The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (70 page)

“I’d just fire him as soon as it comes out and let him scream from the outside,” Kissinger advised. The president was silent for a moment, then said he guessed he would have to do that when the time came, adding, “Well, you know, nobody really will know what they put a president through on a thing like this.” “Well,” Kissinger agreed, “it’s inhuman, Mr. President. These bastards know damn well that you couldn’t have known about it, if one considers all the things you had to go through. You couldn’t be a police judge, too. You’re running the government, you’re doing all the negotiating, you’re carrying a bigger load than any president has.” The president mentioned his trips to Russia and China and ending the war but wondered if he should have spent more time on his campaign, rather than on Vietnam. “If you can’t rely on your own people to tell you the facts, then it’s rather difficult.” Kissinger added, “Exactly. If you had done that, we might still be in the war.” Nixon found Kissinger’s assurances comforting, and told him, “And in the meantime, put your arm around Haldeman and Ehrlichman.”

“You can count on it, Mr. President. I’ve been standing by Haldeman. I didn’t know Ehrlichman was in trouble, too. Now you can count on the fact that I’ll stand by them. But the major person to stand by now is you,” Kissinger said. The conversation ended with a discussion of the state dinner and how “old Frank Sinatra,” who had entertained that night, had given everyone a lift.

After saying good night to Kissinger shortly after midnight, Nixon called Haldeman and told him: “I just wanted to say, keep the faith.”
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Haldeman said that he and Ehrlichman had reviewed the worst-case scenario and “what’s in between,” and “the thing now is just play it as it lies, day by day, and see where we come out.” The president asked if Strachan had been to the grand jury, but Haldeman did not think that had happened, and Nixon told
him he wanted to meet in the morning to discuss who was vulnerable, for he thought I would probably be given immunity notwithstanding his statement.

“One thing we’ve got to do, Bob, is get some kind of line with regard to this whole business of helping the defendants. I just feel some way that ought to be able to be done, you know what I mean? I don’t know whether there is any way, though, is there?” Haldeman felt they could only keep stressing the point that the money had been intended for fees and support and that was it. Nixon again reviewed how Hunt had been taken care of by Mitchell, with Haldeman, Ehrlichman and me being told the next day, and asked if there was some way Ehrlichman could be separated out. “You see,” Nixon noted, “the vulnerabilities of a lawyer here is enormous, because it’s a destruction of his career.” Haldeman thought there was a long way to go before Ehrlichman would face that possibility, and Nixon backed off this idea.

Despite the statement he had issued only a few hour earlier, Nixon was now privately claiming that it was Ehrlichman who had triggered his interest in the Watergate matter. “Ehrlichman’s own investigation was, it’s very important that we get that, you know, that is what really triggered it, rather than what Dean said, see my point?” Haldeman responded with a noncommittal, “Mmm, hmm,” and the president continued. “That makes sense,” Nixon said, suggesting they discuss it, and then got to his point: “We’ve really got to think how to save what there is left of the president, the presidency.” He now thought an Ehrlichman report worked better because “Ehrlichman did call the attorney general and say look, here it is, and after that call, Magruder cracked, so let’s put it all down. Do you think that’s a good idea?” The president asked Haldeman who in addition to Strachan at the White House had any problems; he asked specifically about Larry Higby, who would slip through the cracks notwithstanding his intimate connections with all things Haldeman: “It doesn’t touch our trust in Higby, does it? Or?” Haldeman answered Nixon’s hanging question softly, “Yeah,” indicating that Higby was indeed touched, though Haldeman added that he had not been subpoenaed.

Nixon remained most concerned about me. If I was indicted, the president was convinced, “then, of course, he’ll says he’s going to destroy the president, too. Isn’t that what he’s threatened? He’s been threatening all the time, isn’t he, even you? Isn’t he?” Checking the president’s anxiety, Haldeman assured him, “No, no, he never did.” Nixon began trying to provoke Haldeman into saying that he and Ehrlichman had been pushing to let it all
hang out, but I had somehow blocked them. When Haldeman did not react as hoped, Nixon suggested the tragedy was Mitchell, and his refusal to step up. After a pause the president offered an example—Mitchell’s request to activate Kalmbach. “Who said that, Mitchell said it, didn’t he?” Nixon asked twice, and Haldeman answered twice that Mitchell had requested that I go to Ehrlichman, but he did not recall that I had come to him as well; rather, I had only “alluded” to his agreement. “Well, make him prove it, okay John, Bob, Bob, bye.”

Before going to the bipartisan leadership meeting in the Cabinet Room to discuss energy issues, the president spoke to Ziegler in the Oval Office.
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Ziegler had drafted an explanation of why Nixon had taken action based on new Watergate information, which was presented as the president’s response to newspaper reports, grand jury information and the Gray hearings. Nixon listened as Ziegler read the document, and while the president added a few thoughts, he was not seriously considering Ziegler’s suggestions. At 8:11
A.M.
Haldeman arrived in the Oval Office for a brief chat.
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Nixon had been thinking about his secret recording system. “I would like you to take all these tapes, if you wouldn’t mind,” Nixon began. “In other words, there is some material in there that’s probably worth keeping, [but] most of [them are] worth destroying. Would you do that?” “Sure,” Haldeman said, and the president added that he thought some of the material might go to the future Nixon library.

Haldeman proceeded to tell the president that he had been thinking the night before about the Hunt threat on March 21, a date Haldeman said he did not recall but had looked up. He now felt that the Hunt money matter actually had nothing to do with Watergate but rather was a national security matter. Nixon recognized that Haldeman was reaching beyond reality, so he did not pursue the topic. Rather they speculated again what I would do with, or without, immunity. Ziegler, who was the only link to me at the time and was stepping in and out of this meeting, reported on our conversation of the preceding evening: “When Dean called me last night, he said, ‘You know what the twenty-first was, don’t you?’ And I said, ‘No, as a matter of fact, I don’t.’ He said, ‘That’s when I went in and gave the president my “cancer on the presidency” speech, which brought the president out of his chair.’ And—”
The president affirmed this, saying, “That’s right, he did.” When Ziegler brought up the matter of my failure to provide the president with a written Dean report, Nixon said, “In fairness, it wasn’t that he couldn’t put it on paper.” The president explained, “We were trying to make a public statement,” and my report “would have criminally implicated others.” He felt I was turning on other people now to save myself, and he wanted Ziegler to talk to me. Ziegler said he would.

Haldeman reported that the media reaction to his April 17 statement showed that news people were still focused on who had ordered the Watergate break-in rather than any possible cover-up. Nixon wondered if the press was interpreting his new statement as a repudiation of his prior one, in which he asserted that no one in the White House had been involved in the break-in. When Ziegler asked if he was referring to the August 29, 1972, statement, Nixon confirmed that he was and urged Ziegler to call me and assure me he was not now claiming anything different, notwithstanding news media misinterpretations to the contrary.

While Ziegler left the president and Haldeman again sorted through their recollections, particularly of Hunt’s demand and the president’s involvement. Haldeman recalled that money was paid to the Watergate defendants “to keep them, as they say, keep them on the reservation.” Haldeman again suggested that Hunt’s demand could be considered as “a national security threat” and then offered another rather extreme suggestion: “I haven’t really thought it out, but there is another route. Which would be, throw the entire prosecution, the entire Justice Department, out.” Given that the president would later fire a special prosecutor and allow his attorney general and deputy attorney general to resign after they refused to do so themselves, Haldeman’s suggestion may well not have sounded excessive to Nixon, but this line of discussion ended when Ziegler returned to report on his conversation with me.

Ziegler had found me at home, my house still surrounded by a crowd of television cameras and reporters, and as he reported our conversation: “I said, ‘I wanted to check in with you this morning following the briefing and so forth, and to let you know that in the news I saw someone make references to the fact that the Dean report was full of holes. We’re not characterizing this in any way on specific instructions from the president. We are not going to focus on any individual; this is not fair to any individual to do that. And as my briefing yesterday showed, we did not do that.’ And then I went
through with him what I propose I’ll say again in the briefing, which is, I’m not going to comment. He said, ‘I understand that.’ And he said, ‘The thing to keep in mind is that the Dean report also involved the [March] twenty-first conversation with the president, the oral discussion with the president.’ I said, ‘I don’t think there is any question about that, John.’”

Nixon noted that the “Dean report” was not false, and Ziegler continued, sharing what I had reported: “He said, ‘Ron, look, I understand the position you’re in.’ He said, ‘The important thing is that we now have the president out in front.’” My comment provoked Nixon to interrupt and ask if I said Haldeman and Ehrlichman should go. “No, that’s all he said,” Ziegler responded. This conversation gave the president little comfort, for he had told Haldeman and Ziegler he was confident that, if I did not get immunity, I would launch an attack on the White House.

The president’s schedule was full throughout the morning and early afternoon. A camera crew in the Oval Office was packing up after Nixon had filmed his message on energy for the evening news, so Nixon stepped into his private office to call Henry Petersen shortly before three o’clock for a quick conversation.
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Petersen told him there had been no significant developments, although he thought Gordon Strachan was coming by, and that he was being represented by Fred Vinson, a former assistant attorney general and Petersen predecessor in running the Criminal Division, for the Johnson administration. Petersen said they had not “finished with Magruder,” and when Nixon asked about me, Petersen said, “Dean’s, well, we’ve backed off of him for a while. His lawyers want time to think.” The president said he was treating me “like everybody else because” to do otherwise would be unfair.

After talking to Petersen Nixon returned to the Oval Office and requested a meeting with Ehrlichman.
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He again raised the question of whether or not I should have immunity, and after a long sigh, Ehrlichman answered, “If he has immunity, he’s got to deliver.” As Ehrlichman saw it, immunity would only give me incentive to deliver against him and Haldeman; without immunity my incentive would be to deliver against the president. “Bob and I parsed out pretty carefully what Bob’s recollection of the meeting you had with Dean was, the blackmail/Bittman stuff. And it’s Bob’s recollection that there’s nothing in that meeting, even if it were tape-recorded and published, that could harm you in the sense of you appearing to obstruct justice.”

Nixon, who knew that Haldeman had been present only at the end of the March 21 meeting, did not feel as certain. Ehrlichman continued, reporting
that they had been going through the president’s schedule and found that he had had some eight or nine meetings with me, more than Nixon had thought.
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Ehrlichman said that while he had no way of knowing what was said in those meetings, he was not concerned, as he did not believe that I would seek to damage the presidency if I did not receive immunity: “I just don’t think he’s made that way, but assuming he did, you would have to ask yourself what took place in those private meetings that might have given him any ammunition.” Nixon countered that, even though I might not be inclined to attack the president, my lawyers would be. The president wanted to know when Ehrlichman had started his Watergate investigation, and Ehrlichman replied, March 30, explaining that he had chosen that date because of McCord’s letter, and that when Pat Gray had called me a liar, I had removed myself from Watergate matters. The president wanted to know if Ehrlichman acted before or after Magruder talked, and he said before.

The president told Ehrlichman, speaking rather elliptically at first, that if the Ellsberg break-in came up, it should be explained as a national security matter: “On that we just have to be stonewalling, of course.” In short, Nixon would simply say that any investigation was out of bounds if it involved national security. Ehrlichman agreed, saying, “That’s in the laps of the gods, as I see it.” He said he had been going through his old files and had more information. “The way that project was finally represented to me was that it was a covert look at some files, which could be read to be that they walked in when the nurse wasn’t looking, and they flipped through the file. It wasn’t until much later that we learned that they had actually conducted a burglary.”

“What about the other thing, the wiretapping?” Nixon asked, since he knew I was aware of it. “The wiretapping, in most cases,” Ehrlichman explained, “was conducted under the statute by leave of the attorney general with the Bureau.” With regard to the private wiretapping, “Dean had told me he thought it was done,” Ehrlichman said. “The only private one that I know of that was not actually conducted by the Bureau under proper sanction was one that was going to be attempted in Georgetown, and they were never able to do it.”
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Incorrectly Nixon assumed, “That’s pretty good. Should I get Dean in sometime and talk to him about my various [concerns]?”