Blind Ambition: The End of the Story (50 page)

The third day opened with Senator Ervin in hopeless confusion about a list of questions that J. Fred Buzhardt
, my successor as the President’s counsel, had sent over from the White House. The Senator thought they were addressed to the committee, and he had started to answer them until he realized they were meant for me. I felt embarrassed for Ervin, but I was enjoying a vision of Buzhardt
near apoplexy in front of his television set. Finally Senator Baker
rescued Ervin from the tangle, and it was Senator Gurney
’s turn to question me.

Edward Gurney
, the first Florida Republican elected to the Senate since Reconstruction, had spent two terms in the House of Representatives during the time I worked at the Judiciary Committee. I remembered that I had asked why he carried a small cushion to sit on during floor proceedings, and that a Republican congressman had told me that Gurney
had been seriously injured in World War II. Unless drinking or under sedation, he could sit without his cushion for only a short while. Now he was sitting on his cushion, so I assumed he planned a lengthy and intense interrogation. I expected no friendship from him, especially since I had drawn attention to the White House opinion of him in my opening statement: “...in a subsequent discussion I had with the President, he also reached a similar conclusion...that Senator Gurney
would protect the White House and would do so out of political instinct and not have to be persuaded to do so... The long and short of this morning discussion was that the White House had one friend—Senator Gurney
...”

He began with some basic questions about the origins of Watergate, trying to fix me as among those directly responsible for the break-in. Although the answers to his questions were not difficult, I felt myself tensing. I was not sure how to deal with Gurney
if he got rough. After serving up some nonsense about how his only desire was to conduct a nonpartisan investigation, he inquired again about the law-firm incident in 1966 and put on his best doubting-Thomas face at my explanation. He pressed the issue, and I did not handle it well. I was off balance again. “When did the matter [turn up] in the Civil Service files?” he asked. “Was that in connection with your employment at the House Judiciary Committee
?”

I seized an opportunity to go on the offensive. “No,” I said. “It was after I left the House Judiciary Committee
. As the Senator knows, the House does not run Civil Service examinations on staff,” I added pointedly. I wanted to let Gurney
know that I would call him on his errors. I also wanted to let him know I was aware of Congressional foibles like exempting staff from Civil Service-type clearance, which is done, at least in part, because congressmen like to hire friends and political cronies.

Now Gurney
wanted to know why so many people in the White House had called me the first day after the break-in if I had not been a conspirator: “Why all these calls if you weren’t that closely associated with what they were doing over there in the political field?”

“Well, Senator, I would say that my office was one that, one...” I stopped to think, and then switched to a more direct approach. “I did have some dealings with the Reelection Committee. I did know all the parties involved.” I paused again. I was not thinking well. As Charlie had advised me to do, I went back to the first answer that had occurred to me: “My office normally was asked to investigate or look into any problem that came up of that nature. When any wrongdoing was charged, any Administration offense. For example, when the grain deal came up.” The words were disjointed; I was busily planning another attack on Gurney
. “And I think the Senator will recall, during the ITT
matter, my office had some peripheral involvement in that. And I believe we had some dealings with your office on that matter.”

“Not my office,” Gurney
shot back. “I think we met in Senator Hruska
’s office, the Republican members of the [Senate Judiciary] Committee, isn’t that correct? With you?”

It was not correct, and Gurney
was understandably sensitive about having huddled with me about a scandal like ITT
. I corrected him. “Well, Senator, I recall one time that Mr. Fielding and I came up to your office on the matter, and Mr. Fielding provided some material for your staff.” I had added Fielding’s name to serve notice that he would have to refute two people. Then I went back to why Watergate had fallen so quickly on my doorstep: “It was that type of thing that would come to my office for assistance and aid.”

Senator Gurney
was still nettled by my ITT
references. “What does that have to do with the Watergate?” he asked defensively.

I started explaining again, and soon he turned to confer with his aides. When he did, Charlie leaned forward and whispered to me. “I don’t mind you dumping on Gurney
, but be careful.”

“What do you mean?” I thought I had Gurney
on the run and was now debating whether to drive him home by describing the material Fielding had given him. It had been impressive, but not uncommon a few hundred questions we wanted Gurney
to submit to Jack Anderson about his ITT
disclosures. Before Charlie spoke to me, I had been entertaining ironic thoughts about how I was then trying to nail Anderson for being tough on the White House, whereas I was presently furious with him for toeing the White House line on how Dean had engineered the whole cover-up.

“You’ve got to remember you can’t really win anything up here,” Charlie explained. “He’s the one asking the questions. You’ve already established his bias, and he’s doing a damn good job of showing it.”

“Okay,” I sighed, “but I can’t let the son-of-a-bitch roll over me.”

“I’m not saying you should. But you can’t try to roll over him. You’ve got to remember where you’re sitting.”

I nodded. Charlie was right. I was getting dangerously close to branding Gurney
as a White House lackey, which, although I believed it was true, I could not afford to say. Charlie and I had decided that I had to stay clear of subjective judgments and characterizations. And I knew it was especially perilous to cast aspersions on the integrity of any senator. My experience on Capitol Hill had taught me that senators band together when one of their own is under attack.

Senator Gurney
turned back from his conference and quickly changed the subject. I coasted through the rest of his cross-examination and guessed that he would save his parting shots for the final round.

Senator Daniel K. Inouye
of Hawaii was next. “Mr. Chairman, the charges contained in Mr. Dean’s testimony are extremely serious, with potentially grave consequences,” he announced somberly. “The President of the United States has been implicated, and because of the gravity of these charges, I believe that the witness, Mr. John Dean, should be subjected by this committee to the most intense interrogation to test his credibility.”

I leaned forward, wondering what Inouye
was up to. He wasn’t supposed to be hostile. I felt a chill when he declared that he would use his own time allotment to ask me Buzhardt
’s questions, which had gotten lost in the morning’s confusion.

Almost as soon as Inouye
began reading the questions, I realized how clever a show the Senator had put on with his gruff manner. Buzhardt
’s work was clumsy and naïve, not at all threatening. The exercise provided me another opportunity to recite the cover-up facts for the record. It dawned on me that the President’s new team of lawyers couldn’t perform effectively because they still had no idea of what had gone on.

Senator Inouye
’s interrogation carried over into the fourth morning. Buzhardt
’s questions proved so embarrassing to the White House that Ziegler was to deny that they had official blessing. Charlie, Bob, and I shared a good laugh over the announcement.

Chairman Ervin followed Inouye
with a gentle round of questions. I had had an easy morning, but during the lunch break I stumbled onto ominous signs. I asked Sam Dash’s secretary where the closest lavatory was located, and she suggested that I use the one adjoining Fred Thompson’s office. When I walked in, I found Thompson and one of his assistants hunched over a table.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Sam’s secretary told me to come through this office. She didn’t know you were here. I wanted to use the bathroom.”

They stared at me as if I had caught them poring over pornographic pictures. Strewn before them were copies of some of my canceled checks and other financial records, which had obviously been subpoenaed. I looked quickly away, not wanting them to know I’d seen.

“The bathroom is right there,” Thompson said tersely, pointing to the only other door in the room. I made a quick trip and left, apprehensive about the money questions that were apparently in store for me.

Howard Baker
began his interrogation that afternoon with a long speech that rivaled the Dean-Montoya
exchange for sanctimoniousness: “...I want to say, Mr. Dean, that you have been a very patient witness, and very thorough. You presented us with a great mass of information...and we are very grateful... The net sum of your testimony is fairly mind-boggling...it is not my purpose now to try to test your testimony. It is not my purpose to try to impeach your testimony, to corroborate your testimony, to elaborate or extend particular aspects of it, but rather to try to structure your testimony so that we have a coherent presentation against which we can measure the testimony of other witnesses heretofore given... It occurs to me that at this point, the central question, and in no way in derogation of the importance of the great volume of material and the implications that flow from it, but the central question is simply put: What did the President know and when did he know it? .”

As Baker went on, I tried to find his tack. I knew that he was foxy and that his purpose would be well hidden. I remembered how boldly he had announced that he had not met with the President about Watergate—in spite of the fact that I myself had prepared the agenda for one meeting, and had been summoned to the President’s EOB office in the middle of it. I knew Baker
had insisted that no record be kept of his visit. When I had tried to disarm him by informing him in the committee’s executive session that I would reveal the secret meeting, he had gone on national television and smoothly reversed his previous public statement. He was playing both sides, I knew: demanding the truth and then exchanging strategy messages with Colson; voting with the White House in private sessions of the Ervin Committee and then switching to the other side in public.

Baker’s questioning about the President’s knowledge was difficult. This was a critical danger area for me, and I was well aware of it. My head was filled with minutiae that had to do with the President’s involvement but which I had omitted because I couldn’t be precisely sure of when things had occurred. As Baker tried to pin me down on more details, I became suspicious. Gurney
and Thompson had pushed me for the same kind of information, and I assumed they were working in tandem. Gurney
and Thompson had tried to badger me to pad my testimony about the President; Baker was trying to seduce me to do the same. Since I feared they were all three seeking to catch me in a major demonstrable error, I tried not to be budged from my prepared statement.
2
*

In the final round of questioning, Senator Gurney
said: “Just a few questions, Mr. Dean. I would like to go back to the Kalmbach meeting again, when you and he first discussed this cover-up money.”

“On the twenty-ninth, Senator?” I asked.

“June twenty-ninth.”

“Yes.”

“You’re absolutely certain about that date? It could not have occurred in July, could it have?”

“The first meeting I had with him was when I flew in...” I began, and realized I had erred. Gurney
made me nervous. “...
He
took the last flight, I believe, out of Los Angeles. We met the next morning.” Gurney
was playing with me, he must have something, I could sense it in his smug manner. I tried to anticipate him, undercut whatever he had. “The records—he very seldom stayed at the Mayflower
Hotel and he was staying at the Mayflower
, and I would assume that if the committee investigators would check the records of the Mayflower
Hotel, they could confirm that date. That is the best of my recollection, that it was the twenty-ninth.”

“This was the June twenty-ninth date?” Gurney
repeated.

“Yes.”

“Was there anyone else at the meeting?”

“No, sir, there was not.”

“And my recollection is that you had a short meeting in the coffee shop, is that right?”

“I was to meet him in the coffee shop and I recall we sat down in the booth. And it did not appear very private in the booth, so we decided to go to his room to discuss the matter.”