The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (77 page)

“Well, I can’t, I don’t know,” Nixon said, gathering his thoughts. “I guess you’re right. You go the immunity route—” at which Haldeman interrupted and said, “It’s one more cover-up.” Nixon liked that analysis, observing,
“Yeah, it’s another cover-up. I’m trying to cover up because [I’m] trying to silence Dean.” Then he made a startling admission: “And frankly, if I said something was wrong [referring to involving himself in the cover-up], then I deserve to be impeached.” Accustomed to Nixon’s propensity for self-pity, neither Haldeman nor Ehrlichman reacted, but Ehrlichman effectively dismissed it by not taking it very seriously: “Well, look at it this way. If you did, and you try to live it out that way, you talk about you getting this cloud over, and you got to start moving on to new directions and doing your job. You sure as hell can’t do it that way.” Nixon said he was serious, and was distressed because, “Jesus Christ, I thought at least we could talk to our people [privately, including] Dean and everybody.”

“Well, see that’s the other way to destroy Dean, is not only by Petersen trapping him but by the president,” suggested Haldeman, who wanted Nixon to go public, to present himself as a leader “in a time of crisis, even when it’s your own crisis. And that they’ve got to understand and share the agony that you’ve been going through, that you can and must take the resignation of John Dean. You can’t operate the presidency by threat. You have to remove the threat in order to do it, and you say that that’s what you’ve done. This is a man who’s disserved you.” Ehrlichman supported this idea and added, “You got to go on the assumption that the American people want to believe in their president.” Haldeman held forth at some length about this attack on the presidency, and that Nixon could not use “a gimmick to cover up, which I think our pulling out early does. Maybe you then have got to take the offensive in saying [how] this does show there has been something wrong in American politics.” Haldeman said that when the president retired he would lead the charge in “changing the American political campaign structure.”

From this lofty discussion on reform they were soon back to the reality of their situation, with Ehrlichman reporting that more negative stories were likely to emerge about the campaign, such as bringing the Cubans to Washington “for counterdemonstrations and all that sort of stuff.” Nixon felt that was “stuff I think we can survive.” “The thing you can’t survive,” Haldeman said pointedly, “is presidential culpability. And that, I don’t think, there is.”

“Well, basically, let me put it this way,” Nixon replied. “You shouldn’t survive if the president was culpable out there.” But the president did not think that true of himself. To make the point, he and Haldeman went through a series of his decisions, including the clemency-for-Hunt question, in which all he did, he said, was tell Colson he was very sympathetic to
Hunt’s plight after the death of his wife. He also assured Haldeman and Ehrlichman that he had never discussed this subject with Mitchell. The president’s only concern remained me, and he wanted both Haldeman and Ehrlichman to find out more about how I might be a problem. Ehrlichman suggested he address the situation before it became a problem, urging, “I’d slam him before he could slam you.”

As the conversation headed toward its end, Haldeman produced the notes he had taken during a conversation with me on March 26, when I was at Camp David. He had called to ask if I had any problem going to the grand jury, and he reported that I said I had none. Then I brought him up to date on notes I had been gathering, sorting out what had happened, particularly regarding what I then described as “the blackmail situation” regarding payments to the Watergate defendants. Haldeman read these notes aloud, which were in effect a capsule account of what I would later flesh out more fully before the U.S. Senate and during the Watergate cover-up trial. The others listened and appeared not to disagree with a word. Haldeman had just given them evidence not only that their claims of my inability to write a Dean report at Camp David were not true, but that my draft of that report would have sent us all to prison for conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Ehrlichman explained a project he and Haldeman had been developing: “We made a list this morning to try and see who were in the same boat as I am personally, in this. That is, not charged with anything, with no evidence before the grand jury yet, with an incipient [Watergate] problem, and there are seventeen of us in the same identical situation.” “Really?” Nixon asked in a mildly bemused tone. “That’s principals,” Haldeman noted, referring to seventeen presidential appointees on the staff, and explained, “I mean, you’re not looking at secretaries or low-level assistants.” They proceeded to read off the names, saying that some were only marginally involved, while others were in more deeply; their list was not restricted to those with ties to Watergate, or even to Segretti, but included those who had taken part in activities that investigations and the media might cause to reflect unfavorably on Nixon’s presidency. What follows are the names mentioned by Haldeman and Ehrlichman: Haldeman’s assistant Larry Higby; Dick Moore; Dick Howard, a Colson assistant; Powell Moore, who had accompanied Liddy to Burning Tree Country Club to get McCord out of jail; Bruce Kherli, Haldeman’s aide who handled personnel and made it appear that Hunt had long been off the White House payroll; Fred Fielding, my deputy, and everyone in my office;
Noel Koch,
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who was on the speechwriting staff but reportedly did work with Colson’s office; Bill Timmons, who was involved with the convention; Wally Johnson, who handled congressional relations, including matters regarding Watergate; Ron Ziegler and his deputy Jerry Warren, who were given background information so they knew what not to say to the press; Ken Clawson, a Colson assistant; and Bill Rhatican, whom Ehrlichman mentioned twice without an explanation of why he had been included. None of these people would ultimately ever be charged. But because Ehrlichman believed they were in situations similar to his own, he argued that, unless the president was going to clean out the entire White House, Ehrlichman himself should not be forced to leave. But, he added, he was “prepared to take leave the minute the charges surface.” To Ehrlichman’s surprise, those charges would be made that afternoon, but not in the form either he or the president had expected.

Ehrlichman said that, if he did leave, “I have to go to work, [return to] practicing law.” He said he knew where he could go immediately, to a relatively good-paying job. “You wouldn’t be terribly happy with it, and I wouldn’t be terribly happy with it, but it would be kind of a any-port-in-the-storm situation at that point.” (Years after the fact Colson told me that he had offered Ehrlichman a job at his law firm.) “Let me ask you this, to be quite candid,” Nixon responded. “Is there any way you can use cash?” He posed the question to both men. Each answered again, “I don’t think so.” Nixon explained that he thought there might already be as much as two hundred thousand dollars available in the 1974 campaign fund. Haldeman recognized that violating campaign laws was not going to help and told Nixon, “That compounds the problem, that really does.” Nixon did not disagree but said he wanted them to know it was available. The conversation ended by returning to the notion of a letter from Wilson and Strickler exonerating them of any criminal conduct. Ehrlichman said he would get Wilson “to gin up a letter in satisfactory form, if you’d like to have that for your file.” Nixon said he would, and Haldeman suggested there be two different letters, one for each of them.

Shortly after Haldeman and Ehrlichman left, the president received an urgent call from Dick Kleindienst, who said he needed to meet immediately.
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Kleindienst said information that I had given to Silbert (in fact, it
was actually Shaffer who relayed it and believed it was an an ongoing obstruction of justice to withhold it from Ellsberg) on April 15 regarding the Ellsberg trial needed to be reported to the judge handling the case. Nixon instructed Kleindienst to come to the EOB office, but without Henry Petersen, and Kleindienst arrived twenty minutes later.
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He told Nixon that Petersen had come to him that morning with a memorandum from Earl Silbert, and then proceeded to read from it, quoting Silbert’s discovery of the Liddy and Hunt burglary of Ellsberg psychiatrist’s office to get his files. Kleindienst said that the Justice Department did not believe that any such information had been used to prosecute Ellsberg, but (as Shaffer had advised them) they still believed they had a duty to inform the judge in the Ellsberg trial in Los Angeles that afternoon. Nixon, reminding Kleindienst that he had instructed Petersen to stay out of matters of national security, said that the Ellsberg break-in was part of “what we call the plumbers operation.” As he explained, “Without any knowledge of anybody, these crazy fools went out, and they went into the psychiatrist’s [office]. They got nothing. It was a dry hole. Now what happened there is, however, that Dean was aware of that, because Dean was the one that implemented the whole thing.” This was not confusion on his part, for Nixon clarified precisely what he meant: “When I say implemented, he carried it out.”

Kleindienst advised that they had no option but to turn the information over. “We can’t have another cover-up, Mr. President,” he blurted. Kleindienst reported that once they advised the judge, who would have to inform Ellsberg’s lawyers, the information would be on the street very quickly. “What is Dean, what’s he doing, pointing a gun basically at Ehrlichman?” the president asked. Kleindienst did not know. Nixon continued, “Let me say I want no cover-up. Good God almighty.” After briefly attempting to justify the action, he soon changed direction: “The fact that these people, who were designated to do it, burglarized the office of a psychiatrist, shit, it’s the dumbest God damn thing I ever heard of.” Kleindienst said he had spoken off-the-record with his friend Judge Roger Robb, who counseled him to take the very action he was urging on the president. The president wondered if it would kill the case, but Kleindienst thought not.

Soon Nixon said, “The other point is that Liddy and Hunt, of course, or Dean, could say he was ordered to [do this] by Ehrlichman.” Kleindienst responded, “Sure. He could say he was [ordered] to by you,” but Nixon protested, “No, he won’t do that, because I didn’t tell him.” This led them to a
discussion of whether my trump card might be implicating the president in the Ellsberg break-in. Kleindienst said he told Petersen that, if that was the case, “you have to tell Dean to go fuck himself. You’re not going to blackmail the government of the United States and implicate the president in the Ellsberg matter.” This prompted the president to ask Kleindienst, for whom I had once worked, what he thought about me. He said he had always trusted me, then added, “Up until two weeks ago I thought he was one of the most able, fine, decent, honest, sensible young kids.” Nixon asked Kleindienst what he thought my motives were in giving this information to Silbert.

“His motive is to create an environment whereby he will get immunity,” Kleindienst said,
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and then added, “Dean turns out to be the very weak, selfish, self-directed, you know, the link in this whole operation.” If I had anything to say about Kleindienst along the way, Kleindienst had warned Petersen, he would tell “the son of a bitch to get his ass out.”

Rather than alert Ehrlichman to the fact that this information was about to surface at the Ellsberg trial in Los Angeles, Nixon decided to sit on it for a while. He surely understood that his attempt to assign responsibility to me for the conspiracy to steal Ellsberg’s psychiatric records would not work. The president called Haldeman on the private interoffice line, but Higby answered and said that Haldeman was listening to the March 21 recording of our meetings but would come to the EOB office in ten minutes.
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“Well, that is hard work,” Haldeman said when he arrived with his notes on the March 21 conversation.
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“Good God! It’s amazing. [The recording equipment] works awfully well in picking up the guest. It doesn’t pick up you well. It must be set on the side of the desk or something.” Haldeman said both could be heard, but “it’s hard as hell to hear you, so you got to keep looking back and reworking.” He then presented the highlights of our session: “Dean said, ‘The reason for this meeting this morning is that you don’t really know what I know, so it’s difficult for you to make judgments.’ And, he said, ‘overall there’s, no doubt about the seriousness of all this. There’s a cancer close to the presidency. It’s growing daily; it’s compounding itself. We’re being blackmailed. People are going to start perjuring to protect others, and there’s no assurance it isn’t all going to bust. And, let’s face it. First, let me fill you in on the Watergate.’ Then he went back to the beginning, went through the whole thing on how it came about.”

In all of the recorded conversations before and after this one on April 25, Richard Nixon never had as few comments, nor allowed anyone to speak so
long without interruption, as he did while listening to Haldeman report from his fourteen pages of legal pad notes of highlights of our conversation. Haldeman said he had not finished listening to the tape and would return to it later. The president simply punctuated Haldeman’s recitation with an occasional “right,” except at the point at which Haldeman described Nixon asking me who else had criminal problems, and I told him Ehrlichman, for the conspiracy to burglarize Ellsberg’s doctor. Given that this topic was now a matter of some importance, Nixon protested, “I didn’t know about that. Alright, go on.”

When he finished his account, Haldeman again explained that Nixon should view his reactions to me as merely trying to draw me out to see how much I knew. Haldeman said, “You’re trying to see how far it goes. You said, ‘Is that your recommendation?’ You do that all the time. You ask people questions on the basis of, to try and see what direction they’re going. They’re leading questions.” Nixon was less certain of that, particularly with regard to his declarative statements. “I said ‘a million dollars,’” he noted, although he had equivocated a bit on clemency, telling me, “You couldn’t do it till after the ’74 elections.” As Nixon explained, “That’s an incriminating thing. His word against the president’s, unless he had a tape recorder in his pocket,” which apparently had become his worst fear.
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Haldeman also reminded him of how they were now going to recast this conversation: “At this point, you’re investigating.”