The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (73 page)

In midafternoon on April 19, Nixon met with Dick Moore for what turned out to be a surprisingly informative meeting.
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The conversation began as an effort to probe Moore for what he knew about my thinking and actions, for the president was aware that we had worked together on a Watergate report. Although Dick Moore was anything but long-winded, Nixon, who often impatiently completed the sentences of others, did not really want to hear what he thought but to make it clear to Moore what he
should
be thinking and remembering. Deep into this rambling conversation, a new fact slipped out about paying the Watergate defendants. “Well, let me tell you what was said about that,” Moore remarked, referring to the money, “at the La Costa meeting. Did John Ehrlichman talk to you about the La Costa meeting?” “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s right, in California,” Nixon replied, so Moore continued. “Just the background. Let me give you the focus or perspective.” Nixon interrupted to ask, “Dean was there?” “Yes,” Moore confirmed. “Dean and I got sent for on a Friday afternoon, the day
after the Senate passed the resolution for the Select committee [on Watergate]. Could we come out for the weekend to talk about the Watergate? We got on the airplane.”

“At our initiative, wasn’t it?” the president asked, and Moore said it was. “I ordered that,” the president added. “So you went to La Costa, so what happened?” Moore explained that we had two meetings, one on Saturday and one on Sunday, each lasting several hours. The president asked if we had seen him, and Moore said no—these were “brainstorming” sessions. Moore described how we discussed the Senate’s investigation, and there was a consensus that Mitchell had to get more involved. And Moore said he was told, “Well, Dick, will you, after this meeting, would you go up and see [Mitchell] and fill him in on this whole damn thing and get him to hire some people [to work on it]?” On the second day, Moore recalled, the issue of the defendants arose as a “by the way, they need more money for those fellows. I am just paraphrasing the thing. I don’t know how it came up. But maybe it’s Mitchell turn, maybe he can do some of it.” Moore’s memory was not clear, but he thought Ehrlichman or Haldeman had raised it, in the context of, ‘Can’t LaRue handle it, or something of that sort?’” Moore continued, “And it came up as to whether maybe John Mitchell” ought to raise the money. “Someone, I think John [Ehrlichman], and this was facetious, he said, ‘Maybe Rockefeller can get us some money. Oh, [Mitchell] could get all he wants from Rockefeller, all he has to do is ask Rockefeller.’”

“Money for what?” the president pressed. Moore said, “I presumed that they needed more money for attorneys’ fees or what have you.” Nixon wanted to know if it was payoff money. “No, you wouldn’t say it about that,” Moore replied, explaining that, obviously, the question was what Ehrlichman and Haldeman, who were sending him on this mission, understood the purpose of the funds to be. The president said that if it was for attorneys’ fees, there was no problem; if it was to replenish a fund to compensate these fellows for withholding or altering their testimony, it was a problem. Subtly, Nixon was shaping Moore’s memory. Nixon told Moore he had never heard of the money discussions at “the La Costa thing” until their conversation.

Moore had additional information about money discussions regarding the Watergate defendants: He recalled that he and I had spoken on March 19 within hours of Howard Hunt’s sending his money demand to me through Paul O’Brien with the threat that, if it was not forthcoming, he would have things to say about his work for Ehrlichman. I had been angered by the
threat and informed Moore of it, since he had become privy to the fund-raising for the defendants during our La Costa visit. As Moore now told Nixon, “This was the first time I got the direct notion that they were appealing through Dean for money for silence; it was about a week before sentencing.” Startled, Nixon soon provided an account of our million-dollar discussion, when he had asked me how much money and how long, claiming he had told me, “You can’t do that.” Moore said that when he and I had discussed Hunt’s blackmail attempt, he had told me about a former client who had been blackmailed and nearly killed. Paying blackmail was a no-win situation. “Well, Dean, to his credit, said that when he was with me,” Nixon reported, and he told Moore that he understood the money for Hunt was raised, apparently, by Mitchell.

During his conversation with the president Moore also reported that he had seen the list my lawyer and I had prepared of those we thought indictable. This list did not interest the president, who wanted to discuss Hunt’s demands, and his latest new problem, the La Costa meeting. Nixon suggested Moore talk with me, but Moore cautioned that he was on his way to the grand jury, and the first question they might ask could be about with whom he had discussed his testimony. So the president continued probing, asking Moore’s thoughts about immunity for me and my relationship with Henry Petersen, searching for light in all this darkness.

When Moore departed, Nixon summoned Ehrlichman to the EOB Office, where they discussed Moore’s account of the La Costa meeting.
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“I hope he recalls it better than I do,” Ehrlichman said, and the president took him through the conversation. “Well, I don’t recall the Rockefeller [comment],” Ehrlichman said, but he did not deny that Moore had been asked to raise money from Mitchell for the defendants. Nixon also reported that Moore was aware of Hunt’s blackmail demands.

“Well, if I could suggest a point of view on La Costa,” Ehrlichman said. “Our inability to do what you asked us to do at La Costa, which was to draft a public statement which could be put out as such, led in quick succession to your long talks with Dean.” Ehrlichman claimed I had told them that they could not put out a statement at La Costa, which resulted in the president’s sending me to Camp David, “and then that eventually led to cracking him.”

Ehrlichman then said that he and Haldeman hoped the president might be agreeable to meeting with their “avidly loyal” lawyer, John Wilson. He described Wilson as having the president’s “interest at heart” and as “trying
to approach this from your standpoint, rather than ours.” Nixon agreed to see Wilson that evening when he returned from a cruise on the Potomac. Ehrlichman repeated the information that Wilson and his parter knew Silbert, Glanzer and Titus and would be visiting them soon: “So they’ll find out, I think, quite a lot.”

When Nixon asked if he had told the lawyers about La Costa, Ehrlichman said he had not, and the president noted, “That’s a new element.” Ehrlichman then offered a general explanation of how the money issue was approached: “This subject came up in Dean’s conversations, he would ask me for advice, what to do, and almost invariably, I had no response for him. I was helpless in that situation. The one time I did respond was when he specifically asked if they could use Kalmbach. And that was the only time. I’ve never been able, other than the Bittman thing, where I said, ‘Hell no,’ I’ve just never been able to help him. And so it doesn’t surprise me if I said, you know, ‘Get somebody else to help you, John.’” Ehrlichman continued, “John was getting increasingly desperate as time went on.” “Dean was trying to keep the lid on,” Nixon noted. To which Ehrlichman agreed, “Trying to keep the lid on, and I could never help him.”
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After once again reviewing Magruder’s role—with both men agreeing he was a liar—Ehrlichman turned to the question of resigning, reporting that their lawyers had reached a “very preliminary” recommendation that “they both try to look at it from your standpoint.” Their conclusion was “that Bob’s leaving would hurt you more than help you.” They believed “it would look like you were overreacting, number one. That the facts known were not sufficient to justify it, so there must be other facts hidden that you’re not expressing.” “Oh, I see,” Nixon replied, and the subject was dropped.

The president inquired if they had considered the possibility of their being named as unindicted coconspirators. Ehrlichman said that had indeed gotten the attention of their lawyers, who had gone to see the prosecutors. “Just to find out what that’s all about. Because they say that’s just not proper procedure.”

After Ehrlichman left, the president departed his office for his limousine for the drive to the Washington Navy Yard, where he boarded the
Sequoia
and dined alone on the presidential yacht as it slowly cruised down to Mount Vernon and then back to the shipyard. By 8:26
P.M.
he was back in his EOB office, where he greeted Haldeman and Ehrlichman’s new legal team, John J. Wilson and Frank H. Strickler, partners in the Washington law firm
Whiteford, Hart, Carmody and Wilson. After they exchanged pleasantries, Wilson, who would do most of the talking, said to Nixon, “We admire you so much, we both are dyed-in-the-wool Republicans. I was just telling Bob Haldeman that when I joined the party years ago, I said, ‘No sign of beating Calvin Coolidge with a liberal.’” After the laughs died down, Wilson continued, “We’ve had three days, three different daily sessions, with Bob and John” and visited the district attorney’s office. “We want to first go over Bob’s situation. He’s written a memo of things which boils down the sensitive areas, boils down to the matter of the $350,000. He said that Dean had come to him and told him of the need of this money.” Nixon asked, “For what purpose?” “To alleviate families, and legal counsel, of the Watergate people,” Wilson replied. “And that was one occasion. Later on, when the money was transferred over to the committee, he just wanted to be rid of it. And he had no intention as to where it might go. And that’s that. Now we said to them that ‘We don’t doubt that about the truthfulness.’” But Wilson explained that they told Haldeman, “Circumstantially, it would be wrong to have done this. A jury might think he did it with [improper intentions].”

“When you put it to a jury, it looks like, it’s just very questionable?” the president asked, after a passing bit of confusion. “Yes, yes,” Wilson concurred, and Strickler added, “Depending upon how the testimony comes out [with] various people, it could become an issue.” Wilson explained that it was potentially wrong: “Well, by a fair stretch, this might be something of an accessory after the fact to a conspiracy at the Watergate. This, Mr. President—” Nixon did not understand, because the point had been jumbled, and asked, “Accessory? For what? For the purpose of?” “Of sort of aiding the consequences,” Wilson said, and he offered as an example Dr. Mudd’s assistance to John Wilkes Booth after President Lincoln’s assassination. “I just got that pardon [request],” the president noted, albeit over a century after the fact. Wilson continued, “Yes, I pointed out that [Mudd] didn’t commit the crime but he did so to aid the thing afterward.”
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As the conversation continued, Wilson acknowledged that there was a good chance Haldeman would be indicted, not because he felt the evidence justified it but because of the particular prosecutors assigned to the case: “Bear in mind that we’ve got a group of zealots, particularly in Seymour Glanzer, who is a fire-eating prosecutor, and zealots always shoot for the top.”

“You think you might be able to defend him?” the president asked. Responding almost simultaneously, Strickler said, “On the evidence we now
have, yes,” and Wilson added, “Yes, that’s our feeling,” although he acknowledged, “You know we are guessing at this, Mr. President.” When Wilson continued to hedge, the president assured them, regarding both Haldeman and Ehrlichman, “They don’t lie.”
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Wilson now turned to an assessment of Ehrlichman’s situation. He was not concerned with Ehrlichman’s telling me to “deep six” material from Hunt’s safe and giving materials to Pat Gray, who destroyed them. (When Henry Petersen’s name was mentioned, Wilson said, “I must give you an aside. I don’t trust him, myself.” Wilson then talked vaguely about another case he had with the Justice Department in which Petersen had divulged information about Wilson’s client to a former Justice Department employee. He added, “I don’t go around maligning everyone. He’s on my list of people I don’t trust.”) As far as Ehrlichman’s connection with the money for the Watergate defendants was concerned, “He didn’t know about the three fifty,” the president maintained, but Wilson disagreed. “Oh, I think he knew about it; he must have according to the—” Nixon interrupted to explain, “Well, what I mean is, it wasn’t in his field,” and then continued with a leading question: “Dean says, ‘Can I talk to Kalmbach?’ And [Ehrlichman] said, ‘Yes.’”

“And Kalmbach went out and did raise the money,” Wilson said, and added, “Now these matters involving John alarm us even less, if I can make a comparison, than Bob’s do.” The president asked he if was referring to “the criminal side,” and Wilson confirmed that he was, and said that he saw Ehrlichman as even further removed from “the release of the money.” When, however, they lined up both cases, “Well, frankly, our judgment is that neither one can be successfully prosecuted.”
*

Wilson and Strickler did not have to argue that Haldeman and Ehrlichman should not take leaves of absence, as Nixon relieved them of the responsibility, saying “I don’t want to do anything that would jeopardize their cases.” The president summed up their position: “Let me ask: In other words, your advice at the present time is to stand firm with these men, because basically, if you flush them now, it’s going to probably hurt. Let me put it this way, it will hurt their case, wouldn’t it?” The lawyers agreed and departed at 9:32
P.M.
, and five minutes later the president called Haldeman to report on
the meeting. “Couple of characters, aren’t they?” Haldeman asked. “Very useful, very interesting,” Nixon agreed, and noted, “They only had a half hour with the U.S. attorneys, and they say, stand firm.” Haldeman mentioned that the prosecutors had had a busy day with Hunt, but he had been unable to learn what Hunt had told them.

Haldeman said the
Post
had called the White House for confirmation or reaction to a story from “an associate of John Dean’s, who is seeking to make John Dean’s version of the whole thing public,” saying that “Dean, in his testimony before the grand jury, will implicate people above and below himself, and will state that Haldeman engineered a cover-up.” Haldeman, paraphrasing from notes from his talk with the press office, continued: “One close associate said that Dean is prepared to tell whatever role he might have played in the Watergate case came as a result of orders from superiors in the White House. Despite the allegations [to the contrary], Dean had no advance knowledge of the bugging. That the truth is long and broad and it goes up and down, higher and lower, and that they can’t make a case that this was just Mitchell and Dean. Dean will welcome the opportunity to tell his side to the grand jury. He’s not going to go down in flames for the activities of others.”