The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (49 page)

“I think Bob has a potential criminal liability, frankly,” I added. The president then said, “Suppose the worst, that Bob is indicted and Ehrlichman is indicted. I must say, maybe we just better then try to tough it through. Do you get my point?” I did, and he continued, “If, for example, say we cut our losses and [pay] no more blackmail and all the rest, and the thing blows, and they indict Bob and the rest. Jesus, you’d never recover from that, John. It’s better to fight it out instead, and not let people testify, and so forth and so on. Now, on the other hand, we realize that we have these weaknesses in terms of blackmail.”

I agreed that there were two alternatives: Either to figure out how to cut the losses and minimize the human impact in a manner that would not undermine the Nixon presidency or to “just hunker down,” fight all the way, not let people testify, keep it all buried and hope we could make the right decisions. After making that observation I was surprised when the president said, “I do want you to still consider my scheme of having you brief the cabinet, just in very general terms, and the leaders, in very general terms, and some general statement with regard to my investigation. Answer questions. Report Haldeman was not involved. Ehrlichman—”

“Well, I can, you know, if we go that route, sir, I can give a show,” I began, but because I had just told him there had been no investigation, and that
Haldeman and Ehrlichman were deeply and criminally involved, I could not resist adding a cynical comment: “We can sell it, you know, just like we were selling Wheaties.” The tone of my remark seemed to pull the president back to the seriousness of the situation, my mention of the “mine fields down the road,” the fact that “the guys are going to jail,” the fact that “we’re not going to be able to give them clemency.” Nixon was stunned when I informed him that the Watergate defendants conceivably could get as much as fifty-year sentences, given the comments that Judge Sirica had been making and that he had hiked their bails bonds up beyond their ability to pay while letting a man charged with shooting Senator John Stennis out on the street with virtually no bond.

The president buzzed for Haldeman to come to his office so that a meeting could be set up with Mitchell, Ehrlichman, Haldeman and myself as soon as possible. When Haldeman arrived, the president summarized the high points of our meeting and said he wanted me to give the others the same information I had given him, including the potential criminal liabilities. In fact, over the preceding eight months I had already given them that information, and not unlike the president, they had paid little attention to it, addressing instead whatever was then the current problem. Haldeman, however, did not mention this, and I did not feel it my place to raise it. What was particularly striking about this meeting was that, when the president mentioned matters I had already discussed with Haldeman on repeated occasions, he reacted as if they were all news to him. For example, when the president remarked that Colson had called Magruder, which had triggered Magruder to get Liddy’s plans approved by Mitchell, Haldeman acted surprised, as if hearing it for the first time.
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These were the types of games the president’s men were playing with one another, and with the president. From the distance of four decades it appears that while both men were occasionally conscious that their conversations were being recorded, Haldeman may have been more sensitive to this than Nixon, not to mention more cunning.

When the president asked if I thought Colson should also attend the meeting with Mitchell, Ehrlichman, Haldeman and myself, I said no. I reported that Colson’s lawyer had become a chatterbox; he had discussed Hunt’s demands with members of my staff, a matter about which they had
no knowledge. Haldeman asked, “Who’s Colson’s lawyer? That Jew in his law firm?” I said it was David Shapiro. “That’s where your danger lies,” Haldeman told the president. “It is in all these stupid human errors developing.”

The next forty minutes of conversation fell within what had already become the template for discussing this subject, both during the months that led to this juncture and those that would follow: Problems were raised, but solutions could not be found, because no one wanted to truly face the terrible reality: We had become something of a criminal cabal, weighing the risks of further criminal action to prevent the worst while hoping something might unexpectedly occur that would resolve the problems. Watergate conversations had become like the devil’s merry-go-round, with the same basic tune played over and over while various people climbed on and off. The lever controlling it all was in the hands of Richard Nixon, who from our March 21, 1973, conversation until the end of his presidency would engage in these increasingly protracted exchanges searching for less than truthful solutions to ever-growing problems.

Two instructions emerged from this meeting, one to me and one to Haldeman. I had suggested we might gain some time to deal with Hunt’s demand if Kleindienst called Judge Sirica and said the government had new information that could influence his sentencing decision; might he delay sentencing for a week? The president wanted me to follow up on this (though when I discussed it hypothetically with Henry Petersen he advised against it). Haldeman was to convene a meeting with Mitchell, Ehrlichman and me as soon as possible to explore our options, which he did. Once we decided on the plan we would discuss it further. Nixon said to me, “You had the right plan, let me say, I have no doubts about it, the right plan before the election. And you handled it just right. You contained it. Now, after the election, we’ve got to have another plan, because we can’t have, for four years, we can’t have this thing” that would eat away at his presidency. I had gone from being the intermediary and communications link between and among all these people to the president’s designated fixer.

“Well, there’s been a change in the mood,” I noted for Haldeman and the president, and I was talking not only about Capitol Hill, the anti-Nixon media and the president’s legions of detractors, but about Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, Colson, Magruder and everyone else involved in the Watergate affair, including myself. I was willing to soldier on, for I still believed the president and my colleagues would do the right thing, although I was
beginning to have my doubts. “John’s point is exactly right,” Haldeman noted, and explained to the president “that the erosion here now is going to you, and that is the thing that we’ve got to turn off at whatever the cost. We’ve got to figure out where to turn it off at the lowest cost we can, but at whatever cost it takes.” I agreed, “That’s what we have to do.” The president observed, “Well, the erosion is inevitably going to come here, apart from anything, you know, people saying that Watergate isn’t a major concern. It isn’t. But it will be. It’s bound to be.” I volunteered, “We cannot let you be tarnished by that situation,” still believing I had laid the basic diagnosis before the president before the prognosis became terminal. And the meeting ended.

The president had a full schedule that morning, but when back in his office that afternoon he asked Rose Woods to come in.
¹⁰
About three minutes into this meeting the president said, “Let me ask you something. I’m just doing a little checking. We, at the present time, may have the need for some substantial cash for personal purposes for some things that are outside, political things and so forth and so on. Approximately how much do you have at this point?” he asked, regarding a secret fund she maintained. Rose was not exactly sure but said, “I know we still have that four hundred.” She reported that nobody was aware of this four hundred thousand dollars other than the president.

Shortly after 3:00
P.M.
the president asked Haldeman to come to his EOB Office.
¹¹
When Haldeman arrived he reported that he would be meeting with Ehrlichman and me, and the president said the first matter that needed to be considered was “what we’re going to do about Hunt. I think we’ve obviously overloaded Dean, who’s been carrying this thing. Everybody says, ‘Well, that’s Dean’s job,’ you know.” But the president said it was time for others to step in.

“Well, we’ve been backing him up pretty well,” Haldeman explained, but he noted the difficulty of keeping everything together. As for dealing with Hunt, the president saw the problem as the lack of available funds. Haldeman pointed out that it was not only Hunt, but “it’s Liddy and that other guy, McCord, and the Cubans.” He reported that Fred LaRue had been trying to raise money but was not very good at it: “LaRue isn’t a very dynamic guy.” Haldeman said this had resulted in the need to go back to Mitchell with the money problem, explaining that “guys in the White House” couldn’t handle this. Kalmbach had withdrawn from this risky money-raising business. The
president acknowledged the problem, pointing out, “It’s a dangerous thing they’re going to do, going around getting money.” Haldeman said that I should be the one to convince Mitchell to do this, observing, “You can’t have a fund-raising drive and give everybody certificates and gold pens.”

When Nixon mentioned my concern that this activity involved an obstruction of justice, Haldeman responded, “Well, see, I hadn’t really thought of that.” The president said, “I hadn’t thought of it, either,” and added that he was not sure if that was actually the case. As the conversation continued the president revealed that he did in fact have access to money, and they would have to risk using it, if necessary. Haldeman warned, “It better be washed,” and then explained that there were ways to do it, referring to what I had been told about taking the money to Vegas or going through a bookmaker in New York. When Haldeman said that Mitchell and LaRue should still have some of the $350,000, the president remarked it “could take a hell of a lot more than that.”

Again trying to assess whom Hunt might cause problems for, the president suggested that Colson might be able to deal with him regarding his threat against Ehrlichman. “Ehrlichman said he didn’t seem a bit concerned about it,” Haldeman said, which surprised Nixon; Haldeman added, “He thinks he’s three times removed. That there’s no problem, but I don’t know where that leaves John.”
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Even Haldeman suspected that Ehrlichman was more vulnerable than he was admitting.
¹²
The president, however, recognized the seriousness of Ehrlichman’s position and asked next, “What about Krogh?” for Krogh posed a potential problem for Ehrlichman. Haldeman said he was still making inquiries about Krogh and had spoken with me about his perjury problem. The president also remained concerned about Colson, not only regarding Hunt, but as he told Haldeman, “You had indicated the pressures [that were put] on Magruder. Dean said that all came from Colson. With Hunt and Liddy in his office, he called Magruder and said, ‘Now, look, get off your ass and start working. We’ve got to get [intelligence on] this or that.’” The president said I had concluded that Colson’s call
probably caused Mitchell and Magruder to take action, and Nixon was concerned that he might have provoked Colson’s actions. “Yeah, I know that there was a scheme,” Haldeman conceded, now that I was not present. “With bugging, kidnapping and [mugging],” the president noted. “There was all kinds of stuff,” Haldeman agreed. The president noted, “Now, the point that I make is if, for example, Liddy and Hunt were in the office when Colson called Magruder, then Colson directed it. He knows God damn well what it was about.”

Haldeman volunteered that he might have, inadvertently, been responsible for Magruder’s decisions. “It’s another implication thing,” he said, “I had horrendous pressure on Magruder, at one point, on the basis that [he] didn’t have people covering the Democratic candidates and taping their speeches. And their press conferences, and their Q and As. Remember, you got into it. You asked for some stuff on it. And I thought Buchanan had the stuff, and he wasn’t getting anything.” The president recalled, and thought it innocuous. Haldeman continued, “Alright, but see, Magruder could say he was under enormous pressure from me to cover on that. He was. It wasn’t to bug anybody. It was to carry a tape recorder openly. I mean, I didn’t give a shit what they did with it, I just wanted the tape. So we could prove that Humphrey said what he said about McGovern.” The president added they had also pushed for “their schedules” as well, adding, “all that’s perfectly legitimate.” This discussion of Watergate ended with the president, pursuing my suggestion, asking Haldeman to discuss, when he met with Ehrlichman and me, White House staff going to the grand jury. Haldeman liked the idea of the grand jury as well, because unlike the Senate, where there would be “no limitation,” there were rules—although Haldeman did not yet realize that those rules did not particularly favor those testifying before it.

At 5:20
P.M.
on the afternoon of March 21, Haldeman, Ehrlichman and I were asked to come to the president’s EOB office, following our meeting in Ehrlichman’s office at 3:45. The president was anxious to hear what we had to report, and Ehrlichman took the lead in explaining. “Well, you go round and round and you come up with all questions and no answers,” he reported, in short. “Back up where you were at when you started.”
¹³
We had considered both the grand jury and a special investigative-type panel, which might immunize from prosecution all involved to get to the truth, but neither alternative was realistic to provide everyone protection. “Well, let’s take the grand jury without immunity, what about that?” the president asked. “Yeah, well,
I think that is still a possibility,” Ehrlichman replied. “It leads to some very drastic results. Counsel over here reads the statutes,” he said, referring to me, “and there are awful opportunities for indictment, and so you end up with people in and out of the White House indicted for various offenses.” I had in our meeting earlier that day in Ehrlichman’s office raised the fact that it appeared we had been violating Sections 371 (the federal conspiracy statute) and 1503 (the federal obstruction of justice statute) of Title 18 of the U.S. Code. While I conceded that I was not a criminal lawyer, based on the cases annotating those statutes, I thought Mitchell and Magruder had potential criminal liability both for the Watergate break-in and bugging and for their activities following the June 17, 1972, arrests, as did Dean, Haldeman and Ehrlichman for our post–June 17 activities. When I first raised these criminal issues, months earlier, Ehrlichman had rejected them out of hand. When I brought them up again during our meeting earlier that afternoon, and was more explicit about their ramifications, Ehrlichman had tried again to dismiss them. But now, while speaking to the president, he seemed to acknowledge the problems were real.