The Wars of Watergate (54 page)

If there were any doubts about Gray’s fate, they were resolved on March 20 when he informed the Senate committee conducting hearings on his nomination that he had been ordered not to discuss the Watergate case any further. The White House sorely misgauged the determination of the senators, and Gray confronted an impossible situation.

Senator Robert Byrd, the Democratic Whip, bluntly warned the White House on March 19 that if Dean did not testify, Gray was doomed. Byrd
proved to be a formidable antagonist, a rather ironic twist given his previous friendly relations with the President. On March 22, Byrd challenged Gray: was his first duty to the FBI or to the President?—a “tough question,” as Gray characterized it. But he could not “evade” the fact that he took orders from the President. Gray even admitted he would continue to give Dean FBI reports if the President requested them. Byrd then elicited Gray’s frank charge that Dean had lied when he had told FBI agents that he did not know whether Hunt had an office in the White House. Gray had broken contact with Dean by then, sensing that Dean had pushed beyond the bounds of propriety—and foolishly believing that the White House Counsel was an independent authority. Byrd’s questions were devastating. They involved Gray’s political speeches; his political uses of the FBI; his relations with the President, Dean, and other White House staff members; his conduct of the Watergate investigation; and his personal handling of evidence from Howard Hunt’s safe.
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The performance was a model of congressional interrogation—so incisive, in fact, that Byrd’s substantive material and questions bore the mark of having originated in the FBI itself.

The White House’s troubles were written all over the congressional walls. On March 27, three leading conservative Republican senators—James Buckley (NY), Norris Cotton (NH), and John Tower—implored the President and Dean to speak out and clarify matters. More liberal Republicans were alarmed. Minority Leader Hugh Scott (R–PA) complained that he was “deeply disturbed,” and Marlow Cook (R–KY) thought the whole affair cast a “severe stigma on the Republican party.” Gray’s friend, Senator Lowell Weicker, the maverick Republican from Connecticut, demanded that Haldeman speak out. The Democrats, on the other hand, could afford a low profile. The President meanwhile authorized Scott to say in his name: “I have nothing to hide. The White House has nothing to hide.”

But there was much to hide, and to borrow a favorite Nixon phrase, “losses had to be cut.” The end mercifully came for Gray on April 5 when he asked that his name be withdrawn. This scenario had been contrived by the President. On March 27, Nixon had told Ehrlichman that Gray should come to the White House and say that lacking Senate unanimity and widespread trust, the President should withdraw his name and send another nominee in the same day. On April 4, the White House congressional liaison reported that Gray could not be confirmed. The Democrats, William Timmons warned, were anxious to vote out an unfavorable report on Gray in order to string out a floor debate and “kick him and the President around.”

The next day the President directed Ehrlichman to have Gray make the public suggestion that his name be withdrawn. Suspecting that Gray had been sabotaged from within the Bureau, Nixon ordered it “cleaned out” at the top. Gray did his part, and the President’s spokesman in San Clemente
reported that Nixon had “regretfully” agreed to withdraw Gray’s name. The presidential statement vigorously defended Dean’s role and Gray’s cooperation with the President’s Counsel. When the President withdrew the nomination, he again obliquely assumed responsibility because of his orders to Dean to “conduct a thorough investigation.” The President predictably lamented that Gray had been unfairly exposed to “innuendo and suspicion,” thus unduly tarnishing his “fine record” and “promising future.” A week later, Nixon instructed Ehrlichman to determine whether Supreme Court Justice Byron White might be interested in the FBI directorship. Perhaps he sensed that he would have to nominate a prestigious man, one independent of the President’s will.

Gray was gone, the victim of the President’s machinations and those of his aides, victimized also by Hoover loyalists in the FBI who eagerly leaked word of his activities. One of Hoover’s closest retainers told the President’s secretary that Pat Gray “was never the man for the job.”
¹²

On April 4, the day before Gray withdrew his nomination, Ehrlichman met with Judge Matthew Byrne, of the Federal District Court in Los Angeles. Kleindienst enthusiastically recommended Byrne, a Democrat, for the FBI directorship. Nixon liked the idea, and all agreed that Byrne should visit the President in San Clemente. At the moment Byrne was presiding over Daniel Ellsberg’s criminal trial, but according to Ehrlichman the judge did not think it improper for him to discuss the FBI position while the trial was in progress. Kleindienst claimed that he warned Ehrlichman not to talk to Byrne. Ehrlichman’s contemporary notes reveal that the President asked him to meet Byrne but not to discuss the pending case. Kleindienst did not believe that Ehrlichman fully informed Byrne of the purpose of the visit, and apparently no one else did either. Several weeks later, Byrne used the event as a basis for declaring a mistrial in the Ellsberg proceedings.
¹³
Byrne dropped out of contention for the FBI post, but once again, appearances of Administration wrongdoing dominated public memory.

The creation in early February of the Senate Select Committee investigating the 1972 campaign had caused barely a ripple of public attention. Reporters waited until near the end of the President’s March 2 press conference to raise a rather polite Watergate question. But as John Dean’s “containment” policy disintegrated against the backdrop of revelations unveiled in the Gray hearings, “Watergate” rapidly became a meaningful—and loaded—political term that spread across the nation, raising far-reaching political concerns. During March, White House reporters posed 478 questions to Press Secretary
Ron Ziegler, who often seemed on the verge of tears or hysteria in his responses. “You don’t have to accept this rationale,” he snapped. “You can giggle if you like.”
¹⁴

The
Rockford
(IL)
Morning Star
, a Republican newspaper in America’s heartland, in an April 2 editorial recognized the transformation of Watergate from an “imbecilic bugging” to “more and more a case of high level government dishonesty.” The
Roanoke Times
, a prominent voice of Southern conservatism, had enthusiastically supported Gray’s nomination on February 23, but as his role in a Watergate cover-up emerged, the newspaper concluded on March 22 that Gray was “not his own man; he is Mr. Nixon’s, for that is what the White House insists on.” That was enough for the newspaper to call for Gray’s rejection.

No one better understood the shifting sands of public opinion than John Dean. He had determined that it was time for a direct, thorough discussion with the President of the United States. The President and his men had to confront their past—and their future.

Meanwhile the President had created a new layer to the cover-up. On March 12 he issued a blunt statement asserting the nature and broadening the power of executive privilege. Cloaking himself in precedents dating back to George Washington, Nixon argued that executive privilege was sanctioned by the Constitution’s separation-of-powers doctrine and was necessary to protect internal communications of the executive branch regarding vital national concerns. He insisted that revelations of such communications threatened the candor of discussion and decision making. He pledged that executive privilege would not be invoked to prevent disclosures of “embarrassing information” but only to prevent disclosures harmful to the public interest.
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The next day, however, the Senate Judiciary Committee challenged the President by “inviting” John Dean to testify at the Gray hearings.

Shortly after noon on March 13, Nixon met Dean and Haldeman to discuss new measures to divert attention from the Watergate affair. Dean described how potential witnesses might fare before the Ervin Committee, then scheduled to begin public hearings in two months. The three discussed asking William Sullivan to exploit his FBI connections for information on Democratic presidents’ abuses of the FBI; they also speculated about a public-relations campaign to provide an appearance of openness and cooperation in any Watergate inquiry. The question of the President’s cooperation—or pretense at cooperation—ran like a red thread throughout this meeting and the ones that followed over the next weeks. “I better hit now,… as tough as it is,” Nixon told Dean. While it would be easier to “bug out,” he preferred to “let it all hang out.” The President knew he had to answer questions yet deny any White House complicity.

Nixon realized that Gray presented an immediate problem; his hearings had shaken the Administration’s previously impenetrable calm. The President
thought it might be best to delay the Gray hearings until after the Senate inquiry. In all probability, Gray then would be further damaged, thus giving the President an opportunity to withdraw the nomination. Clearly, Nixon by now had given up on Gray.

The Ervin Committee dominated the President’s thoughts at the March 13 meeting. He asked Dean to summarize the potentially damaging witnesses. Dean thought that particularly vulnerable were Hugh Sloan, the CREEP treasurer, who had passed money to Liddy, and Herbert Kalmbach, Nixon’s lawyer, who had provided hush money to the burglars. Nixon protested that Kalmbach, as his lawyer, merely handled some San Clemente property matters and his income tax—“he isn’t a lawyer in the sense that most people have a lawyer.”

At this point, Haldeman left the room; Dean, after all, had no surprising information for the Chief of Staff. The President and his Counsel then considered the Ervin Committee’s likeliest targets. Nixon thought Mitchell and Haldeman to be the leading candidates; Dean added Ehrlichman to the list. The President particularly focused on the actions and knowledge of Haldeman’s aides, knowing full well that whatever they knew or did in one way or another could be traced to Haldeman. But Dean said that the same people could be linked to Mitchell. The President seemed exasperated. “What a stupid thing. Pointless. That was the stupid thing.” He then blurted: “[T]o think that Mitchell and Bob would allow, would have allowed this kind of operation.…” Mitchell
and
Bob, the President said; in time, he would have to disentangle the two. Mitchell was his
former
Attorney General, his
former
campaign manager, his
former
partner; Haldeman was here and now: he was too close. “The hang-out road’s going to have to be rejected,” Nixon concluded. Dean warned of a domino effect if people started to talk. “So there are dangers, Mr. President. I’d be less than candid if I didn’t tell you the—there are. There’s a reason for us … no—not everyone going up and testifying.”
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Four days later, on March 17, the President returned to his recurrent theme that he needed a report from Dean on the Administration’s investigation of Watergate, a report that would enable the President to go public, appear to be totally forthcoming, and affirm that the White House had no involvement in Watergate. Dean, however, was concerned over precisely that involvement, especially his own. He informed the President that he had been present when Mitchell, Magruder, and Liddy had discussed political-intelligence plans. Nixon saw no problem. His aides legally and necessarily had to discuss such operations because of the potential violence of the forthcoming political campaign. “We had to have intelligence … about what they were gonna do,” he said. Indeed, given the necessity of such activity, the Administration
could turn it to political advantage, the President perversely thought, since it had not used the FBI. “You can use them against demonstrations. But for political character [
sic
],” he solemnly stated, “the Bureau is never used.”

When Dean told Nixon that Colson and Strachan (acting for Haldeman) had demanded more political intelligence, the President again seemed unperturbed. After all, he had repeatedly urged his aides to know the enemy and steal a march whenever they could. Again, Nixon acknowledged the vulnerability of Mitchell and Haldeman. But he always focused on the roles of others in planning or having knowledge of the break-in. On the surface, Nixon did not recognize that the deep involvement of the White House in the cover-up immediately following the break-in was the real problem. Or did he? Did he not realize that the task now was to cover up the cover-up—to “save the plan,” as he often said? If that was to happen, sacrificial lambs would have to be prepared.

As the conversation concluded, Dean told the President about Ehrlichman’s role in the break-in of the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. The President appeared stunned, even mystified, claiming that it was the first he had heard of the matter. “What in the world, what in the name of God was Ehrlichman having something [unintelligible] in the Ellsberg?” Nixon asked. Whatever the answer, the “hang-out road” now had to be even further circumscribed. Another key aide was vulnerable; another “horror” might be revealed. Furthermore, Dean told the President, the CIA had developed pictures Hunt had taken of Liddy in the doctor’s office. Was the CIA, not exactly a reliable Nixon friend, wholly knowledgeable about that break-in? Perhaps not, but the Agency knew that Hunt had some illegal involvement. Here the President lost some of his aplomb, some of his sense of command. “It’s irrelevant,” he told Dean. Ervin had no business in the Ellsberg matter. Ervin had his “rules of relevancy”; “now what the hell has this got to do with it[?]”—meaning the Watergate break-in. More and more had to be contained, had to be covered up.
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It all proved too much for John Dean, who could cope no longer; the dominoes he had imagined had begun to totter.
He
had to let it all hang out. When Dean appeared in the Oval Office shortly after 10:00
A.M.
on the morning of March 21, determined to share the growing problem with the President, Nixon tried to put him off until one o’clock that afternoon. Dean would not budge; he remained with the President for nearly two hours, and Haldeman joined them for approximately the last fifteen minutes. Immediately, Dean blurted out that the White House defenses had crumbled, and the “plan” had failed. Whatever the pending business, the President chose
to listen to Dean, knowing that Dean was wavering in his commitment to the “plan.”