The Wars of Watergate (56 page)

Self-interest abounded at the meeting. The President operated on his own level. Typically, his backing and filling covered the range of options, as he probed the feelings of others and tried to find the most secure ground for himself. He talked about ending the cover-up, but he was unwilling to take the risk that entailed. Dean’s strategy had its appeal to Nixon, but could this most distrusting of men trust others to fall on their swords for him? Familiar Nixon tactics sifted through these conversations: fostering division within his own ranks, and working to maintain the compartmentalization that was the essence of his style. Perhaps he believed that dividing and separating his counselors on tactics and strategy would keep them from uniting against him. But his calculations did not take into account the instinct for self-protection.
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On the night of March 21, 1973, two hours after his Oval Office meetings had ended, the President turned to a different compartment: Charles Colson, a man always ready with fresh intelligence and a singular point of view. Nixon appreciated Colson’s special knack for “dealing” with things. In a telephone conversation that night, Colson eagerly reported to the President that he had met with Howard Baker’s administrative assistant, who claimed “that Howard really wants to [be] with us totally.” Baker wanted the President to know “that he wasn’t getting off the reservation”—a statement repeated twice by Baker’s man. The White House, the aide said, could ignore Baker’s comments on the Senate floor critical of the Administration; “Howard regrets them,” Colson reported. But Baker had to maintain his “credibility” with Ervin in order to negotiate effectively with him, hold him “at bay,” and “control him.” Baker had to “act like one of the Senate club,” lest he destroy his effectiveness with Ervin. Baker’s frustration stemmed from his desire to be the President’s defender while appearing to be disinterested. Meanwhile, he complained that he had been unable to secure a good communication channel to the White House. The aide insisted that Baker wanted to help—to “go all the way and work with us and … defend you and the Republican Party.” Baker took the Senate Select Committee assignment because he believed he could serve those causes. The President wanted to know whether Baker understood Ervin. According to
Colson, Baker thought Ervin bordered on senility and he was phony, and Baker had no respect for him.

Perhaps Ervin could be dismissed lightly, but the President sensed other dangers. “How about the [Ervin Committee’s] Counsel—he is not senile. That is a problem there[,] isn’t it?” Colson knew about Samuel Dash. No, Colson reported, Dash was not senile, and he was anxious to make a name for himself.

The President’s problems, however, were more immediate than those posed by Ervin, Dash, and a Senate investigating committee. “What is your judgment as to what ought to be done now?” Nixon asked Colson. Colson assured the President that he was “not being hurt by this at all. This is a Washington story still.… I am convinced that is so.” Nixon relayed Dean’s concerns about the future, a cue for Nixon to praise Dean’s “superb job here keeping all the fires out” and for Colson to laud his “spectacular job—I don’t think anybody could do as good a job as John has done.” Colson realized that Dean could be charged with obstruction of justice, but he planted an idea Nixon later adopted, that Dean had the double protection of executive privilege and lawyer-client privilege.

Colson’s solution for the President’s mounting woes was to appoint a “special counsel,” someone with “impeccable credentials,” “integrity,” “standing before the Bar,” “totally loyal” (to whom or what, Colson did not say), a “damn good lawyer,” and “a highly respected guy.” The President responded with some enthusiasm:

The two men also talked of Hunt. The conversation was elliptical, yet both seemed to know the stakes. Nixon thought that Hunt had “problems if he does anything.… You know what I mean—he’s …” Colson interrupted and said that Hunt would not “hang in where he is” unless something else was keeping him there. In the meantime, both knew they could expect trouble from Judge Sirica, who already had McCord’s letter. But Colson was not fazed. The President thought it better to deal with the judge and a grand jury than with the Senate investigating committee. And yet, they both knew that it would be politically difficult to invoke executive privilege in the secret sanctuary of the grand jury. Nixon thought a “bland” public statement from him, citing ongoing investigations and like actions, would be worthwhile. Colson assured him that he was “in the right posture at the moment.”
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*  *  *

That same night, the President taped his thoughts about the day—one he described as “relatively uneventful except for the, uh, talk with Dean.” He recalled the reference to a “cancerous growth,” Dean’s discussion of his own criminal liability, the report that some of the aides were seeking their own lawyers, and Haldeman’s concern that Magruder was a weak link. He recorded his judgment that Haldeman had made a terrible mistake in selecting Magruder, a man who lacked character when the “chips are down.” Haldeman had made few mistakes, but Nixon said this was one case where his secretary, “Rose [Mary Woods,] was right.” Nixon liked Dean’s grand-jury idea, but he acknowledged that Haldeman and Ehrlichman, after discussing the idea between themselves, effectively vetoed the suggestion.

“I feel for all of the people involved here, because they were all … involved for the best of motives,” the President recorded. He then reviewed the sequence of events that led to the Watergate bugging, focusing mainly on Colson’s insistence that Magruder and Liddy gain useful information about the Democrats. And, also for the record, the President disingenuously noted that for the first time he learned that Ehrlichman had sent Hunt and his crew to check on Ellsberg. (Throughout this period, Nixon either feigned surprise when that subject was raised or justified the action in national-security terms.) Ehrlichman had told him that he himself “was three or four steps away” from involvement, but that Egil Krogh had a “problem.” The President felt sorry for Krogh, who was only trying to do something “helpful.” He also praised Dean for maintaining vigilance against “every loose end that might come out.” John Mitchell would join further discussions in the morning, and the President hoped that his former law partner and Attorney General might have wisdom on “some sort of a course of action we can follow.” Something had to be done, Nixon realized—“just to hunker down without making any kind of a statement is really, uh, too dangerous as far as the President.…”
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The fragment trailed off, but the candor was exceptional. The “President,” not the “presidency,” was endangered.

“Uneventful,” the President called his day—a rare understatement.

The March 21 discussions were an overture to the series of meetings that began the next day and continued into April. Much of that time was spent maneuvering John Mitchell and his CREEP aides into position to take responsibility for Watergate, leaving the White House entourage relatively immune. But that scenario had been devised before the President heard Dean’s “cancer” exposé on the twenty-first. The evening before, Nixon and Haldeman met for more than an hour. They knew that McCord had offered to talk; accordingly, they mapped their own strategy.

Nixon realized that he would have to offer a public statement on what he
knew and on what his aides did or did not do. But there were limits: “it isn’t that we are afraid of facts, we certainly are afraid of publicity,” he said. But he
was
afraid of facts—of the perjury that some had committed (Magruder, “that son-of-a-bitch”) and the payments to Hunt and the other defendants. The President went on to curse the futility of the break-in. Colson had told him that he had “all sorts of stuff” on the Democrats, but it turned out to be “not a God damned thing,” Nixon complained, more in disappointment than in criticism.

Haldeman thought that Dean’s containment plan still could work. Liddy, “a little bit nuts and a masochist,” could be relied on to keep silent, while others would do so because of the payments they would receive. Haldeman felt that the President’s aides could be protected with executive privilege. Both Nixon and Haldeman believed that Ehrlichman posed a problem, however, not for what he knew about Watergate, but for the break-in of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office. Haldeman suggested that key aides should prepare statements for publication in the
Washington Star
, but Nixon objected—“open[s] too many doors.” He would issue a statement, perhaps a general one, expressing confidence in his staff and basing it on “the Dean report”—a nonexistent document to be conjured up when convenient. But both men were sensitive to the danger of saying that any truth was “the whole truth.” “Never, never, never,” the President emphasized. At this point Nixon acknowledged a dependence on Dean for making the right legal moves: “Dean’s the expert here,” he said. Nixon, supposedly the wise political veteran, relied on a thirty-five-year-old neophyte: the situation veered between the absurd and the tragic.

At one key point in their March 20 meeting, Haldeman shifted the conversation to his own fate. “What bothers me,” he told the President, “is that I still think I’m being tarred in order to protect some other people.” The press then was attacking Gordon Strachan and Dwight Chapin, both of whom were linked, correctly, to Haldeman. But the press wanted “bigger fish”—specifically, as Haldeman figured, Colson and Mitchell. No one, Haldeman knew, believed that Jeb Magruder had acted on his own to authorize Liddy and Hunt’s activities. The President quickly covered for Colson, asserting his conviction that Colson had no prior knowledge of the Watergate break-in. Nixon and Haldeman both believed that Mitchell had an interest in maintaining the cover-up because of his own complicity in—or at least awareness of—the plan. “No question about that,” Haldeman emphasized. The stage was set for Mitchell to play his part.
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Nixon and Haldeman resumed their conversation for nearly ninety minutes on the morning of March 22. First, Haldeman briefed the President on his use of $350,000 in campaign contributions to pay the defendants. Haldeman
had directed Dean to channel the money to Strachan, who in turn gave it to Mitchell’s aide and friend at CREEP, Fred LaRue. The money had been collected since 1968 and had initially been set aside by Haldeman for taking polls and surveys. Nixon argued that none of this constituted an obstruction of justice (as Dean had contended it did) and that the funds were not covered by the recent campaign-financing laws. The two connived at formulating alibis and explanations for the origins of the funds, but their use was the real question. Was it an obstruction of justice—was it blackmail—to pay the defendants? The President insisted that he would not be blackmailed: it was “right” to pay. “God damn it, the people are in jail, it’s only right for people to raise the money for them. I got to let them do that and that’s all there is to it. I think we ought to.… [W]e’re taking care of these people in jail. My God, they did this for—we’re sorry for them. We do it out of compassion.… What else should we do?” More a plea than a question, it seemed. But the bottom line was that the President agreed to blackmail payments.

And how would others be kept in line? Magruder could not be trusted—“he’s not a Liddy type,” Haldeman warned; “he’s exactly the opposite,” meaning, of course, that he might have much to say to the prosecutors. Haldeman complained that Magruder was a man “loaded with ego, personal pride, political ambition,” as if berating himself for not having sensed or tempered those egregious qualities.

Hunt’s threat to expose Ehrlichman’s role in the Fielding break-in rankled. Whenever the subject arose, Nixon hesitated to speak of what he called the “Ellsberg affair” and acted uninformed. “[W]hat happened?” he asked Haldeman—and proceeded to get a report on the operation and its purpose as if this were the first time he had heard the tale. The sordid story only deepened the gloom about how the White House could deal with Hunt.

The conversation eventually settled on the paramount problem: how to “circle the wagons around the White House” and protect the President and his closest aides. Dean had told Haldeman that the only culpability of the White House was for its protection of CREEP officials. As if on cue, the President responded: “Mitchell, Magruder.” Haldeman reiterated: “The White House has no guilt in the Watergate thing.” The skids were greased for John Mitchell.

Mitchell’s “awfully close to you,” Haldeman said, as if to prod the President, but getting only a grunting “Yeah.” In the terms of an old political saw, Haldeman was a man who “seen his opportunities and took ’em.” Mitchell no longer was as close to the President as Ehrlichman, himself, and, now, Dean had become. Proximity was power and influence. Besides, Haldeman said, “Mitchell will find a way out.” Still, he told Nixon, “you have to let them get to him, I think.” Dean’s strategy, Haldeman continued, forced Mitchell “to take the responsibility rather than allowing Mitchell to
hide under the blanket of the White House, which he’s been doing.” Dean was certain that Mitchell could take care of himself, Haldeman reassured the President. The President hesitated a bit: “They’ll kill him.… They’ll convict him,” he told his aide; but then he quickly charted a legal strategy he believed would save Mitchell. Nearly five years of internecine struggle by Haldeman and Ehrlichman against Mitchell had now come down to a tactic redolent of betrayal.
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At 2:00
P.M.
on March 22, the President assembled Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, and Dean and asked, “[W]hat, uh, words of wisdom do we have from this august body on this point?” Rather sarcastically, Ehrlichman remarked that “our brother Mitchell” had brought some wisdom on the matter of executive privilege. Mitchell seemed to sense his vulnerability and cautioned his erstwhile law partner that the more he waived executive privilege, the less it was worth. He urged tough negotiations with Senator Ervin, through Howard Baker, and he recommended organizing “a damn good PR team” in order to avoid “a political roadshow.” Given his vulnerabilities, Ehrlichman heartily endorsed Mitchell’s advice. Haldeman worried that any testimony might indicate that “the President was involved”—certainly an uncomfortable possibility for him, as well.