The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (75 page)

“Dean’s just changed the terms,” Ehrlichman announced, referring to the fact that I was no longer talking with the prosecutors—information that Wilson could only have learned from the prosecutors themselves. “Changed the terms?” the president asked. “Why, I wonder?” Ehrlichman answered, “Probably because these guys didn’t deliver what they said they would.” He added, “[Dean’s] got a guy [who was] Humphrey’s field director in ’68.” “He’s cousin of the sister of Dean’s first wife,” Haldeman clarified.
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Not surprisingly, Nixon reacted, “Well, I just hope the poor son-of-a-bitch is not going to turn him completely rat. But what is Dean going to try to negotiate now, I don’t know. But Christ, I think he must have. It seems to me he’s told them whatever he can so far. Don’t you think he has?” Ehrlichman said, “It sounds like to me, if he is into that Hunt business, that’s pretty far.” (In fact, I had still not gone into detail with Shaffer about the president’s role.) Based on his conversations with Petersen, the president told Haldeman and Ehrlichman, “Dean has not yet cooperated, you know what I mean.”

“You got one sticky wicket there. Dean has the administrative responsibility for the Secret Service, who in the Technical Security Division have responsibility for all document protection and White House guards,” Haldeman pointed out to the president.
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As his helicopter was landing on the South Grounds, Nixon remarked that he did not think my relationship with the Technical Services Division was “that much of a problem.”

The recording system, which was seldom good, made much of the remainder of this conversation difficult to hear. Nixon told Haldeman and Ehrlichman that he wanted to have a further conversation with Dick Moore about the La Costa meetings, reminding them that Moore was a “special
counsel to the president,” for he was an attorney on the staff. But he added that Petersen had told him that my status as an attorney did not mean I could not testify about criminal matters under attorney-client privilege. Both Haldeman and Ehrlichman chimed in, almost simultaneously, “Except his client.” The president said, “His client, I figure, is not a member of the White House staff.” Ehrlichman countered, “Well, is the client’s [employee] not part of the client when acting on behalf of the client?” Meaning, weren’t he and Haldeman covered by attorney-client privilege? Nixon did not engage further in this line of discussion but urged Ehrlichman to talk to Moore; Ehrlichman, however, thought it was too late, given that everyone had now retained counsel. He wanted the president to give Moore a message about his memory of the La Costa meetings: Ehrlichman (falsely) claimed that Nixon had called the La Costa session to come up with a paper on the whole Watergate episode, and as Ehrlichman now recalled, it was I who was “the major impediment” to that effort.

Nixon asked yet again about the money, and Ehrlichman continued: “The money business was nothing new. Dean continually, through this period of time, was coming to us on an episodic basis and saying, Jesus, Mitchell needs money, and what are we going to do? And invariably and inevitably, with the exception of the one little, of the Herb Kalmbach episode, we said, John, God only knows what he’s going to do. And my remark about Nelson Rockefeller is typical. You know, tell Mitchell to go borrow it from his friend Nelson Rockefeller.” Ehrlichman continued, raising his protestations of his innocence to new levels: “See, our sense of this is, throughout, was Dean saying to us, nobody in the White House is involved. And our sense of it being, well, look, if Mitchell needs money, for whatever reason, that’s Mitchell’s problem.” He added, “I have no interest, for instance, in obstructing justice. I had no exposure myself. I was satisfied from Dean that none of my colleagues in the White House had exposure, and that Jeb Magruder was a horse’s ass and got himself into this.” He quickly admitted, “Well, in all candor, I knew that Mitchell was trying to raise money for these people. And I knew that LaRue was, and I knew that because Dean told me so. I don’t have any personal knowledge either from Dean or anybody else of any correction in that process.”

Nixon now added own his spin to Ehrlichman’s account: “You didn’t have any reason to think of it being raised for an improper purpose until two things: one, until McCord said it was for payoff purposes, and two, until Dean came in and said that Hunt is shaking us down.” “Bob and I have
shared a suspicion that Mitchell was at the bottom of all this,” Ehrlichman replied. “There’s no two ways about that. And we’ve shared that suspicion for many months. But Dean very effectively kept between me and any intimate knowledge.” (More accurately, Mitchell simply did not want to deal with Ehrlichman.) “Good,” the president responded.

Haldeman and Ehrlichman soon departed, sharing Easter good wishes, and Dick Moore, who had been waiting, was asked to enter the Oval Office for a quick meeting before the president left.
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Nixon had one point to make, which he buried in other conversation, although his message was clear: “You had nothing to do with the money!” He told Moore that Ehrlichman had explained to him that I had repeatedly raised the need for money, which was being raised for the Watergate defendants’ legal fees and support. That point made, Moore departed, and the president soon headed for his awaiting helicopter.

In his memoir Nixon included a touching, symbolic scene, with Ziegler joining him that evening in Florida at his Key Biscayne residence, where they “watched the sun setting into Biscayne Bay” while they discussed Haldeman and Ehrlichman resigning. The president’s schedule reveals this never happened.
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Nixon did, however, speak by telephone with Ziegler, who was at the Key Biscayne Hotel, and learned that Ziegler was distressed by the negative television coverage of Mitchell emerging from the grand jury, which Ziegler believed was clearly intended to “humiliate him.” The press secretary was concerned that the same not happen to Nixon’s chief of staff and top domestic adviser. He also reported that during the previous three days he had been asked over three hundred Watergate-related questions. Nixon later wrote that because Haldeman had asked him to get a broad spectrum of advice before asking for their resignations, he solicited Pat Buchanan’s thoughts, and he asked Ziegler to call Haldeman and read him what Buchanan had to say. Buchanan thought that anyone who could not “maintain [his] viability should step forward voluntarily,” and the sooner he did so, the better for all. Buchanan cited conservative columnist and television commentator Howard K. Smith as saying that Nixon could either act like Eisenhower, who “cleans house himself,” or Harding, “who covered up for his people.”
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Buchanan also
noted the impact that Watergate was having on the president’s staff: “There is a
Titanic
mentality around the White House staff these days. We’ve got to put out the life rafts and hope to pull the presidency through.”
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At the president’s request, the log of his personal contacts from April 21 through April 24 were not recorded in his official daily diary, because he had asked Pat Buchanan and Chappie Rose (if not others whose names have never been disclosed), to come to Florida to discuss Haldeman’s and Ehrlichman’s leaving the White House. He also made a number of telephone calls soliciting advice: On Easter morning, April 22, the president phoned Colson (7:55
A.M.
to 8:21
A.M.
), me (8:24
A.M.
to 8:39
A.M.
), Haldeman (9:45
A.M.
to 10:16
A.M.
) and Ehrlichman (10:26
A.M.
to 10:38
A.M.
) and also wished everyone well. As I later wrote, all I remembered of the conversation (since I had stayed up late and Nixon had phoned so early) was his ending the call by saying, “You’re still my counsel.” In Nixon’s own account he told me, “You said this is a cancer that must be cut out. I want you to know I am following that advice.” He maintained that I told him I appreciated the call, which I am sure was the case, and that I had not decided if I should take the Fifth Amendment, to which he responded that I should feel free to come and see him. Nixon noted, “Dean said rather coolly, ‘I know how that line got in the statement, the one about no immunity,’” which I had only learned about because Len Garment, with whom I remained friendly, had told me. Nixon wrote that we spoke about Gray’s destruction of documents and the events relating to Hunt’s demands, which led to the March 21 meeting.
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Even at this late date I was still loyal to Richard Nixon, and had not taken my lawyers through any of my personal dealings with him, other than to allude to the fact that there were problems in explaining the cover-up without involving him. In fact, I continued to hope that Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell and Colson would join me in admitting the mistakes we had made, believing it was the only way the president would survive. No one person could solve this problem by taking the blame, particularly anyone at a lower level of the staff. But my superiors were prepared to risk it, or they were in a remarkably deep denial of reality.

It was apparently during a meeting at his Key Biscayne home on Monday morning, April 23, that the president made a firm decision that Haldeman
and Ehrlichman had to go. It was a protracted and emotional session lasting some three hours, and it included Ziegler, Buchanan and Chappie Rose. Nixon recalled Chappie Rose’s quoting Gladstone: “The first essential for a prime minister is to be a good butcher.” Nixon wrote in his memoir that, as the session ended, “we all agreed that Haldeman and Ehrlichman had to resign.” Nixon asked Buchanan to deliver the message, but he protested and suggested Ziegler, who got the assignment to call Haldeman, who would, in turn, talk with Ehrlichman. Ziegler reported that while Haldeman disagreed with the decision, he would accept it. Ehrlichman, however, did not only not accept it but persuaded Haldeman to change his mind. Nixon, in turn, backed down, and rather than tell them they had no choice in the matter, the president began calling other advisers, such as Bill Rogers, John Connally and Bryce Harlow, who had headed the president’s congressional relations office during his first term, thinking they would bolster his position, which they did. But when that information was relayed to Haldeman, he said Rogers and Connally had told them just the opposite. The president returned to the White House on Tuesday evening, April 24.

The president had had several unrecorded conversations with Henry Petersen while in Florida, and called him almost immediately after arriving in the Oval Office on Wednesday morning, April 25.
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After scheduling a meeting for later that afternoon, Nixon badgered Petersen about his prosecutors, who were tracking a leak of grand jury information. The president suggested this was another reason for Petersen to give lie-detector tests to the prosecutors. When Nixon brought up Magruder, Petersen replied that, while it still was not public, the secretary of commerce had accepted Magruder’s resignation effective Friday, April 27.

After Steve Bull, who had taken over Haldeman’s scheduling duties, departed the Oval Office, the president spoke with Ziegler.
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Ziegler reported on his conversation with Bryce Harlow, who supported Haldeman’s and Ehrlichman’s departures. Nixon acknowledged that he was having trouble with them: “They’re never going to do it, they won’t resign. So let’s just see if we can get them to resign today. What would you do, tell them to resign?” Before Ziegler could answer, Nixon added, “Or would you say, ‘Alright, fellows, you’ve got a week?’ That’s about all you can do.” Ziegler passed over the question and
reported“the Connally view and Harlow’s view is that the time to act is instant, and not in a panicky way and not in a the-presidency-is-crumbling-type of emotion.” Connally also thought the president should announce a reorganization when he moved on Haldeman and Ehrlichman.

The two aides, however, persuaded Nixon to allow their lawyers to make the case for why they should not resign, and Nixon met for almost an hour and a half with John Wilson and Frank Strickler in the Oval Office that morning.
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Claiming they were “much better informed about things than they were the other night,” the lawyers focused on the troubling area for both their clients—namely, the payment of money to the Watergate defendants. (Clearly, however, the president was better informed than Wilson and Strickler.) Wilson then briefed the president on what they believed was the applicable law, the obstruction of justice statutes, 18 USC §§ 1503 and 1510, which they paraphrased for the president, and whose requisite state-of-mind requirement they clearly did not appear to fully understand.
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Wilson did mention the law regarding conspiracy, which would instead become the core case against all the Watergate actors involved in the cover-up, but instead briskly dismissed it: “But I do not think that these men criminally breached these statutes,” and this was true “even if you make this a shotgun [i.e., broad] conspiracy.”

After arguing that his clients had not violated the law, Wilson said he wanted to “drop my role as an advocate for a moment and be a recommender—may I be permitted to suggest certain things?” Nixon encouraged him to proceed. Wilson wanted the president to have Petersen state in writing exactly how his clients had violated the law. (Needless to say, such a document would have been uniquely valuable, not to mention unprecedented.) Although Wilson did not dwell on this, he assured the president he was not asking for anything improper. He mentioned that they had run into Glanzer at the federal courthouse: “Glanzer is destroyed. He’s always tense. He looks terrible. He looks like he’s been through a bad illness. I said to him, ‘Seymour, your hair has turned gray.’ He said, ‘Well, they haven’t found us a leaker yet.’” While Wilson solicited information from Glanzer, he got little, only an agreement that they would get an opportunity to bring their clients in informally.

Wilson then turned to the reason for their visit: to argue why Haldeman and Ehrlichman should not be forced out of the White House. He went through his notes, and his seven points boiled down to: (1) If Haldeman and Ehrlichman departed, it “takes all of the White House cover away” and
would embolden the prosecutors to go after them; (2) if should they be indicted it “would relate to acts which while in the White House [but] have no effect upon the presidency”; (3) in the present climate the press would place the worst connotation on their resignation; (4) if I resigned at the same time, it would “place all three in the same boat,” which would put an awful shadow “upon these boys”; (5) if they remained and were indicted, the president had already said that anyone who was indicted would have to leave; (6) to act now “simply helps nobody but the press, [which] will claim credit for driving you to it”; and (7) if they remained in the White House and were indicted, “we’re prepared to write you a very brief letter, as counsel to these two men,” stating that, based on the facts they had been given, “we do not believe they have committed a crime.” In fact, they would write that letter immediately, so the president could produce it and say he had it before they were indicted.