The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (84 page)

10:26
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telephone call with Rogers:
After agreeing that Nixon should announce Elliot Richardson’s appointment as attorney general in the speech, and telling Rogers he hoped to appoint Judge Matt Byrne to head the FBI “if he survives Ellsberg,” Nixon added, “Can I ask you one other thing, if you would?” To reveal the president’s state of mind, the initial section of this passage has been transcribed verbatim: “The, ah, Ehrlichman is hanging terribly tough, and, ah, I wanted, just to get your, just your, your judgment on, ah, on this question again as to, ah, the ah, ah, ah, you, you have, you have no, you believe that we, that they both must, at the very least, take, take a leave of absence?” “Yes, I do,” Rogers replied. “As a matter of fact, my own preference is for resignations.” Nixon said that that was his preference as well. In something of a pleading tone, he said, “Would it be asking too much if I was asking for you to come up and help me talk to them about this thing a little?” When Rogers said he would, Nixon wondered, “How would you, how would you, just go about talking to them? I mean, I’ll talk to them, but what will you say. You’ll just, just lay it out?” A surprised Rogers said he thought that this had all already been agreed upon.

“Well, with Haldeman, yes,” Nixon reported. “But Ehrlichman, I talked to him last night on the phone, and he said he wanted to raise the question with me again. He feels that not only is his case separate, but I think he probably wants to give the president hell for not getting at this himself earlier, and this and that. You know, he’s not behaving well, frankly. Not behaving well, to my surprise.” Nixon told Rogers how Ehrlichman’s attorney John Wilson had reacted when Nixon did not extract further information out of Petersen: “Ehrlichman says that Petersen’s horsing me. He can give me that if he wished.” The president, with a nervous laugh, noted, “But the problem is, Petersen may be canned due to the fact that he knows damn well I’ll give it to Ehrlichman.”

Rogers was appalled that Ehrlichman was putting Nixon in the position of attempting to obtain information from the prosecutor’s office and annoyed at Haldeman’s and Ehrlichman’s obstinacy. “I didn’t realize that they were being reluctant,” Rogers said, and noted, “They can’t perform their duties now. For Christ sakes, the whole government has been in a standstill because these guys are reluctant.” When Nixon mentioned Haldeman’s claim that “half of them is worth two of anybody else, and nobody else can do it,” Rogers replied, “They’re nuts.” He advised Nixon that their sense of their own indispensability had been trouble all along, and that this matter should have been resolved two weeks earlier. Rogers wanted them to abide by their earlier agreement. As the call ended, Nixon said, “Ehrlichman’s coming apart.”
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11:46
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telephone call from Rogers:
Rogers, having mulled over his conversation with Nixon, had second thoughts about his own role in dealing with Haldeman and Ehrlichman; he called to urge the president to find somebody else to do it. “I have no idea what they’ll say if they get desperate,” Rogers conceded, concerned about charges they might make to him against Nixon, information he did not want to have. He was also apprehensive that anything discussed might be leaked, because, as he told Nixon, although he had not spoken with another soul, details of his conversations with Haldeman and Ehrlichman were appearing in news stories. “It seems to me that you shouldn’t have to convince them to leave,” Rogers pointed out. Nixon said he did not know how they would react, lamenting, “I guess anything can happen, can’t it?” Rogers answered, “Well, absolutely. That’s the lesson that has to be learned from these things. Men get shaken and desperate, and particularly ones that have been dictatorial in their conduct with others.” Rogers had, in fact, been experiencing the dictatorial demands of Haldeman and Ehrlichman for years. As they talked it through, Nixon again asked if Rogers would come up, “and then if it gets into a donnybrook, then could I ask you to come over and help? Would you mind doing that?” Rogers did not think it would become a donnybrook. He said he was happy to help, “as long as I don’t get into a pissing match with them.”
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12:28
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telephone call with Rogers:
Nixon requested that Rogers come up around four o’clock to help Ray Price refine the draft of the speech, which he thought overall was “pretty good.” He had a special reason, he explained, for asking Rogers to join him: “I remember how helpful you were at the time of the fund,” the president said, referring to Nixon’s 1952 Checkers speech.
He added, “And, frankly, I might not even see you,” regarding the meeting with Haldeman and Ehrlichman. The president seemed to take solace just in knowing Rogers would be present, should he be needed.
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12:32
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telephone call with Ziegler:
This brief call reveals that the president had by now firmly changed his thinking from asking leaves of absence from Haldeman and Ehrlichman to demanding their resignations. Rather than deliver this news himself, Nixon decided to deputize Ziegler to do so. He explained the reason for his decision was that leaves of absence would have an uncertain duration, while resignations would provide the certainty he needed. Ziegler agreed, and went about the task.
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12:49
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telephone call from Ziegler:
Ziegler reported on his conversation with Haldeman: “Your [i.e., Nixon’s] decision was to ask for their resignations, you talked to Rogers, and thought this through for now three weeks. You feel that a leave of absence would be detrimental to them and to the presidency, and that you intend to ask them for resignations.” Ziegler added, “That you recognized that their lawyers don’t agree with this approach and that they don’t agree with this approach, but the president feels clear in his mind now that this must be done, and that’s what he wants. And Bob said, ‘Fine.’ He understands. He feels it’s the wrong decision, but he will abide by it. And in terms of John, he said, ‘I think John is going to be more difficult in accepting this.’” Ziegler said he told him, “‘I believe the president recognizes that but is prepared to stand by his decision.’ And Bob said, ‘I’ll do what I can with John.’” The president, who was very subdued, said of Haldeman, “Good. A big man.” Ziegler added, “He sure is.” They discussed the matter briefly, with the president giving Ziegler suggestions to pass on for Haldeman’s and Ehrlichman’s resignation letters, and wondered aloud what they, particularly Ehrlichman, would do for money. Ziegler offered that they could get advances from friends. “Okay, thank you,” Nixon said grimly.
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A few weeks earlier Nixon had had the room recording device removed from his Aspen study, so no records exist of his meetings with Haldeman and Ehrlichman after they arrived at Camp David that afternoon, although they all later recounted their memories of the event. Nixon met first with Haldeman at 2:20
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for just over twenty minutes at Aspen Lodge. Haldeman says he found Nixon “in terrible shape.” When Haldeman arrived, Nixon shook his hand, which was the first time he had ever done so. They walked out on the patio and looked at the tulips and discussed their beauty, and as they headed back to the study Nixon said, “Well, I have to enjoy it,
because I may not be alive much longer.” The president said he felt resignation was the right course, and it had been a difficult decision for him. Although Nixon seldom spoke of his religion, he told Haldeman that since becoming president, he got down on his knees every night and silently prayed he would do right in meeting his responsibilities. In Nixon’s own account, he told Haldeman, “When I went to bed last night I had hoped, and almost prayed, that I wouldn’t wake up this morning.” Both Haldeman and Ehrlichman reported that Nixon accepted general responsibility for what had happened at the Watergate. In Haldeman’s account; “He said he’s thought it all through, and that he was the one that started Colson on his projects, he was the one who told Dean to cover up, he was the one who made Mitchell Attorney General, and later his campaign manager, and so on. And that he now has to face that and live with it, and that for that reason, after he gets his other things completed, that he, too, will probably have to resign.” Haldeman added, “He never said that directly, but implied it.”

According to Ehrlichman’s account, he had been “overwhelmed with self-pity [and] barely civil to Haldeman” on the trip up to Camp David. When he entered the Aspen study after Haldeman’s departure he found Nixon in a checked sport coat, his “eyes red-rimmed, and he looked small and drawn.” Nixon told Ehrlichman, too, that he had prayed he might die during the night. “It is like cutting off my arm,” Ehrlichman recounts the president beginning, but then he could not continue, and began crying uncontrollably. He reports Nixon making an admission of guilt similar to the one Haldeman recounted. Ehrlichman and Nixon both recall that Ehrlichman said, “You can do one thing for me, though, sometime. Just explain all this to my kids, will you? Tell them why you had to do this?” Nixon wrote that Ehrlichman said, “with controlled bitterness,” that the president had made a wrong decision that he would live to regret. Ehrlichman added, “I have no choice but to accept it, and I will. But I still feel I have done nothing that was without your implied or direct approval.” With that statement, reported by Nixon, Ehrlichman departed. Haldeman says that Nixon called him back to Aspen Lodge after Ehrlichman left and reviewed his meeting with Ehrlichman. Nixon told Haldeman he was concerned, because Ehrlichman wanted him to admit that he ordered illegal acts, which he refused to do.

Haldeman and Ehrlichman remained at Camp David during the afternoon to complete their formal letters of resignation, discussing them with
Ziegler and Rogers. Both had only one last request: That I be fired. Nixon also met with Elliot Richardson and Dick Kleindienst, as well as with Len Garment, who was taking my post. (I had no formal notification of the events taking place at Camp David, but friends connected to the White House grapevine kept me remarkably well informed.)
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The president spent the day at Camp David working on the speech he would deliver at 9:00
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, gathering information and opinions in a series of telephone calls to complete it.

10:22
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telephone call with Ziegler:
The only matter of substance Ziegler had to report was that Richardson could not be named “acting attorney general”: The president would have to submit his nomination to the Senate, so they should rephrase the announcement and Richardson could not take charge of the Justice Department until confirmed by the Senate. Ziegler also said he had received resignation letters from Kleindienst, Haldeman and Ehrlichman. When Nixon asked, “Now how are you handling Dean?” Ziegler told him that Jerry Jones, a Haldeman aide who handled personnel, would call and tell me that the president had asked for and accepted my resignation. Nixon said that if I wanted to submit a letter or speak with the president, Jones was to say, “No, John, it’s all done.” They talked about how hard this had to be for Haldeman and Ehrlichman, but Nixon had concluded, “I have a feeling that Dean did a favor in that respect, getting the son of a bitch going.”
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10:42
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telephone call with Ray Price:
Nixon sounded out Price on his decision to appoint Richardson, which Price thought an excellent choice. Price had worked late into the preceding night on the draft speech, and when Nixon asked, “Was Rogers helpful?” Price said he had been and had “said he thought that the general tone was good, and it was just about the right amount of sackcloth, and not too much.” Nixon replied, “Oh, hell, as far as sackcloth, I’d be willing to go a lot further. I’m one of the few men in Washington that never blames the secretary when the poor damn secretary misspelled a word. I mean, sometimes the boss is always to blame. So the boss did it. Hell, I appointed Mitchell, I appointed Haldeman, I appointed Ehrlichman, I appointed Dean and Colson. These are all my people. If they did things, they did them because they felt that’s what we wanted. And so
I’m responsible. The boss can never pass it on.” Nixon warned that if you “sackclothed too much, then you no longer can be president,” adding, “Well, I take all the blame, and I don’t blame these poor fellows, and all the rest. When all is said and done, you think, well, Christ, this poor damn dumb president, why doesn’t he resign?” Price laughed, and Nixon continued, “Which is not a bad idea. The only problem is, I mean, you get Agnew. You want Agnew?” Needless to say, Price did not, but he understood Nixon well enough to give him the sympathy he was seeking.
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Nixon arrived back at the White House at 7:58
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and first visited the barbershop in the basement of the West Wing. He then went to his EOB office, where he met with his “makeup consultant” before heading to the Oval Office, where he arrived at 8:58
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for the broadcast. For the previous several hours the thermostat had been turned down to chill the office, which heated up quickly with the television lights, making it too easy for Nixon to perspire. At nine o’clock, the red light on the single pool camera went on, the director dropped his arm, and Nixon began his speech to the nation.

Although Nixon had never been seriously accused of having advance knowledge of the Watergate break-in, he began his talk by stating that he had learned of the June 17 Watergate break-in while in Florida and “was appalled at this senseless illegal act, and I was shocked to learn that employees of the reelection committee were apparently among those guilty.” He said that as the Watergate investigation progressed, he had asked repeatedly if members of his administration “were in any way involved,” and he “received repeated assurance that they were not.” He remained assured of that until, based on information he received on March 21, 1973, he became convinced that the charges regarding his staff might be true. So, he said, “I personally assumed the responsibility for coordinating intense new inquires into the matter,” which he outlined. He said he was cooperating with the Senate’s investigation, and then explained actions he would undertake at the White House: “Today, one of the most difficult decisions of my presidency, I accepted the resignations of two of my closest associates in the White House, Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, two of the finest public servants. It has been my privilege to know them. I want to stress that in accepting these resignations I mean to leave no implication whatever of personal wrongdoing on their part, and I leave no implication tonight of implication on the part of others who have been charged in this matter.” Nixon reported that Attorney General Kleindienst was leaving, although he had “no personal involvement
whatever in this matter.” Nixon disposed of me in ten words: “The counsel to the president, John Dean, has also resigned.” Next he announced the nomination of Elliot Richardson to be attorney general, adding that Richardson had the authority to name a Watergate special prosecutor. The rest of the speech, as I later read it, was window dressing.