The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (91 page)

To edit the white paper, Haig spent almost a half an hour with the president in his EOB office reviewing the document.
⁷⁰
When Haig departed Nixon had a particular revision, so he called him back. “One small thing that would help in editing throughout: Never use the word ‘criminal’; use the word ‘illegal.’”
⁷¹
It went on like that throughout the day and evening.
⁷²
During the late afternoon, Nixon asked Ziegler what he made of the designated special Watergate prosecutor’s statement that he would conduct an “investigation right up to the Oval Office?”
⁷³
“I’m not the slightest bit worried about Archibald Cox,” Ziegler responded, and when Nixon asked why, the press secretary said, ”I don’t think he’s that heavy, and it’s basically irrelevant now as to what Archibald Cox does.” Ziegler saw it merely as a public relations battle. Nixon and Haig took a dinner break on the
Sequoia
for several hours, cruising down the Potomac, and when they got back at 8:14
P.M.
, Haig told Nixon the writers needed to work overnight and would have it in the morning.
⁷⁴

It required down-to-the-last-minute editing to finalize the white paper, which Ziegler assured Nixon was ready to go when they met at 8:50
A.M.
in the Oval Office.
⁷⁵
While Nixon was waiting for the final draft to arrive on his desk, he returned a call from Chief Justice Warren Burger that had come in the previous evening.
⁷⁶
It was a stilted conversation, a response to Nixon’s calling to congratulate Burger on four years on the Court. Nixon assured him he should not be overly concerned about “all the hullabaloo,” which he would survive, and it would pass. Nixon did cross the line in raising the difficulty that Mitchell, Haldeman and Ehrlichman would confront getting a fair trial, but Burger only said, “There will be a lot of books written about this, and a lot of law review articles. It’s just one of the times when the boat’s rocking.” With a chuckle, the Chief Justice added, “This kind of separates the men from the boys.”

When Haig and Buzhardt arrived in the EOB office at 9:55
A.M.
with the draft in hand, Nixon asked who had fact-checked the information.
⁷⁷
Had Haldeman and Ehrlichman? Buzhardt’s answer was vague, saying it had been checked “with a number of people.” When Nixon pressed, Buzhardt responded, “We got through, ah, Colson and Petersen.” The president did not seem totally satisfied with that reply and said they needed to anticipate every possible question. They then proceeded with work on the document, finishing just before 11:30
A.M.
A final revised draft was carried to the EOB office for Nixon at 2:31
P.M.
by Ray Price, who was joined by Buzhardt and Haig. Price had added the one-page summary suggested in the morning meeting.
⁷⁸
Nixon took less than fifteen minutes for a final look and to discuss the release.

That afternoon, shortly after four o’clock, the press office passed out copies of the “Statements About the Watergate Investigations” to the White House press corps.
⁷⁹
The document ran some twenty legal-size pages, printed on both the front and back sides, and it contained just over four thousand words. It opened with a summary statement, followed by the complete version, which addressed four separate topics: “1969 Wiretaps,” “The 1970 Intelligence Plan” (the Dean papers), “The Special Investigations Unit” (the plumbers), and “Watergate.” The document from start to finish was written in the first person, clearly indicating that the statement was from Nixon himself.

I first saw the president’s new statement that day, when I met with
Time
magazine reporter Hays Gorey, who had come directly from the White
House briefing, at which Ziegler was joined by Len Garment and Fred Buzhardt. I had agreed to give Hays an on-the-record interview, but when he asked me about this new statement, I was reluctant, because it involved testimony, which I had not discussed with any newsperson. The statement’s summary had seven key items, and Hays asked if I would give him my off-the-record and for-background-use-only reactions. I agreed to that so he read from the document, and I briefly reacted with either “true” or “false,” though an occasional “bullshit” slipped out.
⁸⁰
Remarkably, while some of the statements were more artfully worded than others, every declaration by Nixon but the first was patently false (I have appended to each statement an endnote that offers several examples of conversations, or other material, that reveal the sweep of Nixon’s mendacity):

With regard to the specific allegations that have been made, I can and do state categorically: (1) I had no prior knowledge of the Watergate operation. (2) I took no part in, nor was I aware of, any subsequent efforts that may have been made to cover up Watergate.
⁸¹
(3) At no time did I authorize any offer of executive clemency for the Watergate defendants, nor did I know of any such offer.
⁸²
(4) I did not know, until the time of my own investigation, of any effort to provide the Watergate defendants with funds.
⁸³
(5) At no time did I attempt, or did I authorize others to attempt, to implicate the CIA in the Watergate matter.
⁸⁴
(6) It was not until the time of my own investigation that I learned of the break-in at the office of Mr. Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, and I specifically authorized the furnishing of this information to Judge Byrne.
⁸⁵
[And] (7) I neither authorized nor encouraged subordinates to engage in illegal or improper campaign tactics.
⁸⁶

Following the “line”—to use a Nixonian term—of his April 30 speech, Nixon dissembled throughout his May 22 summary statement, blending fact and fiction in the remainder of it. But in providing distorted information regarding what took place on June 23, 1972, Nixon set a trap for himself, for no false statements would be of greater consequence than his twisted account of that day’s events. He claimed early post-Watergate “reports led me to suspect, incorrectly, that the CIA had been in some way involved.” That was largely fiction. “They also led me to surmise, correctly, that since persons originally recruited for covert national security activities had participated in Watergate, an unrestricted investigation of Watergate might lead to and expose those covert national security operations.” That was mostly fact. He
then added “to prevent the exposure of these covert national security activities,” while still encouraging a full investigation of Watergate, he so “instructed my staff, the Attorney General, and the Acting Director of the FBI.” That was mostly false, not to mention the fact that he combines events from June 1972 with events in April 1973. Next Nixon completely outmaneuvering himself by stating: “I also specifically instructed Mr. Haldeman and Mr. Ehrlichman to ensure that the FBI would not carry its investigation into areas that might compromise these covert national security activities, or those of the CIA.” He simply passed over the Mexican checks, which raised a political problem, and which he could have legitimately said the Justice Department had advised the White House were beyond the scope of the Watergate investigation. Instead he provided misinformation by omitting these facts.

When the truth surfaced fourteen months later with the release of Nixon’s recording of the Haldeman conversations of June 23, not only did it establish his deception regarding that day, but it destroyed his claim that he had no knowledge of the cover-up until March 21. It was more than the Nixon presidency could withstand, for these falsehoods revealed that he had been compounding lies to keep his defense in place. But it is not clear from the record that Nixon knew he was lying about June 23. To the contrary, it appears that both Nixon and Haldeman were unaware of the potential trap they had set for themselves. The information needed to understand the June 23 meeting could largely have been gleaned from Haldeman’s notes of his conversation with me that morning. But Nixon had also literally banned everyone on his staff from reviewing the Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Colson notes of their meetings with the president. It is clear that Nixon preferred to create his own facts, as he wanted to recall them, and with his May 22 statement he had locked in his defense. It would now be his word versus that of anyone who might dare to challenge it.

F
ollowing the release of the May 22, 1973, statement, a newly confident Nixon became convinced his biggest remaining problem was me. For over a month the president, along with his aides and supporters, had been at work trying to discredit me, an effort that would continue not only throughout the rest of his presidency, but for the rest of his life, with Nixon leading the way.
¹
The pattern that had emerged in the conversations beginning in mid-April simply continued, though the president’s wrath was directed not only at me but at anyone else who presumed to tell the truth if it conflicted with Nixon’s defense. During the month between the May 22 statement and my testimony before the Senate Watergate committee, which began on June 25, the president’s conversations focused on his efforts to recall and reconstruct his activities, mixed with periodic rants, of which follow a few representative samples:

• Admissions of error in his May 22 defense statement:
  “The question, Ron, of when I knew that funds were being raised for the defense, because, you know, we have nailed ourselves pretty tightly to the twenty-first of March. But I’m confident that I must have had something on it earlier in March.”
  ²
  “We don’t want to be knocked down on the idea that we said we didn’t know anything until the twenty-first of March about any fundraising.”
  ³
  
• False protestations of his innocence
  :
  “I didn’t know about any funds before March.”
  ⁴
  Instructions to Buzhardt of what to say to special prosecutor Cox: “The president is cooperating and doing everything he can do on this thing, and that the president is totally innocent and everybody knows it, including me.”
  ⁵
  
• Falsely recasting the June 23, 1972, conversation
  : “Presidential purpose is not to get the CIA in the Watergate [mess].”
  ⁶
  Nixon learned that Haldeman and Ehrlichman had different recollections of the events on this day, namely that Ehrlichman recalled it was all about the Mexican money, while Haldeman had no memory of that being the reason they met with the CIA. Nixon simply could not recall.
  ⁷
  
• Falsely recasting the March 21, 1973, conversation
  :
  “But he [referring to me] didn’t tell me about his suborning perjury of Magruder. He didn’t tell me the fact that Liddy had told him everything on June nineteenth.”
  ⁸
  “Bob was there, thank God, for the last portion of the meeting. Bob said, he’s got his own notes, that the president said, first, it’s wrong [to raise money for the Watergate defendants], second, it won’t work.” “And third, because, basically, you can’t provide clemency.”
  ⁹
  This conversation “is what triggered my own investigation.”
  ¹⁰
  “I said, ‘How much would it cost over four years?’ But then I said, ‘No, we can’t go that route.’”
  ¹¹
  
• How to attack Dean
  : In addition to a lot of name-calling—“asshole,”
  ¹²
  “bastard”
  ¹³
  and “son of a bitch”
  ¹⁴
  were particular favorites—and planting false stories,
  ¹⁵
  other tactics were explored. “We’ve got to hit him right between the eyes [on statements Nixon claimed I had not made to him].”
  ¹⁶
  “[Dean] was the fellow that was really doing it all, Chuck, as far as the cover-up was concerned.”
  ¹⁷
  “You don’t want to take him on [from the White House] until you are ready to knock him out of the box.”
  ¹⁸
  “The guy that can really embarrass the president or raise any questions on him is Dean. The guys that answer that, basically, are Haldeman and Ehrlichman. And to a lesser extent, Colson.”
  ¹⁹
  “And after thinking a little about that [referring to going through Dean’s files], I think it’s got to be done, it’s got to be done probably in the dead of night.”
  ²⁰
  “We’re pulling together a chronology of the different statements he’s made,” Ziegler advised Nixon, material that could be used by the White House staff against me, although it was all pure hearsay.
  ²¹
  “Well, it will be John Dean’s word against a lot of other people.”
  ²²
  Buzhardt told Nixon: “I don’t want to let [Dean] know what evidence exists until he goes under oath, because I would like for him to worry about it.”
  ²³
  Nixon asked Ziegler, “Has it occurred to you and Buzhardt and the rest that it should be about slapping [Dean] as a traitor, a turncoat, at the proper time, Ron?” Ziegler reported that they had been doing that. “It’s got to be done in a brutal
  slam-bang gut-fight way. We’ve got to draw the sword on him,” Nixon instructed.
  ²⁴
  

Notwithstanding Nixon’s concern that I might have secretly recorded him, he kept his recordings going while plotting and planning his effort to cover up the Watergate cover-up. No one on his immediate working staff—other than Steve Bull—knew they were being recorded. Not even the fact that the Watergate special prosecutor demanded more and more of his records gave the president second thoughts about his secret recording. While he had given passing consideration to removing the system, he knew Haldeman had not done so, for he would have been told. He seemed both impervious and oblivious to the fact that this secret system might be revealed, although he was well aware it contained material that could destroy his presidency and create an entirely new set of monumental problems. Executive privilege was then an entirely untested legal concept, more a political stance vis-à-vis Congress than a legal doctrine recognized by any court.
*

When talking with Haig about the Huston Plan, the removal of restraints on domestic intelligence gathering, Nixon said, “I ordered that they use any means necessary, including illegal means, to accomplish this goal. The president of the United States can never admit that.”
²⁵
Later that day he told Rose Woods, “Good old Tom Pappas [had] helped at Mitchell’s request fund-raising for some of the [Watergate] defendants.”
²⁶
Nixon said that Pappas had come to see him on March 7 “about the ambassador to Greece that he wanted” but that “we did not discuss Watergate at that point.” This was untrue, but as he explained, “It’s very important that he remembered that.” The president told his private secretary he wanted her to speak to Pappas to make sure he understood this, explaining to her that Pappas’s fund-raising activities were not illegal unless “his purpose was to keep the defendants shut up.” The president said it was important that he not talk to Pappas about this
matter, but rather she should inform Pappas that the president’s recollection “was that there was no discussion of Watergate.”

At a midday meeting Ziegler mentioned that Kissinger was bitter toward Haldeman and Ehrlichman for “the plumbers activity and so forth.”
²⁷
“Bullshit,” the president erupted. “He knows what was going on in the plumbers activities. Don’t let him give you that crap. He was clear up to his ankles himself.” Ziegler was surprised, and Nixon added, “I don’t want people around here pissing on Bob and John.” In an after-midnight call to Haig, a weary Nixon again raised the possibility of his resigning, since the Democrats controlled Congress and Republicans were weak.
²⁸
Haig would not hear of it, but Nixon was apparently serious, and was also concerned that “Richardson is sort of a weak reed.” Haig was spending time with him and thought he was coming along. But Nixon returned to the topic as the conversation progressed, bemoaning the fact that he had “so many weak people in our cabinet.” As Nixon viewed it, “Richardson’s in the spot where, as you know, he’s going to have to prove that he’s the white knight and all that bull, and so he and Archie Cox will try to try the president, you know, and all that crap. How do you handle that?” Haig said he had been doing some checking and found that Cox was “not an effective guy.” He did not think many of the cases would ever come to trial, for Cox would have them “so screwed-up, nobody will be able to be brought to court.”

Shortly after noon Nixon had Elliot Richardson in the Oval Office for a visit.
²⁹
It was a broad-ranging discussion of the activities of the Department of Justice, with the president praising Richardson and telling him that his experience at the State and Defense departments was of value to the president. Not until the end of this twenty-minute chat did the subject of Watergate come up. Richardson, as he had earlier, vouched for Cox: “He’s certainly fair, honorable, scrupulous and so on. He’s going to get a fellow who has had some experience in prosecution,” Richardson explained, a lawyer like U.S. Attorney Whitney North Seymour, Jr. “You’ve got complete support there, and you can talk in total confidence,” the president assured him, and then he made a point about his papers: “When you’re sitting here making a note for me, or if you write a memcon, that’s made for me and not for anybody
else. Even if we discuss whether or not I’m going to burglarize the ten-cent store. But you can testify. Because, you see, if you ever break into the president’s papers, Elliot, we’d have a hell of a problem here.”

During an Oval Office conversation with Al Haig, the president said he agreed with Ziegler on Watergate: “Ron has a good point. This is just a gut political fight now, this whole thing. Cox is going to be a gut fighter.”
³⁰
Neither man had any illusions about Richardson’s being of much help. Nixon’s solution was to “just kick the shit out of them.” When meeting later that morning with Bill Rogers, and their discussion turned to Watergate, Nixon said, “There was a cover-up. We know that. And now it’s very apparent, the whole God damn thing, frankly, was done because it involved Mitchell.” Rogers reported that Mitchell “looks awful,” and “I think there’s a good chance he’ll kill himself.”

That afternoon Nixon had another long conversation with Haldeman,
³¹
who said that he was telling reporters, and would tell the Senate investigators as well, that the president “had absolutely, categorically, nothing to do with any cover-up of any kind in any way, shape or form.” And he was going to state “categorically” that he “had nothing to do with any cover-up or with any attempt to cover up.” Nixon approved of that and thought Ehrlichman should say the same. Haldeman reminded the president that their involvement with the CIA on June 23, 1972, had related to “the Mexican money,” and when the CIA had no problem with that matter, it was dropped. After a great deal of speculation about testimony, and a rehashing of the events now haunting the Nixon presidency, Haldeman mentioned that I was conducting “a very credible campaign” by doing “interviews with Walter Cronkite and
Time
magazine.” Nixon said that his “theory of the case now is this: That Mitchell was the one who led Dean around.” “I guess so,” Haldeman concurred. Haldeman was also worried about his former colleague, reminding the president: “Mitchell hates Ehrlichman, Dean hates Ehrlichman, Colson hates Ehrlichman.” Haldeman had concluded that I had broken ranks because the prosecutors had lied to me and told me that Liddy had talked, so I figured it was over, and I should go after others. Haldeman thought the prosecutors had turned Magruder by similarly telling him that “Hunt was going to spill everything.” This conversation ended with them attempting to figure out how it had all fallen apart over the last few months.

When talking with Ron Ziegler from Camp David by telephone, Nixon had another of his lapses into the truth.
³²
While speculating about charges I might make, Nixon pointed out, “What the hell, he can say, I suppose, that I was trying to cover up for Haldeman and Ehrlichman, right?” And before Ziegler could respond, the president added: “Which was somewhat true.” Ziegler also told Nixon in this conversation that the addition of Charles Alan Wright to the legal staff “is going to be a big help.” Wright, a law professor from the University of Texas, was an a expert in federal court practice and procedures. While a highly respected scholar and acclaimed appellate advocate, he brought no expertise in the federal criminal law, however, which was still the glaring weakness in Nixon’s defense team.

In midafternoon that day, Nixon phoned Haig, and both wanted to believe the Watergate story was finally dying, although the president acknowledged that “they’re going to try to crap on us about once a week.”
³³
Nixon did not think the overall situation was bad, however, for “I must say, we’re getting a little thicker skin.” Late that afternoon, before departing Camp David for the White House, Nixon called Haldeman to set up another off-the-record meeting at the Lincoln Sitting Room an hour later.
³⁴
Although no record was kept of these private sessions, it is very clear from his later conversation with Ziegler that they once again speculated on my testimony regarding the March 21 conversation but this time versus Haldeman’s likely testimony about it.
³⁵
They also apparently discussed the president’s papers, as he mentioned to Ziegler: “Bob raised this to me today. Around 90 percent of the papers would help us, basically. But the other 10 percent would kill us.” Nixon reminded Ziegler during this conversation, “It’s going to be a God damned mean pissing match.”

During a morning EOB conversation, Haig told the president that, while he felt “we’re over the hump on this thing,” he urged Nixon to listen to all of his conversations with me.
³⁶
“I think you should get these tapes replayed for you, alone, and take notes of your discussions with Dean,” in order to learn from them “what the son of a bitch” had. “You’ve got to know what he is specifically going to charge, and then you can sit down with Buzhardt with your
notes and give Buzhardt whatever he wants, so that we can strategize whipping this son of a bitch, and structure the kind of strategy we have to have to deal with him.” Nixon agreed, however reluctantly, as he was still concerned about what he had actually said in them, although he assured Haig, “I know my motives were right.”