The Wars of Watergate (59 page)

Meanwhile, John Mitchell appeared at the White House to meet Ehrlichman, who had been delegated to do the President’s bidding. (Although Ehrlichman later expressed shock that Nixon had taped their meetings, he himself had regularly engaged in the practice, as he did on this occasion.) Ehrlichman and Mitchell played a cat-and-mouse game. “Poor John” Dean, the former Attorney General said. He’d gotten caught in the middle, and like others (presumably himself) had been simply “trying to keep the lid on” until after the election. Mitchell added that Dean had kept the lid on things even “worse, I think, than the Watergate business”—in an almost taunting reference to Ehrlichman’s involvement with the Plumbers. Clearly, the President’s men were at an impasse among themselves, each having sufficient knowledge to incriminate the others.

But Mitchell made his position clear. He would stay where he was. He had been “euchred into this thing” because he had not paid attention to the “bastards” who had been directed from the start by the White House. Thus, Mitchell, too, had decided to “stonewall”—a term he borrowed from the President. Ehrlichman so informed the President, adding that Mitchell had lobbed “mudballs” at the White House and refused to take any responsibility.
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Ehrlichman gave complete details of his talk at an afternoon meeting with Nixon and Haldeman. Mitchell implicitly had threatened Ehrlichman with his own knowledge of things. Mitchell opposed a special prosecutor but believed that the President needed Counsel to take Dean’s place and suggested one of their former law partners. Meanwhile, Nixon bravely announced that he would not be intimidated by Mitchell’s threats. “[T]hrowing it off on the White House isn’t going to help him one damn bit,” he said. Yet he realized that if Mitchell carried out his threat it would be “a hell of a problem for us.” Interestingly, the President seemed equally, if not more,
concerned that Colson might be indicted. Perhaps that would be too close for comfort, as he remembered Colson’s promise of clemency to Hunt.

Clemency talk rang a bell for the President and his men. “There could be clemency in this case and at the proper time,” the President said, “having in mind the extraordinary sentences of Magruder [who had not yet been sentenced]…. but you know damn well …” Haldeman finished the point: “It’s gotta be down the road.” During the morning session on April 14, the President seemed to promise “full pardons” for everyone. He also spoke of clemency for Magruder, provided he kept the White House distanced from his story.

Ehrlichman thought that it would be useful to get his report to Kleindienst to demonstrate the White House’s cooperative spirit. Ehrlichman and Nixon spun a story claiming that the President ordered an investigation when McCord revealed his intention to talk. The two carefully coached and rehearsed each other. After a pause, the President asked whether Mitchell would be convicted. Ehrlichman thought he would be. Alone later with Haldeman, Nixon consoled his aide, berating Mitchell for trying to involve Haldeman. But as always, his feelings covered a wide gamut. Indignantly, he complained that Mitchell had let it all happen himself. But he was worried that Mitchell had said he knew of other things. The President was sure Mitchell would never go to prison. “What do you think about that as a possible thing—does a trial of the former Attorney General of the United States bug you?” he asked, as if thinking out loud. “This God damn case,” he muttered.
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Shortly after 5:00
P.M.
on that April 14, Ehrlichman returned to the Oval Office to report on his meeting with Magruder and his lawyers. It was as expected: Magruder would implicate Mitchell, along with Dean. He had given the prosecutors details of the extent to which Dean’s coaching had led to his earlier perjured testimony. Nixon realized that Dean might be an enemy within, now that he found himself threatened. Magruder had warned that the prosecutors were hot on Dean’s trail and that they remained interested in Haldeman’s links to the wiretap intelligence. It was time to think the unthinkable: Would Haldeman, too, have to sacrifice himself? Briefly, the President speculated on Haldeman’s resignation, perhaps expecting some help from his side. But Haldeman told him he would have to “figure out” that “crunchy decision” by himself.

At the end of the conversation the President cursed the growing official and public preoccupation with the Watergate story. “[D] ragging the God damn … thing out and dragging it out and being—and having it be the only issue in town,” he complained to Ehrlichman. Get the “son of a bitch
done,” he said. Indict Mitchell and the rest; there would be a horrible two-week scandal, but he was sure they could survive. He thought the story might appear worse than Teapot Dome, but he saw a difference: no venality, no thievery, no favors. Still, he realized the seriousness of the picture if Mitchell were indicted. And then there was what he described as the vulnerability of others—he must have realized that these others included him—regarding the charges of obstruction of justice. On this front, he exhorted Haldeman and Ehrlichman to fight. After all, he said, “we were simply trying to help these defendants.”
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Ehrlichman had a substantial body of information in his possession. Lest he ever have to face any charge as an accessory, he sought cover by unburdening himself to Attorney General Kleindienst—and undoubtedly testing Kleindienst’s reaction to Mitchell’s involvement. But when Kleindienst learned that Ehrlichman had been collecting information for several weeks, he delivered a warning: “Yours is a very goddamn delicate line as to what you do to get information to give to the president and what you can do in giving information to the Department, you know, to enforce the law.” With undoubted sarcasm, Ehrlichman replied: “Well, you are my favorite law-enforcement officer.” With that, Kleindienst, the President, and all his men prepared for the annual White House correspondents’ dinner. The
Washington Post
won numerous awards that evening for its Watergate stories, articles Nixon considered libelous. Yet he noted the irony, as he said, that he had just “learned the facts” of the Watergate case.
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Before the dinner, Nixon dictated a long diary entry, summing up the extraordinary events of April 14. He expressed relief that “the loose cannon”—meaning Magruder—“finally has gone off.” He regretted that “we” had not resolved the affair just after the elections. “I just wasn’t watching it that closely then and nobody was really minding the store.” Pity the good men who had acted with “the best of intentions, with great devotion and dedication,” who were caught up in the affair. He berated himself for leaving too much to Dean and Mitchell. But not a word about how he had schemed to have Mitchell assume responsibility in order to keep the White House and “the presidency” secure. Finally, the inevitable self-pity: Nixon noted the good approval rating he had received in the polls, but he sensed that this was probably the last time it would appear so high, “unless we get a couple of breaks toward the end of the next year.”
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It never was to be.

The President could not let go. After the correspondents’ dinner, he had telephone conversations with both Haldeman and Ehrlichman. Each man fit a special compartment of his concern. Nixon realized that Haldeman might have to be sacrificed because of his links with the fruits of the Watergate break-in, such as they were. Ehrlichman was an especially delicate problem
because of his connections to the Plumbers. How long could that business remain under wraps?

Whatever empathy or relief the President expressed toward Magruder in his diary entry was forgotten as he told Haldeman that he just could not depend on Magruder. He seemed particularly anxious to establish the line that money payments to the defendants had not been intended to obstruct justice. He reassured himself that it would be the word of felons such as McCord and Hunt against the word of those who raised the money. But he worried that someone might have “some piece of paper that somebody signed or some God damned thing.…”—as if in fear that written or taped evidence would undermine the White House in some way. Alternate notes of confidence and defiance ran through the President’s thoughts. He told Haldeman that they should consider telling the Ervin Committee that White House officials would testify in executive session or not at all.
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Several minutes later, the President called Ehrlichman. He discussed Haldeman’s possible resignation, insisting he would be loath to have it. It would give an appearance of other wrongdoing; besides Haldeman had done many good things. “You don’t fire a guy for a mistake, do you?” But what Nixon really wanted to know was how Ehrlichman planned to deal with Dean. By now he realized that Dean, not Magruder, was his greatest danger. The President was blunt in what he could offer Dean: “Look, he’s gotta look down the road to, to one point, that, uh, there’s only one man that could restore him to the ability to practice law in the case things still go wrong.… [H]e’s got to have that in the back of his mind.” Ehrlichman had to reach all those involved and get the “straight damn line” that “we raised money,… but, uh, we raised money for a purpose that we thought was perfectly proper.” (When the White House prepared tape transcripts a year later, Nixon inserted at this point: “RN is referring to E[hrlichman], H[aldeman], [and] not to himself.”) The President was beside himself: “[W]e weren’t trying to shut them up, we just didn’t, we didn’t want ’em to talk to the press.” That was “perfectly legitimate, isn’t it?” he asked his former Counsel. Ehrlichman guardedly said he did not have a “perfect understanding” of the law relevant to the matter. Like a man anxious to establish an alibi, the President eagerly sought to ensure that everyone offered the same explanation for the payment of money to the defendants.

Ehrlichman knew that Kleindienst was talking to the prosecutors that very evening, and he expected to hear from him in the morning. The President thought Kleindienst could be intimidated and be made to understand that Mitchell was the primary target. Whatever loyalty Kleindienst felt toward Mitchell was beside the point. Both men thought that Kleindienst now would turn the case over to “the Dean,” presumably Solicitor General and former Harvard Law School Dean Erwin Griswold.

But Kleindienst was not on the President’s mind at the moment. John
Dean, and what he might do, clearly loomed larger the more Nixon dwelt on the subject. What was Ehrlichman going to do with him? The aide seemed reluctant to lean too hard. Nixon knew the route, however. Ehrlichman could tell Dean that “the President thinks you’ve … carried a tremendous load and … his affection and loyalty to you is [
sic
] just undiminished.… And … we can’t get the President involved in this.” Nixon suggested that Ehrlichman work on Dean for his role regarding obstruction of justice. He claimed that he felt better now that the story was breaking. “I don’t want the Presidency tarnished,” he said, “but also … I’m a law enforcement man. Right?” he asked. “Yep, and you’ve got to move on to more important things,” Ehrlichman replied, offering one of his lengthier comments in the whole conversation.
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The President had belatedly recognized his weakest link. By then, Dean’s lawyers had had several meetings with the prosecutors, and Dean himself had talked to them on April 8. At that early stage, Dean bargained hard for immunity, although both sides sensed that it might impair his credibility. Dean’s conversations with the prosecutors at first centered on Magruder and Mitchell but then expanded to the roles of the President’s aides, including information on the Fielding break-in. Only when Dean became convinced that he would be the scapegoat, and when the President began to ease him out of the case, did he escalate his charges to embrace the President. From the outset, the prosecutors worried about corroborating Dean’s charges, but they rejected a suggestion to “wire” him for his White House meetings.
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Shortly after the President and Ehrlichman spoke late in the evening of April 14, Kleindienst finally learned about Dean’s conversations. The containment operation was over; the domino principle now applied, and damage control was the order of the day.

At the White House correspondents’ dinner that evening, Kleindienst received an excited call from Henry Petersen, who told his chief he had to see him at once. Earlier that evening, Harold Titus, the U.S. Attorney, and his aides, Earl Silbert, Seymour Glanzer, and Donald Campbell, had briefed Petersen as to the roles of Mitchell and Dean. Petersen had trusted Dean and had much respect for Mitchell; he was, Silbert remembered, visibly stunned and upset. At 1:00
A.M.
on April 15, Petersen, accompanied by Titus and Silbert, recounted for the Attorney General the story Dean had given to them. Kleindienst listened for nearly four hours, distressed, distraught, but undoubtedly relieved as the prosecutors assured him that Dean had not specifically implicated the President in the cover-up. They all agreed that Kleindienst must see the President promptly.
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Kleindienst called Nixon at 8:00
A.M.
, and the President agreed to see him after the White House prayer service. Several hours later, Nixon informed
Ehrlichman about the call and asked, in apparent innocence, who Titus and Petersen were. Ehrlichman was sure that Kleindienst would plead for a special prosecutor so that he could remove himself from the case and yet remain in office. Ehrlichman opposed the idea. The President agreed, thinking a special prosecutor would only mean “another loose cannon rolling around the deck.” Both expressed some concern that Hunt might have alerted the grand jury about the Plumbers, and both again thought Colson might be exposed. Dean increasingly was on their minds, and both sounded fearful that he might have to cooperate in order to defend his activities.
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Nixon and Kleindienst met for seventy minutes in the Executive Office Building. Nixon listened calmly as Kleindienst related what he had heard from the prosecutors. He played Kleindienst like an instrument, explaining that Dean had been handling the investigation of the break-in while everyone else was preoccupied with the election. “But after the election,” the President said, “I couldn’t think what in the name of [expletive deleted] reason did they play around then?” Nixon had his excuses. He always had run his own campaigns, but the burdens of the presidency, including preparation for the Russian summit, had prevented that the past year. Then, after the election, he had been distracted by his involvement in the December bombing of Vietnam.