The Wars of Watergate (67 page)

Cox perceived that his task force had a substantial rival in the Senate Select Committee. The committee had been at its work for more than three months when Cox appeared on the scene. The day before Richardson announced Cox’s appointment, the committee launched its public hearings. Cox quickly came to the same conclusion that Earl Silbert had reached: the committee’s public hearings could well interfere with future prosecutions. Several days after Cox’s appointment, Select Committee Counsel Sam Dash paid a courtesy call on his former professor. He offered Cox access to the committee’s computerized files and asked what else he could do. “Disband,” Cox said.

Senator Howard Baker later characterized Cox’s attitude toward the Ervin Committee as preferring that “we go out of business.” On June 4 Cox specifically asked Ervin to suspend the hearings until all trials had been held, in order to “promote our mutual goals.” He thought that the hearings would impede investigations because witnesses would rather bargain than testify publicly; he worried that excessive publicity would undermine accepted standards for fair trials; he believed that grand-jury proceedings might better protect the innocent; and finally, he argued that dual investigations would result in confusing releases of bits and pieces of information.

Cox told Ervin that he feared his request might be construed as a cover-up, but Ervin recognized that Cox simply did not want the Select Committee in the field. What Cox desired, the Senator told his colleagues, was for the committee to delay “until the last ringing echo of Gabriel’s horn trebles off into silence.” Ervin and Senator Herman Talmadge argued that the committee
had no power to delay, however, since it operated under orders from the full Senate.

When the Select Committee applied to Judge John Sirica for immunity for Magruder and Dean, Cox perfunctorily challenged the request, urging the judge to require private hearings for the witnesses or deny the committee access to them altogether. With intended irony, Dash invoked an argument Cox had made as Solicitor General in the Kennedy Administration, that courts could not interfere with congressional public hearings to protect pending criminal trials. Judge Sirica emphatically agreed with Dash and Solicitor General Cox.
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The Senate Select Committee prepared for more than three months for the public hearings. The White House did likewise, beginning with Ehrlichman presiding over a lengthy meeting in San Clemente in February to discuss the committee and White House moves. The participants agreed to delegate a liaison with Howard Baker, one directed by Dean. Ehrlichman assessed the committee and dismissed the Democrats as inevitably partisan. He told Dean that the name of Senator Daniel Inouye (D–HI) should be pronounced “Ain’t no way,” for “ain’t no way he’s going to give us anything but problems.”

Shortly after the committee convened, Baker visited the President for a “totally off-the-record,” “private” meeting and reported on the committee’s early activities. Ervin, Baker commented, was “full of compliments”—it was not clear whether they were for Republican members or for the President. Nixon urged Baker to keep the investigation confined to the Watergate burglary, rule out hearsay evidence, and invoke the “Hiss rules,” whatever those were. Several times over the next week, Nixon insisted that executive privilege not be compromised, but somehow he confused what he regarded as Truman’s “cover-up” of the Hiss affair with a proper course of action for himself. Yet he proved willing to compromise, suggesting that his staff might answer written questions from the Senate committee. Discussions of the forthcoming hearings repeatedly evoked presidential soliloquies on his role in the Hiss hearing. As always, Nixon believed that he had earned “their” hatred because of that case. The “New York–Washington axis,” he firmly believed, was out “to get” him.

The President directed that his aides guide Republican congressional leaders in establishing a firm defensive line against the committee. At one and the same time, he said that the issue must be “defused” and that he would not tolerate a cover-up. He wanted Kleindienst and Baker to work together to ensure executive sessions for White House personnel and thereby avoid confrontations over executive privilege. But in the Administration, confrontation
often accompanied conciliation. Nixon wanted Ziegler briefed so that he could “kick the Ervin committee.” Haldeman meanwhile would publicize examples of Democratic Party sabotage and violence during the campaign. By April 11 the President wished to know who would handle the “counter-attack” against the committee; he particularly wanted questions to be raised concerning Democratic campaign spending and practices. He instructed Ehrlichman to talk to their friends in the press and urge them to cease writing about the Administration’s lack of cooperation with the committee. Nixon, however, underestimated the situation, confidently believing that Senators Baker and Edward Gurney would provide strong minority reports, thus reducing the heat. Still, he looked for a deal with Ervin whereby John Dean might testify in executive session.
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Charles Colson and Ehrlichman worked together to develop guidelines that might best protect the President’s aides and his claims to executive privilege once the hearings commenced. John Mitchell contributed a bit to the discussions, as did Baker. Ehrlichman and Ervin negotiated at length—with their telephone conversations dutifully taped by Ehrlichman.
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The President trusted Baker and Gurney. But Lowell Weicker troubled him deeply. “What the hell makes Weicker tick?” Nixon asked Haldeman and Ehrlichman. “Nobody’s been able to figure that out,” Ehrlichman responded. Several days later, Ehrlichman asked Baker the same question.
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The White House thought that attacks on Dash might intimidate or delay the proceedings. Ehrlichman asked Gray to have the FBI check Dash’s background. When Dash hired a chief investigator—a man distinguished for inventing a “bug” designed to simulate a martini olive—White House staff workers publicly complained that Dash had “compromised” the entire investigative process, despite the fact that the man had already been relieved. They also discovered that Dash had criticized Mitchell and that a Select Committee staff lawyer had criticized the Administration when he had been fired as head of legal services at the Office of Economic Opportunity. White House aide Ken Khachigian told Larry Higby that with enough pressure, they could force Dash’s resignation and “throw the Ervin Hearings into chaos.” But Khachigian was operating amid chaos—and did not know it. He gave his memo to John Dean, requesting approval and action; at the same time, Dean was negotiating with the prosecutors and preparing to talk to Dash.
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The most elaborate White House plans for coping with the Senate Select Committee involved its arrangements with Howard Baker. Baker had led the Republican opposition when the Senate authorized the committee in February. Despite senatorial courtesy, Baker’s readily transparent attempts to narrow the scope of the investigation fooled few people. In the months prior to the public hearings, Baker regularly consulted with Nixon’s chief aides,
fought to contain the investigation, and argued in behalf of the President’s tactics within the committee. He failed, notwithstanding his thinly disguised appeals for “fairness.”

According to Dean, Baker requested an off-the-record meeting with the President in late February or early March, just after he selected Fred Thompson, a Tennessee campaign aide and a former U.S. Attorney, as the Senate Committee’s Minority Counsel. White House congressional-liaison men had suggested other names to Baker, but Baker went his own way. Dean thought that Baker wanted to assure Nixon of his good intentions. The President’s briefing paper—prepared by Dean or his aides—suggested that Baker prevent the hearings from becoming a “political circus” and that they be concluded quickly because they were nothing more than a “witch hunt.” The President could assure the Senator that the White House had no prior knowledge of the Watergate break-in, and he could inform Baker that the Democrats had bugged Nixon’s own offices in 1968. The paper also stressed that Dash was partisan and urged that the minority members of the committee treat him roughly. Finally, it was suggested that Baker meet with Dean to discuss committee matters, a ploy that would reinforce claims for executive privilege for Dean should he be called as a witness.

When Dean and Baker later clashed over this meeting in an executive session of the committee, Dean admitted that Baker had urged the President to waive executive privilege. But he insisted that Nixon believed he had Baker’s commitment to aid the White House. Colson told the President on March 21 that Baker was eager to cooperate and that the Senator had signalled the President to ignore his public statements, as they were for “political” consumption. Baker met Kleindienst for secret consultations, and a Baker aide informed Colson that Baker hoped to “control” Ervin. Ehrlichman assured Nixon that Baker was “protecting us” regarding executive-session testimony by White House aides. Baker and Ehrlichman held lengthy discussions regarding television coverage of the hearings. They talked several times in late March and early April, and on several occasions, Baker spoke to the President.
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Baker and Thompson labored to ensure that the hearings would end by June and to keep them confined to the Watergate break-in, dirty tricks, and campaign financing. At a crucial May 8 executive session of the committee, Baker argued that the burglars (excepting McCord) and the arresting police officers should appear first, followed by Mitchell, Colson, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman. Dean would be last, thus enabling the others to avoid responding to his accusations. Baker also wanted senators to question witnesses before the committee counsels had their turn. Ervin would have none of it: “Well, my daddy used to say that if you hire a lawyer, you should either take his advice or fire him. Since we’re not planning to fire Sam Dash, I suggest we take his advice.”

Baker tenaciously opposed granting immunity to Dean, as requested by Dash. He faithfully echoed the emerging White House line: “I believe he is probably the most culpable and dangerous person in the Watergate affair.” He complained that Dean and his lawyer had intimidated the committee. Again: “From what I hear, Dean is the principal culprit in this Watergate affair.” Gurney readily supported him, but Weicker backed Dash’s position, leaving Baker no choice but to go along rather than isolate himself. He asked that the record show his “grave concern.” Senator Ervin, always mindful of senatorial courtesies, “suspected” that the White House tried, but unsuccessfully, to influence Baker.
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In the wake of the departure of Haldeman and Ehrlichman, with possible indictments facing them and other White House staffers, Pat Buchanan fretted over the forthcoming hearings, with “the Great Constitutionalist putting on his daily television show.” He suggested that if the President revealed “all” the campaign’s dirty tricks on both sides, and if he advocated campaign-financing legislation, he might abort the proceedings or at least defuse the revelations of what Buchanan called “a trick-a-day.” By now, however, events and revelations had far outstripped the Administration’s capacity for defensive, let alone counteroffensive, measures.
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On February 21, at the initial meeting of the newly formed Senate Select Committee, Baker offered what was to become a familiar homily on nonpartisanship. The inquiry, he said, should be a “Committee undertaking and not a Republican-Democratic undertaking.” He urged his colleagues “to act as much as possible as a judicial body.” The group approved Ervin’s selection of the committee’s Counsel, Sam Dash.
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The Democrats appointed Senate veterans to their four places on the Select Committee. They were low-profile legislators who did not project the fiery partisanship of an Edward Kennedy, and their publicity mills largely pointed to their home constituencies. Herman Talmadge, like his father before him, had long commanded the loyalties of his fellow Georgians. As Chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, he had important connections to conservative Midwestern Republicans. He retained only a few vestiges of Georgia populism, and he and his wife had social links to the Nixons. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii had been a risk-taker as a young Army combat soldier in Italy during World War II, but he had evolved into a cautious, discreet Senator whose caution and discretion had served his career quite well. Inouye’s bland demeanor barely masked his contempt for the Nixon White House, however. Joseph Montoya was an amiable veteran of New Mexico politics. Throughout the proceedings, Montoya’s staff prepared superb questions for him, many of which opened unexplored ground. But the Senator had neither the wit nor the energy to lead witnesses; instead, he preferred to squeeze
vague moral advice to the young from those accused of wrongdoing. Whatever their differences in background and temperament, all three Democrats joined in unswerving support of Sam Ervin. His authority in the committee was never in jeopardy.
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The Republicans lacked the Democrats’ cohesiveness. They also had different reasons for serving on the committee. Howard Baker had both Senate and national ambitions. Edward Gurney and Lowell Weicker actively campaigned to be on the committee. According to the Minority Counsel, Gurney considered television his medium and argued that he would project a favorable image for the party. A Republican from a traditionally Democratic state, Gurney had little modesty about his partisanship. He also had a problem with a political slush fund of his own. Of the three Republicans, only Gurney never indicated by appearance or substance anything less than absolute loyalty to Richard Nixon.

Weicker reportedly had been prepared to denounce the Republican leadership if he were denied a seat on the Senate Watergate Committee. During the months of preparation for the hearings, the White House correctly perceived the Connecticut Republican as an adversary. The Senator’s motives are not easily discerned. He was a loose cannon, as the Administration had feared. Dash never decided whether Weicker merely sought publicity, whether he was conducting a personal vendetta against the White House, or whether he pursued the investigation altruistically. Weicker immediately sensed that the Minority Counsel was Baker’s boy; he had a similar disdain for Dash. Both Ervin and Baker had difficulty keeping Weicker from marching off the reservation. With Weicker on their side, the outnumbered Republicans had no chance for unity.