The Wars of Watergate (84 page)

The Democratic-controlled Congress pressed the President on his removal power in another area. After Cox’s dismissal, it voted to abolish the offices of Director and Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget. The purpose here simply was to remove two Nixon appointees and subject future nominees to a confirmation process. Nixon vetoed the bill, calling it an infringement on his removal power with “an unconstitutional procedure.” The President mustered enough support to sustain the veto, but Congress passed subsequent legislation simply requiring confirmation of future nominees.
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The incident demonstrated the President’s residual power and his ability to appeal to constitutional forms, but it also revealed the boldness of the opposition.

As the “firestorm” engulfed the White House following the events of October 20, the President’s problems with the courts and the tapes intensified. On October 30, Buzhardt informed Judge Sirica that several subpoenaed conversations had never been recorded. The next day, the media referred to “the two missing tapes,” a description that reinforced perceptions of sinister deeds. Nixon complained, because Buzhardt had told the truth. Earlier, however, the President himself had deceived his lawyers. Before Cox learned of the taping system, Henry Petersen had told him about Nixon’s remark that he had recorded an April 15 meeting with John Dean. Cox requested a tape of that conversation, but in order not to expose the taping system, Nixon instructed Buzhardt to tell Cox that the President had made a summary of the meeting on a Dictabelt and that the summary was personal. When Buzhardt searched the tape inventories in November, he discovered that no such Dictabelt existed. Chagrined, Garment and Buzhardt visited the President in Florida a few days later to report on the situation. At this meeting, they presented various options, including resignation. Garment also urged Nixon to secure a new, outside lawyer. It was a time for distance.
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The President, however, already knew of another bombshell about to explode. Rose Mary Woods, his personal secretary, told him on October 1 that she “might have caused a small gap” in a Haldeman-Nixon conversation of June 20. According to the President, Woods offered a convoluted explanation of reaching for the telephone while transcribing the tape and inadvertently hitting the recorder’s delete button “for about four or five minutes.” Nixon said that he was not concerned, because he was sure that the subpoena had been in error and the June 20 tape had in fact not been requested. But on November 15 Haig informed the President that Buzhardt
had incorrectly interpreted the subpoena and that the June 20 tape indeed had been included. And the bad news grew worse: the four- or five-minute gap actually ran to 18 1/2 minutes. Nixon blithely announced to the press earlier that day that there would be no more “bombshells”; the same newspaper stories contained Judge Sirica’s announcement that Buzhardt had informed him of the 18 1/2-minute gap.
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Nixon later recalled exact details of his secretary’s alleged mistake, but at the time, Haig publicly disparaged Woods’s description and quoted the President as having complained of her being “imprecise.” Haig scoffed at Woods’s contention that at the time of the mysterious erasure she had talked on the telephone for only five minutes, as she originally reported. Typical of a woman, Haig said: she did not know the difference between five minutes and one hour of talking. Haig fairly brimmed with explanations at the time. Perhaps, he testified, “some sinister force” had applied “the other energy source and taken care of the information on the tape.” Garment reportedly was “tired and obviously troubled” over the tape gap and thought it would “destroy everything and everyone before it is all over.” During a hearing in Sirica’s courtroom on the tape in question, Rose Mary Woods seemed confused as to whether the White House lawyers really represented her. For her December testimony in Judge Sirica’s court, Charles Rhyne, a former President of the American Bar Association and an old law school friend of Nixon’s, appeared with her. “Believers in the accidental theory could gather for lunch in a phone booth,” said the conservative
National Review.

The Special Prosecutor’s office went to elaborate lengths to consider the possibility of charging Woods with obstruction of justice, mutilation of public documents, and contempt of a court order. But the lawyers realized that if she claimed the erasure was accidental, Woods could not be charged with any crime unless the prosecution could show her acts were willful, an unlikely prospect.
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The White House and Jaworski’s office jointly selected a six-man panel of experts on November 21 to study the damaged June 20 tape. Within three weeks Sirica announced that the panel had informed him that neither Woods’s typewriter nor her high-intensity lamp could have caused the constant buzzing sounds heard on the tape gap, as the White House earlier had announced.

Meanwhile, opinion polls showed a continuing deterioration in the President’s standing. By late December, a Louis Harris survey reported that by a 73–21 margin, Americans believed that Nixon had lost so much credibility that it would be difficult to accept him as President. But when the same sample was asked whether Nixon should resign for the good of the country, a 45–44 vote was recorded in the negative. Then, a month later, Harris found that by a 48–40 plurality, Americans favored Nixon’s impeachment if he should be found to have been “negligent” in the care of the White House tapes.

The panel examining the erased June 20 tape reported to Sirica on January 15, 1974. It unanimously found that at least five, and possibly as many as nine, “separate and contiguous” erasures had been made by hand-operated controls. When one of the Watergate prosecutors asked if the erasures had been accidental, an expert testified that “it would have to be an accident that was repeated at least five times.” Assistant Press Secretary Gerald Warren told reporters on January 16 that the President could in no way be implicated in the tape gap, basing his conclusion “on many discussions” he had held with Nixon. The common defense for the President centered on his vaunted mechanical incompetence. Gerald Ford, for example, knew that the President “wasn’t adroit mechanically.” The President’s new lawyer, James St. Clair, told one of the experts that he would have to talk to “his own experts”—apparently forgetting that the panel had been selected with White House cooperation.
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Jaworski attempted to continue the investigation of the tape gap, but both he and the FBI met determined White House resistance. Buzhardt at first consented to a brief FBI interview but then refused further discussions. Repeated efforts by FBI agents to interview Woods, Haig, Ziegler, and Stephen Bull—those with access to the tapes—met with repeated refusals. By March it was clear: the President no longer would tolerate any intra-branch investigations of himself and his staff. It should have been a warning to Jaworski.
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James Kilpatrick, a prominent conservative columnist and Nixon loyalist, was satisfied, if St. Clair was not. Nixon’s supporters, Kilpatrick wrote, had to confront the “monstrous idea … that their President is indeed a crook.” The expert testimony could not be “blinked away”; the erasures were deliberate. Kilpatrick had “blinked away” a variety of charges against the President—the Cambodian bombing, the alleged cover-up of Watergate, the overtures to Judge Byrne, the “extortion” of campaign contributions—but the erasures were different: evidence had been knowingly destroyed, and if Nixon could be implicated in any way, “he is done for.” The President alone was responsible for the preservation of the evidence; he would have to answer for its destruction. “I want to believe my President is not a crook—but only Richard Nixon himself can dispel the idea now,” Kilpatrick concluded. For his part, Jaworski saw the tape-gap incident as a blessing of sorts, for he thought it made the White House realize it could not afford more such hostile public reactions toward tampering with evidence.
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The President quickly realized around the same time that “something worse” than the tape gap had happened. Public questions about Nixon’s taxes that surfaced in the fall of 1973 prompted IRS Commissioner Donald Alexander to order an audit of his tax forms. The tax payments showed striking changes.
In 1969 Nixon paid more than $72,000, but in the next three years, while serving as President, he paid taxes of $792.81, $878.03, and $4,298.17, respectively. His income had dropped sharply after he left his law practice, it was true, but his reduced payments primarily resulted from a gift of his vice-presidential papers to the National Archives. The problem here was a simple one: the President and his lawyers had falsified dates on the deed of gift to comply with changed laws. The tampering was costly, for the IRS determined in April 1974 that Nixon owed $476,431 in back taxes and interest.
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The political costs were incalculable.

When Nixon first met Donald Alexander in May 1973, shortly after appointing him Commissioner of Internal Revenue, he told him to do his job “well, and do it honestly.” The President never discussed the tax system, or any individual’s taxes, with Alexander—but Haig “bawled out” Alexander for some of his actions. Alexander knew that Nixon had tried to fire him on several occasions, although Secretary of the Treasury George Shultz firmly supported him.
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Alexander was a loyal Republican and an admirer of the President; he was not, however, the kind of IRS Commissioner that President Nixon and his aides often discussed in private, fantasizing an official who would blindly follow Nixon’s bidding to settle old political scores.

On December 31, 1969, Congress passed a tax-reform act, following the Administration’s wishes. On its own, Congress included a provision eliminating deductions for gifts of private papers. Lyndon Johnson’s Commissioner of Internal Revenue alerted the former President’s staff and urged that Congress be persuaded to delete the provision. The effort failed, but a compromise provided that gifts made before July 25, 1969 still could be deducted. Nixon had completed a lawful transfer of papers to the National Archives by December 30, 1968. The papers were hurriedly appraised and valued at $80,000, almost all of which Nixon deducted for the tax year 1968. Early in 1969, John Ehrlichman told the President that he should continue to take deductions for more papers. “Good,” the President replied on the memo.

Nixon’s vice-presidential papers were sent to the Archives on March 26–27, 1969. Of the 1,200 boxes containing the papers, more than 200 contained only invitations to speaking engagements and social affairs. Nixon’s lawyer later claimed that he and an appraiser met on April 8 and visited the Archives to make an appraisal. The lawyers executed a deed of gift, supposedly dated April 21, 1969, the day the President sent his tax-reform message to Congress. But in fact the lawyers and the appraiser had not met at that time—indeed, the appraiser never viewed the papers until November 3, 1969. After a few brief visits to survey the material, he established a value of $2 million for Nixon’s papers. In the meantime, Congress had eliminated the deduction, but one of the President’s lawyers decided that the papers effectively had been given in March 1969, and therefore qualified for
the deduction. He consulted with the appraiser, and they now established the papers’ net worth at $576,000.

In April 1970, the lawyers prepared a new schedule of valuation to accompany a deed of gift for the papers, and back-dated both to March 27, 1969. The President was shown the forms, reputedly said, “That’s fine,” and signed the documents. There is no evidence that he knew of the back-dating. But later a Republican staff member of the House Judiciary Committee informed his superiors that Nixon unquestionably attended to details of his own tax returns: he had discussed deductions for donated documents with Lyndon Johnson; his law partner had written him a lengthy memo about the matter; he had signed the deed in 1969 for such a 1968 deduction. In addition, Ehrlichman had relayed instructions in June 1969 regarding Nixon’s desire for more deductions for his papers, and the President had met the appraiser to discuss their value. While congressmen focused on whether or not Nixon had violated the tax laws, they carefully skirted the more fundamental question of treating public papers as private property.

Questions regarding the President’s taxes dovetailed with discussions of government expenditures for his houses in San Clemente, California, and Key Biscayne, Florida. The General Services Administration had spent more than $1.2 million on house and ground “improvements” at the two estates. Nixon initially claimed that the work had been done for security reasons. But subsequent investigations showed that he himself, not the Secret Service, had requested the work and that a large part of the cost had no security justification, including money spent on a fireplace exhaust fan, a new shuffleboard court, a sewage system, brass lanterns, and a gazebo. Modern presidents are away from the White House a good deal of the time, and Nixon may have established the most extraordinary record of all. Between 1969 and 1972, he spent 195 days in California and 157 in Florida—nearly one-fourth of his first term. When reports of the expenditures on his retreats were first made public, Ron Ziegler denounced them as unjust, unfair, and irrelevant “to our way of life in this country.”

Pressure increased for a public accounting of Nixon’s taxes and expenditures. On July 29, 1973, Tax Analysts and Advocates, a public-interest law organization, apparently received information on the deed of papers and demanded an investigation. News also leaked regarding the President’s home improvements and small tax payments. Finally, on December 8, Nixon disclosed his tax returns for 1969–72 and an audit of his private finances since 1969. During that time, he had become a millionaire. He admitted that the gift of his papers and the sale of some California property raised questions, and he agreed to submit the matter to a Joint Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation, a group of senior members from the House and Senate tax committees. He also announced that he and Mrs. Nixon would contribute their San Clemente home to the nation after their deaths. Finally, he said that he
would give the committee full access to all documents and, if necessary, “I will pay whatever tax may be due.”