All the President's Men (45 page)

“But when John got back to the White House, it became obvious that the President had been persuaded by the German shepherds to keep his losses to a minimum  . . . to sacrifice John Dean while trying to discourage the indictment of Haldeman and Ehrlichman. Instead of agreeing to cooperate, they are still telling the P that John should walk the plank for all of them. The P is ready to give John the final shove.”

Bernstein asked if Dean now believed the President was involved in the cover-up himself.

“See what other people say about this first,” he replied. “Then we can visit again.”

Woodward called his man from CRP. “Dean said in March he wanted to blow this up. Dean has attempted to be honest, but he was taking orders from Haldeman and Ehrlichman. Honesty and following orders were inconsistent, so Dean broke ranks.”

The reporters began another round of calls to the White House. Dean’s version of the events since March 21 was surprisingly easy to confirm. The grip of fear that Haldeman and Ehrlichman had once exercised seemed to have been broken. Haldeman and Ehrlichman had acknowledged to certain of their colleagues in the White House that they had authorized widespread undercover activities and knew of payments to the convicted conspirators but maintained that they had never specifically approved or ordered anything illegal.

About 7:45 that night, Woodward got a call from a Capitol Hill source with an even bigger story: The
New York Daily News
would be on the streets in a few minutes, he said, saying that Acting FBI Director Gray had destroyed documents taken from Howard Hunt’s White House safe. The documents reportedly destroyed had been in
two folders. One contained bogus State Department cables fabricated by Hunt to implicate President John F. Kennedy in the 1963 assassination of South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem. The second was a dossier stuffed with information collected by Hunt on Senator Edward Kennedy. The source said the
News
story was accurate.

Woodward called a Senate aide on the Watergate committee. He confirmed the
News
account. John Dean had told Assistant Attorney General Henry Petersen about it 10 days before.

About 9:30, the phone at Woodward’s desk rang. “Give me a number to call you on,” Deep Throat said.

Woodward gave him the number of one of the main city-desk lines. The call came at once.

“You’ve heard the Gray story?” Deep Throat asked. “Well it’s true. On June 28, in a meeting with Ehrlichman and Dean, Gray was told the files were—quote—’political dynamite’ and should—quote—’never see the light of day.’ He was told, quote, ‘they could do more damage than the Watergate bugging itself.’ In fact, Ehrlichman had told Dean earlier in the day, ‘You go across the river every day, John. Why don’t you drop the goddamn fucking things in the river?’ Gray kept the files for about a week and then he says he threw them in a burn bag in his office. He says that he was not exactly told to destroy the files, but understood it was absolutely clear what Dean and Ehrlichman wanted.”
*

Bernstein reached Dean’s associate.

“You ever hear the expression ‘Deep Six’?” he asked. “That’s what Ehrlichman said he wanted done with those files.”

The story was solid. Howard Simons ordered the front page remade for the second edition.

Bernstein was more shaken by all this than by anything since June 17. It was the language and the context of Ehrlichman’s remark to Dean that troubled him. Just as if they were a couple of Mafiosi talking to each other in a restaurant, the President’s number-two assistant had said to the President’s
consigliere: Hey, Joe, we gotta dump this stuff in the river before the boss gets hurt.

Howard Simons slouched in a chair, drawing deeply on a cigarette,
the color gone from his face. “A director of the FBI destroying evidence? I never thought it could happen,” he said quietly.

•   •   •

In the late afternoon of April 27, Bernstein and Woodward were called over by one of the editors to look at a story that had just come across the Associated Press wire as a bulletin.

It was another Watergate. In Los Angeles, at the trial of Daniel Ellsberg, Judge Matthew Byrne had announced that he had learned from the Watergate prosecutors that Hunt and Liddy supervised the burglary of the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in 1971.

Bernstein reached John Dean’s associate for their daily conversation.

“Carl, how do you think they learned about that little bag job on the coast?” the associate asked.

Dean again?

“You ask the prosecutors who told them about that. . . . John’s got some stories to tell. Ask them about his credibility. Everything he’s told them has checked out  . . . and there is still a lot more he hasn’t told them yet that they want to know about. Don’t forget: John Dean was over there at the White House a long time, and there were lots of projects. John has knowledge of illegal activities that go way back.”

How far back?

“Way back  . . . to the beginning.”

More wiretapping?

“I wouldn’t challenge that assumption.”

Burglaries?

“Would you keep a squad of burglars around the house for years if you only wanted them for one or two jobs?  . . . H and E are upset about what has come out so far. There are documents  . . .”

About burglaries?

“About a lot of things. You might think about the story of Patrick Gray destroying those documents. There is only one way this whole story will ever come out. . . . You didn’t see E run down to the prosecutors and tell how he broke the law. Has H been down there? I don’t expect the P to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue to the court-house. That leaves one person. John Dean again. . . . We are laying a foundation to protect ourselves.

“Haldeman and Ehrlichman have been trying to get John to take a dive and convince the P that he should save their skins and blame it all on John. The P has agreed.”

Is Dean going to implicate the P?

“There were lots of meetings. . . . The P was there. The cover-up was being discussed.”

The next evening, Woodward went to the White House. He had asked a senior presidential aide for an interview to talk about John Dean. Woodward sat in one of the colorfully decorated offices in the old Executive Office Building and drank coffee out of a cup bearing the Presidential Seal.

Haldeman and Ehrlichman were finished, the man said.

And, yes, it was coming. John Dean was going to implicate the President in the cover-up. The aide had a pained expression on his face.

What did Dean have?

“I’m not sure. I’m not sure it is evidence. . . . The President’s former lawyer is going to say that the President is  . . . well, a felon.” The man’s face trembled. He asked Woodward to leave.

16

A
T THE OFFICE
, Bernstein and Woodward discussed the statements of both men. They were convinced that Dean was going to implicate the President. Bradlee and Simons thought it would be premature to print that. They wanted specifics, a look at the documents Dean supposedly had, Dean’s recollections of conversations with the President himself—something that would enable them to evaluate whether Dean was telling the truth.

Instead of the Dean story on the President, the reporters put together a Sunday story which said that senior White House aides had concluded that Haldeman and Ehrlichman were involved in the cover-up.

The next morning, April 30, word came in slowly. There was a phone call from Capitol Hill. Then, a tentative confirmation from a reporter at the White House. Bradlee came out of his office to tell Woodward: It’s happening today. Four of them: Haldeman and Ehrlichman have resigned; Dean has been fired; Kleindienst has also resigned. Elliot Richardson is moving over from the Defense Department to become Attorney General. Bernstein came in a few minutes later and Simons told him the news. He went to his desk and sat down. James McCartney, a national correspondent for Knight Newspapers who happened to be in the office writing an article on the
Post
for the
Columbia Journalism Review,
came over and wanted to talk to Bernstein. Bernstein said he didn’t want to talk just then.

Just before noon, the White House made an announcement, and
the resignation letters arrived in the office and were Xeroxed. That made it real. The Haldeman letter referred to “various allegations and innuendoes” and “the flood of stories” which made it “virtually impossible under these circumstances for me to carry on my regular responsibilities in the White House.” Ehrlichman said that “regardless of the actual facts, I have been a target of public attack  . . . repeated rumor, unfounded charges or implications and whatever else the media carries.”

McCartney’s article, which appeared in the July-August 1973 issue of the
Columbia Journalism Review,
recorded Bradlee’s reaction to the official news:

It was 11:55
A.M
. on April 30, and Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee, 51, executive editor of the
Washington Post,
chatted with a visitor, feet on the desk, idly attempting to toss a plastic toy basketball through a hoop mounted on an office window 12 feet away. The inevitable subject of conversation: Watergate. Howard Simons, the
Post’s
managing editor, slipped into the room to interrupt: “Nixon has accepted the resignations of Ehrlichman and Haldeman and Dean,” he said. “Kleindienst is out and Richardson is the new attorney general.”

For a split second, Ben Bradlee’s mouth dropped open with an expression of sheer delight. Then he put one cheek on the desk, eyes closed and banged the desk repeatedly with his right fist. In a moment he recovered. “How do you like them apples?” he said to the grinning Simons. “Not a bad start.”

Bradlee couldn’t restrain himself. He strode into the
Post’s
vast fifth-floor newsroom and shouted across rows of desks to  . . . Woodward  . . . “Not bad, Bob! Not half bad!” Howard Simons interjected a note of caution: “Don’t gloat,” he murmured, as
Post
staff members began to gather around. “We can’t afford to gloat!”

Bradlee came through the city room, whooping. “Never,” he kept saying. “Never, never, never, never.” Bernstein and Woodward sat at the desks. Woodward suggested they take a walk.

That night at nine, the President addressed the nation on network television. Bernstein and Woodward went into Howard Simons’ office to watch the speech with him and Mrs. Graham.

“The President of the United States,” the announcer said solemnly.
Nixon sat at his desk, a picture of his family on one side, a bust of Abraham Lincoln on the other.

“Oh, my God,” Mrs. Graham said. “This is too much.”

The President began to speak: “I want to talk to you tonight from my heart. . . . There had been an effort to conceal the facts both from the public, from you, and from me. . . . I wanted to be fair. . . . Today, in one of the most difficult decisions of my Presidency, I accepted the resignations of two of my closest associates. . . . Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman—two of the finest public servants it has been my privilege to know. . . . The easiest course would be for me to blame those to whom I delegated the responsibility to run the campaign. But that would be a cowardly thing to do. . . . In any organization, the man at the top must bear the responsibility. That responsibility, therefore, belongs here in this office. I accept it. . . . It was the system that has brought the facts to light  . . . a system that in this case has included a determined grand jury, honest prosecutors, a courageous judge, John Sirica, and a vigorous free press. . . . I must now turn my full attention once again to the larger duties of this office. I owe it to this great office that I hold, and I owe it to you—to our country.

“ . . . There can be no whitewash at the White House. . . . Two wrongs do not make a right. . . . I love America. . . . God bless America and God bless each and every one of you.”

The day after the President’s April 30 speech, Bernstein was at his desk reading the
New York Times
and the
Washington Star.
A copy aide dropped a UPI wire story:

White House Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler publicly apologized today to the
Washington Post
and two of its reporters for his earlier criticism of their investigative reporting of the Watergate conspiracy.

At the White House briefing, a reporter asked Ziegler if the White House didn’t owe the
Post
an apology.

“In thinking of it all at this point in time, yes,” Ziegler said, “I would apologize to the
Post,
and I would apologize to Mr. Woodward and Mr. Bernstein. . . . We would all have to say that mistakes were made in terms of comments. I was over enthusiastic in my comments about the
Post,
particularly if you look at them in the context of developments that have taken place. . . . When we are wrong, we are wrong, as we were in that case.”

As Ziegler finished he started to say, “But  . . .” He was cut off by a reporter who said: “Now don’t take it back, Ron.”

Bernstein took the copy and laid it on Woodward’s desk. Later, Woodward called Ziegler at the White House to thank him.

“We all have our jobs,” Ziegler replied.

•   •   •

Bernstein and Woodward had been sitting on the Dean story for a week; they had not been able to develop information on exactly what Dean was going to say about the President’s involvement in the cover-up. On Saturday, May 5, they had just finished writing a story about the mood of uncertainty and lack of morale in the White House when a long teletype message came from the wire room. It was a press release from
Newsweek.
Woodward assumed the worst—the news magazines put out a press release on Saturday night only when they had an exceptionally important story.

The
Newsweek
story said that Dean was prepared to describe two incidents in the previous year that led him to conclude that Nixon knew about the Watergate cover-up. The first was in September 1972, after the Watergate indictments had been returned, and they had gone no higher than Liddy. Dean was summoned to the Oval Office by Haldeman and found the President and his chief of staff “all grins.” Dean quoted the President as saying, “Good job, John, Bob told me what a great job you’ve been doing.” The second occurred in December, Dean alleged, when Ehrlichman told him the President had, in effect, approved executive clemency for Howard Hunt.