The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (56 page)

During an early morning Oval Office conversation, when discussing the payments to the Watergate defendants, Haldeman explained how I had become involved in passing messages from Mitchell to Haldeman and Ehrlichman: I had not volunteered but had been drafted by necessity, for “no one else would do it.” Haldeman said, “Mitchell just kind of laughed and said, ‘You got to start doing something,’” and reminded the president, “I mentioned this to you at the time.”
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In the early afternoon Ehrlichman came to the Oval Office and reported that Mitchell was in town, and that Haldeman and I were going to meet separately with him.
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Ehrlichman said I would tell Mitchell I was talking to the prosecutors and would not lie for Mitchell and Magruder, and Haldeman would tell Mitchell he could not support his contention that he was not running the president’s campaign operation—as Mitchell had testified under oath—while he was still attorney general. Ehrlichman further reported I had informed him that I expected to be asked about the “hush money” to the defendants when I appeared before the grand jury. The president responded, “Well, they’ve got to go into that, because, because we’ve got Hersh,” referring to the series of stories in the
New York Times
by Seymour Hersh regarding payments to the Watergate defendants.
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This prompted a conversation about the money paid to the defendants and speculation about who might say what and how. They rehearsed potential testimony for Mitchell, Haldeman and me, until Nixon asked, “What in the name of God is [Mitchell] going to say about the money, then?” If Mitchell was pressed, and confronted with the true testimony of others, Ehrlichman said, he did not know what Mitchell would say. Ehrlichman then admitted that the reelection committee “sent me a message through Dean that they needed help in raising money for these poor souls. And I sent word back through Dean that I just did not know how to go about it.” The president asked, “But you did have such a conversation?” Ehrlichman affirmed he had.

“He had that conversation with Haldeman, too?” the president continued. “Yep,” Ehrlichman replied, adding that Haldeman had said he did not know how to help, either. “So then they sent a message to Kalmbach through Dean, whether that’ll come out or not, I don’t know.” After passing over Kalmbach, they discussed the $350,000 cash fund that Haldeman controlled being sent back to the CRP for payments to the defendants. Ehrlichman reported that he was working with Haldeman to make him a better witness, because “he tends to be very intellectual in his answers,” and Ehrlichman felt he could be selling his position better. “And I asked Kleindienst, when I saw him again yesterday, to get me a reading on what’s happening at the grand jury, which he promised to do.” The best news that Ehrlichman had for the president was that lead Watergate prosecutor Earl Silbert had told Kleindienst that they had no interest in calling Haldeman or Ehrlichman or Colson, but rather were only interested in Strachan, Dwight Chapin and me. But both men realized that, with the Senate Watergate committee paying careful attention, the prosecutors were undertaking “a very full and completely thorough investigation.” After the president gave passing consideration to a “special adviser” on Watergate, like a retired Supreme Court justice or federal judge, the conversation ended with Nixon’s concluding that, while he was not being “Pollyannaish,” he felt the situation was under control.

Shortly before noon, Ehrlichman reported during an Oval Office conversation that Mitchell had called to say that Robert Strauss, the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, was ready to settle their civil lawsuit against the reelection committee, having received approval to do so from
Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield, Speaker of the House Carl Albert, and the chairman of the Senate’s Watergate committee, Sam Ervin.
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Mitchell said they could settle if Maury Stans would agree, but that this might require a nudge from the White House. The president instructed Ehrlichman to tell Mitchell to do as he thought best and to have Len Garment do the nudging of Stans. (The lawsuit was ultimately settled for $775,000.
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) Discussion of the suit prompted the president to complain about Sam Ervin’s “pissy-ass game” regarding the rules for White House witnesses at his hearings: “This old fart is trying to screw us.”

Ehrlichman said he was going to pass the word to Howard Baker “that they really don’t want to get into Kalmbach’s records,” because “there’s going to be some senators and congressmen on both sides of the aisle that really wouldn’t like to open that whole can of worms.” Nixon, however, was unclear about what he was referring to. “Well,” Ehrlichman explained, “you get into the [Teddy] Kennedy investigation, for one thing.”
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Apparently Kalmbach had also arranged payments of campagin contributions to favored conservative Democratic congressional candidates. Most of this conversation focused on their concern about the reports Liddy had prepared for the reelection committee and the White House about information he was overhearing at the DNC, which he dictated to his secretary, Sally Harmony, based on the material gathered by Alfred Baldwin.
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It appeared that these documents had been given to Gordon Strachan, which probably meant Haldeman was involved. Notwithstanding Haldeman’s denials, the president remained concerned about him.

At 12:34
P.M.
Ehrlichman was back in the Oval Office conversation to report on his talk with Mitchell about the DNC lawsuit; he agreed he would arrange to settle it.
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More important Ehrlichman said he had tried to brace Mitchell for what lay ahead, encouraging him to “focus” on the potential problems. Mitchell said he had retained Paul O’Brien to represent him. Ehrlichman thought this was a good development, “because we can use O’Brien now as a conduit to Mitchell in a way I didn’t think we could before,” suggesting that such information might now be protected by attorney-client privilege.
The president made it clear he did not want Mitchell testifying in a way that appeared that either he or the White House was covering up. It was the potential criminal exposure that most troubled the president: “I don’t give a damn if the Ervin committee comes out and condemns us. That does not worry me,” although he proceeded to make it clear that he did not want Ervin to have a free ride: He wanted a strong minority report by the Republicans on the committee. Ehrlichman explained that that was not going to be all that easy for Baker and the other Republicans were “not about to endorse anybody at this point,” and Baker himself had become “very standoffish.”

Ehrlichman wanted Nixon’s views on my testifying before the Senate, because the committee wanted to subpoena me, which could “get the litigation started,” if that was going to be necessary. The committee felt it could get its request for subpoeaned information to the U.S. Supreme Court by summer. This was fine with the president, but Ehrlichman, who was meeting with Ervin and Baker again that evening at Blair House, said he would keep it an open question: “I’d rather not give them a definite no on Dean at this point.” Ehrlichman appeared both comfortable with my testifying and with a court test on my not testifying.

Repeatedly, throughout this conversation, Ehrlichman mentioned how unhappy the Senate committee was with McCord as a witness, because of the weakness in his information and its crediblity. The president said that a result of Sirica’s delaying McCord’s sentence, to see how he could help the Senate was to give McCord high incentive for fabricating testimony or, as Nixon described it, “producing a bunch of God damn crap.” Accordingly, the president told Ehrlichman he wanted attention devoted to the “destruction of McCord.” Given Ehrlichman’s meeting that evening, the discussion of the Ervin committee’s proceeding remained at the forefront of this discussion. “John, let’s face it,” Nixon said, the proceeding was not going to end until they got “some big fish and fry them, and then they’ll go away. Not until then.” No big fish concerned Nixon more than Haldeman and Ehrlichman, and he wanted to know what would happen if Magruder, with his “apple-cheeked credibility and all that, were to blow.” Nixon believed that merely calling him a liar would not solve a potentially “uncontrollable” situation. Nixon was also concerned about me, and asked, “Is Dean now trying to be subpoenaed? Is that right?” Ehrlichman reported I was “still waiting” and had “not yet heard.” The president understood that both Dwight Chapin and Gordon Strachan had already been to the prosecutors’ office.

Most everything Ehrlichman had discussed with the president earlier in the day was revisited, to varying degrees, during midafternoon Oval Office conversation with Ehrlichman, Haldeman and Ziegler.
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Ziegler attended to considering appropriate public statements about a situation that Ehrlichman sardonically described as “We’re getting bombed because [the president] appears to lack candor, forthrightness, [and] responsiveness to the needs of the nation in cleaning out a festering corruption.” The president observed that whatever statement was made, it should be made strongly.’’

Regarding the Senate’s likely Watergate hearings and the grand jury’s investigation, Ehrlichman felt all the White House witnesses would be strong, but the “weak witnesses would be Mitchell, LaRue, Mardian, folks of that kind” from the campaign. Nixon agreed, then noted, “Haldeman is the man we have to think about here. I don’t know what you do in the Dean thing. It’s tough.” There followed a lengthy and indecisive discussion about whether or not I should testify before the grand jury, but it was unanimously agreed that I should not appear before the Senate committee. At most I should provide written answers to questions, or possibly take part in an informal meeting with the committee members. It was presumed that Haldeman would testify before the Senate, and he was working on a statement. Although Ziegler had been dealing with Watergate since its inception, he was relatively new to these process discussions, and he suggested that enough information be released “to draw a circle around the president, around the White House, to give the presidency and the White House something to stand on.”

“How do you do that, Ron?” Ehrlichman asked. Ziegler, who became frustrated and annoyed when Ehrlichman pushed, replied, “I don’t have the solution, John.” “Well, I’ve got the itch. I don’t know how to scratch it. That’s my problem,” Ehrlichman said, dismissing Ziegler.

Haldeman was concerned that if I did not appear before the Senate it would be claimed “that Dean was the mastermind that ran this whole thing.” The problem with that argument was that it would come back to either Mitchell or Haldeman, since it was well known I did not have that kind of power. The president liked the idea of claiming that, as the lawyer, I had conducted an investigation, although he understood I had not done so, because my undertaking was protected by privilege. They plotted and speculated about what might have occurred during the planning stages that produced the break-in, and then in the aftermath, and Ehrlichman ran out several scenarios of my testimony, all of which absolved everyone but me.

Ehrlichman suggested, for example, how I might testify I had learned about the hush money demands: “I continued to attend meetings at the committee to reelect,” Ehrlichman, playing the role of Dean, began, “principally for the purpose of counseling on election laws, to make sure that the White House didn’t get off on the wrong foot, and so forth. At those meetings the question of the care and feeding of the defendants kept arising, and people kept turning to me, particularly John Mitchell, saying, ‘You’ve got to help us get the money to keep these fellows from starving and to keep their attorneys going and so forth.’ And so, on several occasions I came back to the White House and communicated John Mitchell’s message to various people in the White House. On one occasion, I contacted Herb Kalmbach to see if he could raise money for John Mitchell. On other occasions, I communicated with people outside of the White House with regard to this matter, and I became a participant in the process of raising and trying to send any money to the defendants.” The president, confused by Ehrlichman’s proposed fictional account, asked, “Did he raise money?” Ehrlichman answered, “He was in the process. But he didn’t personally put an arm on anybody.”

“But you didn’t help [him]?” the president asked Ehrlichman. “No, but Herb did,” Ehrlichman answered, failing to acknowledge that Kalmbach had done so at Ehrlichman’s direct request. “So, in other words, he did raise some money?” the president further pressed. “He was instrumental, I would say,” Ehrlichman suggested. “Really?” Haldeman asked with an incredulous tone at this new account. Ehrlichman began to back off when Haldeman, who was aware of the true facts of the matter, said, “It seems to me he was instrumental in passing information along to those who could raise the money. But not that he was instrumental in raising it. He didn’t contact anyone.” “That’s what I said,” Ehrlichman protested. “That’s a semantic, Bob.” “No, but he knew,” the president added. “The point is, [he had knowledge].”

“He was in the process,” Ehrlichman repeated, and they continued to fashion my testimony for me, including, at one point, Ehrlichman’s more accurately noting that I was “merely a connection, you know, that there are people at both ends involved.” But those people at both ends—Mitchell, Magruder, LaRue, O’Brien and Parkinson at one and Ehrlichman, Haldeman and the president at the other—remained unmentioned. Ehrlichman noted, “If this were a dead-end road that nobody would go down unless Dean said something, then you don’t have a problem. But it isn’t.” Haldeman pointed out, “People at both ends have an overriding interest in not saying anything.”

At the end of this ultimately inconclusive meeting, Nixon flew off to
Camp David to continue to search for a solution that would keep these problems a safe distance from his presidency.

The
New York Times
reported that Dwight Chapin and Gordon Strachan, along with Donald Segretti, James McCord and Robert Reisner, a former Magruder assistant who kept his schedule, had all appeared before the grand jury the day before.
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As Nixon was now relying exclusively on John Ehrlichman to deal with Watergate, he summoned him to report to the Oval Office early that morning. Ehrlichman said that Reisner’s appearance meant the prosecutors were looking at Mitchell’s meetings with Magruder, Liddy and me.
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Ehrlichman said he would call Kleindienst later that morning to “get some feel” for the grand jury testimony now being presented, although he was confident that Strachan and Chapin were describing Segretti’s activities, which was of little concern. The only real unease that morning was whether Strachan would be asked about receiving reports from Liddy’s Watergate-bugging operation. Ehrlichman did not believe, however, that McCord had that information, so he doubted the subject had arisen. He did have new information concerning the Senate’s hearings, which had been postponed until May 1.