeman later reported involved in part “fill[ing] him in on all the [Watergate] coverage in the paper today, and the fact that it’s building up.”
¹²
The
New York Times
had a story—7 G
O TO
T
RIAL
T
OMORROW IN
B
REAK-
I
N AT
D
EMOCRATIC
O
FF
ICES
—that identified the defendants and noted that Judge Sirica had “repeatedly prodded the Government to take up the reasons behind the break-in.”
The
Washington Post
had two front-page stories: W
ATERGATE
J
URORS
F
ACE
G
UARDED
L
I
FE
, which described the Spartan living conditions the jurors would encounter while being sequestered for an estimated “six weeks to three months” during the trial, and M
ANSFIELD
A
SKS
P
R
OBE OF
W
ATERGATE
, which reported that Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield (D-MT) had sent a letter to Senator Sam J. Ervin (D-NC) requesting
he undertake an investigation of Watergate and “other insidious campaign practices.” It appears this news resulted in a discussion about how those associated with the president should handle their testimony, for as Haldeman noted in his diary, the president felt “our people should take the Fifth Amendment rather than getting trapped into testifying.”
¹³

In an Oval Office conversation Ron Ziegler raised the fact that the Watergate trial was starting, and Nixon instructed that there should be no comment from the White House during the proceedings.
¹⁴
Ziegler agreed, and it was understood that the Justice Department would handle all responses and reactions. Nixon was pleased to learn that Clifton Daniel
*
was coming to Washington to head the
New York Times
bureau. Ziegler believed they could develop a good working relationship with him; the president observed that their doing so was a good way to stick it to the
Post
. Haldeman arrived as Ziegler departed, followed shortly by Ehrlichman.
¹⁵

Ehrlichman relayed the details of his appearance the previous day on
Meet the Press
, where he had been questioned about Watergate by
Time
magazine columnist Hugh Sidey: Did he know the facts of Watergate? No. Did the president know? No. Sidey asked why the White House had not investigated, and Ehrlichman replied that the FBI had conducted the biggest investigation since the Kennedy assassination, and literally dozens of witnesses would be called in the forthcoming trial. He added that the White House had conducted its own investigation, and no one in the administration was found to be involved. Anything beyond that, Ehrlichman told Sidey, he was not prepared to discuss, nor did he know the motive behind Watergate or the inception of the plan.

Haldeman reported that “the way it appears now, Hunt is going to take a guilty plea on three counts,” after the opening statement. “They will ask him, presumably, whether there were any higher-ups involved, after he takes his guilty plea, and he’ll say no.” Rothblatt, the lawyer representing the Cubans, was a zealot who wanted to fight; Liddy was not going to plead but rather go to trial hoping for a reversible error by the judge or prosecutors; he believed he could
“screw something up somewhere.” Haldeman assured the president, “They all will sit mute. None of them will testify, none of them will take the stand, except McCord, who does intend to take the stand, but McCord has no firsthand knowledge of any involvement of other people. Therefore, Dean’s not too worried about his taking the stand.” Haldeman added that, if convicted, which he presumed they would be, they could be immunized by Congress, but they would “take contempt of Congress charges rather than testifying before Congress. At least, that’s their present position.” Ehrlichman explained that both the grand jury and Congress could immunize them to obtain their testimony.

A little later Ehrlichman asked, “Did you see the Marty Schram story over the weekend?” The
Post
had run a story from
Newsday
that reported: “The Watergate burglary and espionage mission at Democratic Party headquarters was part of a widespread project in which documents were photographed in the Embassy of Chile and several liberal Democratic senators were kept under electronic surveillance, according to a source close to the defendants.”
¹⁶
Neither the president nor Haldeman had seen the piece, so Ehrlichman offered his own version of it: “There’s a story to the effect that a CIA agent has bagged a lot of embassies here, including the Chilean embassy. That’s been kicking around now for two or three weeks.
Newsday
finally ran it as a story, and they assert that there is a CIA project officer who is around this unit, and they’ve been in existence for some time.” Haldeman thought this account might be part of the defense the Watergate burglars were developing.

After a brief discussion of the bugging of the Nixon campaign plane in 1968, Ehrlichman returned to the Watergate trial and shared new information he had picked up: “I was going to say, one of the witnesses in the Watergate case is going to be a kid that Hunt recruited who was in the Muskie headquarters and then in the McGovern headquarters.
*
And—” The president
interrupted to ask, “Worked for Hunt?” Ehrlichman confirmed he did and continued, “Was paid thirty-five hundred dollars, and finally broke off with Hunt because he refused to bug Gary Hart’s telephone over at the McGovern headquarters. That’s going to reopen and re-escalate this whole political sabotage business, I would guess. And that would come fairly early in the trial, I would think, because it’s part of the conspiracy.” Ehrlichman began speculating, “Now, if Hunt pleads and is sentenced maybe they won’t call that guy. I don’t know whether Liddy—”

“But what about the Congress, though?” the president asked. Nixon said he did not have a problem with this kid’s having been planted in a candidate’s headquarters: “That, believe me, doesn’t bother me too much. Good God, there are people planted in headquarters all the time.” “And bugging,” Haldeman added. “So they can say that he was in the headquarters, and that Hunt recruited him, he was in the Muskie headquarters.” Nixon later continued, “What did the guy do in the headquarters? I mean, he just worked there?”

“Oh, he’d send down schedules and collect papers, and just whatever he could lay his hands on, I guess,” Ehrlichman answered. “And he didn’t mind doing that, but when they asked him to plant a bug, [that’s] why he bailed out.” There was some confusion over the timing, which neither Haldeman nor Ehrlichman were able to correct, and the president eventually complained, “Well, I’ve heard pieces of the story. That’s how it always is.”

In a meeting with Colson that afternoon, in his EOB office, the president said, “Incidentally, Haldeman told me that apparently that Hunt is going to [plead guilty to every one of his counts]. And very definitely, I think it’s the right thing for him to do, Chuck.”
¹⁷
Colson informed Nixon, “He’s doing it on my urging.” After a brief discussion about Hunt’s college student operative, the president sat silently for a moment, and then said, “Well, don’t let it get you down.”

“Oh, hell no,” Colson reassured him. “I know it’s tough for all of you,” Nixon said. “For you, Bob, John and the rest. We’re just not going to let it get us down. This is a battle, it’s a fight.” He noted that it was a fight they should undertake knowing “[w]e’ll cut them down one of these days. Don’t you agree?” Colson said he thought it good that Liddy was going to trial, as “a hell of a lot of stuff has come out” already. The president felt that as long as the trial was in progress, Congress would have to keep its “God-damn cotton-picking hands off.” The president sought some clarity as they
discussed the trial procedures and then reminded Colson, “But, you know, Chuck, it’s something they all undertook knowing the risks. Right? What did they think?” Colson said he did not think they appreciated the risks. “They didn’t think they’d get caught?” the president asked, and then he suggested that they might have believed that the Democrats would drop the matter after the election. Colson offered this analysis: “I think they figured that these were all guys who were CIA. They all were taking orders from people like Liddy, acting on behalf of John Mitchell and others. You know what I mean?”