The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (34 page)

“Right,” Haldeman reported. “Well, it’s really a damn shame this Watergate thing goes on and on and on,” the president noted. Haldeman called it “sort of a permanent cross” of embarrassment. When the president said the hearings were expected to go on for a year, Haldeman explained that the
Senate had called for the committee’s report “no later than February of next year,” so he did not think the hearings could go that long.

In the course of other items on his list, Haldeman suddenly remembered, “Oh, Baker’s appointed Fred Thompson to minority counsel.”

“Oh, shit. That kid?” the president asked. “Well, we seem to lose them all here, don’t we?” “Well, that’s why they felt you ought to see Baker,” Haldeman replied. The president wondered if it was now too late, but Haldeman thought not, and they discussed making White House staff available to Baker.

Haldeman now called me regarding a talking paper I had prepared for a meeting between Nixon and Baker, and wanted to know why it did not include all the actions the Democrats had taken to undermine Nixon’s campaign, such as using communist money to underwrite violent demonstrations. “Bob,” I told him, “we haven’t developed much hard information yet regarding the communist money. We have no documentation of that sort of money ever having been involved.”
²⁰

When their conversation resumed, Haldeman explained to Nixon that they were still trying to develop a strategy to delay the Senate proceedings as long as they could. Although the president thought they should get them over with as quickly as possible, the White House, in fact, had absolutely no control over the situation.

That afternoon, Howard Baker was slipped into the Executive Office Building from West Executive Drive by Bill Timmons and taken to the president’s office.
²¹
Baker managed to seat himself about as far away from the microphones buried in the president’s desk as possible, resulting in a mostly inaudible recording. While the president’s official record of the meeting indicates it lasted approximately forty minutes, the recording runs only eight and a half minutes. This visit might well have continued in Nixon’s outer office, which would not have been recorded. Notwithstanding the poor audio, the gist of the recorded conversation can be heard, and Nixon later mentioned matters they had discussed.

Pleasantries were brief, and almost immediately Baker told the president, “Nobody knows I’m here, except Bill Timmons.” Baker wanted to keep his visit secret.
*
It is not clear what “guidance” Baker was seeking, but what he
got were protestations of innocence from the president, with Nixon dominating the conversation. Baker may have been concerned that he was inadvertently assisting in developing a case that would destroy a Republican presidency, so he wanted to see if he could read any problem signs, and later use this private meeting to protect his own ambitious career. Early in the conversation Baker stressed that he did not want the committee conducting “a fishing expedition.” Nixon’s only real complaint was that he did not like the idea of Haldeman’s and Ehrlichman’s being hauled up to the committee and put on television, but he agreed with Baker that they should get the hearing over with as quickly as possible. The president said he had made an investigation, and Watergate would fall on Mitchell’s shoulders.

“Who is Dash?” the president asked. “Sam Dash was Dick Kleindienst’s classmate at Harvard [Law],” Baker reported. “Who is Thompson?” the president asked. “Fred Thompson is an [assistant] U.S. attorney for Tennessee,” Baker responded. The president expressed concern about Dash’s getting “awfully partisan,” and whether Thompson could “go in there” and handle him. Baker said Thompson was tough, six feet six inches tall, “a big, mean fella.” “Smart?” Nixon asked. “Terribly,” Baker assured him. The president reported that he was going to ask Kleindienst to stay on through the hearings, and while Baker found Kleindienst “a little flamboyant, a little unpredictable,” he thought he would be fine in this case. After about six minutes of bouncing matters around without much direction, Baker said, “I’m really sorry to trouble you with this.” The president said it was no problem, adding, “In the meantime, I know you’ll do a good job. You’re exactly right. The main thing is to have no damn cover-up, that’s the worst thing that could happen.” He added, “If it does get rough, then I think you may have to, at a certain time, turn and get out, get away from it.” Baker agreed, and the meeting ended.

Talking with John Ehrlichman the next morning, the president reported, “Baker’s line is about what you’d expect. He would like to have his contact
be Kleindienst. He and Ervin met with Kleindienst.”
²²
The president asked if that was okay with Ehrlichman, who replied that it was fine. “Kleindienst has a kind of metaphysical attachment to John Mitchell,” Ehrlichman observed. The president said, “I must have scared him to death. I put it very hard to Baker about Mitchell. Because Baker was hinting about the White House staff and all that, and I said, well, I checked them all over, and I said, unless somebody’s lying, my main concern [is Mitchell.]” But the president told Ehrlichman that was not quite true, because “the thing I’m concerned about [is] the Magruder thing, [because] Bob and that Magruder is just awfully close. I don’t think Magruder would say something. But he might.”

“If he did, he would implicate Mitchell. He would protect Bob, I suspect. I think that’s the way now [it would fall],” Ehrlichman surmised. Nixon solicited Ehrlichman’s view regarding Colson’s role, whose exposure Nixon assumed was Hunt. Ehrlichman agreed, adding, “And Magruder.” The president was confused, and asked, “Did Magruder work with Colson?” Ehrlichman explained, “Magruder claims to Dean, and Magruder’s playing a game, he’s telling different people different things, apparently, and I’ve not talked to him. But the impression I have is that Magruder’s peddling the line that Colson is the guy who put the unmitigated pressure on him.”

“To change the bug?” the president asked. “To do this,” Ehrlichman said flatly. “To bug?” Nixon asked again, and Ehrlichman responded with a matter-of-fact “yep.” The president reported, “Well, you see, Colson denies that completely,” which Ehrlichman said he knew. The president continued, “But I’ve asked both Bob and Colson. Well, I don’t know, I can’t—” This information troubled the president. He added, “I have really got to know whether or not, because, mainly because—” His thoughts were not clear as he stuttered a bit, but he said, if they were involved, “then I’ll deny that I ever heard it.” Ehrlichman said he understood, and Nixon declared, “I’ve got to know whether Bob knew about it, and I’ve got to know whether Colson knew about it.” No one had ever laid it all out for him, even when he had asked. He added, “If they both, if they did, then we’re going to play our games,” clearly meaning to cover it up. “That’s right,” Ehrlichman agreed. The president explained that it was important for him to know this before issuing a statement on executive privilege.

Nixon then continued his report on the meeting with Baker, telling Ehrlichman, “I gave him a good lecture about how the Hiss case was handled,” saying he told Baker, “We ruled out hearsay. We ruled out guilt by association and innuendo and so forth. You ought to really insist on that.”

The president went on: “He wanted me to issue a statement to the effect that we would cooperate with the committee. I said, I’m going to have a press conference one of these days, and I’ll so say. I’ve always stated that. I mean, I’m not going to put out any written statement to the effect.” The president then told Ehrlichman that Baker explained the way the committee’s inquiry was going to proceed, which he did not like: They would first call “a lot of pipsqueak witnesses, little shit-asses over periods of weeks to build it up, the pressure, so they would have to call Colson, you got to call Haldeman, you got to call Ehrlichman and Chapin, whoever the hell, sorry, they’ll have called Chapin, anyway.” Nixon said Baker’s strategy was to conduct their own private investigation, confront Ervin, and cut off the inquiry, whether or not it went higher than the seven already convicted. Baker wanted to “call the big men right away. Prick the boil.” After that, Baker felt, everybody would get bored to death. Nixon said he liked the strategy.

The president reported that Baker wanted to sit down with Ervin and place a “total limitation as to the subjects.” The president added that he had told Baker he did not like having his top aides “dragged up.” Again Nixon pressed Ehrlichman: The real question was, whose testimony were they afraid of, and therefore needed to cover on executive privilege? He wanted to know if it should be Haldeman or Colson, but when he addressed Ehrlichman, he said, “I don’t think you have a problem.” Ehrlichman, who would be convicted of more crimes than anyone save Liddy, flatly told the president, “I don’t have the problem.” Nixon pressed, “You worked with Hunt.” Ehrlichman repeated, “I don’t have the problem.”

Ehrlichman noted that those he thought did have a problem—Mitchell, Stans, Colson and Kalmbach—were all out of the White House, so without any potential privilege, and the real concern was who had approved the money for the operation. “And those chips are going to have to pretty much fall where they may, as I see it.” “What are they going to say? They raised the money?” Nixon asked. Ehrlichman noted, “There’s a hell of a lot of money, and it floated around, and there weren’t receipts, and there was funny bookkeeping, and there was a lot of hanky-panky, and money went to Mexico and back, and there were just a hell of a lot of odds and ends of stuff over there. Now, Stans says he’s clean, and I suspect he is. I think he can tell a damn good story.”

“Knowing Stans, yes,” the president agreed. “So Mitchell was going to end up being the fall guy in that,” Ehrlichman noted. “What’ll Mitchell say?” the president asked. Ehrlichman replied, “I don’t know what he’ll say. I just don’t
know what he’ll say. He’s been puffing his pipe and looking at the ceiling and saying, ‘You guys got a problem.’ And we’re beginning to get to him a little bit. Dean’s been hammering away on him to impress on him that he’s got a problem here.” They speculated about what Mitchell might say, agreeing that his best defense was to claim he simply failed to keep close controls on the distribution of the money. “It’s his only defense, and it may be correct,” the president said.

Ehrlichman replied, “I think he knew, and I think LaRue was sort of his agent, and he kept him posted.” This was a new player in the Watergate story. “LaRue?” the president asked, for it was the first time anyone had mentioned the former Nixon White House aide and Mississippi oilman being connected with these illegal activities. “Oh, yeah, LaRue’s in this thing up to his ass,” Ehrlichman assured the president. “Has he been called?” Nixon asked. “LaRue’s a mysterious, shadowy figure that hasn’t been called,” Ehrlichman said. “But he was into it?” the president said with dismay. “Oh, yeah,” Ehrlichman again assured the president, and then decided to give him a bit more information about Haldeman: “Now, Bob had what we call constructive knowledge.” Nixon asked, “How did he get that?”

“Through a fellow named Gordon Strachan. Gordon Strachan’s job here was Bob’s liaison with the campaign.” Ehrlichman had the president’s full attention with this information, for while Nixon knew of Strachan’s role in the Segretti matter, he had not been aware that Strachan had somehow been involved in, or connected to, Watergate, other than a fleeting hint by Haldeman during their December 10, 1972, morning conversation. Ehrlichman continued, “Gordon Strachan kept the most meticulous attention to the details. But very little of it was actually imparted to Bob. Strachan was a sort of a data bank, so that if Bob needed to know something, he’d pick up the phone and say, ‘Gordon, what about this or that?’ and he knew.”

“My point is, did Bob know that information was coming from tapped sources?” Nixon asked. “No, but I suspect Strachan did,” Ehrlichman surmised, leading Nixon to suggest, “Strachan’s just the message guy.” Ehrlichman continued, “Well, Strachan probably never comes into it, because Strachan’s job was not to direct anybody to do anything. He was just to keep informed.” This was less than a full characterization of Strachan’s role, which involved carrying messages for Haldeman and taking part in certain actions when requested to by him.

“Information manager,” the president said, which Ehrlichman affirmed,
and continued, “Now, on Colson you have two diametrically opposite stories. You have his and you have Dean’s conclusions born of a lot of odds and ends of circumstantial evidence that he’s putting together. Dean tells me privately that he thinks that Colson was in fact in meetings and that Colson probably was the effective cause of Magruder doing this tap work. Now, that’s his conclusion, based on circumstantial evidence,” which Ehrlichman did not mention had come to me from Magruder, Mitchell and Colson. After a few false starts the president reacted to this information, as he had when Haldeman had given him similar information earlier: “I believe Colson’s totally capable of it, but I would doubt if Colson would be that unintelligent, that’s all.” Ehrlichman, however, quickly called Colson’s intelligence into play, reminding Nixon, “Well, let me tell you, the Hunt trip to [interview] Dita Beard was a bonehead play.”

“Oh, it was. Silliest thing I ever heard of,” Nixon agreed. Ehrlichman noted that was a “Colson operation from beginning to end, so I have to assume that Hunt was kind of intrigued with—” Nixon interrupted to note that Colson “very possibly might be behind this whole thing,” and Ehrlichman continued, “—I think he was. I think he was, because Hunt’s a cops-and-robbers type. Now, I’m not going to tell you with any degree of assurance that Chuck’s involved, but what’s important to know about this is that there are circumstances which diligent counsel could put together in the same way as John [Dean] did.” Nixon did not disagree with any of Ehrlichman’s analysis, and it brought him back to the issue of executive privilege, which was the first thing they needed to decide. Nixon thought he might talk with Kleindienst about it, when he called him to get him to stay on, suggesting they start with written interrogatories as the opening negotiating point.