The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (50 page)

Given the disadvantages of the grand jury option, Ehrlichman continued, “the other route would be two papers, or possibly three, and these papers would say, ‘Mr. President, you asked me about this thing. Here’s my review of the facts.’ And I think we disagree as to whether or not that’s a viable option or not. I think you could get out a fairly credible document that would stand up, and that will have the effect of trimming the scope, and would have the effect of maybe becoming the battleground on a reduced scope, which I think is important.” Ehrlichman said he felt the “big danger in the Ervin hearings” would be their running out “leads into areas that it would be better not to have to get into.”

“But does anybody really think we should do nothing?” Nixon asked. “That’s the other option, period. Keep fighting it out on this ground, if it takes all summer?” Haldeman assured everyone it would indeed take all summer. “That’s the other thing, whether we’re going to contain the thing,” Ehrlichman noted, and reported that we had considered all these possibilities, including “playing the odds, keep trying to put out fires here and there. The problem of the Hunt thing, and possibly McCord, and some of these other people breaking, there is no sign-off ever. It just goes on and on and on.” Then the president asked Ehrlichman, “Well, if that’s the case, then what is your view as to what we should do now about Hunt, and so forth?” “Well,
my view is that Hunt’s interests lie in getting a pardon if he can. That ought to be, somehow or another, one of the options that he is most particularly concerned about. His indirect contacts with John,” referring to the blackmail demands, “don’t contemplate it at all.” Ehrlichman surmised that “they think that that’s already understood.”

“I mean, he’s got to get that by Christmastime,” the president added, referring to Hunt’s clemency. The president asked me how Hunt’s confessing everything could help him, wondering if he could “get clemency from the court.” I explained how Hunt might appeal to Judge Sirica, saying he would cooperate with the government, and the judge might respond to the plea for leniency. The discussion turned to paying off Hunt, and I reported that, while I had not spoken to either Mitchell or LaRue, I understood they were “in a position to do something.” This information caused the president to lament to us all, “It’s a long road, isn’t it?” I then raised more vulnerabilities that I had touched on only lightly during my morning session with the president, like the remarkable number of secretaries who had varying degrees of knowledge. I reported that the DNC’s legal team was planning a rather “intense civil discovery” in the coming weeks and appeared to be coordinating with the Senate’s inquiry. And finally, while discussing the matter in general terms (though the fact that I was speaking to the president with Ehrlichman present did not escape my notice), I added, “And the other thing I must say I’ve noticed is, there is an attitude that has grown amongst all the people that have been involved in this thing to protect their own behinds. And they’re going to start hiring counsel. Dwight [Chapin], for example, now wants a lawyer. Kalmbach has hired himself a lawyer. Colson has retained a lawyer.”

Picking the right moment in our circular conversation, Ehrlichman asked, “Or is there another way? Like the Dean statements, where the president then makes a full disclosure of everything which he then has. And [then the president] is in a position, if it does collapse at a later time, to say, ‘Jesus, I had the FBI, and the grand jury, and I had my own counsel. I turned over every rock I could find. And I rested my confidence in these people in good faith, and it’s obvious now . . .” Ehrlichman trailed off, having made his point. He was flat-out stating that I should write a bogus report behind which the president could hide, and when it fell apart he could blame me. Ehrlichman was effectively volunteering me to fall on my sword, an offer I declined to take.

Slowly the president reembraced the scheme he had formulated when he
first thrust me forward on August 29, 1972, with my nonexistent investigation clearing everyone. I listened as he explained how we had been around and around on this matter, and he finally said, “If you, as White House counsel, John, on direction, I asked for a written report, which is very general, understand.” He nervously chucked as he continued, now knowing what I knew, “I don’t want to get all that God damned specific. I’m thinking now in far more general terms, having in mind the fact that the problem with a specific report is that this proves this one and that one and that one, and you just prove something that you didn’t do at all.” I did not have a clue what he was saying, but I listened. “But if you make it quite general in terms of your investigation, [which] indicates this man did not do it, this man did not do it, this man did do that.” Then he added that he wanted me to address the Segretti-Chapin thing, which I answered with a noncommittal, “Um hmm.” When the president asked if this was possible, Ehrlichman jumped back into the discussion and suggested, “To give some weight to that, could you attach as an appendix a list of the FBI reports to which you had access: interview with Kalmbach; interview with Segretti; interview with Chapin; and Magruder; and whoever; Dean; the whole business. So that the president at some later time is in a position to say, ‘I relied—’”

“Not on Dean alone but on corroborated evidence,” I said, interrupting. “That’s right,” Ehrlichman added, and he elaborated further on using the FBI reports, with the president largely repeating Ehrlichman’s argument. Looking for a way out of this conspicuous deception, I said that because of the Gray hearings, which had called into question my credibility, I might not be the best party to undertake this task, and that someone else should assume responsibility for it. In response, Ehrlichman made the absurd claim: “This will rehabilitate you, though.” The president added that he did not believe my credibility was in question but rather that they merely wanted me to testify. This discussion went on for some time, with Ehrlichman even suggesting I simply whitewash the Ellsberg break-in. I said nothing until I finally pointed out the obvious: “Well, I still see in this conversation the things that we’ve thought of before, we’ve talked about before, but they do not ultimately solve what I see as the grave problem of a cancer growing around the presidency, and that cancer is going to continue to grow. This is just another thing that gives a problem. It does not clean the problem out.”

Ehrlichman asked, “Doesn’t it permit the president to clean it out at such time as it does come up, by saying, I relied on it. And now, this later thing
turns up, and I don’t condone that. And if I’d known about that before, obviously I wouldn’t have done it. And I’m going to move on it now.” The president turned to me, and asked, “Your point is, you really think you’ve got to clean the cancer out now, right?” I answered, “Yes, sir.” He then asked, “And how would you do that?” clearly wanting an answer that did not result in a breakdown of executive privilege. “You have to do it to get the credit for it,” I explained, “that gets you above it. As I see it, I see people getting hurt, and I hope we can find an answer to that problem.” I was, in effect, telling the president to take action on the information he now possessed.

Ehrlichman again jumped in with an idea. “Alright, suppose we did this? Supposing you tender a report to the president on everything you know about this. And the president then fires some people, step one. Step two, send the report over to the Justice Department that says, ‘I’ve been diligently at work on this. My counsel’s been diligently at work. Here are his findings.’” While I said nothing, I thought Ehrlichman’s idea had merit, for at least now we were discussing an honest Dean report, much as I had outlined to the president that morning. The president immediately recognized the problem with this approach, however, and asked, “Where would you stop it?” “Christ,” Ehrlichman responded, “I don’t know where it stops.” Again, no agreement could be reached about where to stop, because once you did so, it became a further cover-up. At one point I facetiously suggested that the president could draw names from a hat to decide “who gets hurt and who doesn’t,” which would be about as fair a process as any. Once again, an honest report to the Justice Department by me was ultimately dismissed, because it would hurt too many people. Consideration was given, but rejected, to confiding in Henry Petersen. And when the conversation came back to me writing some sort of statement, I said, “The idea was a temporary answer,” with which the president agreed but said he would settle for a temporary answer.

I raised the very real problem looming over our conversation: namely, that when Sirica sentenced the convicted Watergate defendants on Friday, it would likely change the dimensions of everything. Although I had no special knowledge other than what I had read in news accounts and gathered from conversations with the CRP lawyers, it did not take much foresight to imagine what was likely to occur in the coming days and weeks.
*
“I think [it] will
prompt new problems,” I said, and added, “I think he will charge that he cannot believe the trial was conducted by the government presenting a limited case, that he is not convinced the case represents the full situation.” I noted that, if that happened, “It’ll have a dramatic impact on the day of sentence with Sirica from the bench, because he’ll charge that there are higher-ups involved in this. He may take some dramatic action, like appointing a special prosecutor. Who knows?” When Nixon asked if he could do that, I answered, “Sure, I think he could.”
*
I explained that the prosecutors were going to take all the people who had been sentenced back before the grand jury and question them. “Sirica may, you know, give them provisional sentences. And say if they are helpful to the government back before the grand jury, he’ll reconsider the sentences.” And I suspected, as I said, that he would give them “horrendous sentences.” (This, of course, was exactly what happened.) The meeting again ended with no answers.

Later that evening the president called Chuck Colson.
¹⁴
During the course of this conversation, when the president mentioned in passing that I had done a superb job of keeping all the fires out, Colson warned Nixon, “Yeah, well, Dean has a problem also, Mr. President. I didn’t want to say this to you Monday night when you mentioned him to me. Dean has done a spectacular job. I don’t think anybody could do as good a job as John has done,” Colson began. “The thing that worries me is the possibility of somebody charging an obstruction of justice problem. In other words, the subsequent actions would worry me more than anything, and that’s where John has, you know, he’s done all the things that had to be done, but that makes him a little more of a participant than you would like. He’s the fellow that has to coordinate it all.” Colson noted that I had a double privilege, but still he was concerned. “The subsequent developments would be the only ones that would worry me. I don’t worry about how Watergate came about.” Notwithstanding the fact that I had already acknowledged to the president that I could go to jail, he dismissed Colson’s concern. “Of course, that was what had to be done,” he said. “Hell, yes,” Colson agreed. He laughed lightly, as he said, “I know, I know. No second thoughts. That’s not the point.” Colson was also trying to warn him that someone new from outside should be brought in to handle the mess.

That evening the president dictated a long entry to his diary: “As far as
the day was concerned it was relatively uneventful except for the talk with Dean, who really, in effect, let it all hang out when he said there was a cancerous growth around the president [that] is simply going to continue to grow and that we had probably to cut it out now rather than let it grow and destroy us later. He obviously is very depressed and doesn’t really see anything, other course of action, but to move to let the facts out.” Nixon concluded that “Hunt seems to be a real problem” and added, “I don’t think that certainly Haldeman or Ehrlichman had any idea about bugging. I, of course, know Dean didn’t. He, in fact, pointed out that when Liddy first presented this scheme, it was so wild Mitchell sat puffing on his pipe chuckling all the while. Then came the real cruncher. Apparently what happened is that Colson, with Liddy and Hunt in his office, called Magruder and told him in February to get off his ass and start doing something about setting up some kind of operation.” He acknowledged, however, that Colson may not have known that what he was urging would result in an illegal operation.

Nixon added, “I learned for the first time that Ehrlichman apparently sent Hunt and his crew out to check into Ellsberg, to see something about his psychiatric problem with his doctor or something like that. That seemed to me to be a very curious junket for Ehrlichman to be involved in. Ehrlichman says that he was three or four steps away from it, but apparently Krogh has a problem here because Krogh did answer one question to the effect he did not know the Cubans which, of course, puts him in a straight position of perjury. This, of course, would be a terrible tragedy because Krogh was involved in national security work at the time that had nothing whatsoever to do with Watergate and the whole Ellsberg business.” As for my concern about Haldeman’s role with the $350,000 being sent back to the reelection committee and used to pay Hunt and others, which I described as an obstruction of justice, the president noted, “I don’t think that this is the problem that Dean seems to think it is, but of course he has to warn against every loose end might come out, particularly in view of some of the things that have come up to this point. They’re going to meet with Mitchell in the morning and I hope that Mitchell will really put his mind to this thing and perhaps part of it all can come some sort of course of action we can follow. It seems to me just to hunker down without making any kind of statement is really too dangerous,” the president added, and then he fell silent for fifty-nine seconds, with his cassette recorder continuing to run, before he dictated, “I got to go over to the house, it’s quite late.”
¹⁵

The president arrived at the fourth-floor EOB auditorium at 8:44
A.M.
to make an appearance at the foreign and domestic policy briefing for his subcabinet and all commissioned White House staff members. Haldeman, Ehrlichman and all the key staff were present, including me, but I departed with Haldeman after the president made some brief remarks. Haldeman said that Mitchell was on his way to Washington, and we would meet in his office when Mitchell arrived. Haldeman then accompanied the president to his first-floor EOB office for another Watergate-related conversation.
¹⁶
When the president asked who was advising Pat Gray, Haldeman said no one, since he refused to take advice, and reported, “I think that we’ve just got a loose gun that rolls back and forth on the deck there.”