The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (116 page)

10
Conversation No. 908-15.

11
Conversation No. 45-93.

12
See H. R. Haldeman with Joe DiMona,
The Ends of Power
(New York: Times Books, 1978), 296. See also Conversation No. 908-24. Nixon told Ziegler to apologize to the FBI agent, explaining, “The guy was standing out there in the hall blocking my path. As I came walking up, I said ‘Who are you?’ He said, ‘FBI.’ I said, ‘You sit inside that door. Get out of here.’ Can you imagine that? Stand out in front of Haldeman’s office.”

13
Conversation No. 120-1.

14
Conversation No. 909-2.

15
Conversation No. 909-11.

16
Conversation No. 909-6.

17
Conversation No. 909-26.

18
Trial transcript,
U.S. v. Ehrlichman
(July 11, 1974), 2341.

19
Conversation No. 909-27.

20
Conversation No. 909-29.

21
Seymour M. Hersh, “6 MAY BE INDICTED: Promises of Clemency in Break-in Called Part of Scheme,”
New York Times
, May 2, 1973, 1. In fact, the gist of this story, and the parts that Ehrlichman reported to Nixon, were highly accurate. Hersh was getting solid information, but not from me.

22
Conversation No. 910-3.

23
Conversation No. 45-149 (Haldeman) and Conversation No. 45-151 (Ehrlichman).

24
Conversation No. 911-2. Ehrlichman, and Krogh for a brief while, were totally confusing information I had given them. Months earlier, when in Henry Petersen’s office, he had shown me photographs the CIA had developed for Hunt and Liddy when they worked at the White House. They were pictures made of the office building of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in Beverly Hills, California. Because Liddy had told me of his break-in operation on June 19, 1972, following the arrest of his men at the DNC, I immediately figured out that these were pictures they had taken when scouting the job and casing the offices. Remarkably, one picture
included Liddy standing in the parking space under the sign: Dr. Lewis Fielding. Beside Liddy were cars with California license plates. I said nothing to Petersen but returned to the White House and told Ehrlichman about them. In doing so, I made very clear that I had no indication whatsoever that Henry Petersen knew what to make of them. All Petersen told me was that he had shown them to Earl Silbert and asked Pat Gray about them. I also told Ehrlichman it would probably not take an investigator a half-day to put together what had happened by contacting Dr. Fielding, who was Ellsberg’s psychiatrist.

When at Shaffer’s instruction (and to make certain we were not obstructing justice) I told Earl Silbert, on April 15, 1973, about the Ellsberg break-in, I did so by telling him about the pictures in Petersen’s files. After the Department of Justice revealed this to Judge Byrne, and it became public, Ehrlichman began telling Nixon that I had told both him and Krogh that Henry Petersen had been aware of the Ellsberg break-in because of these pictures. That was untrue. Until April 15, 1973, neither Silbert nor Petersen had any idea what the pictures from the CIA involved. Ehrlichman, in this May 2, 1973, conversation, again told the president that in “late November, early December” I had told Krogh “that Petersen, Pat Gray and Earl Silbert all had seen those pictures.” That was true, except none of them knew what the pictures involved, as Ehrlichman was now claiming.

25
Conversation No. 911-16.

26
Alexander M. Haig, Jr., with Charles McCarry,
Inner Circles: How America Changed the World: A Memoir
(New York: Warner Books, 1992), 332–35.

27
Haldeman,
The Ends of Power
, 299.

28
Henry Kissinger,
Years of Upheaval
(Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1982), 108–9. Kissinger wrote that on the evening of May 2, 1973, he received a call from Rose Woods saying Nixon wanted to bring Haig back as chief of staff for a few weeks, but the president was worried about Kissinger’s reaction to having his former subordinate technically becoming his superior. Rose said Henry should not cause any problem, because Nixon needed a chief of staff. Kissinger says he was not happy with the arrangement but knew Nixon needed someone in the post, and he recognized that Haig could handle it. Haig also called Kissinger and told him he would not take the post if Henry had a problem. And finally, after Nixon had used others to deal with Kissinger and gotten it all in order, Nixon called Henry himself to explain that making Haig chief of staff was really his plan to increase Kissinger’s influence at the White House.

29
Conversation No. 912-2.

30
Conversation No. 912-3.

31
Conversation No. 912-7.

32
Conversation No. 912-18.

33
Conversation No. 433-67.

34
Conversation No. 913-1.

35
Conversation No. 913-3.

36
Conversation Nos. 913-8 and 433-73.

37
Conversation No. 45-162.

38
Meanwhile, friendly reporters told me—when I did on-the-record interviews—about the incredibly vicious whisper campaign the White House had launched to discredit me. A few that were floated but never printed, because they were too outrageously false: I had been kicked out of college for cheating or bad grades; I had deserted my first wife and son; I had been fired from a law firm for unethical conduct; I had participated in orgies; and I was so terrified of prison I might commit suicide—to mention only a few.

39
Conversation No. 45-164.

40
Conversation No. 45-166.

41
Conversation No. 914-8.

42
Conversation. No. 432-24.

43
Conversation No. 434-9.

44
Conversation No. 45-185.

45
Conversation No. 120-3.

46
Conversation No. 915-9.

47
I knew the way the White House worked, so I had no doubt the effort to discredit me was coming from the top. I quickly learned that it was Al Haig and John Ehrlichman doing much of the nasty work and getting their loyal followers to do their bidding. They were claiming I was a notorious liar who had deceived the president and my colleagues regarding Watergate. The efforts were twofold: hopefully, to block my testimony, in which I would merely spread false stories about my former colleagues, or to discredit it. We also learned that the Department of Justice might litigate the validity of the congressional immunity statute during the thirty-day automatic waiting period they had invoked, another way to prevent me from testifying before Congress. For these reasons I issued a statement on May 10, 1973, charging that there were “ongoing effort(s) to limit or prevent my testimony” concerning Watergate. More specifically, I stated: “Efforts have been made to prevent me from obtaining relevant information and records; attempts have been made to influence the handling of my testimony by the prosecutors; restrictions have been placed on the scope of my testimony as it relates to the White House; and blatant efforts have been made to publicly intimidate me. Finally, I am, of course, aware of the efforts to discredit me personally in the hope of discrediting my testimony.” I closed the statement by noting, “The news stories quoting unidentified sources and speculating on the nature of my testimony” did not come from me, nor were they authorized by me, not to mention that they were “neither complete nor accurate.” Indeed, I had not leaked anything, as I later testified under oath, and everything I provided the news media I did on the record, and that was very little. Bob McCandless would tell me thirty years later, in 2002, that he simply lied to Charlie and me about what he was doing to keep us unaware and unsullied.

48
Conversation No. 45-199.

49
Conversation No. 45-201.

50
Conversation No. 915-12.

51
Partial transcript of a telephone conversation between Robert Cushman and John Ehrlichman, July 7, 1971. Statement of Information, Hearings Before the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives 93rd Congress, 2nd Session, Book VII-Part 2 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1974), 727.

52
Conversation No. 45-193.

53
According to the Presidential Daily Diary, from 4:18 to 4:20
P.M.
the president talked with Haldeman, on May 10, 1973, See www.nixonlibrary.gov/virtuallibrary/documents/PDD/1973/099%20May%201-15%201973.pdf.

54
Conversation No. 45-212.

55
This meeting was revealed the next afternoon when Nixon said, “Bob, as I told you yesterday, and I want you to know how much that meeting meant to me in the Lincoln Room last night, I’ve kind of reached a [point], where you kind of reach low spots sometimes in life.” See Conversation No. 916-19. This meeting in not on the president’s PDD log and appears to have occurred after Nixon returned from watching a movie alone in the White House theater, the Hitchcock thriller
Notorious
.

56
But Haldeman later wrote, after his resignation, “Nixon and Haig both called me to discuss their strategy, in which I, as it turned out, would later play a major role. They expected Dean to testify to Nixon’s March 21 statements about raising money to pay off Howard Hunt. I said, that because I had been at that same Oval Office meeting, I would testify (unstated: falsely, which was known to Nixon but not Haig) that the overall thrust of the meeting was Nixon’s intention to ‘probe’ Dean to find out what really happened. As to the raising money for Hunt, I
felt
Nixon had at one point said that would be wrong.” Haldeman,
The Ends of Power
, 299–300. (Emphasis added.) Haldeman wrote that statement while in federal prison, after having been convicted of conspiracy to obstruct justice and perjury for his testimony before the Senate when he said the president stated “There is no problem raising a million dollars, we can do that, but it would be wrong.” His statement that he “felt” is very soft compared with his hard testimony before the Senate, in which he claimed that he was “absolutely positive.” As the government pointed out, Nixon had made no such statement during our March 21 conversation; rather, he kept saying
that he thought Hunt should be taken care of. Haldeman’s notes, which he said he reviewed before testifying, do not have Nixon saying it would be wrong regarding raising and paying the money; he made that statement after I told him it would be impossible for him to grant clemency. See counts 8 and 9, Indictment, and closing argument of James Neal,
U.S. v. Mitchell et al.
(December 20, 1974) 11,695–11,699; see also,
U.S. v. Haldeman, et al.
559 F.2d 31 (1976).

May 11 to 22, 1973

1
Vernon A. Walters,
Silent Missions
(New York: Doubleday & Co., 1978), 605.

2
See, e.g., http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/ellsberg/judgerules.html.

3
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Conversation No. 916-16.

4
Max Holland,
Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat
(Kansas City, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2012), 145–48.

5
Conversation No. 916-19.

6
Conversation No. 46-3.

7
Conversation No. 46-17.

8
Conversation No. 434-37.

9
Nixon made the following calls on Friday May 11, 1973, to Haig: Conversation No. 165-2 (5:35 to 5:57
P.M.
), Conversation No. 165-4 (6:35 to 6:47
P.M.
) and Conversation No. 165-8 (7:08 to 7:27
P.M.
); on Saturday May 12, 1973: Conversation No. 165-10 (10:11–10:49
A.M.
), Conversation No. 165-19 (12:37–12:54
P.M.
), Conversation No. 165-21 (12:59–1:03
P.M.
), Conversation No. 165-23 (2:04–2:10
P.M.
), Conversation No. 165-29 (2:27–2:35
A.M.
), Conversation No. 165-31 (5:17–5:44
P.M.
), Conversation No. 165-33 (6:48–6:56
P.M.
); and Sunday May 13, 1973: Conversation No. 165-40 (10:09–10:43
A.M.
).

10
Conversation No. 165-4.

11
Conversation No. 165-8.

12
Conversation No. 165-10.

13
Conversation No. 165-19.

14
Conversation No. 165-23.

15
Conversation No. 165-31.

16
Conversation No. 46-21. Note: It is not clear why the call to Ziegler is on a White House telephone recording, when Nixon was at Camp David.

17
Conversation No. 165-36.

18
Conversation No. 165-38.

19
Conversation No. 917-2.

20
Conversation No. 917-5.

21
Conversation No. 917-6.

22
Conversation Nos. 46-27 and 917-28.

23
Conversation Nos. 436-2 and 46-31. See also “Ruckelshaus’ Statement on Wiretaps,”
The Washington Post
, May 15, 1973, A-10.

24
E.g., Joseph Kraft, “The Long Shadow of Scandal”
The Washington Post,
May 15, 1973, A-21; William Claiborne, “Kissinger Sought Security Leak Plug: Missing FBI Records Found,”
The Washington Post
, May 15, 1973, A-1; R. W. Apple, Jr., “Kissinger Viewed Summary of Taps,”
New York Times
, May 15, 1973, 22; and John M. Crewdson, “Week-Long Hunt: Pentagon Papers Trial Ended in Part Over Lost Material,”
New York Times
, May 15, 1973, 1.

25
Conversation No. 46-31.

26
Conversation No. 917-44.

27
George Lardner, Jr., “Four Names On List for Prosecutor,”
The Washington Post
, May 15, 1973, A-1; George Lardner, Jr., “Probe Job Declined by Top Choice,”
The Washington Post
, May 16, 1973, A-1.

28
Conversation No. 436-18.

29
See Conversation No. 46-32 (Haig, 7:12–7:13
P.M.
), Conversation No. 46-33 (Garment, 7:19–7:26
P.M.
), Conversation No. 46-34 (Garment, 7:27–8:15
P.M.
), Conversation No. 46-41
(Ziegler, 9:01–9:03
P.M.
), Conversation No. 46-43 (Ziegler, 9:15–9:22
P.M.
), Conversation No. 46-49 (Garment, 9:40–9:46
P.M.
), Conversation No. 46-50 (Higby, 9:47–9:53
P.M.
) and Conversation No. 46-51 (Herb Klein, 9:55–10:02
P.M.
).