All the President's Men (43 page)

Then he forced a smile—more like a grimace—and hurried from the room. Bernstein asked some of the regulars if his hands always shook like that. Only recently, they said.

The mood in the press room turned ugly after the President left. The reporters were going to beat and flail Ziegler into submission.

At first Ziegler’s resistance was firm. There were no contradictions between the President’s latest statement and what had been said before, Ziegler insisted. The previous statements from the White House had been based on “investigations prior to the President’s action” and on
“the previous investigation” and on “information available at the time.” Now “new information” had led to the latest “standing statement of position.”

But the reporters wanted more. On the eighteenth blow, Ziegler yielded.

“This is the operative statement,” he said. “The others are inoperative.” For a moment, there was a splendid silence.

It was after six when Bernstein returned to the office and began writing. Any story about Haldeman’s and Dean’s resignations would have to await further confirmation. Ziegler had filled several pages of transcript dodging that question. But Woodward had already written an insert that helped put the President’s statement in perspective. He had been told by officials at Justice and the White House that several presidential aides would soon be indicted by the Watergate grand jury—Mitchell, Magruder and Dean were the most likely candidates. They were not named in the story.

When he read the story, Harry Rosenfeld gave Bernstein a good-natured look which said, “You should know better,” and crossed out the reference to the President’s shaking hands.

•   •   •

The reporters began to search for the exact reasons behind the President’s abrupt turnabout. The next morning, April 18, Woodward called a man from CRP and asked him who was talking to the prosecutors.

“Why don’t you come over to my office about four this afternoon? I might have something for you,” he said.

It was a long, warm walk, not very pleasant because the Metro subway construction had ripped up many of the streets and sidewalks along the way. The sound of jackhammers and piledrivers was deafening. Woodward could still hear the noise outside as he sat in a chair across the desk from the CRP man.

“Magruder is your next McCord,” he said. “He went to the prosecutors last Saturday [April 14] and tucked it to Dean and Mitchell.”

Woodward was surprised. He had regarded Magruder as a super-loyalist. Things must have been very bad, he said.

“Bad, shit,” the man said. “The walls were coming in on him—walls,
ceiling, floor, everything.” He threw his arms in front of his face for emphasis.

Woodward asked what Magruder had pinned on Dean and Mitchell.

“The whole mess,” the man said, “the bugging plans and the payoff scheme  . . . those meetings, or at least one meeting, in Mitchell’s office when everything was discussed with Liddy before the bugging.”

Woodward took a cab back to the office and called a White House official.

We know Magruder is talking, Woodward said.

“You’ve got pretty good information, then,” the official answered.

How extensive was what Magruder told the prosecutors?

“The works—all the plans for the bugging, the charts, the payoffs  . . . This is no hearsay like McCord. It will put Dean and Mitchell in jail.”

•   •   •

Woodward called Magruder’s lawyer, James J. Bierbower, and told him that the
Post
was aware that his client had gone to the prosecutors.

“Now wait, now wait,” Bierbower said, “I’m not even confirming that he is my client.”

Woodward said the
Post
was going to report that Magruder had accused Dean and Mitchell on both the bugging and the cover-up.

“I’ll call you back in fifteen minutes,” Bierbower said.

Half an hour later, he told Woodward, “I will confirm that he will testify before the grand jury when he is called.”

Woodward called a Justice Department official and told him what he had.

“That’s not all.” The official sounded positively cocky. “Other people will testify that Mitchell and Dean were in on the arrangements for the payoffs.”

Bernstein reached a White House source who confirmed Deep Throat’s information that Haldeman and Dean were finished there. Dean’s resignation had already been typed out and Haldeman’s was in the works.

Woodward was finishing the first page of the story when Bradlee arrived at his desk. He had brought a sheet of his two-ply paper with
him and sat down at a typewriter behind Woodward. Their backs were to each other. Woodward heard Bradlee say something about “the story I’ve been waiting for.” Then Woodward heard the sound of the typewriter. Bradlee’s first paragraph was out in about a minute flat and he asked Woodward to turn around and look.

Woodward protested mildly that Bradlee had failed to attribute the story to any sources. It read as if Magruder’s allegations had come from nowhere and landed in the
Post’s
lap.

Bradlee was undeterred. “You can do that later,” he said, and started typing again. By the end of the third paragraph, he had more or less solved the attribution problem and filled the two-ply.

Except for titles, middle names and initials, the three-paragraph lead was Bradlee’s.

Former Attorney General John N. Mitchell and White House Counsel John W. Dean III approved and helped pian the Watergate bugging operation, according to President Nixon’s former special assistant, Jeb Stuart Magruder.

Mitchell and Dean later arranged to buy the silence of the seven convicted Watergate conspirators, Magruder has also said.

Magruder, the deputy campaign manager for the President, made these statements to federal prosecutors Saturday, according to three sources in the White House and the Committee for the Re-election of the President.

The entire story filled half of the front page, the most space ever devoted to a single Watergate story.

The New York Times
edition for the same day, April 19, carried a five-column headline on Watergate. Attorney General Kleindienst had disqualified himself from handling the case because of “persistent reports” that three or more of his colleagues would be indicted. Sy Hersh had written that the grand-jury inquiry had shifted emphasis from the Watergate bugging itself to the obstruction of justice by administration officials thought to be involved in the cover-up. John Dean was said to be ready to implicate others, if indicted.

That morning, Bernstein called Dean’s office. Dean’s secretary was crying. She didn’t know where her boss was, or if he worked at the White House any more. She gave Bernstein the names of several friends and associates of Dean’s who might be helpful. All were unreachable.

15

I
N THE LATE MORNING
, when Dean’s secretary had regained her composure, she called back and read Bernstein a statement that had been issued in Dean’s name.

To date I have refrained from making any public comment whatsoever about the Watergate case. I shall continue that policy in the future. . . . It is my hope, however, that those truly interested in seeing  . . . that justice is done will be careful in drawing any conclusions as to the guilt or involvement of any person. . . . Finally, some may hope or think that I will become a scapegoat in the Watergate case. Anyone who believes this does not know me, know the true facts, nor understand our system of justice.

Bernstein read the statement twice. A threatening, defiant John Dean was something new. He called the White House press office to check the statement. The White House would have no comment on “unauthorized” statements by John Dean.

The
Post’s
White House reporter, Carroll Kilpatrick, called Bernstein from the White House press room. Ziegler, in his daily news conference, had made no effort to defend Dean. The President’s counsel was “in his office  . . . attending to business of some sort.” The President was searching “for the truth, not scapegoats.”

Bernstein reached a friend of Dean’s whom he had talked to once before. Their previous conversation, brief and unfriendly, seemed forgotten. Now, Bernstein was told: “The truth of the matter is fairly long
and broad and it goes up and down, higher and lower. You can’t make a case that  . . . this was just John Mitchell and John Dean. If Jeb’s saying John Dean had prior knowledge of the bugging, John has a different story. John welcomes the opportunity to tell his side of the story to the grand jury. He’s not going to go down in flames for the activities of others.”

The friend would not say which others. But the message, loud and clear, confirmed that those who had once served Richard Nixon as one, and had forged the superstructure of rigid White House discipline and self-control, were in open warfare with one another.

Bernstein reached one of the associates suggested by Dean’s secretary. The man sounded cordial when Bernstein introduced himself. Bernstein decided to make a proposal:

The
Post
had been very rough on John Dean, he said, but the facts had justified it. Now the case was blowing wide open. Dean had been in a unique position to understand the whole of Watergate. Others in and out of the White House were obviously gunning for him—Ziegler today and Magruder yesterday—and would try to discredit Dean before he could do them any more damage. If the
Post
knew what Dean had to say—if he would talk to the reporters, and if they thought he was telling the truth—the paper could foil the attacks. But only with facts. The reporters had enough sources to check out his allegations and substantiate them. It could work to Dean’s advantage. Unless he lied.

The associate said that Dean respected the
Post’s
Watergate coverage. Just what they needed, Bernstein thought, an endorsement from John Dean.

Dean “doesn’t think you’ve been unfair to him. There’s no reason for him to take it personally. Hell, he didn’t take a step without somebody telling him what to do in this thing. He didn’t make the decision to try to beat you. He was against it. He’d like nothing better than to sit down with you and tell you the whole story. But that’s not what he needs now. If he ever testifies, he has to be able to say under oath that he did not talk to the press first. That doesn’t mean that you and I can’t do a little visiting with each other. After you check out a few things and there gets to be some trust built up both ways, we’ll both know better where we’re going.”

Not knowing what to expect, Bernstein asked where he should begin.

“You might start with the P’s statement,” the associate said. (It took Bernstein a moment to realize that “the P” was the President.) “Find out what happened on March 21—who it was that brought all those ‘serious charges’ to the P’s attention.”

John Dean?

“Well, I’m not saying who it was, but your thinking is on the right track. Check it out. It sure wasn’t John Ehrlichman who walked into the Oval Office that day and said, in effect, ‘There has been a cover-up and it’s worse than you think it is, Mr. President.’ That would be a pretty good reason to make somebody a scapegoat if you were, say, H, wouldn’t you think?”

Haldeman?

“And others. From June 17 on, John Dean never did a thing unless H or somebody else told him first to do it—including the arrangements for hush money.”

Who else?

“Let’s see how you do with checking this out first.”

What about before June 17?

“John Dean would tell the grand jury that, yes, he went to a meeting at which the bugging was discussed, and that he said he wouldn’t have anything to do with it, and that he said anybody else who did was crazy.”

John Dean seemed to have answers for everything. If Dean had been at that meeting, how did he explain the “Dean Report”? And the President’s assurance that Dean and his report had convinced the President that his close aides did not have advance knowledge of the bugging?

“The so-called report of the investigation was more or less whole-cloth—a concept, or a theory, that was passed on to the P.”

By whom?

“Not John Dean. He had never even discussed Watergate with the P as of August 29.”

Then what was the report?

“God damn, I thought you guys were supposed to be smart,” he laughed. “There never was a report. Dean was asked to gather certain
facts. The facts got twisted around to help some other people above him. Now those people plan to cut their losses and shore up by implicating John Mitchell and John Dean. It’s wishful thinking on their part if they think they can get away with that.”

Why didn’t Dean go public right away, if he was so interested in the truth?

“One, because nobody would believe him if he walked out today and said everything he knows. This didn’t start with Watergate. It was a way of life at the White House. He’s got to establish gradually that he’s reliable, that he won’t lie. Because he knows things that nobody else is ever going to talk about willingly. Almost everything can be checked out. But before he goes public, he’s got to convince everybody—the prosecutors, the press and Senator Sam’s people on the Hill—that he’s telling the truth. Otherwise the White House will cut his balls off before he has a chance.”

Which was why John Dean was willing to do business with the
Washington Post,
correct?

“Look, you asked me the right questions and I gave you some leads. The
Washington Post
isn’t about to go out on a limb for John Dean. Check it out and we’ll visit again tomorrow.”

Bernstein didn’t know what to think. Of all the Watergate principals, he probably had the least regard for John Dean. At least John Mitchell was his own man. Colson’s intellect was first-rate, somebody to respect at the poker table, regardless of what you thought of him. Haldeman was an enigma, sometimes brilliant, often pitifully shortsighted, often cruel, sometimes appealingly human. But Dean had not seemed to have any substance, a WASP Sammy Glick who hadn’t even been very imaginative about the way he climbed to the top. On the other hand, Dean would be the kind Haldeman would rely on and then cut loose. He had to know a lot.